Few stations and $200 to fill up: Life on California's 'hydrogen highway' | Hacker News Reader

Few stations and $200 to fill up: Life on California's 'hydrogen highway'

japantimes.co.jp

26 pointsPaulHoule18 comments

I think there was a point in time when hydrogen looked like it might be a realistic option for personal cars. I think that time has now passed. Electricity is just so much more ubiquitous, which makes battery electric cars much much more attractive.

However, I think hydrogen makes a lot of sense for fleets of vehicles that need to go long distances between fixed depots where infrastructure can be built. I think hydrogen buses and trucks are a natural choice, because you can build fuelling stations at their depots, and then you don't have to lug a battery around. Whether that ends up being more cost effective than battery electric, I don't know.

When the cost of drilling oil and converting to gasoline outweighs the cost of manufacturing hydrogen, the current oil giants will pivot.

This will drive (current) costs down.

They’re not going to allow their businesses to fail.

Perhaps, but the playbook has always been lobbying and deception to prop up oil. Manufacturing hydrogen isn't enough; they'll have to build out the infrastructure (I have no idea how easily gas pumps/stations can be retrofitted)

Indeed but, you can be sure, they have the finances to do that.

It’ll be how there businesses survive.

>When the cost of drilling oil and converting to gasoline outweighs the cost of manufacturing hydrogen, the current oil giants will pivot.

It is actually cheaper and greener to burn fossil fuels to make electricity for EVs, and just capture the CO2 emissions released than to produce hydrogen.

Virtually 100% of H2 sold today is 'blue hydrogen,' meaning it is derived from steam methane reforming of natural gas, a process that actually generates more Greenhouse Gas than simply burning natural gas [1].

'Green Hydrogen' produced from the electrolysis of water is incredibly expensive (about 3-4x more than Blue). Both are mature technologies that are unlikely to get cheaper at larger scale.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.956#:~....

I have faith, and it is only faith, someone will find a way to cheaply crack water at some point.

Looking at hydrogen after considering a CNG car, it has all the problems of CNG, plus it's an even more exotic fuel that reacts with the container and it's an exotic chemistry project to turn the fuel into motive power. Yes, the vehicles exist, but it seems like a big waste of everyone's time and money.

Shared problems:

high pressure vehicle fuel tanks that expire 15-20 years after manufacture and are uneconomical to replace (if parts are even available)

high pressure fuel storage which will require a large energy cost to compress

High pressure on board fuel storage is hard to expand and heavy compared to liquid fuels.

CNG/LNG/Propane powered vehicles can work for high mileage fleets that work locally, they typically put on enough miles that the vehicles would be retired before the tanks expire anyway, and they can put fueling stations in their service and parking depots. And the vehicles tend to be heavy already, so a large metal tank is no big deal.

I had LPG installed on my car last year. For the fuel prices in my part of Europe, I calculated it would pay for itself in less than 10,000km.

LPG is lot simpler than CNG or Hydrogen as the fuel can be stored at room temperature in liquid form at relatively low pressures. The tank pressure is around 10 bar / 150 psi, which is not much more than your home water supply. CNG is around 200 bar and hydrogen around 500 bar.

Note though that there is a world of difference between a room temperature pressurized water system (which won't BLEVE if it ruptures) and propane (which will).

Exactly! I could also see hydrogen for things like freight trains and cargo ships which will be tough to electrify in America (so much track and rail companies hate spending on upgrades.)

Hydrogen seems not only more dangerous, but more complex to store and deal with than typical gas. Whereas every gas station and nearly every home already has an electric connection that will have to be maintained and upgraded forever, regardless of what happens to cars. Electricity as the prime energy source for cars and devices also allows any potential future fuel type or energy source to be used for generators. That’s not possible with hydrogen, and it’s a massive downside.

We have an opportunity to (in software terms) generalize our infrastructure and separate concerns. We can make energy generation separate from energy use. That’s going to be a lot more flexible for the long-run than committing to distributing more gas around.

No one is seriously pursuing hydrogen for large cargo ships. Storing enough compressed or liquified hydrogen to make an ocean crossing is just ridiculous. The current trend is toward ammonia fuel which, although it has some safety and environmental problems, is far more practical and cost effective.

https://gcaptain.com/one-awarded-aip-for-ammonia-fueled-cont...

Was it ever taken seriously by anyone? It seems like just a distraction to keep ICE cars on the road.

If Toyota or anyone wanted hydrogen to be the future then they needed to make it be the future by investing millions in a refueling network.

Tesla made electricity the future by doing just that.

Also, all the hydrogen came from petroleum anyway so it’s just gas with extra steps.

Congratulations you just did absolutely nothing at great expense and difficulty.

Yep. "In 2022 less than 1% of hydrogen production was low-carbon. Fossil fuels are the dominant source of hydrogen." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

Hydrogen as a "green fuel" is a scam cooked up by the fossil fuel industry. It will never happen. Except for certain niches, it's just not practical.

Why are we still discussing hydrogen if methane is a solved problem? (CNG/LPG). My car gets full tank for about 20 EUR and drives 400km. Creating green methane out of bio sources or from CO2 is pretty ok too given solar/wind as energy source. Transportation is not an issue , leaking through solid containers is not an issue. Why choose hard mode and try to build out hydrogen?

Because Hydrogen, green Hydrogen in particular, is an important problem to solve.

Hydrogen -> Ammonia -> Nitrogen component of Fertilizer is a huge portion of the modern food system.

If we need to mass produce green Hydrogen for Ammonia anyway, it'd be cheaper if we found other uses of Hydrogen while we were at it.

Ok so the plan is to ignore actually feasible options to make transport carbon neutral and light dollars on fire researching hydrogen to maybe make nitrogen?

H2 for transit seems like it works very well for Trucks and Trains actually.

> to maybe make nitrogen

Ammonia Fertilizer is NH3. So that's 1x N2 + 3x H2 == 2x NH3, if I'm getting my chemistry correct.

But not "maybe", we are doing it, and we *MUST* do it. One of the biggest uses of fossil fuels in our life is our nitrogen fertilizer system. Decarbonizing our fertilizer is as big and important a goal as decarbonizing our transit.

And if H2 is useful for transit, then doubly so. We can use H2 for transit and then use H2 + N2 == Fertilizer and solve both at the same time.

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You can't use batteries to make Ammonia / Fertilizer. So we're going there anyway with regards to our "tech tree". Might as well experiment and see how feasible transit is.

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