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Herzlos wrote:
But why go through such a wasteful approach to generate hydrogen from electricity just to turn it back into electricity later?

1. Hydrogen fuel cell technology certainly needs to improve before it becomes truly viable, so it seems to be more of a future prospect than something we can do right now.
2. Hydrogen can just be used as regular fuel. It burns pretty well, after all.

 Overread wrote:


As I understand it the main issue is that with computer design and efficient design you end up with designs which are very intricate and small; but which are ultimately a nightmare to actually get into. Because they are designed to be built on an assembly line once rather than, like most old vehicles, to be accessed to be repaired. It's basically a huge difference in the ethos of design where cars were once built to "last forever" even though they weren't (they used to rust like crazy); but now we have better materials and understanding ,but we don't built them to last forever - we build them to last until we want to sell them another car.

It's a design ethos that has infected design probably since sometime after WWII. It's why we live in a throw-away age. Not only have we insane advance of technology, but we have built in waste within the whole concept of how our economies work. Heck we see the same, if far faster on both advance and waste, with electronics. How many new mobile phones are really "new" and giving users better features and how many are just doin the same things they did last year, but perhaps a little faster (possibly because it has less bloat-ware auto installed onto it)

It's true we're now much more of a "throwaway" society than we once were. Back in the 70s or 80s it wasn't unusual to see home appliances and lots of other things lasting for decades. Now a combination of how things are built and the power of marketing makes us much more wasteful. Combine that with the fact we can't repair things like we used to and you get a perfect storm of waste. There used to be 3 TV repair shops in the town where I grew up, usually also doing things like washing machine and fridge repairs as well. Now there's one, but its main business is installing TV aerials and dishes. It's now almost impossible to repair a modern TV because it's effectively a sealed unit with a big PCB and a sealed single-unit screen where replacing a single element often means buying a whole new unit. The same applies to cars.

For a practical example of how this computer-aided approach ot manufacturing and design affects tings just look at any of the more modern GW plastic sprues. All those intricate bits cut at weird angles that require you to only match up arm A with body 1 and weapon B, or weird interlinked parts that slot together like some sort of strange puzzle designed to torture your patience exist because a computer program decided that was the most efficient way to cut up a model and arrange it on a sprue.

I believe the EU has been trying to push some legislation through against these sealed units. Since sealed units are also often designed with entry points only accessible with specific custom tools. Some are even made so that getting inside a plastic unit is nearly impossible without breaking it open

Heck just to clean the scroll wheel on a mouse you have to remove several screws and then almost crack the plastic shell to actually gain entry. Whereas the screws should be enough all on their own without need of the case also being clipped together oddly.

There's belts and there's belts. Most will only deactivate one system, and do minimal damage. But if that belt happens to be the timing belt and your engine happens to be interference, it can take out your pistons, valves, and camshaft- which could cost you about 10,000, if I'm not mistaken. Whenever that thing comes up for maintenance, it gets replaced, because the consequences of it failing are catastrophic.

Yeah, I was primarily talking about timing belts, sorry. Alternator belts can likely snap without causing any problems except for an eventual flat battery.

 Tiennos wrote:

2. Hydrogen can just be used as regular fuel. It burns pretty well, after all.

It's a hugely flammable gas at normal temperatures though, so much harder to store and transport than gasoline (which is liquid with a flammable evaporate). You need to store it under huge pressure to get it liquid, which means pressurized tanks, valves, venting and so on.

It may make a suitable replacement for the butane gas used in domestic heating, since it burns cleaner and if you're piping it in at low pressures you avoid most of the difficulties. For vehicles it just seems like an extra inefficient step for most things, though I can see the merit in using hydrogen to fuel huge energy guzzling machinery like combine harvesters and mining trucks, because it'll be a lot easier to refuel them with hydrogen than batteries.

Herzlos wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:

2. Hydrogen can just be used as regular fuel. It burns pretty well, after all.

It's a hugely flammable gas at normal temperatures though, so much harder to store and transport than gasoline (which is liquid with a flammable evaporate). You need to store it under huge pressure to get it liquid, which means pressurized tanks, valves, venting and so on.

It may make a suitable replacement for the butane gas used in domestic heating, since it burns cleaner and if you're piping it in at low pressures you avoid most of the difficulties. For vehicles it just seems like an extra inefficient step for most things, though I can see the merit in using hydrogen to fuel huge energy guzzling machinery like combine harvesters and mining trucks, because it'll be a lot easier to refuel them with hydrogen than batteries.

Dihydrogen isn't really more or less dangerous than "natural gas" (methane/butane/propane) that is used everywhere. Yes it is a pain in the fundament to store because liquefying it is difficult and it's literally the least dense gas there is, but there are ways to work around that.

 Overread wrote:



As I understand it the main issue is that with computer design and efficient design you end up with designs which are very intricate and small; but which are ultimately a nightmare to actually get into. Because they are designed to be built on an assembly line once rather than, like most old vehicles, to be accessed to be repaired.

Pretty much. You'd think that a battery pack made of individual cells would lend itself to replacing worn out or otherwise not working cells and not the whole pack but you'd be wrong.

Same with the drive unit. This Merc B class owner was quoted 18K to replace the drive unit (which sadly happened quite often).

https://electrek.co/2020/06/12/when-an-out-of-warranty-ev-fails-who-you-gonna-call/

Regrettably a lot of those cars will end up totaled so you buy a new one.

There are supposedly 3rd party companies who'll refurbish batteries by replacing the bad cells. I'm not sure why it's not a more common option.

Herzlos wrote:
There are supposedly 3rd party companies who'll refurbish batteries by replacing the bad cells. I'm not sure why it's not a more common option.

It may be because the batteries don't degrade as badly as many people (manufacturers included) first thought. Initially there was a lot of talk about batteries significantly losing their ability to hold charge over a period of about 3-5 years but that just doesn't seem to be the case. Yes, there is a bit of a reduction in capacity over time but it's nowhere near the level it was first feared to be.

Also, depending on the car, it may not be possible to actually replace the cells. Teslas have what are effectively a huge number of individual cells that look just like regular AA batteries, albeit larger. But many other cars, such as the i3 and Leaf have very different types of battery where it's not really so easy to just replace a cell. You kind of have to replace the whole thing.

Again, it looks like solid state batteries are very close to ready for commercial use, these will be a game changer for electric cars.

As for the temperature issue, i wonder if a plug in heater could gbe linked to the battery compartment for when the car is parked or in a garage.I imagine the battery compartment could be well
insulated too.

Slipspace wrote:
It's true we're now much more of a "throwaway" society than we once were. Back in the 70s or 80s it wasn't unusual to see home appliances and lots of other things lasting for decades. Now a combination of how things are built and the power of marketing makes us much more wasteful. Combine that with the fact we can't repair things like we used to and you get a perfect storm of waste. There used to be 3 TV repair shops in the town where I grew up, usually also doing things like washing machine and fridge repairs as well. Now there's one, but its main business is installing TV aerials and dishes. It's now almost impossible to repair a modern TV because it's effectively a sealed unit with a big PCB and a sealed single-unit screen where replacing a single element often means buying a whole new unit. The same applies to cars.

Fairly recently, I was put in a position where I was replacing my stove/oven range unit in my kitchen. . . Went around to a few places, we had a solid price point where we wanted/needed to be at. . . Every time I mentioned something along the lines of "I don't want to be back here 5 or 6 years from now doing this again," I was invariably told something along the lines of "ohh, in that case you need to get X brand" (usually this was Viking brand). . . which is known for their incredibly longevity, good clean looks and all that. . . but are also $7-15,000 up front.

Gitzbitah wrote:There's belts and there's belts. Most will only deactivate one system, and do minimal damage. But if that belt happens to be the timing belt and your engine happens to be interference, it can take out your pistons, valves, and camshaft- which could cost you about 10,000, if I'm not mistaken. Whenever that thing comes up for maintenance, it gets replaced, because the consequences of it failing are catastrophic.

I can only speak for the dealership I work at, so grain of salt and all that. . . We have very very few vehicles that use timing belts. Get your vehicle in early to get it replaced while its making noise, and its probably gonna run you maybe 5-600 bucks. Wait till it actually goes, and the last tow-in timing belt job we had, I think was still only 3500-5000 bucks. Granted, I work at a chevy dealership, and Chevy is somewhat notorious for "cheap" vehicles that are easier to replace than repair. This is also reflected in the rising prices of the used car market. . . Growing up it was extremely common to see 15-20 year old cars running "strong" and being sold for cheap. Certainly the badge on the nose of the vehicle will play some role in whether a repair is actually 10k or not, as I know that "premium" brands mark up the same exact Continental/Bosch timing belt to 70% higher than another brand would, just because it is on a premium brand.

But the thing with 99% of all of the big problems that come into our shop??? Today's cars will let you know there's an issue BEFORE it becomes a major issue. I mentioned above things like Oil change/service lights. . . we had a customer who voided her warranty because she bought a brand new chevy, drove it to 28,000 miles and NEVER changed the oil. . . So, because not only was the oil level low, it was super sludgy and wrecked most of anywhere that oil touches. Thing is, that car does have all kinds of oil life, service life, and other dashboard indicators to let the driver know that they need to do service.

Slipspace wrote:

Also, depending on the car, it may not be possible to actually replace the cells. Teslas have what are effectively a huge number of individual cells that look just like regular AA batteries, albeit larger. But many other cars, such as the i3 and Leaf have very different types of battery where it's not really so easy to just replace a cell. You kind of have to replace the whole thing.

It's actually the other way around. Because Teslas have such a huge number of individual cells with all the associated wiring, cooling, etc. and also considering the battery pack itself is a structural part of the chassis (for weight reasons) no one will touch them as it's so labour intensive and the chance of damaging the pack.

Actually Tesla will remotely forbid you from charging at high speed if it detects you're using a refurbished battery you installed yourself (there are many videos on that issue on Rich Rebuilds channel)

https://electrek.co/2020/02/12/tesla-disables-supercharging-salvaged-vehicles/

Theoretically the bigger prismatic cells other manufacturers are using should be easier to replace, but all VW, Audi, BMW, etc. are doing is a commitment to recycle them at the end of the life of the battery pack.

https://www.electrive.com/2019/02/21/vw-releases-battery-recycling-details/




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Herzlos wrote:
But why go through such a wasteful approach to generate hydrogen from electricity just to turn it back into electricity later?

Because the energy density of hydrogen is much better than batteries (still not up there with fossil fuels, but close), and the cycles of energy generation (like renewables or nuclear) can make it very cheap to dispose of excess energy.

Batteries are expensive and heavy, and hydrogen can help where batteries don't work so well like long-distance applications where the power/weight of battery is a liability.

Makes sense. I could also see plenty of merit in using excess renewable energy to split water into hydrogen which could then be burnt to deal with peaks. Kinda like the pumped dam approach but without needing the hill.

Herzlos wrote:
Makes sense. I could also see plenty of merit in using excess renewable energy to split water into hydrogen which could then be burnt to deal with peaks. Kinda like the pumped dam approach but without needing the hill.

I believe there are a few experimental power plants doing just that.
I've also heard there is (or soon will be) one in Germany where they use hydrogen and carbon dioxyde to synthetize methane. It could then just be pumped into the existing gas network.

The issue is, excess renewable energy, absent its a hydroeletric plant, doesn't exist. LCOE cost estimates can only show renewable energy sources PEAK production being economically efficient -- and none of those particular renweables are producing that energy 24 hours a day, so the result is that solar and wind both underperform relative to their "levelized" (read "made up by someone who wanted them to win") costs by about 70 percent.

If you add capacity to your system, you are paying triple for it in resources to accompish miniscule amounts of actual energy, and if you then ALSO store it with a waste of 40 percent (hydrgen industrial productions MOST optimistic scenario is 40 percent loss. MOST.) you are now underperforming with your money by an astonishing amount. You get .3 of your purchase price for energy and multiply it by .6 of your storage price for hydrogen.

I

Dukeofstuff wrote:
The issue is, excess renewable energy, absent its a hydroeletric plant, doesn't exist. LCOE

The excess doesn't need to be right in renewables, but can be caused by renewables unpredictable nature.

It's not uncommon to have negative wholesale energy prices.

https://energypost.eu/negative-electricity-prices-lockdowns-demand-slump-exposes-inflexibility-of-german-power/

Right now there's overcapacity in many markets, and prices reflect that. Also countries like France with high percentage of nuclear usually behave negative prices almost every night in certain regions.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Has anyone mentioned motorbikes here?

I think much more of a challenge due to the battery technology weighing so much. Couple of hundred KG can be managed in the weight of a 1.4 ton car, not so easy if the motorbike only weights less than 200kg to start with.

So perhaps some kind of hydrogen fuel cell technology will be a better route there?

Although I did think the Harley Livewire is the most modern and stylish looking machine that company has ever made (appreciate that there are a fair few Americans here who might not want to shoot me )

A co-worker of mine keeps mentioning that "X way round" show that Ewan McGregor does every so often with another person. . . first season was a trip from like, NY to Madrid, Spain by way of Alaska and Russia (or some such nonsense). Per my co-worker who's seen some adverts, the latest season with Mr. McGregor is supposed to go from the southernmost city on the tip of South America, riding electric bikes the entire way, up to like, NYC or some northern US city, and they are the Harley EV bikes from what I gather..

Thanks a lot, I hadn't heard of that new show but loved the previous ones. I will check it out

When it comes to car dealers and warranties i know a relative of mine had a car under warranty break down and took it in for repairs, and they took a long time.

One of the guys who worked there finally told him that when a warranty job comes in that would cost over a certain amount they are under a policy (orders) to do everything possible to find an excuse to void the warranty.

So he told my relative he'd spent 3 days looking for an excuse to deny the warranty but had to admit there wasnt one, it got fixed the next day as the fix only took a couple hours.

As to EC directly, I just had a thought:

What if we turn madison avenue loose on ECs?

These guys sold cigarettes for decades, and i think we can all agree that ECs are a far better product that cancer sticks. So could they sell ECs to a large enough segment of the public to make them viable?

Get a few hawt celebs to endorse them, a few biological barbie dolls with generous amounts of silicon and collagen to drape themselves over some ECs, maybe have the lead character of a popular show switch to one and watch the sales pile up.

Eh marketing on stuff like that only works so far. Thing is its not like a cigarette in that is a throw-away price tag for many people.

It's a huge price tag and that not only unsettles some, esp when they see that most of the price is batteries and the car itself devalues at an insane speed right now; but also locks out whole segments of the population.


What you really need is a government with the desire and money to subsidise the whole enterprise. To push local infrastructure both in terms of supply of energy at power charging points; but also to fund education and training courses for mechanics and technicians; they also need to have a means to subsidise sales. That might be giving grants to customers to buy them or giving grants to manufacturers or retailers. However it works the idea being to push sales hard by lowering the price to the consumer.

A really smart move would lower the price of one (electric cars) whilst steadily raising the price of the other at least in the mid-range market (you don't want to raise the low end because you'd have to seriously lower the EC market value to then touch that market segment - but if you can do it go for it).


A handful of years doing that would be a huge investment, but would likely pay off in way more actual sales and uptake than simply getting skimpy/famous people to endorse them.
Plus once you've got people onto and in the system it should, in theory allow the market to steadily take over since you'll have them helped ramp up production and production workflows and factories and the like. So the price would naturally come down and you could steadily do away with the support packages to encourage sales.


Of course this assumes a government who wants a high car ownership rate. Others might want to encourage public transport systems and might instead sink that same money into better and cheaper public transport to lower the overall demand and use of cars.

That's pretty much what the government has been doing here. Depending on how much CO2 a car emits, it gets either a subsidy or an extra tax. So hybrids and electrics end up being not much more expensive than a middle-range car, cheap cars aren't affected much and big gas-guzzlers get a huge markup.

The UK government pays ~£3,000 of an electric car.
There is a rebate for chargers, when bought to go with a new car or new house, too.

In my area a lot of public buses were rebuilt to run on alternative fuels, methane or some other gas.

A lot of official vehicles were converted too.

Maybe various municipalities could start this with electric vehicles.

One bonus to advancing industry is it removes a casual excuse of "Oh I don't need it, my car is tiny compared to all the lorries/busses/trains/aircraft.


Indeed eco-friendly aircraft being used as a majority would remove a massive amount of pollution.

 Overread wrote:
One bonus to advancing industry is it removes a casual excuse of "Oh I don't need it, my car is tiny compared to all the lorries/busses/trains/aircraft.


Indeed eco-friendly aircraft being used as a majority would remove a massive amount of pollution.

Clean airplanes would be great, but road transport is by far a greater source of pollution. Sure, one plane may pollute like a hundred cars, but there's just a stupidly big amount of cars and trucks driving around...

Automatically Appended Next Post:
wow, wo, wo. Airplanes use so much power in fuel as to make TRUCKS look thrifty. A truck may consume as much fuel as 125 or so cars PER YEAR. A big jet flying internationally, however, can consume 150,000 liters in a 10 hour flight, which is closer to the amount (if you are in a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle) of some 10,000 cars.
Not "like a hundred" .. that is what a truck does. More like 10^4 of them, two orders of magnitude higher.

That is incidentally why (especially with fuel weight issues) you ain't seeing battery planes crossing the atlantic any time soon, and why it might just barely be economically viable to create a dynosoar plane after all.

In one year of constant use, a big jet will therefore (to be clear) consume 3.65^2 x 1.5^4 or roughly 5.4 million litres of fuel, compared to the annual car use of an average american car (25 mpg, so not that very efficient) of merely 1.5^3 gallons (or 600 L). So its literally 4 orders of magnitude, and then a trippling or so.

The downside of this is, we don't have a battery technology other than actual jet fuel capable of this level of energy concentration and release, unless you want to start messing with E=Mc^2 conversions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OOps, error, I was off by an order of magnitude. 1.5^5 per day, not 4, means as much as 100,000 cars per annum would consume per annum.

You want to save the world? Build a better jet.

Sadly, not likely, so converting the worlds cargo trucks is a much likelier solution.

Or we could just go back to earlier forms of international travel, like boats. Most bulk shipping is done via cargo ships anyway. And heck, with COVID killing off so many airline companies we might see fewer air travel in general going forward.

Speaking of trucks which I presume means the 18 wheeler trailer types that carry cargo. i remember some commercials that had a tree lifting cargo off them and putting them on trains, then explaining how trains for rapid cargo transport were vastly must fuel efficient and less polluting than trucks. Lemme see if i can find that commercial somewhere...

Couldn't find the one i was thinking of, but there's this...

https://youtu.be/HaxaTtXxh0Y

Oh, and a little joy for our hydrogen fans...

https://youtu.be/6whJ56LmlFI

Honestly if we developed high speed trains and had distribution hub to hub tracks we could reduce the need for aircraft for rapid shipment.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Speaking of trucks which I presume means the 18 wheeler trailer types that carry cargo. i remember some commercials that had a tree lifting cargo off them and putting them on trains, then explaining how trains for rapid cargo transport were vastly must fuel efficient and less polluting than trucks. Lemme see if i can find that commercial somewhere...

In the US for sure, rail-load freight is a very good option for a load that needs to travel a LOONG distance uninterrupted. . . In my locality, one of the major auto manufacturers uses trains to move the vehicles that come off the boat to the next hub, depending on final location of a given vehicle (IIRC, there are 3 or 4 hubs that a given car can be loaded onto, tho if its closer than any of those three hubs, it goes out on a truck). . . It's also a pretty efficient way of getting large quantities of goods from an origin to a hub. Rail doesn't eliminate the need for trucks, it just changes the means and distances at which trucks operate.

Dukeofstuff wrote:


wow, wo, wo. Airplanes use so much power in fuel as to make TRUCKS look thrifty. A truck may consume as much fuel as 125 or so cars PER YEAR. A big jet flying internationally, however, can consume 150,000 liters in a 10 hour flight, which is closer to the amount (if you are in a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle) of some 10,000 cars.

You need to compare by miles travelled per person. A big jet on a 10 hour flight may consume a huge amount of fuel, but then so would the same 300 passengers making the same 5000 mile journey.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Or we could just go back to earlier forms of international travel, like boats. Most bulk shipping is done via cargo ships anyway. And heck, with COVID killing off so many airline companies we might see fewer air travel in general going forward.

The problem is travel time - cargo can take weeks to arrive somewhere if it's planned for appropriately, but if people only have a 2 week vacation they don't want to spend 12 of those 14 days travelling to/from their destination, unless it's part of a cruise (and cruise liners use a lot of fuel too, but obviously will be easier to run on electric than an aircraft). I'd never get approved to travel across Europe to visit a customer site by train when I can do it in a 2 hour flight.

I'd love to see a lot of investment in high speed rail, to at least displace car travel.

I'm sure there was also somewhere in the US that was experimenting with airships for slow cargo transport - pretty fuel efficient and can go more or less anywhere, but incredibly slow. So it may be ideal for moving logs from where they are felled back to a depot.

Dukeofstuff wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
wow, wo, wo. Airplanes use so much power in fuel as to make TRUCKS look thrifty. A truck may consume as much fuel as 125 or so cars PER YEAR. A big jet flying internationally, however, can consume 150,000 liters in a 10 hour flight, which is closer to the amount (if you are in a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle) of some 10,000 cars.
Not "like a hundred" .. that is what a truck does. More like 10^4 of them, two orders of magnitude higher.

That is incidentally why (especially with fuel weight issues) you ain't seeing battery planes crossing the atlantic any time soon, and why it might just barely be economically viable to create a dynosoar plane after all.

In one year of constant use, a big jet will therefore (to be clear) consume 3.65^2 x 1.5^4 or roughly 5.4 million litres of fuel, compared to the annual car use of an average american car (25 mpg, so not that very efficient) of merely 1.5^3 gallons (or 600 L). So its literally 4 orders of magnitude, and then a trippling or so.

The downside of this is, we don't have a battery technology other than actual jet fuel capable of this level of energy concentration and release, unless you want to start messing with E=Mc^2 conversions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OOps, error, I was off by an order of magnitude. 1.5^5 per day, not 4, means as much as 100,000 cars per annum would consume per annum.

You want to save the world? Build a better jet.

Sadly, not likely, so converting the worlds cargo trucks is a much likelier solution.

A plane doesn't fly quite as much as 10 hours per day every day, although it's not that far. A decent estimate seems to be about 3000 hours of flight a year.
Now the fuel burned per hour varies a lot on the size of the plane but let's say the average is 10 000 L per hour, that'd be 30 million L per plane per year, or as much as 50 000 cars with your estimate of 600L/year.

There are about 20 000 commercial airplanes in service in the world, so the equivalent of about 1 billion cars.
Meanwhile, there are actually an estimated 1.4 billion cars, trucks and buses in the world.

So yes, better airplanes (or less airplanes) are definitely needed, but ground transport needs to improve just as much.