this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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That's not entirely true. If you are purely looking at $/kWh then yes, of course this is the case. However that is not the only consideration when it comes to transport. Weight of the drive unit, use of rare earth metals, lifespan of the drive unit, energy density by weight, speed of recharge, ease of transport energy, and more are all considerations.
I'm not arguing that vehicles will become hydrogen electric. I agree they are not suitable without some serious technological advances. What I'm saying is that at a certain point, larger vehicles (trucks, trains, ships, even aeroplanes) will become more suitable to hydrogen.
Hydrogen has its own problems with rare metals like platinum and palladium.
Even setting aside the energy loss, the cost of compression, chilling, storage etc is much more expensive than both fossil and ev charging infrastructure. Scale will help but it’s simply not there.
I can see a future in aviation for fuel cells but for shipping I think it far more likely we’ll see something like ammonia fuel cells taking centre stage. It’s vastly more easy to transport and a leak at sea isn’t as big a deal.
Light passenger vehicles? Never going to happen. It arrived 20 years too late.
Ammonia is significantly more harmful in the event of a leak. Yes, it's more hydrogen dense than pure liquid hydrogen.
Ultimately I don't see a reason to dismiss hydrogen like some are doing. Is it the perfect solution in all cases? Of course not. Does that mean it is not a viable fuel source for transport? Absolutely not.
Scale solves most problems. Hydrogen also has other uses, such as steel production, which further increases the scale.
For light vehicles batter EV is likely to be the leading type for some time, as volume is more of an issue then weight for the ranges we need.
It’s why I don’t see ammonia being used outside of shipping.
Scale won’t get to fix FCEV light vehicle transport because is simply chicken and egg.
Unless governments pump billions into hydrogen infrastructure there’s simply no financial return for any investors. And why should governments do that when BEVs are already solving the decarbonisation issue?
Battery technologies like Lithium Iron Phosphate and Sodium Ion are here and solve the material issues. And once the materials are mined they enter a circular economy.
Fast forward 30 years and most new car batteries will be made from old ones.
Look again. I'm not talking about light vehicles.
A BEV truck can weigh up to 5 tons more than a FCEV. Why would that not be a case use for hydrogen? Now scale up to a ship where volume is no issue. BEV shipping is a non-starter.
New battery tech is fantastic. But why would you assume new battery tech, currently prohibitively expensive, will come down with scale but hydrogen won't?
The short version is: Because people are making and buying the batteries. Hydrogen has failed to scale.
They've been ripping hydrogen stations out in the UK, Norway, California. Hydrogen may as well be Betamax or HD-DVD at this point.
Edit: I’ll be quite happy if I’m wrong. I would love to see more widespread decarbonisation assuming the hydrogen wasn’t blue.
I expect this to change. The problem is they pushed it out for light vehicles before it was ready. If it's going to work anywhere, it'll be heavy vehicles, shipping and aero.
But hell any new zero emissions tech is ok by me. Just...something other than dead rotten dinosaurs.