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Exactly. This event just makes all the hydrogen car people even more entertaining. At this point I’m fairly convinced hydrogen cars were a coordinated plan by

by zionic 4y ago

Exactly. This event just makes all the hydrogen car people even more entertaining. At this point I’m fairly convinced hydrogen cars were a coordinated plan by oil companies to delay EVs. It probably would have worked if Tesla hadn’t come out of nowhere.

microtonal 4y ago
Could you explain what the problems are? I don't have a strong opinion either way, but you can buy hydrogen cars. In the city where I live there are hydrogen buses and garbage trucks and they seem to do fine?
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Mostly hydrogen is the smallest element so molecules of hydrogen (H2) are extremely hard to contain. They leak from everywhere so your entire infrastructure has to be designed with very tight tolerances and even still, you’ll have leaks. In addition, those leaks can prove to be dangerous since it’s so reactive and flammable, so you have a highly leaky flammable gas at high pressure… So you think, well fine, we can just generate it on site via electrolysis — alas, hydrogen actively destroys metal containers via embrittlement. Not so much in hydrogen gas, but any process where you’re running chemical or electrolytic reactions; https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
  - fsh 4y ago
    I have the impression that the problem of hydrogen leakage from vehicles is vastly exaggerated. A study on two commercial hydrogen cars found leakage rates of 2-6 mL/min (Table 4 in [1]). At this rate, it would take over 15 years for the tank content of a Toyota Mirai (5 kg of H2) to leak out. [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42154-020-00096-z https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42154-020-00096-z
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      The Hydrogen isn't leaking from vehicles since they take so many precautions to ensure they don't, including those tight tolerances and special materials. You just need to replicate that at every step of the supply chain which becomes onerous and expensive.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  I think it's an okay fit for fleet vehicles where the headaches are closer to worth it, but the volatility + the difficulties in safely and reliably containing the compressed gas are the main issues.
  - senectus1 4y ago
    >I think it's an okay fit for fleet vehicles This is the thing... there is no "one size fits all" but the nay sayers look at hydrogen and say "nah too hard for anything". They're wrong. Hydrogen will be huge in the NEAR future... it just wont be a silver bullet.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      > will be huge in the NEAR future. Is what fans of hydrogen have been arguing for 30 years.
      - senectus1 4y ago
        while the dominant powers in the world get fat and rich (and sick) off liquid dino's. The world finally has motivation to get out of that rut. Dominant powers will make hydrogen work for them because thats how a corrupt capitalist society works.
    - zionic 4y ago
      Hydrogen vehicles are essentially an oil company scam. They are fraud, at a physics level, vs EVs. They fall apart the second you take a serious, first-principles look at how they work. HN rate limits my replies you can read my sibling comment if you’d like more information.
      - senectus1 4y ago
        this is a deeply cynical and irresponsible statement. granted, most of it is made via non-renewable dirty methods... but there is VAST sums of money pouring into Green Hydrogen. Its going to become dominant in very few years. 5-8 is my guess.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Its not that it doesn't work at all, but while there are some trial uses of hydrogen in automotive. Its the very extreme minority of cases. You can buy one of only a few models of car, and those are only sold in absurdly small numbers. For trucks there are more trials going on but real mass production of hydrogen trucks isn't really a thing for a few more years (and many expect those will be further delayed). There are many reasons for this. Just something as simple as count how many different sub-systems are required between a BEV and a FCEV. In addition that basic disadvantage, the end to end energy in efficiency is worse, so its more expensive. In addition to that, the infrastructure required is about 10-100x more expensive. Tesla as one start up rolled out a global (or lets say in the developed world) EV charging infrastructure. The same amount of money invested in hydrogen infrastructure like not even have resulted in enough locations to charge the whole West coast. And because you can't charge at home, you need many more such locations. So really end to end it makes no sense pretty much from any direction you look at it and has been absolutely destroyed in the market. Some people still have hope for trucks, but there too the trends are pretty clear.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    Hydrogen has one thing going for it in that it only takes 5 minutes to fill up once you find a pump. Electric takes 4-6 times as long or more. Electric still comes out ahead despite this handicap.
    - microtonal 4y ago
      Hydrogen has one thing going for it in that it only takes 5 minutes to fill up once you find a pump. Electric takes 4-6 times as long or more. Right. This is the main issue for us for going electric. We barely use the car, but when we use it, it is often for longer distances (visiting my in-laws, who live in another country, holidays). Having to 'refuel' longer and more often is very inconvenient.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        Most normal people don't drive many hours without making a 20 min break. Doing a 5-10 min break every couple hours seems reasonable. Even just pieing and stretching the legs. As long as the supercharges are placed well its perfectly fine. I know there are some extreme people who basically push and pie in a bottle if they have to, but most people don't travel that way. Modern EV can refuel large part of the battery in like 15min. There is still an advantage, but it gets smaller with every generation of vehicle.
- snewman 4y ago
  Part of the issue is that this rocket doesn't just use hydrogen, it uses cryogenic liquid hydrogen, which apparently is even harder to manage. To quote from an excellent writeup [0]: > Because it is so tiny, hydrogen can squeeze through the smallest of gaps. This is not so great a problem at ambient temperatures and pressures, but at super-chilled temperatures and high pressures, hydrogen easily oozes out of any available opening. Elon Musk responded to this article with the following tweet [1], which to my understanding is a pretty reasonable take: > Accurate assessment. Raptor design started out using H2, but switched to CH4. Latter is best combo of high efficiency & ease of operation imo. Delta-v difference between H2 & CH4 is small for most missions, because CH4 tank is much smaller & no insulation is needed. [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-nasa-rediscovers-the-perils-of-liquid-hydrogen/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-... [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1566233000458592256 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1566233000458592256
hotpotamus 4y ago
I just think of hydrogen cars as electric cars with a competing battery technology. I think li-ion batteries have just come a longer way in energy density, lifecycle, and charging speed than anyone expected 20 years ago.
- zionic 4y ago
  Hydrogen is an extremely inefficient (200-300% the energy waste of an EV) battery that’s notoriously difficult to handle, contain, and transport safely. Unless we’re mining gas giants hydrogen is not a fuel source, so you have to immediately toss 40-50% of the energy you produce to create it. You lose a ton then transporting it to its point of consumption, and even then converting that (wastefully) stored energy to kinetic energy is STILL less efficient than an EV. Instead, all of that energy used to make hydrogen could have been sent via the grid at 90-95% efficiency to an EV that will store and convert that energy to motion at 85-90% efficiency. A hydrogen economy means tens of PWH of waste energy vs a pure EV economy. The only reason you’d want hydrogen is if you’ve invested trillions in the oil industry and hope to repurpose that infrastructure.

by zionic 4y ago

microtonal 4y ago

Could you explain what the problems are? I don't have a strong opinion either way, but you can buy hydrogen cars. In the city where I live there are hydrogen buses and garbage trucks and they seem to do fine?

mikeyouse 4y ago
Mostly hydrogen is the smallest element so molecules of hydrogen (H2) are extremely hard to contain. They leak from everywhere so your entire infrastructure has to be designed with very tight tolerances and even still, you’ll have leaks. In addition, those leaks can prove to be dangerous since it’s so reactive and flammable, so you have a highly leaky flammable gas at high pressure… So you think, well fine, we can just generate it on site via electrolysis — alas, hydrogen actively destroys metal containers via embrittlement. Not so much in hydrogen gas, but any process where you’re running chemical or electrolytic reactions; https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
- fsh 4y ago
  I have the impression that the problem of hydrogen leakage from vehicles is vastly exaggerated. A study on two commercial hydrogen cars found leakage rates of 2-6 mL/min (Table 4 in [1]). At this rate, it would take over 15 years for the tank content of a Toyota Mirai (5 kg of H2) to leak out. [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42154-020-00096-z https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42154-020-00096-z
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    The Hydrogen isn't leaking from vehicles since they take so many precautions to ensure they don't, including those tight tolerances and special materials. You just need to replicate that at every step of the supply chain which becomes onerous and expensive.
mikepurvis 4y ago
I think it's an okay fit for fleet vehicles where the headaches are closer to worth it, but the volatility + the difficulties in safely and reliably containing the compressed gas are the main issues.
- senectus1 4y ago
  >I think it's an okay fit for fleet vehicles This is the thing... there is no "one size fits all" but the nay sayers look at hydrogen and say "nah too hard for anything". They're wrong. Hydrogen will be huge in the NEAR future... it just wont be a silver bullet.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > will be huge in the NEAR future. Is what fans of hydrogen have been arguing for 30 years.
    - senectus1 4y ago
      while the dominant powers in the world get fat and rich (and sick) off liquid dino's. The world finally has motivation to get out of that rut. Dominant powers will make hydrogen work for them because thats how a corrupt capitalist society works.
  - zionic 4y ago
    Hydrogen vehicles are essentially an oil company scam. They are fraud, at a physics level, vs EVs. They fall apart the second you take a serious, first-principles look at how they work. HN rate limits my replies you can read my sibling comment if you’d like more information.
    - senectus1 4y ago
      this is a deeply cynical and irresponsible statement. granted, most of it is made via non-renewable dirty methods... but there is VAST sums of money pouring into Green Hydrogen. Its going to become dominant in very few years. 5-8 is my guess.
panick21_ 4y ago
Its not that it doesn't work at all, but while there are some trial uses of hydrogen in automotive. Its the very extreme minority of cases. You can buy one of only a few models of car, and those are only sold in absurdly small numbers. For trucks there are more trials going on but real mass production of hydrogen trucks isn't really a thing for a few more years (and many expect those will be further delayed). There are many reasons for this. Just something as simple as count how many different sub-systems are required between a BEV and a FCEV. In addition that basic disadvantage, the end to end energy in efficiency is worse, so its more expensive. In addition to that, the infrastructure required is about 10-100x more expensive. Tesla as one start up rolled out a global (or lets say in the developed world) EV charging infrastructure. The same amount of money invested in hydrogen infrastructure like not even have resulted in enough locations to charge the whole West coast. And because you can't charge at home, you need many more such locations. So really end to end it makes no sense pretty much from any direction you look at it and has been absolutely destroyed in the market. Some people still have hope for trucks, but there too the trends are pretty clear.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  Hydrogen has one thing going for it in that it only takes 5 minutes to fill up once you find a pump. Electric takes 4-6 times as long or more. Electric still comes out ahead despite this handicap.
  - microtonal 4y ago
    Hydrogen has one thing going for it in that it only takes 5 minutes to fill up once you find a pump. Electric takes 4-6 times as long or more. Right. This is the main issue for us for going electric. We barely use the car, but when we use it, it is often for longer distances (visiting my in-laws, who live in another country, holidays). Having to 'refuel' longer and more often is very inconvenient.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      Most normal people don't drive many hours without making a 20 min break. Doing a 5-10 min break every couple hours seems reasonable. Even just pieing and stretching the legs. As long as the supercharges are placed well its perfectly fine. I know there are some extreme people who basically push and pie in a bottle if they have to, but most people don't travel that way. Modern EV can refuel large part of the battery in like 15min. There is still an advantage, but it gets smaller with every generation of vehicle.
snewman 4y ago
Part of the issue is that this rocket doesn't just use hydrogen, it uses cryogenic liquid hydrogen, which apparently is even harder to manage. To quote from an excellent writeup [0]: > Because it is so tiny, hydrogen can squeeze through the smallest of gaps. This is not so great a problem at ambient temperatures and pressures, but at super-chilled temperatures and high pressures, hydrogen easily oozes out of any available opening. Elon Musk responded to this article with the following tweet [1], which to my understanding is a pretty reasonable take: > Accurate assessment. Raptor design started out using H2, but switched to CH4. Latter is best combo of high efficiency & ease of operation imo. Delta-v difference between H2 & CH4 is small for most missions, because CH4 tank is much smaller & no insulation is needed. [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-nasa-rediscovers-the-perils-of-liquid-hydrogen/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-... [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1566233000458592256 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1566233000458592256

hotpotamus 4y ago

I just think of hydrogen cars as electric cars with a competing battery technology. I think li-ion batteries have just come a longer way in energy density, lifecycle, and charging speed than anyone expected 20 years ago.

zionic 4y ago
Hydrogen is an extremely inefficient (200-300% the energy waste of an EV) battery that’s notoriously difficult to handle, contain, and transport safely. Unless we’re mining gas giants hydrogen is not a fuel source, so you have to immediately toss 40-50% of the energy you produce to create it. You lose a ton then transporting it to its point of consumption, and even then converting that (wastefully) stored energy to kinetic energy is STILL less efficient than an EV. Instead, all of that energy used to make hydrogen could have been sent via the grid at 90-95% efficiency to an EV that will store and convert that energy to motion at 85-90% efficiency. A hydrogen economy means tens of PWH of waste energy vs a pure EV economy. The only reason you’d want hydrogen is if you’ve invested trillions in the oil industry and hope to repurpose that infrastructure.