How to Promote the Hydrogen Economy Hoax

[Martin Williams]

I don't think domestic batteries like the one you mention are anywhere near big enough to supply an EV.

But of course, a bigger one might be OK. Personally, I don't want to be bothered with the hassle of worrying whether there is enough fuel for my needs, be it hydrogen, electrical charge, or magic pixie dust. It seems to me that a hydrogen-based system would provide a minimum-hassle solution, that's all. If there's not enough, I can visit a filling station.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Please double check my work. It looks like this home electrolysis generation, compression of hydrogen, and use in a Mirai is ~4 times less efficient than using the same 68.4 kWh to charge batteries in a BMW i3-REx or Prius Prime.

I didn't check your math, but your conclusion is certainly in line with the informed analyses, based on real science, which say that BEVs are 4x to 5x as energy-efficient as fool cell cars. You can read that conclusion in some of the linked articles cited as sources in the second post to this thread, and similar estimates are shown here:

Claiming that a fool cell car could ever compete with BEVs on energy efficiency, or cost of operation, can only be done by being a science denier.
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[Martin Williams]

Why can you not understand efficiency is not of primary concern when the energy is free from your solar roof?

Nobody is denying science or that the figures you quote may be correct. The argument is based on the superior convenience of hydrogen-fuelled cars.

I suspect horses utilise energy more efficiently than any car, but few people prefer them as a means of transport.

 

[bwilson4web]

Why can you not understand efficiency is not of primary concern when the energy is free from your solar roof?

It determines how much solar power is needed, the area and storage battery. The excess can sometime be a revenue source to the grid.

Bob Wilson

 

[Martin Williams]

Agreed it affects the cost of the solar panels. These are becoming less expensive however. It also - if you choose to store energy in a storage battery for subsequent transfer to a car's battery then it will also have an effect on that which will be expensive.

If you go the hydrogen route, the efficiency affects only the size of the solar panel array.

I would imagine that practical home hydrogen system would attempt to maintain at least a tankful of hydrogen, perhaps 6 kg, which you might choose to increase to cover periods of dull weather. (Particularly important in the UK!!). Having reached this level, the excess energy could be sold to the grid.

The point I am making is that efficiency is of great importance in a battery car, because the amount of available energy in the battery is limited and slow to replace.

This is not the case for hydrogen cars. The tank can be made bigger if necessary and it is quick to recharge anyway.

The hydrogen advantage is in having a car which is always capable of undertaking what may be a long journey, at little notice, and you do not have to remember to routinely plug it in every time you come home or search for a vacant hitching post away from home. I believe this will count a lot more to the general driver who cares little about the efficiency with which the vehicle carries him about. He is making his hydrogen for free, so why should he care?

 

[bwilson4web]

. . .
The hydrogen advantage is in having a car which is always capable of undertaking what may be a long journey, at little notice, and you do not have to remember to routinely plug it in every time you come home or search for a vacant hitching post away from home. I believe this will count a lot more to the general driver who cares little about the efficiency with which the vehicle carries him about. He is making his hydrogen for free, so why should he care?

The other alternative is a plugin hybrid that uses gasoline when longer distances are needed. The advantage being gas stations are common and reasonable prices compared to hydrogen stations.

In terms of power, I chose to go with a natural gas fueled, automatic generator. Although solar cells were attractive, their costs were not proportional to the expense. Less bad, solar technology is still developing. The generator not only runs the house but also L2 charging.

Everyone's requirements vary but I and my wife are retired living on a fixed income. The cost per mile takes money away from food, medicine, utilities, and taxes. Before retiring, I replaced our hybrid cars with plugin hybrids and never looked back. They are less than half the cost per mile of our hybrids.

Bob Wilson

 

[Martin Williams]

Well, I would agree that locking up hydrogen in a hydrocarbon molecule is a better way of containing it than a tank, and the resulting thermal energy is high enough to run a practical car using an ICE! It is cheap and works well, but there are well-known disadvantages, and this is not the way we are going to be allowed to go! I would imagine hybrids will die out as ICEs are seen as unacceptable in any car.

I would make the point also that hydrogen is expensive at the moment because it hasn't become a mass-transit fuel yet. Given plenty of free electricity from the sun and the wind, I suspect it could become exceedingly cheap. There is no shortage of it in any country, and it can - as argued above - even be made at home for zero cost once your solar roof is paid for. I can't see, therefore, why the current high cost will not fall dramatically, perhaps to a level well below that of current fuels.

I can appreciate your need for a minimum-cost solution, being retired myself. Who knows, you may find that solar power eventually becomes so inexpensive that replacing your generator becomes an attractive option one day. In the meantime, I wish you and your wife well with the sensible arrangements you have made.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Why can you not understand efficiency is not of primary concern when the energy is free from your solar roof?

The question is why you would keep repeating something so clearly and obviously not true.

This is not the case for hydrogen cars.

Well it's pretty clear you're not driving a fool cell car, despite all your fool cell fanboy posts here. But if you were, and if the efficiency fuel cell stack in your car suddenly dropped from ~50% to, let's say, ~10%... then I think you would care quite a bit.

The tank can be made bigger if necessary...

And a BEV's battery pack can be made bigger if necessary. So clearly that's not an advantage for fool cell cars.

...and it is quick to recharge anyway.

If you think fool cell cars are so great, why aren't you driving one?

It's only "quick to recharge" if you happen to be near one of the very few H2 refueling stations. Otherwise, it takes quite a long time to recharge... including travel time to and from the refueling station.

One of many reasons BEV drivers love their electric cars is that it only takes 15-30 seconds at night to plug them in, and another 15-30 seconds to unplug them in the morning. Far, far more convenient than having to drive to one of the few, rare places where a fool cell car can be recharged!

The hydrogen advantage is in having a car which is always capable of undertaking what may be a long journey, at little notice, and you do not have to remember to routinely plug it in every time you come home or search for a vacant hitching post away from home.

BZZZZZ! Wrong, but thanks for playing! You can't use a fool cell car on a long trip, because you'll run it out of refueling range from the nearest H2 fueling station. That is, unless you just drive in a giant circle around one of those few stations... and if that's all you need a car for, and you're so rich that you don't mind paying something like 3x-4x as much for fuel as you do for gasoline, then by all means a fool cell car is for you!

I believe this will count a lot more to the general driver who cares little about the efficiency with which the vehicle carries him about. He is making his hydrogen for free, so why should he care?

I don't know anyone making hydrogen for free. Or compressing it and storing it for free, either. Neither do you.

I created this discussion thread for useful discussion, not to give you a place to keep making illogical straw man arguments. Please stop.

 

[Martin Williams]

The question is why you would keep repeating something so clearly and obviously not true.

I have evidently failed to make my point clear to you.

If I am paying for the energy, or have only a limited amount of it available, then obviously, the efficiency with which I use it is much more important than anything else. However, if it is free and plentiful, then it ceased to be of much concern. It is no longer the primary concern.

Someone generating hydrogen from his solar roof, can stockpile it at little cost and having paid for the equipment to generate what he needs, he has little concern with the efficiency with which the car uses it. He can easily carry enough for his needs and that's all he needs to do. Efficiency is no longer his primary concern.

A car that runs on batteries still has to concern himself with the vehicle's efficiency, because - pending the arrival of bigger capacity batteries - the available energy that can be stored in it is limited and if the car is inefficient may not be sufficient for the journey. The situation is exacerbated by the time taken to recharge on a long journey. Efficiency remains a concern for him.

My remarks were in both cases limited to a situation where users generate their own energy in whatever form from solar panels. There is some impact on the capital cost of the equipment needed in both cases, but as solar panels are getting steadily less expensive I feel that is again not a great worry.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Someone generating hydrogen from his solar roof, can stockpile it at little cost and having paid for the equipment to generate what he needs, he has little concern with the efficiency with which the car uses it. He can easily carry enough for his needs and that's all he needs to do. Efficiency is no longer his primary concern.

Again, you just appear to be trolling. It's not that your argument is invalid, it's that you don't even have a real argument.

If what you were saying had any truth to it, then you could point to someone in the real world doing this. You can't, because nobody is doing that. And the reasons they're not, are the various reasons which have been repeatedly explained to you. The reasons you choose to ignore.

So again, I'll ask you to stop unless you have a real argument to make.
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[Martin Williams]

Why not attack my arguments rather than accuse me of trolling?

Let us not descend into yah-boo postings please.

I am, by the way, talking about future possibilities. That nobody has done it yet (as far as I know) can therefore not be taken to prove anything either way.

 

[Cypress]

...I'm pretty sure that hydrogen will prevail eventually, mainly because it involves less hassle or change in driving habits than any other.

The vast majority of charging happens at home or while doing other things I’m already doing. There is almost zero hassle to it. Hassle is driving to a gas station and waiting in line on a busy weekend to fill up. It’s a great change in habits.


Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs

 

[Martin Williams]

Well, EVs evidently suit you because you have the facilities to charge it. My point is that in Europe, more than 60% the population cannot charge their cars at home. They live in houses with no land, park on the street, and there are no hitching posts - or wish to see them installed. Others live in apartment blocks where there are no facilities to charge. These people could not own an EV even if they wanted to! Charging facilities are unlikely to appear until there is a demand for them, and given that EVs make up only about 1 or 2% of car sales there isn't any real demand.

As to hassle, queues at filling stations are rare. If there are no vacant pumps I tend not to drive in, but go to another. The whole process takes a couple of minutes, not significantly longer than the time taken to plug in and unplug a cable. Indeed given that you probably do this daily, and I fill the tank maybe once every two weeks, it is less time spent. Basically, a warning light comes on telling me I have 50 miles to go to an empty tank. This means I have a day to spot a convenient filling station as I drive about on other business. Moreover, the car is ALWAYS ready to drive on a long journey without my having to plan ahead. I may have to stop en route, but it will take only minutes before I am on the road again. I don't have to worry about making sure it is charged or delay my journey until it is.

I am used to this level of convenience, and worrying about batteries and having to charge the car daily is, I find, an unattractive prospect, as is the prospect of buying a more expensive car along with having to install a charger for it. The increased expense of the vehicle will probably never be saved by not having to buy fuel and I can easily afford what I spend. Hydrogen cars are, to me anyway, a much more attractive alternative. At least they will be when they come down in price. I would like to abandon ICE cars as much as you. But I don't see batteries as more than a short-term expedient until hydrogen takes over.

I won't be too concerned if hydrogen fails because EVs become more practical. If they do I will probably get one, but for me, they are a long way from being a desirable thing to purchase. Each to his own I suppose. I'm pleased you enjoy your EV and wish you well of it.

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Others live in apartment blocks where there are no facilities to charge. These people could not own an EV even if they wanted to! Charging facilities are unlikely to appear until there is a demand for them, and given that EVs make up only about 1 or 2% of car sales there isn't any real demand.

All that is a quite sensible, sober assessment of the state of the EV revolution. That is, it's still in the "early adopter" era.

But claiming that people "don't want" EV hitching posts to be installed, just because you personally don't like the look of them, is pretty silly. It's just you, dude!

There was a time when people lamented paving over the landscape to build more parking lots and more roads. While I do sympathize with that attitude, and I'd love to see more of nature preserved -- I'm especially horrified with the ongoing mass extinction event humans are causing -- people rarely let esthetics get in the way of practical concerns. I'm annoyed at the local utility installing a street light across the road from our house; the stargazing was much better before they did that! But I certainly can't object to the improvement, because of the benefit to the entire neighborhood for its safety and security concerns.

Big Yellow Taxi
by Counting Crows

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
And put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half to seem 'em
No no no
Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
Til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
​

BTW -- Just as a gentle reminder, this thread is supposed to be about how to fight against promoting the "hydrogen economy" hoax.

 

[Martin Williams]

I'm pretty sure that planning committees would be horrified to see ancient and historic towns with them all along the pavements! There was huge opposition to parking meters. But the demand would come from EV drivers, and they are currently as rare as hens teeth.

Off topic, but re your streetlight. I used to work for an electronics company based in an idyllic village in Buckinghamshire. All the houses were thatched, as was the office, the roads higgledy piggledy - a charming place. Then the local council got street lights installed. A few weeks later when I arrived to visit I noticed they had stopped working. It seems that the locals - like you - preferred to see the stars, but more importantly, burglaries had started happening there. It appeared the lights had helped burglars far more than the locals who knew the irregular roads and paths like the back of their hands anyway. Within six months, the lamp posts were removed!

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

I'm pretty sure that planning committees would be horrified to see ancient and historic towns with them all along the pavements! There was huge opposition to parking meters. But the demand would come from EV drivers, and they are currently as rare as hens teeth.

"Ancient and historic" towns might want to install EV hitching posts made to resemble the hitching posts such towns used to have, in the horse-and-buggy era. This is, again, a rather silly objection. Towns and cities have already been altered to accommodate motorcars, motorized wagons, and motorized omnibuses; a slight additional modification to accommodate EVs is going to be a far easier transition.

This is still completely off-topic for this discussion thread.
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[Martin Williams]

"Ancient and historic" towns might want to install EV hitching posts made to resemble the hitching posts such towns used to have, in the horse-and-buggy era. This is, again, a rather silly objection. Towns and cities have already been altered to accommodate motorcars, motorized wagons, and motorized omnibuses; a slight additional modification to accommodate EVs is going to be a far easier transition.

This is still completely off-topic for this discussion thread.
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You would not believe the furore that accompanied the installation of parking meters here. They were highly unpopular and have now been almost totally removed. There is certainly no demand whatsoever for hitching posts, and with sales approaching zero outside London, its likely there never will be.

Wireless charging might be acceptable, but how much does THAT cost?

 

[Cypress]

With a long range EV, you don’t have to charge daily either. And people without access to home charging could make use of one of thousands of destination/workplace charging. Going to movie? Find a nearby charger. Eating out? Find a nearby charger. Shopping? Find a nearby charger. It’s really quite simple.

In the US the reverse is true from a household perspective. More than half of households live in detached single family homes. And more than half own at least 2 cars. Even in Europe if 40% of people live in houses, that’s potentially millions of possible easy and accessible locations electricity for car charging and ownership.

I just can’t see hydrogen taking off, other than in lighter than air vehicles. Too expensive to deploy the infrastructure, and still largely based on fossil fuel extraction and distribution.


Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs

 

[Martin Williams]

Presumably, then, the US will stick with battery cars whilst Europe goes with hydrogen. There is no reason why both should not happily coexist.

I'd have thought the infrastructure changes for hydrogen would be less. There is no impact on the grid or electricity supplies or cabling to accommodate the extra load. (An estimated 30% increase in capacity is required, according to conservative estimates.)

The change to hydrogen involve only filling stations (perhaps one per 10,000 cars??) and initially, modifications to refinery plant and replacement of conventional road tankers with high-pressure ones. In time, I imagine electrolysis plant will take over, using excess wind and solar energy. The fact that hydrogen can be readily extracted from petrochemicals in the immediate future will, I think, greatly aid the transition.

Hydrogen is already here. The technology has been developed. It is only a matter of deploying it. As for battery cars, there is a clear need and demand for bigger batteries and lower charging times, better tolerance to heat and cold etc. All these depend on breakthroughs we would all like to see. I really hope they arrive. Better batteries would be greeted with delight even by non-EV drivers! But sadly, breakthroughs like this do not come to order.

 

[Feed The Trees]

I didn't check your math, but your conclusion is certainly in line with the informed analyses, based on real science, which say that BEVs are 4x to 5x as energy-efficient as fool cell cars. You can read that conclusion in some of the linked articles cited as sources in the second post to this thread, and similar estimates are shown here:

Claiming that a fool cell car could ever compete with BEVs on energy efficiency, or cost of operation, can only be done by being a science denier.
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Back to name calling, as is tradition.

This chart is predicated on beginning with a 100% renewable source in order to make hydrogen. It's one way, not the only way... well unless you have an agenda to push. This chart is predicated on you dedicating a resource to make it. Where's your chart on the method of ending up with hydrogen while they're making other things anyways? Then it's just industrial waste that has a sunk initial energy cost because they're going to do the other processes regardless. It's not so bad if you start the chart past the initial step. But then, it wouldn't fit your bully pulpit to bully, would it?