Are Tesla's days numbered?

[AlexC]

A lot depends where the hydrogen comes from, At the moment it mainly comes from fossil fueled powered electricity.

Yes Andrew Forrest is pushing green hydrogen, and converting it to ammonia for easy storage. But he's mainly interested in iron ore production.
Anything is possible these days, I guess market forces will make the final decision.

Indeed market forces will decide. Battery energy density is already in low volume at 500wh/kg, double currently used. When that becomes the norm, cars will have 4-500 mile range, exactly that of petrol. Density will then move to 800-1000wh/kg within a decade. Thus 1kg in weight is 1KW energy. Prices have dropped enormously, and will hit $50 kw/hr in 2025 making average battery pack cost $2-300, way less than an ICE / HEV engine. Thus HEV will never happen and you can bet mortgage on it!

Robert Llewellyn interviewed a physics professor a couple of years ago on Fully Charged, and he gave very good, practical reasons why hydrogen is a bad idea and will only ever be a niche market.

The oil industry is promoting it as an answer to all our worries because they want to carry on drilling for fossil fuels when we all stop buying petrol and deisel.

Exactly, it’s a mythical solution to keep ICE and the oil industry in business by slowing down EVs with misinformation. China is showing them the door.

 

[Big Ears]

Indeed market forces will decide. Battery energy density is already in low volume at 500wh/kg, double currently used. When that becomes the norm, cars will have 4-500 mile range, exactly that of petrol. Density will then move to 800-1000wh/kg within a decade. Thus 1kg in weight is 1KW energy. Prices have dropped enormously, and will hit $50 kw/hr in 2025 making average battery pack cost $2-300, way less than an ICE / HEV engine. Thus HEV will never happen and you can bet mortgage on it!

HEV is already here on my drive.

 

[Gadget Geek]

Found it.

HEV is already here on my drive.

Commiserations.

 

[AlexC]

HEV is already here on my drive.

What are you driving and how do you fuel it?

 

[Gomev]

I think Tesla will still make cars, but I think they will have to head down the HEV route to stay in business, in the UK so many houses cannot charge a car at home, regardless of what they have on the roof, charging stations are no good unless you're travelling and really need to use them.

HEV seems the best option until the world's governments see that Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, preferable in an ICE car, not a fuel cell.

HYDROGEN ? ? ? ? ?

Let's use a ton of electricity to split the hydrogen from water (the only green hydrogen), then pressurise it and store it in tanks to be transported around the country, (unless you have it done locally in say a hydrogen station), Then pump it into smaller pressurised tanks in cars just so it can then use a fuel cell to convert it back to bl**dy electricity to drive the car.

Or use it in an ICE car with it's thousands of moving parts.

Much simpler to put that electricity that you use to create the hydrogen straight into the car.

No wonder hydrogen has been the fuel of the future since the 1950s or even before and has actually and never will be the future.

 

[Gadget Geek]

Burning hydrogen at high temperatures in an internal combustion engine produces nitrogen oxide, as does petrol and deisel.

 

[siteguru]

What are you driving and how do you fuel it?

HEV in his case is Hybrid Electric Vehicle. Look at his profile - he has an MG3+

 

[AlexC]

Ha, my bad, apologies! hybrid is a stop gap for now.

 

[Rolfe]

Ha, my bad, apologies! hybrid is a stop gap for now.

Interesting that you should say that, as friend commented on an email list that she might be late for our Zoom meeting tomorrow as she's going to be test-driving a plug-in hybrid. A couple of private emails later and she's well on the way to considering a BEV.

Why for you do that?

Because hydrogen as a fuel for private motoring is a spectacularly bad idea that isn't going anywhere, and that has been obvious for some time now. Things are actually going backwards with hydrogen filling stations being closed. You pretty much can't give a Toyota Mirai away now. The Ukranians are using them as bombs.

And that's before you even go near the public resistance to the idea of driving while sitting on top of tanks of highly pressurised fuel of the kind that caused the Hindenberg fire.

 

[5teep]

Hydrogen has ZERO future in cars! It’s complex, expensive with no refuelling infrastructure. it’s a possible stationary storage product, but that’s it. Some manufacturers like Toyota sing its praises, because they are nowhere in EVs. EVs are the simplest technology which is getting better all the time along with huge battery energy density improvements (within 2-3 years) that will even support electric planes within a decade or so. HEV will never happen.

Hydrogen for HGVs and big heavy vehicles. Electric for cars.

Had somebody moaning at me the other day at a charger. She was driving a hybrid with an 8kw battery and moaning that there's no infrastructure and thought buying her car was a mistake....

 

[Gadget Geek]

And that's before you even go near the public resistance to the idea of driving while sitting on top of tanks of highly pressurised fuel of the kind that caused the Hindenberg fire.

And flew the Saturn V to the moon.

 

[AlexC]

Interesting that you should say that, as friend commented on an email list that she might be late for our Zoom meeting tomorrow as she's going to be test-driving a plug-in hybrid. A couple of private emails later and she's well on the way to considering a BEV.

If EV is too expensive, then hybrid MG3 perhaps.

 

[Gomev]

And flew the Saturn V to the moon.

The Saturn 5 fuel was a mixture of Oxygen and Kerosene. (and the Saturn 5 didn't go to the moon )...but apart from that......

 

[Rolfe]

And flew the Saturn V to the moon.

Even if it were true, the idea of sitting on tanks of highly pressurised rocket fuel isn't likely to be all that reassuring to the average Joe.

 

[Big Ears]

Because hydrogen as a fuel for private motoring is a spectacularly bad idea that isn't going anywhere, and that has been obvious for some time now. Things are actually going backwards with hydrogen filling stations being closed. You pretty much can't give a Toyota Mirai away now. The Ukranians are using them as bombs.

And that's before you even go near the public resistance to the idea of driving while sitting on top of tanks of highly pressurised fuel of the kind that caused the Hindenberg fire.

I had a Dual Fuel van for a while LPG/Petrol both are explosive.

LPG for refillable tanks is now getting harder to find even for cooking unless you use Expensive Calor.

The Hindenberg was a gas bladder, not a pressure vessel, very different.

Time will tell.

 

[Rolfe]

I know it's different, but it's a matter of perception. The idea scares the willies out of me I have to say. Not to mention having to go to a filling station all the time, if there even is one to go to. And the capacity issues there, and other problems. And the PRICE!

I think once people are used to the idea that their car fills itself while they're asleep, and overnight AC charging is available kerbside and in residential car parks, the attraction of a car you have to take to a fuel station every time is going to fade pretty fast.

 

[jackois]

Robert Llewellyn interviewed a physics professor a couple of years ago on Fully Charged, and he gave very good, practical reasons why hydrogen is a bad idea and will only ever be a niche market.

The oil industry is promoting it as an answer to all our worries because they want to carry on drilling for fossil fuels when we all stop buying petrol and deisel.

I worked on an Ethylene plant before I went offshore... at a certain point in the cracking process hydrogen was injected... we spent more time trying to keep the hydrogen inside the process than anything else... and that was in equipment meant for the job and operated by highly trained staff.

Imagine Joe blow arriving and re-fueling...

 

[jackois]

Even if it were true, the idea of sitting on tanks of highly pressurised rocket fuel isn't likely to be all that reassuring to the average Joe.

Modern wimps... it's being a fat lardy who's not very clever that stopped me...

 

[Gomev]

I had a Dual Fuel van for a while LPG/Petrol both are explosive.

LPG for refillable tanks is now getting harder to find even for cooking unless you use Expensive Calor.

The Hindenberg was a gas bladder, not a pressure vessel, very different.

Time will tell.

I think time has already told.
We are now past the tipping point towards EVs. Even HGVs that were originally thought of as a main use for hydrogen over battery electric are now going BEV.

 

[Rolfe]

Hydrogen seems to be the God of the gaps. Maybe not private motoring, but commercial vehicles. HGVs. Farm machinery. Diggers and the like. Shipping!

But we've had electric vans for years, electric buses are all over the place, and practical electric HGVs are starting to appear. Farm machinery too. It's a while now since I watched a film about EVs in Norway, and one of the segments was about a construction site close to a nursery school. Normally they would have been required to stop work for an hour in the early afternoon to let the children have their nap, but this one was allowed to work right through at any time, because all the machinery was electric.

All new short-haul ferries in Norway are now electric and I think they're BEVs. The cruise ship I was on this summer was propelled by electric motors powered by diesel generators. Things like that are going to be fairly easy to convert to battery operation when the right batteries are available.

There are already electric light aircraft and I read recently that electric flight across the USA from coast to coast was the next goal.

I also saw a video that was rubbishing hydrogen as ever being a practical fuel for long haul shipping or aviation, because of the physics of storing and carrying the volumes of fuel that would be required. All the applications the hydrogen enthusiasts fall back on to justify continuing to back the notion are busy falling like dominoes.

I don't understand the fascination with it, not from Toyota or from JCB or from all the "EVs are just a stop-gap until the holy grail of hydrogen arrives" fanbois. To me it has always been self-evidently ludicrous, but I thought I might be missing something. Turns out I wasn't.

I do see that the petrochemical companies are keen to promote it because it's basically another fossil fuel, another product they can diversify into as petrol and diesel sales wither away. (Green hydrogen is simply daft, inefficiency on steroids.) But why does anyone else think it's a good idea or get so keen to promote it? It's a mystery to me.