All coming across my news feed lately:
Volvo dumps EV brand Polestar (Though the Chinese majority took it over).
Tesla recalls almost all of it's cars.
F-150 Lightning losses and production cuts.
Charging debacle in the midwest freeze.
Hydrogen powered Semis.
Hydrogen engined hybrids.
Not looking great for a mandated EV thing. I am still tossed up, though I really really want an Alpha Wolf still.
Please discuss per the forum rules.
Hydrogen continues to offer the best selection of the worst downsides. Second most nightmarish fuel in terms of transport and storage next to ammonia, high up-front vehicle costs and limited range like an EV, refuel times that are closer to an EV than an ICE nowadays, high fuel costs like an ICE, fuel is currently mostly fossil-sourced like an ICE, fueling stations are incredibly rare instead of at every gas station or in every manmade structure with electricity.
EVs are hitting a speedbump because accelerating production ran into slowing demand, but I don't think hydrogen is taking off, and I hope it won't.
Again.... remember the EV mandate includes all versions of hybrids. So adding a 48V starter/generator qualifies for an EV. Those will probably be the gross majority of the EV mandate, IMHO.
As for H2, people think it's new research, but it's just been going on for a long time. Fuel cell or ICE- they have been worked on for a long, long time.
No solution is perfect- H2 has green generation issues as well as real storage and movement challenges. But some think they are easier to solve than the BEV issues, apparently.
I'm hopeful that the "mandatory" aspect of EVs will subside. They really are great - for some things, but to prescribe them for everything is, as of now, asking too large sacrifices of us nermal folk. And it's not like the USA needs any more bones of contention.
What I don't get is hydrogen. Sure it burns clean. Sure there's a theoretically limitless supply of it. But it's still expensive to produce and distribute, not to mention the safety aspect of high PSI gasses.
I, personally, would hesitate to take a side of any specific technology right now. Everything has their benefits, everything has their downsides.
I mean we can debate H2 generation, but if we do, we also need to debate the realistic impact on 100x increase in battery production. Neither are good, right now. BUT, both are also showing some serious promise.
At the same time, green liquid fuel should be considered as well.
If we had a overhead power and pantograph design for BEVs to cruise on the interstates without using the batteries it would solve a lot of problems.
There's a lot to unpack on this topic but I would like to point out that the freezing charging debacle is largely a problem with charger design and not strictly a physical problem. I know the Flo's chargers are rated way below freezing and used the midwest freeze as an opportunity to advertise as such.
Was it Toyota that just announced a new solid state EV battery ?
I think the answer has not got here yet , and maybe not discovered !
My vote now is a plug in Hybrid .
dclafleur said:There's a lot to unpack on this topic but I would like to point out that the freezing charging debacle is largely a problem with charger design and not strictly a physical problem. I know the Flo's chargers are rated way below freezing and used the midwest freeze as an opportunity to advertise as such.
Freezing weather charging seems to work pretty good in Norway , and Norway has a large percentage of EVs because of lower taxes on new EVs.
In reply to alfadriver :
You say they all have benefits and downsides, but it seems like hydrogen has so many downsides and vanishingly few benefits. Right now nearly all the hydrogen available is made from fossil fuels or as a fossil fuel byproduct, and fixing that would require a radically overhauled energy system, with renewable/nuclear power being used to make hydrogen and then transporting it around in pipelines and trucks to hydrogen stations. Hydrogen FCVs need catalysts that have similar production issues to today's BEV batteries. It seems like the only benefits of FCVs are "efficiency somewhere between an ICE and an EV," "maybe slightly faster refuel vs. EV" and "only water vapor emissions."
On the topic of radically reworking the world's energy systems, green liquid fuels can be put into two different categories, biofuels and synthetic fuels. Biofuels could work if they were made from crops that work well for that, like switchgrass grown on minimally tilled land, rather than crops that are politically and economically convenient for it like corn. If enough biofuel could be produced that could decarbonize existing ICE transportation, although it wouldn't do anything for other forms of air pollution and could actually slightly worsen them.
Synthetic e-fuels can't work as a mainstream solution because of how energy-intensive they are, the synthetic fuel production supply chain is the most ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine ever imagined, where renewable electricity is collected and used to collect other renewable resources that are refined into fuels and then shipped around like gasoline to be put into an engine that turns 2/3rds of it directly into waste heat, instead of putting that renewable electricity from the first step straight into a BEV that turns 90% of it into kinetic energy at the wheels. A study done around 2020 found that world electricity production would need to be tripled or quadroupled at that point in time to have enough energy to replace fossil fuels with synthetic e-fuels. So synthetic e-fuels can only work as a niche option.
californiamilleghia said:Was it Toyota that just announced a new solid state EV battery ?
I think the answer has not got here yet , and maybe not discovered !
My vote now is a plug in Hybrid .
Yep they've been working on it for a while and are supposed to have a production car with a solid-state battery available in the next year or two. Dual-carbon batteries are another technology looking close to ready for consumer devices, they're already used to power satellites.
Note that the "all cars" Tesla recall involves a font that's a bit too small, which will be fixed with an OTA software update. It has nothing to do with the mode of propulsion. The other recall announced with regards to steering is again just a car thing, like the recall on the ball joints on my Dodge truck. Ford scaled back their production estimates for the Lightning, they were going to expand production dramatically, now they're going to expand it less than dramatically.
And there were fuel pumps freezing a couple of weeks ago, but nobody wants to click on that article :) Never mind what can happen to diesel fuel...
The Toyota solid state battery should not be believed until it's in production. They keep announcing they're almost there, but there are some significant problems. So just consider it the 100 mpg carburetor for the time being :) I mean, we did eventually get to 100 mpg cars (sorta, check out the VW Lupo 3L). They just didn't have carburetors.
H2 just doesn't work all that well from a physics or an infrastructure standpoint, really. It will likely work in some specialized cases, but maybe not before batteries overtake it.
It's going to end up with "the best choice for a given use case".
Pure battery EVs can be made to work pretty well in a large number of cases, we're seeing that in real life.
Mild hybrids like the original Prius can work well overall by supplementing a small ICE without a whole lot of extra baggage. This is the way to go to make a vehicle more efficient but still liquid-fueled IMO.
Plug-in hybrids are - to me - the worst of both worlds because they need relatively large batteries to get their all-electric range paired with an entire drivetrain that's rarely used. They're the all season tire of EVs. But like all season tires and brake pads that work on the street and track, people like the concept and it allows them to get most of the benefits of a BEV without the concern that they'll have to wait for charging. I suspect they will gradually fall out of favor as people get more experience with BEVs and learn more about what charging really looks like.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I agree that putting a large battery together with an ICE is mostly adding all their disadvantages together, but at the same time I don't think there's any good reason for a non-plug-in hybrid to exist. If the car has a battery of any size it should be possible to plug it in to charge, if that only lets it make very short trips without firing up the ICE or just replaces a bit of costly, eco-damaging gas with relatively cheap, clean, and upgradeable grid power, that's fine. If my DD was a plug-in hybrid with 10 miles of range the ICE wouldn't get used much.
GameboyRMH said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
I agree that putting a large battery together with an ICE is mostly adding all their disadvantages together, but at the same time I don't think there's any good reason for a non-plug-in hybrid to exist. If the car has a battery of any size it should be possible to plug it in to charge, if that only lets it make very short trips without firing up the ICE or just replaces a bit of costly, eco-damaging gas with relatively cheap, clean, and upgradeable grid power, that's fine. If my DD was a plug-in hybrid with 10 miles of range the ICE wouldn't get used much.
I am making the assumption that a plug-in hybrid (of the sort I'm describing) will have a non-trivial EV range, enough to allow it to perform normal daily use. That's why I was using "mild" to describe a vehicle that really can't go very far at all on battery. It's a sliding scale, there's no hard line where they transition.
You're right, though, that adding a charger to any car with a traction battery is beneficial. Doesn't take much electrical infrastructure to charge a baby battery.
I think Toyota (when not putting out press releases about solid state batteries that will be here real soon now we promise) has made a good case that mild hybrids are the best total use of resources, as the batteries are used to a fuller extent than a pure BEV and they decrease the use of fossil fuels. I'm still a big believer in BEVs from an ownership level - I'm glad not to have to deal with an ICE - but the reasoning is good.
GameboyRMH said:You say they all have benefits and downsides, but it seems like hydrogen has so many downsides and vanishingly few benefits. Right now nearly all the hydrogen available is made from fossil fuels or as a fossil fuel byproduct, and fixing that would require a radically overhauled energy system, with renewable/nuclear power being used to make hydrogen and then transporting it around in pipelines and trucks to hydrogen stations. Hydrogen FCVs need catalysts that have similar production issues to today's BEV batteries. It seems like the only benefits of FCVs are "efficiency somewhere between an ICE and an EV," "maybe slightly faster refuel vs. EV" and "only water vapor emissions."
It's a lot easier to make hydrogen with electricity than it is gasoline, so if your goal is nuclear-powered combustion engines then that's probably the best choice. Hydrogen energy density isn't as high as hydrocabon fuels, but it's a lot better than batteries. Cars probably don't require it all on their own, but hydrogen combustion might make more sense for things like long-haul trucks, ships, or aircraft.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
The problem with hydrogen density is that you can't count the mass of the fuel without taking the tanks into account. A Mirai weighs about the same as a Model Y. And hydrogen combustion is challenging from a leak perspective, you've got to deliver that hydrogen to the cylinders which means you're dealing with a hot, shaking platform. I can see hydrogen working for ships best.
Nuclear powered combustion, I like that. It's like calling my solar-charged BEV fusion powered :)
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Liquid fuel also means the various forms of alcohol. Which there is a great abundance of sources of. And it seems that you want to ignore the development of green H2. Not sure why, but it exists, and is moving fast.
But, as I said before, I'm not willing to pick a winner right now. Your perception of why H2 is bad isn't shared with people in Toyota who are heavily working on fuel cells. And your perception of liquid fuel isn't shared with people from Porsche who are heavily working on other fuels.
And when you say "large scale" for EVs- it's not even close to the entire fleet right now- so it's barely scale on the basis of the auto market.
Forgive me for sharing the open mindedness of my fellow automotive engineers. And I lean toward liquid fuel alternatives since we have the solution for everything but the source of the liquid fuel- using it, keeping it clean, distribution- all almost totally solved. But it, too, has a very long way to go to be the primary solution.
Actually, I think the future will be a combination of all of them.
Anyway, based on previous threads like this, it will eventually become an "EV now" thread and discount all of the issues. So my contribution is done enough. Keep an open mind.
alfadriver said:In reply to GameboyRMH :
Liquid fuel also means the various forms of alcohol. Which there is a great abundance of sources of. And it seems that you want to ignore the development of green H2. Not sure why, but it exists, and is moving fast.
Because green H2 has all the same problems as today's fossil hydrogen except for one, the fossil CO2 release that comes along with it. That's still A LOT of problems left.
alfadriver said:And your perception of liquid fuel isn't shared with people from Porsche who are heavily working on other fuels.
The people at Porsche are smart and can access all the same research on synthetic e-fuels' unavoidable massive thirst for energy, so I think they know just as well as I do that it can only work as a niche solution. Which makes sense for them as a niche manufacturer.
alfadriver said:Forgive me for sharing the open mindedness of my fellow automotive engineers. And I lean toward liquid fuel alternatives since we have the solution for everything but the source of the liquid fuel- using it, keeping it clean, distribution- all almost totally solved. But it, too, has a very long way to go to be the primary solution.
I agree that liquid fuels are a much more mature solution than hydrogen - arguably even a more mature solution than EVs - but producing a near-zero-carbon sustainable liquid fuel in the first place seems like a bigger challenge and a less tested option than decarbonizing the electrical grid. We have BEVs running on renewable grid power right now but AFAIK a sustainable liquid fuel is something that's only possible in theory and hasn't even been tested successfully (not counting Porsche's e-fuel experiments that can't scale due to the energy guzzlage).
EVs are only slowing down because I believe the venn diagram of homeowners (people with personal, overnight charging) and EV owners are quickly beginning to become the same circle. It's going to continue to move up, but just at a pace that matches what homeowners can afford year over year.
Hydrogen, I believe, could be very useful for performance. Similar to what the N74 is supposed to be. For consumers? It's still expensive, and we need to get to the point where we have enough extra energy to justify making it. Which could, and totally should happen!
Keith Tanner said:The problem with hydrogen density is that you can't count the mass of the fuel without taking the tanks into account. A Mirai weighs about the same as a Model Y. And hydrogen combustion is challenging from a leak perspective, you've got to deliver that hydrogen to the cylinders which means you're dealing with a hot, shaking platform. I can see hydrogen working for ships best.
Nuclear powered combustion, I like that. It's like calling my solar-charged BEV fusion powered :)
According to wikipedia, the hydrogen tanks weigh about 95 pounds each (it has two), and the fuel cell stack is another 80 or so. Then there's another ~ 100 pounds for the hybrid-mode battery in it, and whatever the electric motors weigh (probably less than those in the model Y, since it makes less power). I dunno why the Mirai is so heavy.
This is compared to the model Y's battery which is supposedly 1700 pounds.
Mazda had a working hydrogen combustion RX8 20 years ago.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
And a working hydrogen combustion Miata 10 years before that. But it's one thing to do a technology demonstrator that is rarely operated and " only under controlled conditions, and something totally different to solve that problem at scale and with individual owners over decade+ time spans. Toyota tried to field a combustion H2 racer last year and was confounded by leaks.
I cannot be the only person who hears "hydrogen vehicle" and immediately thinks:
Yes, apples and oranges, I know, but still not the sort of natural association that tends to prove beneficial for marketing efforts.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/bakx-white-hydrogen-natural-mali-1.7094645
I believe this article has a link to a Quirks and Quarks episode I heard on the subject of hydrogen
In reply to 02Pilot :
It's not completely unjustified. Hydrogen loves to leak - it's a tiny molecule - and is flammable between 4% and 75% concentration. Just see how much trouble NASA has had filling hydrolox (H2 and liquid O2) rockets over the decades. It's not easy to deal with.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
And keep in mind, the people at NASA are engineers and literal rocket scientists who have studied, designed the process, and trained in it.
My biggest issue with hydrogen is the refueling process itself. Ignoring the almost complete lack of infrastructure, think of the average driver that can't even be bothered to use a turn signal or put down their damn phone. The refill connectors are going to need to be idiot proof on top of somehow redundantly leak proof, if not fully automated which will come with its own issues.
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