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Electric/Hydrogen


ditchman
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been spending a looooonnnng while in lockdown and waiting for this wretched house sale to go thro...........hence alot of TV News/ watching.............over the last few months it seems (to me anyway) that Hydrogen is being chosen/mentioned  more and more.....either as a gas form or fuel cell ....Japan is committing itself to a Hydrogen economy and bus and heavy equipment/plant manufactureres are going down the Hydrogen route..................

the car manufacturers are still firmly sticking with electric...but i daresay the battery space can be altered to take a H2 fuel cell........

i have always thought that H2 would be the answer which will be produced using green electricity...and it seems in certain sectors they are now going that way..........

have the car manufacturers got it wrong....i daresay there will always be a niche market for short range electric cars/vans....but you cant power a combine with a battery or plough a field or haul 20tonnes of goods from scotland to london overnite with a battery...........

i think hydrogen is the way to go ..........

 

any thoughts ?.....have i got it all wrong ?

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I know that of all the electric/hybrid vehicles on the market today only 1 is currently capable of towing my 1486kg caravan and even that has to be switched over to diesel to tow.

Hydrogen I'm afraid I wouldn't have a clue. I know its heavy water and has to be manufactured. Humming the dambusters as I type🤣

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It's an infrastructure issue I think, with electric having a head start.    Would cost a lot to build Hydrogen into conventional filling stations.   Then there's the reality that EVs are just a stepping stone to fully autonomous vehicles.  We are in the twilight era the internal combustion engine powered vehicle.  Dragging a caravan around?  I think that will go too....not sure what will replace it.

 

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53 minutes ago, ditchman said:

i think hydrogen is the way to go ..........

I believe hydrogen is a good way to go in many applications.  However, I believe it has a bit of an Achilles for cars - in that it is difficult to store.  I believe it needs a very high pressure (read very heavy cylinder) to liquefy - which may be OK in a bus, but is not so good in a car.  I know that there was some possibility to store it with a catalyst in some way, but I'm not sure if that ever proved possible.  Quite a good summary article here https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/advantages_disadvantages_hydrogenenergy.php

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1 hour ago, ditchman said:

....haul 20tonnes of goods from scotland to london overnite with a battery...........

Not on a battery only, that is still only for short distances, but with an electric highway it would work.

They have been running tests since 2016 now I think, at last here in Sweden.

/Markus 

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14 minutes ago, Cosmicblue said:

 Dragging a caravan around?  I think that will go too....not sure what will replace it.

 

Unfortunately I think you're correct.

As for replacement I think it will be motorhomes. The Caravan Club has already changed its name to the Caravan and Motor home club.

I just don't see the point of having yet another MOT, tax and insurance plus running costs to "drive" a caravan and tow a get around vehicle.

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3 hours ago, Centrepin said:

Unfortunately I think you're correct.

As for replacement I think it will be motorhomes. The Caravan Club has already changed its name to the Caravan and Motor home club.

I just don't see the point of having yet another MOT, tax and insurance plus running costs to "drive" a caravan and tow a get around vehicle.

I reckon the near-future for caravans would be to build a battery pack into the trailer base, that would then extend the range massively.

IMO, the main issue with electric vehicles is the lack of any standardisation, especially (surprisingly) from the EU car manufacturers. They can't agree on anything so will never make any advancements. The major manufacturers also held back, letting Nissan and Tesla do the grunt work, then jumping in late and claiming they'd reinvented the wheel. They're so heavily invested in oil that they were hoping Tesla would fail and electric would die off.

Electric vehicles need a booster, something to quickly extend the range, readily available. If the manufacturers could stop being petty, they could work on a super-capacitor bank, or hot-swappable battery that could be swapped out in minutes, then recharged at the station while you drive another 200 miles.

As for hydrogen, unless they can come up with a really energy-efficient way of splitting hydrogen from water in-vehicle I can't imagine it being very feasible for passenger cars due to storage and transportation issues.

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4 hours ago, ditchman said:

been spending a looooonnnng while in lockdown and waiting for this wretched house sale to go thro...........hence alot of TV News/ watching.............over the last few months it seems (to me anyway) that Hydrogen is being chosen/mentioned  more and more.....either as a gas form or fuel cell ....Japan is committing itself to a Hydrogen economy and bus and heavy equipment/plant manufactureres are going down the Hydrogen route..................

the car manufacturers are still firmly sticking with electric...but i daresay the battery space can be altered to take a H2 fuel cell........

i have always thought that H2 would be the answer which will be produced using green electricity...and it seems in certain sectors they are now going that way..........

have the car manufacturers got it wrong....i daresay there will always be a niche market for short range electric cars/vans....but you cant power a combine with a battery or plough a field or haul 20tonnes of goods from scotland to london overnite with a battery...........

i think hydrogen is the way to go ..........

 

any thoughts ?.....have i got it all wrong ?

Maybe far too dangerance to let the plebs loose with?

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Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are just a stepping stone to a longer term, dare I suggest sustainable, Fuel Cell based solution (FCEVs). Most vehicle manufacturers FCEV roadmap is currently based on the assumption of hydrogen. Even close to home JLR have announced all Electric by 2025 but they are looking at Hydrogen based range extenders. I suspect this is the roll-out that many manufacturers will take on the path to wider adoption of FCEV technology.

Just a few years ago plenty of people were saying Hydrogen has no future for road transport but there has been a shift in thinking, some remain ardent detractors of hydrogen but the debate feeds healthy competition and innovation towards improved battery and fuel cell technologies.

Hydrogen is also being looked at for shipping and aircraft (again).

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4 hours ago, Cosmicblue said:

Then there's the reality that EVs are just a stepping stone to fully autonomous vehicles.  

I hear this a lot but the two are unrelated, just happen to be occurring at roughly the same time but on a different timelines of roll-out. There is no dependency for AVs to be EVs. In fact the computational load for higher levels of autonomy are at direct odds with the energy constraints of EVs, the higher the autonomy level the lower the range of the EV will be. 

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I am pretty sure a while back rather than cylinders for hydrogen in cars there was a lot of interest in using Metal hydride solids to store hydrogen which when heated releases the hydrogen. This was a way to get over having heavy tanks of flammable gas in the vehicle. This has the added bonus that in case of a crash it would not release all the gas if the fuel area was punctured.

 

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I have been banging on about this for years. It's the obvious answer and far superior to battery power in everyway. I even saw a TV programme about 5 year ago where and Honda petrol car had simply converted its petrol engine to run on hydrogen. The fuel cell idea is the answer. I think there is a push for it to be used in HGV and the use of it in trains is well advanced.

I believe in around 15yrs time we will look back on battery vehicles as a short lived novelty that never really took off.

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1 hour ago, TRINITY said:

I have been banging on about this for years. It's the obvious answer and far superior to battery power in everyway. I even saw a TV programme about 5 year ago where and Honda petrol car had simply converted its petrol engine to run on hydrogen. The fuel cell idea is the answer. I think there is a push for it to be used in HGV and the use of it in trains is well advanced.

I believe in around 15yrs time we will look back on battery vehicles as a short lived novelty that never really took off.

I agree.

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I have recently read that one of the UK Engineering Universities are in the process of developing a metal matrix storage system that works with hydrogen at greatly reduced pressures.if this is successful it could spell the end of battery powered electric cars.why lug a one ton battery everywhere using a good percentage of your stored energy just to move the store!?

Hydrogen is the future, generate the gas using off peak wind & solar & distribute using the same infrastructure we already have for petroleum fuels.

The added advantage of course is that the capacity of the fuel cell required for a vehicle would easily power the household when you get home! Therefore  no need for a massive investment in power  transmission for the grid system?

I would wager that Mr Musk is already involved.

 

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12 hours ago, JohnfromUK said:

I believe hydrogen is a good way to go in many applications.  However, I believe it has a bit of an Achilles for cars - in that it is difficult to store.  I believe it needs a very high pressure (read very heavy cylinder) to liquefy - which may be OK in a bus, but is not so good in a car.  I know that there was some possibility to store it with a catalyst in some way, but I'm not sure if that ever proved possible.  Quite a good summary article here https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/advantages_disadvantages_hydrogenenergy.php

Quite an interesting article there, even if it is written in a slightly quirky style... but I must say there are a few things given as facts that I'd like to see referenced, otherwise it tends to become a bit of a propaganda statement that needs a lot of fact-checking to be believed.

However, reading another of his articles on hydro-electric power I'm not sure that the author has ever met ditchman...

Quote

On top of that, the pants don’t produce toxic byproducts.

😆😆

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I saw on Just have a think that I mentioned earlier that they were working on infusing the hydrogen into a liquid for transportation that was easy to extract at the destination - which would negate the need for it to be liquified (extreme low temperature) and pressurized (very thick and heavy containers).

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14 hours ago, Raja Clavata said:

Musk isn't a fan, at least publicly, he reckons hydrogen powered cars is an extremely dumb idea. Behind the scenes, who knows...

It’s relatively cheap to convert any existing combustion engine to run on hydrogen in terms of money and the environment.  Many councils are running former diesel dust carts on it. 

The governments around the world banning new hydrocarbon engines in a few years has played right into his hands, people are now thinking the only option for a (new) car is electric - great marketing by Musk. 

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On 15/03/2021 at 17:15, TRINITY said:

I have been banging on about this for years. It's the obvious answer and far superior to battery power in everyway. I even saw a TV programme about 5 year ago where and Honda petrol car had simply converted its petrol engine to run on hydrogen. The fuel cell idea is the answer. I think there is a push for it to be used in HGV and the use of it in trains is well advanced.

I believe in around 15yrs time we will look back on battery vehicles as a short lived novelty that never really took off.

I'm sure I saw some similar with a Honda crv on top gear. It had normal road car performce. They had a petrol pump type thing that can  be installed outside your house, converting h2o into h2 for the car. It also heated your home. If that was available today I'd gladly have 1. 

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