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Bournvitta2022 t1_iwpje8n wrote

One more propoganda report gainst hydrogen.

Hydrogen has multiple uses and can easily fit into the current structure of transportation and logistic.

Just read abt EV battery manufacturing and recycling and raw material mining. It's more damaging to environment than hydrogen will ever be.

Hydrogen can actually have countries self sufficient nin their energy needs unlike battery manufacturing (only few countries have lithium reserves).

Renewable energy can be used to produce cheap hydrogen. Making a fuel cell requires less material then batteries.

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Kaindlbf t1_iwpohja wrote

Except that hydrogen takes 3x times more energy to make than charging a car directly. Also difficult to transport and store compared to just using the grid.

Also vehicles will be much more expensive to refuel and service than pure EV from a fundamental architectural point of view. Dead end tech.

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Bournvitta2022 t1_iwpp8co wrote

Really, cost of EV was also high initially. Also you need to take into account the environmental effect of mining for raw materials in large scale plus recycling is a nightmare for now.

Hydrogen once scalability is achieved it would be cheaper to produce. It's just abt figure out material that can transport hydrogen like piped CNG.

Also for heavy TRUCKs hydrogen makes more sense.

Maybe we can have Battery for cars and hydrogen for industrial use and transportation.

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bawng t1_iwqlrwo wrote

But unless you count the first EVs a hundred years ago, hydrogen cars have been around for a lot longer than modern EVs. We had a hydrogen car push in the 90s or something and there was a lot of public and private investment into building a hydrogen distribution infrastructure. But the cost never fell. When the first modern EVs started coming around, they were already cheaper.

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Bournvitta2022 t1_iwqmkpt wrote

Yes but for countries like Japan and india. Hydrogen makes more sense even if expensive as long as cost is lower than IC engine.

Self reliance and also japan has a reactor that produces electricity as well as hydrogen at cheap cost. It's just a prototype but its promising.

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Kaindlbf t1_iwrsg8l wrote

It only makes sense in Japan because Toyota lobbied the government for heavy hydrogen subsidies.

It's only competitive if government pays the difference.

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TheRogueMoose t1_iwpo0mz wrote

Imagine a future like this: You finish your day at work. On your drive home you stop to top up your hydrogen powered car (hydrogen was produced using renewable energy sources), it only takes a few minutes. You get home and plug your car into your house. Your car now provides all the necessary power to charge the battery bank in your house.

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Josquius t1_iwqcz0t wrote

Or, better idea, you don't have to drive home.

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konwik t1_iwqgy3j wrote

Because your home is your car

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BBASPN69 t1_iwqi60g wrote

Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars

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ihatereddit53 t1_iwrdq8z wrote

Unexpected Gary Numan! Lol

(Or corrosion of conformity, but thats just a(lovely) cover haha)

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TheRogueMoose t1_iwt3ohq wrote

That would be ideal, but WFH didn't really seem to take off up here in Canada like it did everywhere else.

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reid0 t1_iwqjao2 wrote

Or…we don’t waste all that energy making the hydrogen and shipping it and instead just let your solar panels charge your home battery and you just plug your car in to charge from that when you get home.

Your hydrogen dream is unlikely at best because hydrogen just doesn’t make sense for personal transport, whereas my example is already happening.

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whyamihereonreddit t1_iwqulyd wrote

Or we don't rely on just one technology and invest in multiple ones since each technology may be best suited for certain applications.

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bremidon t1_iwtz22b wrote

That's a nice idea, but your pursuit of perfect is slowing down the attainment of good.

I don't have anything against hydrogen, but it does seem rather overhyped for its position right now.

The only place where I see it being clearly better is in replacing NG in industrial processes.

We do not need it for cars. That is already done.

Looking at the truck market, it looks likely that we will not need it there either.

Air travel is still in play. Maybe?

Ships might also be in play.

So if someone wants to say that we should be investing in hydrogen for those three segments -- air travel, ships, and industrial -- then I can support it.

What I think is happening in some places is that, having completely missed the BEV wave, some people and companies are dreaming of being able to unseat batteries in that area; and, that is utterly silly, imho.

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Sp3llbind3r t1_iwr1si0 wrote

Not so sure about that. I think there is room for both.

Driving around 2.5 ton cars with huge batteries you normally use 5-20% of the capacity is also kind of stupid. Maybe a hybrid would be more intelligent. 50 - 100 miles for everday by battery and 500 miles + from hydrogen for travel.

Some people will be better of with electric, but other use cases call for other technologies.

You also got to take into account that we have to overbuild renewables by a lot. There will be more and more leftover energy that we cant use in that moment and need to store somewhere. That could be used to produce cheap hydrogen.

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Barrel_go_BRRR t1_iwrp77j wrote

Maybe the production cost of hydrogen through PtX might fall heavily when we have an abundance of renewable energy, but isn't the storage of it still quite expensive? The more we have of it, the more it's gonna cost to store? (Just a random thought/question)

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Sp3llbind3r t1_iwrwg2d wrote

Sure it costs, as i think you need pressurized steel tanks. But we also store a huge amount of lpg.

The question is what we will use it for?

On vehicles for longer distances especially trucks? Combined with a plugin battery for short distances?

Replacing LPG or coal in industrial applications?

Maybe for load balancing in power grids? I'm not sure about that one.

We also should not use it to replace gas or oil heating in places connected to the power grid. That is way better served with heat pumps powered from the grid.

I think hydrogen is suited to be produced decentralized. I don't know if we need that huge stores, as it could be produced more on demand.
And i think we will need way less hydrogen then fossil fuels.

And i don't think it will be this or that but multiple options to suit the use case most efficiently.

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bremidon t1_iwu0e83 wrote

>We also should not use it to replace gas or oil heating in places connected to the power grid. That is way better served with heat pumps powered from the grid.

Some of us are not so lucky. We would *love* to use a heat pump in our home, but it would mean gutting a 200+ year old house and replacing the entire heating system.

Not only is that expensive, but I would have to work out what the environmental cost of that renovation is (as well as tossing out perfectly fine components) compared to the savings of getting a heat pump.

Now, if I were able to simply modify the boiler, then things become a bunch easier to calculate.

So sure, new houses should definitely go with heat pumps. But there are millions of houses that simply cannot make this level of renovation without defeating the purpose. Hydrogen might be really good here.

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bremidon t1_iwtzia8 wrote

>Driving around 2.5 ton cars with huge batteries you normally use 5-20% of the capacity is also kind of stupid

Well, now you exchange a ton of batteries for a ton of hydrogen storage, motor, and all the tech you need to make the hydrogen work. And by your own scenario, you are dragging that around most of the time, when you don't actually need it. Also, don't forget all the tech you need to connect those two systems.

I currently have an SR+. We take it on long vacations and it's just fine for that.

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>You also got to take into account that we have to overbuild renewables by a lot.

I agree with this statement, but not the conclusion you make from it. Honestly, we have no idea what is going to have when we reach super power. This is simply not a situation we have ever had outside of very small, local, temporary scenarios.

It's not like the equipment to create that hydrogen is free to build or maintain. The question will be: is the stored hydrogen we get from it worth the construction and maintenance cost?

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rogerdanafox t1_iwr7w04 wrote

Or pumped hydro

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Sp3llbind3r t1_iws5gjd wrote

Sure, but unfortunately space for hydro is limited too. If you don‘t want to destroy your ecosystem in the mountains.

In Switzerland i think we produce about 60% of our power with hydro. But we build out most of the easy places and there are large hurdles to overcome. Be it construction effort / difficulty wise or in form of resistance against future projects.

I guess it‘s always a tradeoff.

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reid0 t1_iwsenbf wrote

Driving around a completely seperate, mostly unused engine in a hybrid, which doubles the complexity and maintenance of the vehicle is no more efficient than carrying battery weight. When the number 1 selling personal vehicle in the US (F150) weighs between 4,069-5,697lb, I think it’s fair to say that vehicle weight is not people’s primary concern.

People already have the option to choose lighter, shorter range EVs, but they tend to buy longer ranges due to range anxiety. As EV adoption continues however, a lot of people are realising that they don’t need the extra range and are buying shorter range EVs the second time round.

Combine that with improvements in battery density, improvements in charging speeds, and tech such as wireless charging, battery weights can and are going down.

It’s funny, the anti EV crew claim there’ll never be enough renewables and the pro Hydrogen crew claim there’ll be so much they we’ll have nothing better to do with it than make Hydrogen. In the meantime, rooftop solar and a home battery can cover most people’s energy needs while getting nowhere near what it would take to generate the equivalent amount of hydrogen.

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Sp3llbind3r t1_iwskah9 wrote

You know, put a small battery in a hydrogen car and make it plug-in or a fuelcell in an electric car.. Drive with the small battery in citys and with hydrogen is for the range anxiety..

I don't get pickups and SUV's at all. Maybe the streets get too bad because nobody with money pays taxes or something.

It will take a while with renewables. And you will have a huge amount of overproduction if you want to power your grid with solar, wind and water. Maybe we figure out better uses.

But the amount of batteries you want to produce is huge and an issue.

Just imagine a houshold with a f150, some kind of sedan and a home battery.

I guess charging whole parking decks of electric cars in citys is not without Challenges. At the Moment it looks like chargers outpace cars by a bit. But that might soon change. If you have to wait to charge somewhere, that gets tiresome soon. Charging at home is the obvious solution. But not that easy to implement in citys.

I'm by no means anti EV. But there are problems that we need to solve. And i don't think we need to replace fossil engines with a single Technology.

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TheRogueMoose t1_iwt4i56 wrote

Everyone always forgets about the people who don't own homes.

I rent an apartment in a tiny rural town. I would basically have to visit a charging station every time I planned on driving anywhere, especially with the incredibly poor cold weather range you get with current EV's. So sure, I might save a few bucks on fuel costs, but at a great loss to my personal time, that's just not worth it to me. Maybe one day we'll be there, but it won't be anytime soon.

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bremidon t1_iwu0gyk wrote

>I would basically have to visit a charging station

No. You would basically have to have a charger installed near your apartment.

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TheRogueMoose t1_iwukoas wrote

You just said the same thing with different words...

Now if you mean at my apartment, then no, that won't ever happen. The cost for the landlord to install would then be passed down into the rent and rent is already gotten out of hand. It would make sense if I paid for it myself, but i honestly don't believe the power coming to the building would be adequate to support 10+ charging stations. And I wouldn't be able to take it when i leave, so I would just be out thousands of dollars for nothing

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bremidon t1_iwuny8i wrote

>You just said the same thing with different words...

Nope.

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>Now if you mean at my apartment, then no, that won't ever happen.

Of course it will.

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>It would make sense if I paid for it myself

Yes, it would.

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>i honestly don't believe the power coming to the building would be adequate to support 10+ charging stations

That's a solvable problem.

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>And I wouldn't be able to take it when i leave

Sure you could.

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Ange1ofD4rkness t1_iwqes40 wrote

One can also transport the Hydrogen to places to refuel, where recharging a battery may be limited (the military right now has huge "bags" of fuel they set up and can transport as needed to keep vehicles running ... which is a huge factor in combat)

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