Hydrogen isn't going to happen. It's effectively a very difficult and expensive way to store electricity. There's no infrastructure for it at all, the process of producing it is either extremely energy intensive or it's dirty and the equipment is bulky. It's been 20 years out forever.
Makes more sense to go straight to electricity and skip the intermediary step of producing, transporting, storing and carrying hydrogen.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
I don't get the hating on another state thing.. We all got problems, but we're all americans. If we can't see beyond our differences.. then there's a bigger problem here.. Unless it's Wisconsin.. 1st DUI is free.. (it's a joke, but not really)..
I guess.. if you get an endorphin rush from it.. I don't get it..
I feel like this move makes sense and also look forward to a future with quick charging batteries with increased energy density.
The real solutions, I believe, are going to be more mass transit, walking & bicycling, and simply *less* transit. EV's replacing combustion engines is something but it's not the only change needed if we're going to really battle climate change. More working from home, moving to a four-day work week, city planning that puts work closer to homes, new road projects being only for walking & bicycling and not more cars. These are the changes I think should happen along with more EV's and a good electrical infrastructure to support them.
Keith Tanner said:Hydrogen isn't going to happen. It's effectively a very difficult and expensive way to store electricity. There's no infrastructure for it at all, the process of producing it is either extremely energy intensive or it's dirty and the equipment is bulky. It's been 20 years out forever.
Makes more sense to go straight to electricity and skip the intermediary step of producing, transporting, storing and carrying hydrogen.
Keith is right. There are sectors where hydrogen makes sense (e.g. backup generators for a business) but transporation is not one of them UNLESS we find a better way to store it than merely compressing it into tanks. (low energy density/poor range.) I highly recommend this book for a good discussion of hydrogen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hype_About_Hydrogen
I see a lot of sides to this thing.
First, the battery has to be durable and cheap enough so that the bottom end of the economy can live with them, too. Especially since they will be the ones dealing with the end of life battery. Current battery tech can't do that, yet. But I know there is a strong effort to find better alternatives.
Second, ICEs are still very much under development because the above point.
Third, Id bet that hybrids will be part of the eventual end.
Fourth, the last time CA mandated EVs, OEMs sues them using their own constitution and that resulted in PZEV cars.
Something needs done, but, to me, the current best solution is to not drive to work every single day for all of us. It works for many, it very much reduces our carbon output as a whole, and is essentially free now. (Relative time ICE to EV fleet conversion).
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
No rush. No hate. I'm just hoping people can see all the sides of the issues and find a balanced solution.
I'll agree, CA is a leader. Some are held up as an example of what not to do, and their failures can serve as a warning for others not to follow suit.
Peace! 
Forgot one thing, previously legal ICEs can't be banned. The rules can be very tightly enforced though.
pres589 (djronnebaum) said:The real solutions, I believe, are going to be more mass transit, walking & bicycling, and simply *less* transit. EV's replacing combustion engines is something but it's not the only change needed if we're going to really battle climate change. More working from home, moving to a four-day work week, city planning that puts work closer to homes, new road projects being only for walking & bicycling and not more cars. These are the changes I think should happen along with more EV's and a good electrical infrastructure to support them.
Agreed. Ultimately a massive amount of the carbon footprint from a car comes from it's initial production. If we want to do more for global warming, we need to reduce consumption and have things that last longer and are recyclable as well as more efficient means of transit even compared to electric cars.
Keith Tanner said:Hydrogen isn't going to happen.
The activity in the industry doesn't agree with you. Some very interesting mergers and acquisitions from large corps of the small startups. There are some hurdles for sure, but transportation sector is one of the ones that may come quickest. H2 cost through renewable sources aren't competitive now, but from a fuel comparison standpoint hydrogen is closer to gasoline costs for transport than say for natural gas use for the grid. Add incentives, carbon tax, etc and it gets close. I think hydrogen for storage/grid use is further out as the round trip efficiency of power to gas to power is quite low, imo I think that will be last for scale but activity is already happening now. Using hydrogen is about the only tool to decarbonize steel, cement and other "hot" industrial processes, so there are those uses as well. As scale builds, cost drops, we all win? Maybe.
I see battery EV being the short term/short run solution, and fuel cell EV or hybrid FC/BEV for longer haul and tougher use like commerical trucking, forklifts, dock vehicles, etc.
Not floundering, but I wonder if this is just political grandstanding. I mean, cars continue to get better mileage with less emissions, hybrids and electric cars are no longer an oddity, and manufacturers continue to make them a larger portion of their offerings, and all signs indicate they are going to continue this trend. This feels like a politician trying to get credit for something that is already happening.
Japan is trying very hard to make hydrogen work, but despite the constant show cars (Mazda built a hydrogen-powered rotary Miata in the early 90s!) it's just not getting anywhere. There certainly is some hype in the sector as has been illustrated well this week, though.
gearheadmb said:Not floundering, but I wonder if this is just political grandstanding. I mean, cars continue to get better mileage with less emissions, hybrids and electric cars are no longer an oddity, and manufacturers continue to make them a larger portion of their offerings, and all signs indicate they are going to continue this trend. This feels like a politician trying to get credit for something that is already happening.
Two things can be true at once. I think it is mostly political grandstanding, but it puts all the manufacturers on notice.
Japan will be a bit slow, Korea is doubling down, Germany just released their roadmap and it's aggressive. The last year there is a lot activity from a policy perspective and industry has been very active over the last 18mos consolidating technologies and developing JV's. Not sure what's public and what isn't but a quick google will bring up a few things.
In reply to gearheadmb :
I semi-agree with Newsome and I think you're right. But why not? We have no real choice with climate change, and Cali seems to be finally, slowly devouring and public-utility-ifying PG&E.
Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) said:Japan will be a bit slow, Korea is doubling down, Germany just released their roadmap and it's aggressive. The last year there is a lot activity from a policy perspective and industry has been very active over the last 18mos consolidating technologies and developing JV's. Not sure what's public and what isn't but a quick google will bring up a few things.
For stuff like this I tend to shy away from 'a quick google' and try to restrict my information to sources I trust. Too much tinfoil!
As for hydrogen- you're completely right with it's use in steel and metalworking, but Kieth's comments are correct. Most Hydrogen production relies on either cracking natural gas or water electrolysis, and the latter is going to be a precious resource as climate change worsens. Worse yet, electrolysis is something like 33% efficient due to the high coulomb factor of basic water- it takes something like 3 times the energy to crack water for hydrogen because 2/3rd the energy you put into it oes straight into heating it up to that factor. Fuel cell 'reactors' also have a total lifespan of 15 years that hasn't been improved upon.
There's also different chemicals that can be used too. Methanol is in our window washing fluid and doesn't require 15,000PSI connections, but can be used in it's own fuel cells.
Keith Tanner said:For stuff like this I tend to shy away from 'a quick google' and try to restrict my information to sources I trust. Too much tinfoil!
https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2020-06-10/german-government-to-agree-national-hydrogen-strategy#:~:text=BERLIN%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20The%20German,the%20country's%20greenhouse%20gas%20emissions.&text=It%20set%20a%20goal%20of,to%20five%20Gigawatts%20by%202030.
https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/editoriaux-de-lifri/edito-energie/south-koreas-hydrogen-strategy-and-industrial#:~:text=South%20Korea's%20priorities%20are%20leadership,and%203.3%20million%20for%20export.
https://www.s-ge.com/en/article/global-opportunities/20201-c5-japan-hydrogen-market#:~:text=Japan's%20Basic%20Hydrogen%20Strategy,Strategy%22%20as%20early%20as%202017.&text=The%20retail%20price%20for%20hydrogen,Nm3%20in%20the%20long%20term.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/8/21427009/gm-nikola-acquisition-electric-hydrogen-truck
https://www.h2-international.com/2020/02/17/linde-joins-itm/
https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/offerings/renewable-energy/hydrogen-solutions.html
https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2019/09/09/cummins-closes-its-acquisition-hydrogenics
For your reading pleasure.
That collection of links looks like the result of a quick Google search. Seriously, the Verge reporting on the awesome GM/Nikola deal? You have noticed what's happened to Nikola in the past week or so, yes?
Some of the others are just shiny press releases that someone bought someone else, which of course never contains any actual analysis.
Germany is suggesting that hydrogen be used as a storage medium for excess energy production. It's not a very efficient storage mechanism, though - would it make more sense to have a battery bank as is already being done in places like Australia?
Building out an infrastructure for hydrogen is going to be really, really difficult. It's not like gasoline where you're basically just pumping water. There are high pressures involved, hydrogen loves to react with things and go boom and the equipment is always going to be more expensive than gas/diesel. Plus there's the dirty secret that not all the hydrogen on site will be at high enough pressure to fuel vehicles, so if you empty the "header tank" you have to wait for the pressure to build. But more importantly, until there is an infrastructure, it's not a viable technology for anything more than a port or a warehouse.
Electric car infrastructure is a little schizophrenic. There's the high speed infrastructure which is undergoing a fairly heavy build-out right now and starting to become viable for passenger vehicles if not heavy trucks. That's a matter of adding big chargers to an electrical grid and building parking lots. But lower speed charging is already available everywhere because of that electrical grid. I could plug a BEV in at work without any extra wiring being done. I could plug one in at my shop. Any warehouse can charge forklifts or trucks, the power is already there. Electric vehicle infrastructure is mostly in the last-mile stage, hydrogen isn't even at the first mile yet.
Actual analysis you have to pay for, it is what it is.
What is interesting about Germany is that it's location is such that the renewable buildout can't be reached in-country. They will be a net importer, and using hydrogen as a storage medium can buy them quite a bit even at low round trip % (50-60). Li-Ion battery cells themselves can be in the 90's but fully burdened drop a bit even in mild climates and depth of discharge limitations for warranty purposes de-rate them quite a bit from a capacity standpoint. They also have a not so great 1:4 power to energy ratio where with large installations they get expensive. There are some other promising storage technologies but none are quite ready for primetime.
I totally get the infrastructure point, and that is the reason for the activity, to ever have it you need to start putting incentives in now. It's not like there won't be many tools in the overall decarbonization tool box. You need to deploy many solutions: PV and wind, maybe baby nukes, multiple storage techs, decarbonized gasses and fuels, etc.
I think you are right in the shorter term 5-10yr around hydrogen but longer term it will be a piece of the larger puzzle.
As a right leaning mostly independent, I find this mandate to be incredibly far out of line. Governor Newsom has once again overstepped his bounds. I absolutely hate the California vehicle laws that are in place. This new mandate is no better. The market was headed toward EV's and hybrids anyway. He can't take credit for that. You can scream climate change all you want, but if the market still exists for a gasoline engined 9 second factory drag car in 2035, who is he to deny the right to purchase that?
On the note of rolling blackouts... This has been an issue in SoCal my entire life. There are giant solar farms, and wind farms, within an hour of my home. They have only grown in the last 20 years. We are still doing rolling blackouts every summer. I can only imagine the increased infrastructure that will be required when we are all charging our cars up at night with our A/C on at 72, with our pool pumps running.
They can have my buggy whip when they pry it from my cold dead hands...
Also why are all these people on my lawn?
Plug in hybrids are already here and gaining popularity for the appliance vehicles that most people need. Pure electrics have expanded quite a bit in the last few years, despite gas prices being down. By that comment, I mean, if gas was still cruising over $4 a gallon rather than $2.25ish we would be seeing more motivation and more electrics on the market. There are a number of reasons that electrics and hybrids do well with automated vehicles as well, and those are coming.
Its easy when talking on this forum to think in the part of the market that interests us, but the majority of people are leasing appliance vehicles, not all in for a driving experience like we are. The vast majority of cars sold right now are crossover SUV's, begin another gas crunch and we will see smaller electric and hybrid cars gain market share, it happened 10 years ago.
Its coming. It isnt the death of fun. We arent likely to be slapping carburetors onto pushrod V8's for fun for too much longer as a primary means of going fast.
Will we see no more ICE cars being sold that quickly? I kinda doubt it. I would bet that the majority of the market will be electric or at least plug in hybrid by then though.
Electric cars are coming anyway, CA is just playing to its base and sticking it to the pres. Batteries however are going to be a huge, huge issue, as is the electrical grid. I am not sure the whole electric car thing has been though out very well in terms of infrastructure. The debate now is not if they are going to take over, but when, and are we prepared. They aren't coming in 2035, I think it will be faster than that, maybe not 100%, but bigger and bigger numbers each year. As many benefits as lithium batteries offer, they also have big drawbacks in terms of shipping, storing, and self combustion. For this to work, battery technology has to expand at a rapid rate.
Honestly, the biggest barrier I keep coming up against in my mind is rare earth minerals and the supply of them...
Most of them come out of china because mining them is an ecological disaster, not to mention labor wages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element#Global_rare-earth_production
Those are critical for most of the high capacity battery technologies that have been coming out, so mass production of them have a certain bottleneck.
Cooter said:They can have my buggy whip when they pry it from my cold dead hands...
That is a common mode of transportation around here though they do emit some methane.
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