
The case for hydrogen-powered cars - scottie_m
http://www.thedrive.com/tech/14431/are-hydrogen-cars-the-next-big-thing-again
======
sharpercoder
When discussing hydrogen cars, I particularly like the blog of Mux about this
topic.

Part 1: [https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-
ca...](https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-
work-part-1)

Part 2: [https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-
ca...](https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11493/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-
work-part-2)

Part 3: [https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-
ca...](https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11556/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-
work-part-3)

Part 4: [https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-
ca...](https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11572/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-
work-part-4)

~~~
stephengillie
The first part is a 60-minute read. Could you summarize the thesis of the
first part or 2 into a few bullet points?

~~~
taneq
It literally starts with a summary:

> This is an extremely long, in-depth blog series, so I'll start by giving you
> a summary.

------
mikeash
The one advantage of hydrogen cars, refueling speed, is not actually an
advantage for typical driving habits.

A hydrogen car takes about five minutes to refuel. On a typical day, a battery
car takes about five _seconds_ to refuel: you plug it in and you leave it
overnight. Sure, the actual charging takes longer, but who cares? You’re not
involved.

On long trips, this reverses, but how often do you do those? Most people do a
couple a year. You might lose a couple of hours waiting for charging there.
Otherwise you’re saving minutes every week.

This is something I see people having a hard time truly understanding. They
see that a car takes hours to recharge on a home 240V outlet, think “that’s a
long time!” and stop there. They don’t realize that it’s a time _saver_ most
of the time.

Even if there was a hydrogen station on every corner, and the price was as
cheap as electricity, I’d still never buy a hydrogen car. Who wants to visit a
fueling station every week?

~~~
Pulcinella
This only works if you live in a house or an apartment that has electric car
outlets installed.

Most apartments have no place to plug in your electric vehicle.

~~~
adrianmonk
Apartments will probably eventually offer electric charging. It's a small
investment, and they can turn it into an additional revenue stream (which they
love) and/or can advertise it as an amenity that sweetens the deal of leasing
there.

However, will they plenty of charging stations, so that you never have to
worry about moving your car so someone else can charge? That seems doubtful. I
suppose they could allow a monthly lease of a reserved charging station,
though.

~~~
ianai
I doubt they will if they have to pay for it. Apartment complexes, in my
experience, hardly retrofit anything. The RE market is so messed up that
complexes don’t have to do much of anything to increase their rent. What was
there at time of build (be that the 1980s or 90s) is what you’re likely to
get.

What the US needs is a political desire for New Deal type programs. Work still
sucks outside of 2-4 (?) metropolis areas. Probably a large infrastructure
project could get charging stations to the masses at the apartment level, and
not much else.

One exception though could be a vast surge in oil prices. We’re talking
7$/gallon.

~~~
dogweather
Subjectively, charging stations are "everywhere" in apartment complexes here
in Las Vegas.

------
audunw
I think hydrogen cars is a technology that kills itself.

Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the
hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas), and that a BEV is
cheaper to assemble (less parts, less piping), the market for hydrogen cars is
completely dependent on the price of batteries.

As batteries get cheaper, and rapid chargers get faster, the niche that
hydrogen can occupy gets smaller.

The thing is, hydrogen cars are electric cars. It's possible some of them will
even include a larger battery and become plug-in. So every hydrogen car sold
will also benefit the development of better BEVs.

To me, this is a clear feedback loop that benefits pure BEVs. And where will
BEVs be when hydrogen cars actually hit the market with significant numbers
and models? What if 150kWh batteries are standard? What if 400kW charging is
standard? What if the price is not much higher? These are all within reach.
It's just a matter of time, and the hydrogen economy does not seem to be
moving fast enough that its got time to spare.

But I fully support all subsidies and financial support for development of
hydrogen fuel cells. Maybe it won't be success in cars, but it could be in
other fields.

~~~
jk2323
> Since pure battery electrics will always have lower operating costs (if the
> hydrogen is produced from electricity and not oil/gas)

There are other options. You can producte H2 directly from sunlight.
[https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-
magazine/fuel...](https://setis.ec.europa.eu/setis-reports/setis-
magazine/fuel-cells-and-hydrogen/mimicking-nature-producing-hydrogen-sunlight)

And we might run out of Lithium. Or Cobalt. Or Vanadium. I doubt that we run
out of Hydrogen.

~~~
endymi0n
The point is - it's neither one nor the other: Combining working fuel cell
technology with batteries really gives the best of both worlds:

\- Batteries are the most efficient in the long run and very dynamic at power
release, but they are heavy (more than half the weight of Tesla's truck is the
batteries), use lots of rare resources and take pretty long to recharge. It's
getting better, but if you _really_ want to drive a few thousand miles with
short fuel breaks in an emergency, you can't.

\- Hydrogen fuel cells suck at dynamic release, they really want to have a
constant power draw. They're less efficient than batteries, but you can refuel
quickly and don't have to carry the fuel weight with you all the time.

Taking all the technical challenges of storing hydrogen and making efficient
fuel cells aside for the moment, combining the two technologies is really
awesome in a way. You can get rid of two thirds of the batteries — and
suddenly you have a car that's all of: easy to instantly refill, still dynamic
to accelerate and overtake on the highway due to the batteries, but you also
just have to dimension the fuel cell for average, not for peak power draw.

Considered the hydrogen is CO2 neutrally generated, it's really the optimum
solution.

~~~
danans
> if you really want to drive a few thousand miles with short fuel breaks in
> an emergency, you can't.

What kind of emergency would involve driving a few _thousand_ miles quickly? I
can only see a few hundred (hurricane evacuation).

At those distances, why wouldn't you fly?

------
_ph_
Things not so often mentioned in the Hydrogen vs batteries discussions:

\- just fueling hydrogen vehicles requires an substantial amount of
electricity for the compressors. An electric vehicle could drive at least 10%
of the distance on this electricity alone. That is not counting the
compression work at any the production site and when filling the trucks.

\- distributing hydrogen requires trucks. In most places, the elecricity
network is available.

\- refueling with a hydrogen vehicle is faster then recharging. But you have
to refuel them at fuel stations. Electric vehicles can recharge at home or any
parking lot with outlets - more and more companies have parking lots with
electrical outlets.

~~~
bunderbunder
The charge rate on electric vehicles is very slow, though, unless you're using
one of Tesla's superchargers (which aren't everywhere).

I think that, when people are worrying about charge time, they're really
asking, "Will charge times mean that a 5-hour trip to visit Mom and Dad now
turns into a 10-hour trip, or, worse, something that requires an overnight
stay?"

~~~
Retric
Batteries are rapidly approaching the point most people will want to stop
before their charge runs out.

~330 mile range is available today, which is pricy, but quickly dropping. The
expected 50% battery price drop within 5 years is probably going to make 300+
mile ranges become standard and likely 600+ Mile ranges will start showing up.
Further once you get into the 400+ mile range territory particularly charging
say during lunch can significantly increase range without completely filling
the battery.

~~~
bunderbunder
I can see it charging sufficiently over lunch if you use a supercharger. And
that will be great if you've got superchargers installed in the parking lot at
the place you stop for lunch. But I wouldn't fault anyone for feeling like
that's a pretty big "if". Especially if truck stop food isn't your bag of
peas.

~~~
adrianN
EVs don't have to replace ICE cars over night. Many people never drive long
distance but commute every day. There will be a number of years where we have
time to improve charging infrastructure. IMHO chargers for people in cities
that don't have a garage are more important than superchargers next to
highways.

------
StevenPaul
If you could remove the protons from the hydrogen then the remaining electrons
could be piped through wires, vastly simplifying distribution

~~~
CiaranMcNulty
I guess we'd need to suspend the wires above the carriageway?

------
unknown_apostle
Not sure if hydrogen cars are the future. But at the least, for a few years,
they will run side by side with BEVs. Definitely in the form of buses and
garbage trucks.

That's why I'm currently quite fond of platinum as a speculative investment.
Fuel cells require quite a bit of platinum. Yet platinum has rarely been
cheaper relative to other commodities like gold. I think because the market is
discounting a decline in diesel engines and maybe because of recycling. (Even
though platinum has been more expensive than gold even before catalysts were
common.)

In addition, platinum deserves to receive a geopolitical risk premium. 80% of
the world's platinum is mined (at a loss!) in South Africa, which is prone to
intense labor disputes and looking less attractive every day. And the next big
producer is Russia. Yet above ground stock piles have declined in the past
decade.

In the 1+ year that I've been in platinum, it hasn't been a success. The
market just remains comatose. But we'll see :-)

~~~
ianai
Platinum is also something like 3 orders of magnitude rarer in the crust than
gold. What it’s value needs is a use case. Gold appears in many more places
than the one or two places platinum does.

------
notaki
"This remains a categorical advantage over BEVs, which even under fast-
charging conditions typically require several hours to fully recharge."

-That's BS. Should say 30 min. to 1 hour. Hydrogen is a dead end. Toyota and Hyundai are only making hydrogen cars for the ZEV credits.

[https://youtu.be/UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128](https://youtu.be/UOt9KF2fsdw?t=128)

[https://youtu.be/zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609](https://youtu.be/zC3zM9rrUT0?t=609)

------
nimish
Hydrogen has serious technical issues compared to batteries. It is very hard
to store, easily flammable, can cause metal issues -- see hydrogen
embrittlement and attack -- and is basically not present in nature except as a
byproduct of fossil fuel extraction.

So you need to dump a bunch of energy in creating a very difficult to handle
material. In comparison, battery tech gets 7-10% better each year and has the
immense economies of scale of electronics, electric motors, and power
electronics all driving down cost and increasing competition.

There's a reason oil and gas companies propelled a lot of this development.

~~~
mdekkers
_Hydrogen [...] is basically not present in nature._

I am probably misunderstanding the whole "most abundant element in the
universe" thing. Can you explain?

~~~
nimish
Hydrogen the atom is very common but what is needed is hydrogen the gas i.e.
molecular hydrogen or H2. Hydrogen is very reactive so it's usually always
bound up, for example in water. Stripping off the hydrogen atoms into H2 gas
is energy intensive.

Since it's so reactive, it's both a pain to handle and to extract unless you
have a lot of natural gas reserves, where it's relatively abundant.

Or you find it in the interstellar medium but I mean good luck mining a
nebula.

~~~
mdekkers
thank you for the excellent explanation!

------
DubiousPusher
This seems kind of silly to me. I'm no expert but as far as I can tell, almost
all the difficulties confronting electrics are known quantities that we make
slow but steady progress on each year. Meanwhile this author is saying, that
for hydrogen to be viable we just have to solve this one massive distribution
system problem and we're good.

Isn't it kind of obvious which tech is more likely to overcome its
impediments? Especially since problems that can be solved in small bitsized
pieces is exactly the kind of thing big corporations are good at?

------
DmenshunlAnlsis
Hydrogen is a dream technology, but it comes with some caveats. Right now
production tends to be linked to fossile fuels, either as a result of
extraction, refinement, or from electrolysis powered by coal. Presently the
only for this to scale and be green will be nuclear power, and the politics
are poisonous around that in every way. It’s expensive to even try to build a
plant, and without the political will to deal with the waste, it’s dsngerous
too.

Then there’s storage of Hydrogen, which is manageable, but not trivial.
Transportation is difficult, but again possible to manage given enough drive
to make it work. Fuel cells also currently require expensive catalysts such as
platinum. I don’t see any of these problems close to being approached, never
mind solved.

This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has
answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other
hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are
anything, but.

~~~
audunw
> This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has
> answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the
> other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are
> anything, but.

This is not really fair..

Batteries can be produced cleanly just as much as hydrogen. It's just a matter
of chemistry, mining practices and cost.

Furthermore, batteries is not a fuel. It is not burned. It can be recycled or
reused.

But I get what you mean. All in all this is a technological arms race, and it
seems to me that batteries have a pretty big head start. Though it's not over
until we get a battery that is made from cheap common elements that has 2-3
times the capacity of todays batteries. In the meantime I suppose hydrogen
fuel for the personal transport sector has a chance.

------
mtgx
There is no case to be made for hydrogen-powered cars. EVs are going
mainstream full-power ahead. In 5 years there will be like 50 EV models on the
market (already being designed right now).

------
pasbesoin
I think we'll end up with enough "next generation" energy (renewable,
whatever), that we'll be able to afford the inefficiencies in manufacturing
"legacy", high-energy-density fuels -- and product precursors, e.g plastics --
where still needed. (Avoiding further extraction and all the pollution and
environmental damage and unqualified and quantified future impacts.) And our
overall carbon burden may be enough less (disregarding accumulated atmospheric
load, in this arugment), that we can afford the corresponding limited amounts
of exhaust.

So, for common transport, I don't know whether pure hydrogen still fits in. It
hasn't scaled, and it's still more difficult to handle.

------
vlehto
"Most H2 is created through a technique called "cracking," which involves
splitting the methane molecule (CH4) found in natural gas into two H2
molecules and a free carbon atom."

You can generate methane from rotting garbage, cow dung and whatnot. Almost
anything that rots. And some of it is now torched as the transport is too
expensive from far away oilfields.

But here's and idea: burn that methane directly in fuel cell?

[https://newatlas.com/platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-
cells...](https://newatlas.com/platinum-free-methane-fueled-fuel-cells/17064/)

People are WAY too exited about that "only water vapor from the tailpipe!"
-hype.

------
Justsignedup
Isn't the problem that the _COST_ of hydrogen powered cars / fuel astronomical
compared to batteries and petroleum?

------
Theodores
The only way hydrogen works as a fuel storage medium if you have more
electricity than customers for it. In he Orkney Isles wind is used in this
way.

Hydrogen does not fit into the more popularly imagined future where renewables
creates electricity that is then stored in parked cars, to be used when
everyone gets home and the solar has run out.

------
te_chris
Does anyone know anything about the potential for fuel cell tech to replace
diesel in diesel-electric locomotives?

------
foobarbecue
_(In investing jargon, this is known as the "Death Valley Curve.")_

All this time I thought it was a biblical reference but I guess it's actually
about California. Everything's about California, really, when you get right
down to it.

------
nullifidian
6000 words and no technical arguments of why hydrogen is viable or not.

------
mavhc
Not related to hydrogen, but it takes as much electricity to refine and
distribute gasoline to drive 1km as an electric car uses to drive 1km

------
Animats
The hydrogen car is mostly a way to return drivers to slavery to gas stations.

Heavy trucks, though...

------
eip
Stan Meyer tech has been ready for mass production for well over a decade. But
it can't be released until the death of the petro-dollar slavery system.

Energy == Money == Power and currently the MIC has most of it. Decentralized
production of energy is their biggest threat.

~~~
pjc50
That's a perpetual motion fraud.

