First principles pondering

[Cyberman]

As Elon has stated in the past, hydrogen "fuel cells" should really be called "fool cells". Not very efficient. And there's virtually no hydrogen infrastructure throughout the world today. Electricity is... everywhere you see power lines. Hydrogen's time came and went over 20 years ago, technology has way surpassed its efficiency. 40 years ago I watched a TV show all about hydrogen, the most basic and common element in the universe. To my amazement, I learned you can get hydrogen fuel... from water! Split the water molecule with electricity, you get oxygen and hydrogen gasses. And the world's surface is 2/3 water. We'll never run out of water, even if it's just salt water. And what comes out of the tailpipe of a hydrogen ICE engine? Water vapor, clean enough to drink, as the hydrogen recombines with oxygen to become water again. The name of the show was "Fire In The Water". I thought, this is it, we're on the brink of a paradigm shift, we're all gonna be driving hydrogen cars in a couple of years. Only problem was, hydrogen cost about $8 a gallon, back in 1981, when gas was about a buck. I expected hydrogen tech to catch up, but it never happened. Now we're way beyond hydrogen, although I realize today's tech is certainly more sophisticated than strapping a hydrogen tank under an ICE vehicle, but BEV's are here to stay. There may be a place in other industries for fuel cells, but for personal transpo, BEV's are the shit.

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[Crissa]

Right now batteries are resource intensive. But what will it look like when battery recycling kicks in?

...They remain heavier and more resource intensive. It's just a density problem.

Batteries are in a better place than they were, and Hydrogen Fuel Cells aren't great a small scale, but everything has its trade offs.

-Crissa

 

[Newton]

i should try to make a 200cc bike run on hydrolized water, with the energy from an alternator/ generator... or would that break physics?

 

[Dids]

They are going to build a recharge station next door to your house. Pick one.
1. Supercharger lot.
2. Hydrogen refuel station.
Did you pick number 1? Why?

 

[rr6013]

They are going to build a recharge station next door to your house. Pick one.
1. Supercharger lot.
2. Hydrogen refuel station.
Did you pick number 1? Why?

The question is range. It’s whether LiON has a backup like a little red “Jerry can” provided ICE. IF electrons can’t be stored and conserved in reserve onboard Teslas:

a) for that occasional circumstance where a car needs 50 mile EXTRA range to a charger. Then range offroad, backcountry and out of country becomes Tesla off-limits.

b) Power grid fail. Then Tesla range is backup solar, Powerwall or stuck.

Secondly, range morphs into question of electrons
a) If Fuel cell is just another battery for electrons, are all electrons equally interchangeable? Affordably for Tesla to consume?

b) Power grid electrons too expensive. Then Tesla range dependent on grid, solar and/or Powerwall.

c) LiON technology too expensive. Then what is Tesla pivot?

Lastly, question of range boils down to availability. Your question:
a) Supercharger nextdoor
b) Hydrogen nextdoor

China hydrogen for mass transit could mean b) Hydrogen nextdoor. IF China subsidize, mandate or out-compete BEV charging stations Tesla range could be non-competitive in China cities that are hydrogen.

Hydrogen centralized distribution is a game Big Oil know well plays well and could well be its pivot. IF power grid doesn’t upgrade to compete with demand growth Big Oil pivot could save utilities monopoly.

Panama power grid is exceptionally under developed without resources to build out for 2x or more by 2040 when ICE are no more. Hydrogen from Big Oil pivot may be cheaper for nations internationally. Tesla BEV range suddenly becomes Geo-fenced and too limited to charge from only solar and Powerwall.

 

[Diehard]

They are going to build a recharge station next door to your house. Pick one.
1. Supercharger lot.
2. Hydrogen refuel station.
Did you pick number 1? Why?

They are going to build a recharge station next door to MY house. Pick one.
1. Supercharger lot.
2. Hydrogen refuel station.
Did you pick number 2? Why?

Most people won’t have it next to their house and they won’t care if my house blows up. Assuming anyone will have a say in where it goes. If we got comfortable riding around with gasoline in our tanks and natural gas in our houses. We can get comfortable with this.

We all watched chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi fiascos on TV and yet we still have 56 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 94 nuclear power reactors in U.S. Many people live and work around them (in danger zone). And many charge their EVs with the power coming from those power plants. Bad stuff happening to “other people” on the news is not as strong of a deterrent as you think.

I am not saying I am pro hydrogen vs EV at the time each of them have their own pros and cons but I would like the tech to grow so I have a choice. Only if they put the station next to your house

 

[Luke42]

Does that 80% include compressing the hydrogen gas?

I think that's just the electrolysis losses.

I'd been under the impression that the efficiency of hydrogen was closer to 50%, but a quick google search contradicted what I remembered -- so I went with that number.

Whether the efficiency of hydrogen is 50%ish or 80%ish doesn't really matter. Lithium batteries are still much better in terms of overall well-to-wheels efficiency (assuming a well is involved at all).

 

[LoPro]

They are going to build a recharge station next door to MY house. Pick one.
1. Supercharger lot.
2. Hydrogen refuel station.
Did you pick number 2? Why?

Most people won’t have it next to their house and they won’t care if my house blows up. Assuming anyone will have a say in where it goes. If we got comfortable riding around with gasoline in our tanks and natural gas in our houses. We can get comfortable with this.

We all watched chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi fiascos on TV and yet we still have 56 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 94 nuclear power reactors in U.S. Many people live and work around them (in danger zone). And many charge their EVs with the power coming from those power plants. Bad stuff happening to “other people” on the news is not as strong of a deterrent as you think.

I am not saying I am pro hydrogen vs EV at the time each of them have their own pros and cons but I would like the tech to grow so I have a choice. Only if they put the station next to your house

The hydrogen refueling stations in Oslo, Norway, were «green» and based on sea water and solar, but were getting fewer after declining demand, until one exploded in 2019 and has been closed since. I think there’s just one place left now but that’s of course incredibly impractical for the few people interested in hydrogen cars.

https://longtailpipe.com/2019/06/10/hydrogen-refueling-station-in-oslo-norway-explodes-and-burns/

 

[Luke42]

Right now batteries are resource intensive. But what will it look like when battery recycling kicks in? From what I understand, the recycling process would be much less intensive. So really, the intensity of batteries would primarily be a first generation issue. Once enough of the resources had been pulled together, that intensity would basically be completed.

Hydrogen fuel cells use a fair amount of platinum, which is the same material that makes the catalytic converters so expensive.

There are a lot of press releases showing how various companies and labs have figured out how to cut costs here -- so maybe there's been some progress since the last time I tried shopping for a hydrogen fuel cell.

P.S. The last time I tried to shop for a hydrogen fuel cell was about 15 years ago, and they appeared to cost as much as my house (around $100k), which is why they stayed mostly in research labs. If progress has cut their costs by 60%, that still makes them about twice as expensive than batteries, and that's before you start buying the high-pressure hydrogen tanks.

 

[Diehard]

The hydrogen refueling stations in Oslo, Norway, were «green» and based on sea water and solar, but were getting fewer after declining demand, until one exploded in 2019 and has been closed since. I think there’s just one place left now but that’s of course incredibly impractical for the few people interested in hydrogen cars.

https://longtailpipe.com/2019/06/10/hydrogen-refueling-station-in-oslo-norway-explodes-and-burns/

It is probably due to Will Ferrell challenge. They want to put all their energy on EV . Either that or a sharpshooter from Tesla.

Which tech wins is always about more than inherent characteristics of it. Electricity lost to gasoline years ago and it looks like it may be winning now.

If hydrogen didn’t take off in Norway, it probably won’t take off here.

 

[carpedatum]

Reasoning from first principles is how we wound up with a growing worldwide network of Superchargers. That's a capital-intensive, loss-leading product that had to be created in order to get the public to buy into BEVs. Reasonably speaking, a company that wants the world to shift to alternative fuels must invest in infrastructure to fuel them. One can't be all that disruptive without such an investment.

After studying California's fuel cell stations map for a while, I wouldn't touch a hydrogen-powered vehicle with a ten foot pole. There are very few stations in existence to begin with, and many of those are offline, for one reason or another. No organization has stepped up and said that it will solve this. The most likely of them (Toyota, Honda, who have a vested interest) seem to expect that these things will just pop up. It already looks like a dead idea, at least for now.

An important first principle is that to get people to adopt a thing at scale, their experience has to be better with that thing. Guilt alone won't do it but a better ownership experience will. Create that tipping point and the public will see your point of view. If the hydrogen standard-bearers want us to see things their way, they're going to have to invest meaningfully, at some point, in fueling stations (and get rid of the dealer networks, but that's another problem).

There's no doubt that our grid is in need of massive renovation and capacity improvements to solve for a world full of BEVs, but (as evidenced by the newsworthy messes in CA and TX) it is in dire need of that anyway. There is, now, political momentum, thanks to both those newsworthy messes and Tesla's example. It is easy to ignore the potential in a potentially-workable technology, but harder to ignore what has been made obvious.

I don't see politicians making efforts to pour money into hydrogen filling stations any time soon, but the electric grid? There I see obstacles, but also enough political will to get stuff done. Major oil companies haven't said that their peak production is now in the rear view mirror on a whim. They, too, have reasoned from first principles.

 

[CyberOwl]

Great conversation!
I'm a hydrogen freak, with a hydrogen fetish. It's 100% part of our sustainable energy future, no question. The new 'metallic sponge' storage technologies are absolute game changers, which the gen pop has yet to wrap their heads around.
The wonderful thing about H is it allows you to access geographically remote and untapped high energy zones. H is really the only sustainable form of intercontinental energy transfer, which will be a necessity as long as energy markets exist. Build a katabatic wind farm in E. Antarctica and you've got yourself the Saudi Arabia of clean fuel. Maybe with a crypto mine on the side hustle.

 

[CyberOwl]

They are going to build a recharge station next door to your house. Pick one.
1. Supercharger lot.
2. Hydrogen refuel station.
Did you pick number 1? Why?

Number 2. Reason is scarcity. Electricity is common.

Plus, a supercharger next door has surprisingly little utility. Unless you live in a commercial space. And then, the value lays only with the captive audience, not the joules.

 

[Luke42]

The question is range. It’s whether LiON has a backup like a little red “Jerry can” provided ICE.

The Rivian trucks can recharge each other "in the field" using a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) charging cable:
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/08/rivian-confirms-v2v-charging-auxiliary-batteries/

Of course, it'll be a net energy loss (f*ck you, themodynamics!).

If you have a vehicle with a 50% battery and a second vehicle with a 0% battery, you should be able to hook them together with V2V charging cable and end up with two vehicles with 22% batteries.

That might be just the thing you need to drive both vehicles to the next charger.

Off-road vehicles often travel in groups so that they can assist each other with spotting, winching, and mechanical problems. The resource management is a little different with V2V charging than with jerry cans, but it seems workable in practice from where I sit.

Tesla could implement V2V charging, as well.

P.S. Generators and camp-battery packs are another option for a "jerry can" to dump a few kWh into your battery. There are lots of options, V2V charging just happens to be my favorite at this point. You should pick what works for you.

 

[FutureBoy]

Great conversation over the differences between hydrogen vs electric.

Here’s what I want to know. Which one has “cooler” explosions or catastrophic events?

We are all well acquainted with hydrocarbon explosions, fires, etc. For the vast majority of us, this is not firsthand knowledge. Instead, it has been a trope in so many tv shows and movies that it is like we experienced it ourselves. Gas stations blowing up, cars exploding after flying over a cliff, gas tanks being shot at, laying a trail of gas that can be lit to burn something from a distance, tension created by a fire next to fuel barrels that will explode just in time for our hero to jump to safety while a cool fireball explodes in the background, having the hero swim underwater while the surface burns.

Clearly most of these situations are not exactly realistic or experienced on a day-to-day basis. But without them, where would all the excitement in media go? Rooms of writers the world over are going to need a set of replacement tropes to use.

So which technology do you think will win out in the media? Which one will those writers want to work with? Which one will the public become more familiar with through shared media exaggeration?

I have to say that so far, I have not been impressed by the tension created by an imagined electric grid future. Sure, electricity can get shut off, downed power lines can electrocute, enemies can be tortured with a sparking power cable. But beyond that, the imagined catastrophes have been rather lame and make poor plot points.

How will we collectively be entertained? If there is no catastrophic medium, why would we pick that infrastructure build out? The vast majority of the populace is not making cash choices over the future infrastructure debates. But they are contributing to our shared vision of the future infrastructure through media selection. Which technology will win their vote?