UK.gov: Here's £8.8m to plough into hydrogen-powered car tech Alongside its electric vehicle ambitions, the British government is also pouring a few millions of pounds into hydrogen fuel cell-powered car tech trials. The proposed 200 vehicles – billed by a government statement as "hydrogen powered", something that brings to mind the Hindenburg disaster rather than modern fuel cell tech …
Almost all hydrogen made today (most of which goes into making synthetic ammonia) is produced by steam reforming of hydrocarbons which makes it a large producer of greenhouse gases:
CH4 + H2O → CO + 3 H2
CO + H2O → CO2 + H2
Only about 4% of hydrogen comes from electrolysis.
And even if it did all come from electrolysis from the greenest source of power imaginable - the thermodynamics of making, storing, transporting and using hydrogen are lousy in comparison to battery technology.
Not just the thermodynamics.
There are two more major issues:
1. Safety. If you feel comfortable having a 700bar pressurised tank in your car - please be my guest. I would love to see how this fares in an accident or a fire which is a result of an accident.
2. Loss. Hydrogen will diffuse through anything at a very substantial rate.
3. (albeit related to your points 1 + 2) "Hydrogen Embrittlement" - that your metallic tank will slowly become more brittle over time (due to 2 perhaps?) and thus become increasingly unsafe especially in a crash
So there would have to be absolutely mandatory and very strongly enforced full pressure testing of the hydrogen tanks (and all high pressure components) on a regular basis.
Toyota have already thought about the safety angle in a way many a geek could appreciate. What they did was take a number of full petro...hydrogen tanks from the Mirai to an army range and got them to shoot the sh*t out of them. The tanks happily survived 20mm auto-canon as well as assault rifle and battle rifle rounds, so one would suspect they'd be fine in a collision, or the ricochets from trying to stop Godzilla.
There are two more major issues
You missed out the third one - that 700bar tank will contain "not a lot" of energy in the fuel compared with liquid systems (petrol, diesel, x-thanol, LPG, ...
And the fourth one - that it's completely incompatible with any of the existing distribution and dispensing infrastructure which means a a huge investment before it becomes practical at all.
And the fifth one - that the vehicle won't be dual (or multi) fuel.
Really, this is yet another example of throwing our money at something for political reasons with a complete lack of any rational thought about what the end result is supposed to be. A better use for the hydrogen would be to convert it to methanol which is : liquid at normal temperatures and atmospheric pressures (just like petrol), compatible with existing storage distribution and dispensing infrastructure (just like petrol), can be used in only marginally modified existing vehicles, and so on.
Had "flex fuel" been mandated when electronic fuel injection became ubiquitous, then by now most vehicles would be flex fuel - with suitable seal materials and capable of adapting the fuelling to run on ANY mix of petrol, ethanol, or methanol.
So compatible with existing infrastructure and vehicles - great, can be introduced piecemeal without massive up front costs and upheavals. Not only that, but being easily transportable in bulk (ship or pipeline), it would be fairly easy to set up production where sunlight is plentiful (for making the hydrogen) and transporting the easily transportable liquid to where it's needed.
But where's the trough for snouts if they went for that ?
There is another even simpler solution that requires NO change in our petrol cars, NO change in the infrastructure and no research as it already exists
It has been shown to be possible to generate petrol from air using high temperatures created from focusing the sun in deserts (where quite a bit of the current oil and petrol already originates)
Of course thats not sexy but it does take CO2 out to make the petrol and it is recreated when the petrol is burnt. Really using the petrol to store solar energy for us.
...Are there any unbiased, layman-friendly explanations of the challenges kicking around?...
Unlikely. Due to its connection with renewable energy and the anti-CO2 brigade, hydrogen is now a political gas, and you won't get any valid balanced comments about it.
It will either be "there are hundreds of problems in even thinking about it", or "We know just how to do it, and want to bring out a prototype of a fully-working system - can we have a billion pound grant?"...
It will either be "there are hundreds of problems in even thinking about it", or "We know just how to do it, and want to bring out a prototype of a fully-working system - can we have a billion pound grant?"...
I suspect that will actually be and, not or
Aside from "Alternative Energy without the hot air" you mean?
Issues with H2 fuel cell cars.
1)They are not fuels, they are energy carriers, storing the energy generated elsewhere.
2) What kind? The LH2 at -253c or the GH2 at 10 000psi? BTW the USAF (who deal with quite a lot of pressure vessels, like the one that destroyed the AMOS 6 satellite on the F9 a while back), rate them by "lbs of TNT equivalent." and 10Ksi is toward the high end of such tanks.). There is a (relatively) low pressure system using metal alloys that absor/desorb GH2 but people seem to think it's heavy. Google "Interstitial hydrides."
3) A US study reckoned the diffusion and embrittlement issues are containable (so to speak) with suitable alloys. But you're looking at a whole new distro network with (ideally) all welded joints. LH2 normally uses "Vacuum Jacked Line," which is double skinned piping with an evacuated cavity between. It's a PITA to use and mfg.
4)We know how to do bulk storage of gases (really large scale) much better than store electricity.
But I'm not unbiased. Hydrogen is the physicists choice for a fuel. Not an engineers choice. IMHO
Fuel cells ¬ stupid.
Fuel cells with H2 (on Earth) very stupid.
My alternate fuel choice is the sugar solution fuel cell.
Room temp storable liquid.
Compatible wit existing supply chain .
Very safe to handle (unless there are bees or wasps around)
Renewable.
Sustainable.
> There is a (relatively) low pressure system using metal alloys that absor/desorb GH2 but people seem to think it's heavy.
The bigger problem is that a usable fuel tank made of the stuff would be worth substantially more than the rest of the vehicle.
The even bigger problem is that the total annual production of such alloys is only enough for a few tens of thousands of vehicles per year and I understand it's limited by availability of raw materials.
The only good point about hydrogen is that it can be used directly in a hydrogen fuel cell. That's it; that is the sole good point.
The downsides to hydrogen are that it has very poor energy density so you need a great deal of it, it can only be stored at great pressure or at very low temperature, it diffuses through metals very readily and makes them brittle as it does so, it is explosive at a huge range of concentrations and burns with a flame that is invisible to humans (birds may be able to see it, it glows in the ultraviolet).
Hydrogen as a fuel is a political thing, not an engineering thing.
The sanest alternatives are methanol or ammonia, both synthesised using alternative power sources or using nuclear energy. Ammonia actually has numerous advantages over hydrogen; it is not very explosive, doesn't diffuse through things, can be contained in the same sorts of tanks that LPG is stored in, and smells absolutely horrible so leak detection is easy.
Ammonia can be burned in a conventional internal combustion engine, in a jet turbine or even (with the use of a catalyst to decompose it to nitrogen and hydrogen) in a fuel cell. If you absolutely must have a zero-carbon fuel and batteries/supercapacitors won't work, then ammonia is the best choice.
"Are there any unbiased, layman-friendly explanations of the challenges kicking around?"
Youtube: Search for "CNG tank explosion" - and realise this will be an even more common even with hydrogen.
There's a reason that hydrogen test vehicles are only ever leased by manufacturers. They simply don't want the liabilities associated with sales and consequent poor maintenance/old age.
I did some work in a poly silicon refinery once where they got the hydrogen for the process from a nearby refinery that had hydrogen as a waste gas from another process - so that would be a practical source if there is enough around.
But storing and transporting hydrogen is not efficient at all - the storage tanks on site were 6 inches thick and I was told would go empty in 2 weeks if untouched.
How long will the tank on the Toyota last if it's not being used or just getting light use?
That alone gives the lie to any "Green fuel" bu***hit about Hydrogen.
Never mind that 3x more energy is spent either cooling it or compressing it. IOW you get out (at most) 1/4 of the energy you put in.
TBH at that pressure you could start by driving the wheels through a crank shaft linked to a couple of reciprocating cylinders IE an expansion engine, before you fed it to the FC.
"the thermodynamics of making, storing, transporting and using hydrogen are lousy in comparison to battery technology."
And that's without even going into the problems with hydrogen embrittlement, pressure cycling effects on tankage/pipework and the fact that the stuff simply _leaks_ through most containment when pressurised no matter how much wishful thinking is applied
Hydrogen is a useful process gas, but a LOUSY transport fuel.
That with safety test with the various sorts of ammo is all very well but... With a cylindrical tank you would almost never get a "direct" hit with the rounds glancing off to one side or the other. What about fixing the tank at about bumper height next to a concrete wall - as it might be in a car crashed against a motorway central barrier. Then take a thirty tonne truck and drive straight into it at forty or fifty mph. I don't think there would be many Toyota "geeks" keen on standing anywhere nearby would there? Of course the petrol or diesel tank would blow up under these circumstances too but it would be interesting to see the difference.
A group have come up with a catalyst that converts Formic Acid into Hydrogen + CO2 + water.
In theory the CO2 could be scrubbed, but the benefit is that you can get ~590L of Hydrogen from 1L of Formic Acid.
It has low toxicity and low flammability at room temps and is easily transported.
Still doesn't answer where the formic acid is coming from, but it looks promising.
Given the UK has no mass market car companies not under foreign ownership, it seems strange to subsidise pie in the sky technologies. Why not leave the car companies to invest their own billions in the technologies they think are most promising?
Much better to spend the money renationalising public transport and reduce traffic and pollution that way. I am not sure how popular these eye-catching initiatives really are with voters - perhaps some gullible greens might start voting Tory but seems unlikely.
Much better to spend the money renationalising public transport and reduce traffic and pollution that way.
You've been suckered by that gormless, white-bearded, Russian, sympathising anti-Semite, I suspect.
Rail services now carry more traffic than they ever have in recorded history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Great_Britain#/media/File:GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2015.png
And bus services have bumbled along for the most part much as they always have done, for the simple reason most people use them as a last resort, as they are slow, smelly, uncomfortable and full of vermin.
No I live in a city with electric trams and an underground system running on 100% renewable electricity. Buses are useful in areas not served by the trams, underground or suburban train system. All state-owned naturally. Even my ISP is owned by the city. Of course my water supply (hot and cold) is also state owned, as is the electricity company. I don't live in Russian either!
I think rail use in teh UK has grown also due to population increases and from a very low starting point after Thatcher had run down the public services and preventing them from investing.
Quite amusing that most of the rail companies are actually state-owned. Just its the Qatari, French or German state, not the British one.
No I live in a city with electric trams and an underground system running on 100% renewable electricity.
If that is so how do you cope with the lack of power when the wind doesn't blow and it is night so no solar power?Hydro power could do it but that would have to be from a very large dam and not a pumped system, those are only useful to take the load while the real generators (coal or gas) run up.
"Britain railways services are ranked internationally as better."
By whom? You can't just say that without evidence, you know.
It's like those international university league tables; different criteria, different results. So; tell us how they are better. Enquiring minds like those of us from the sticks who have to drive to London because of the sheer inconvenience of taking trains and buses would like to know.
By whom? You can't just say that without evidence, you know.
Can't offer rankings, but I live in France. There is a tendency to judge French trains by the TGVs, which are of course really nice (as they should be with a 1000 euro annual subsidy from every taxpayer). Unfortunately anyone who has to travel on ordinary suburban services would soon be pining for Network Southeast. Even more so at the moment, since the drivers are striking 2 days out of 5 for the next month to protest about new drivers having to take ordinary pensions like the rest of us instead of the gold-plated civil service ones they had in the past.
I suppose when you can retire at 50 you need a good pension to enjoy your retirement...
Better?
In what deranged universe is that?
Extortionately expensive at peak times in UK.
For any "out in the sticks" locations expect infrequent services
Expect non punctual trains and cancellation (especially on "out in the sticks" trains as delays / constellations on these typically cost less than a big inter city so are the "go to" choice to send to the bottom of the heap if any problems)
I use trains a lot, but hate them, on the peak time services I get its packed, rare to be lucky enough to get a seat.
Zero integration of train and bus in areas I use them e.g. bus leaves a minute before train is due, only chance to "connect" on bus (without huge wait for next one) is train on time and bus late so you can get on the late bus.
I have used German trains and trams etc, they were orders of magnitude better experience than my UK experiences (cannot commentate on France as not enough experience on French transport to make a reliable judgement)
Of course it may be taht the UK public transport I use is beacon of crapness and the rest is amazing - but based on experiences of commuter pals in other parts of UK I doubt it.
as a commuter you want
cheap
frequent
reliable
fast
clean
chance of a seat
Only the totally down the tubes road infrastructure prevents me from driving - as most of the drive would be in nose to tail crawling traffic, lots of stop start, high & inefficient fuel use, which is no fun & highly polluting so I do my "green bit" and train it.
For any "out in the sticks" locations expect infrequent services
Expect non punctual trains and cancellation (especially on "out in the sticks" trains
Just like in France, believe me, despite much larger subsidies than UK services.
as a commuter you want
cheap
frequent
reliable
fast
clean
Perhaps, but then implicit in that is "somebody else to pay for it".
AC: You've been suckered by that gormless, white-bearded, Russian, sympathising anti-Semite, I suspect.
OT but I didn't know Daily Mail journalists had enough STEM to read stuff on The Register.
(Today's Mail front page is a prolonged accusation of anti-Semitism against Corbyn, seemingly forgetting that the last time the Mail was anti-Semitic was when it attacked Ed Miliband, accusing his father of "hating" Britain - safely dead so no libel - and including an awkward picture of Miliband struggling with a large bacon sarnie to remind its readers of his Jewish roots.)
Further evidence of Daily Mail "journalism"? The disconnect between Russia, Israel and policies on nationalisation: the fact that a service being heavily used does not mean it is good if it has a de facto monopoly (ask American users of Comcast how that works for them), and the dig at buses (because Mail readers think that they have risen enough in the world to look down on bus users).
"A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.
Mrs. T"
Also "There is no such thing as society, only individual men and women" (I actually made myself listen to that speech after being told she didn't say that. Yes she did.)
I guess Oxford could at least claim that it was unable to teach her anything useful, other than how to put the air into Mr. Whippy and sell the proles half as much ice cream for their money - surely a metaphor for her entire period in government.
Still, at least she patronised the Scottish whisky industry rather heavily.
....Also "There is no such thing as society, only individual men and women" (I actually made myself listen to that speech after being told she didn't say that. Yes she did.)...
Well, she didn't say 'that'. What she actually said was:
..."They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours."...
And what's wrong with that?
"people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours."...
And what's wrong with that?
"
Sure sounds like a good excuse to fill your boots at the expense of others.
Nose to the trough politicians agree.
There is no such thing as society, only individual men and women" (I actually made myself listen to that speech after being told she didn't say that. Yes she did.)
She did indeed, but you're being selective with the context. It was during a debate on the NHS when the comment was made that "society" would have to pay for it, and Mrs. T pointed out that "There is no such thing as society, only individual men and women" who have to foot the bill, i.e. there is no amorphous moneypot called "society" that finances everything for us.
"And bus services have bumbled along for the most part much as they always have done, for the simple reason most people use them as a last resort, as they are slow, smelly, uncomfortable and full of vermin."
Are these the same buses that the poorly paid nurses and workers that use food banks have to use? Maybe a last resort for you in your big Tory palace and 4x4 you use for picking up the kids from grammar school but that's not the same for everyone. Rail services carry more people because more people can't afford cars but hey lets not let logic get in the way and because there are more people strangely enough.
Posting for balance only but I personally think re-nationalising public transport is a good idea considering it gets next to no money spent on it and only serves to make money for the shareholders where it should be there to serve the customer. If only there was the more choice that was initially promised rather than a load of big companies running specific lines/routes with zero competition.
"Such better to spend the money renationalising public transport"
Says someone that never used the trains in the 70's and 80's which were, frankly utter shit.
Think it's bad now, just introduce a system where there is no incentive to improve.
Hydrogen suffers from the same (current) problem of EVs, that its stored form has a very low energy density. And unlike electricity, hydrogen's difficult to produce efficiently, has no distribution infrastructure, and is probably even less well suited to remote regions than EVs would be. But with the extensive research on EV technology, it seems far more likely that the energy density of batteries will improve than hydrogen storage will improve.
If they want to throw money at low emission vehicles, they'd be better spending it on proper planning for low emissions electricity generation year round, on planning to upgrade the electricity distribution system,
or on battery research (not that £9m buys much of anything).
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We already had a way to cut co2 emissions by a average 11% and 20 times less NOx than a diesel in operation that runs on conventional vehicles and infrastructure, LPG.
It was going to be a big thing to address environmental concerns, we had tax breaks, I ran a converted car on it full time for a few years with my continental gas fill adaptor tucked in the glovebox at the ready (because well, we were too british to not use the same standard as the rest of europe weren't we) and was really convinced it was the future, I got some experience of tuning the motor for it and fitted a different ecu that mapped more advance in to restore lost hp from the lower calorific value, and was set to build a project engine for another car with more CR and advance and ignition tweaks to take advantage of it with a dedicated gas multipoint injector system controlled by a ecu. I pulled the 2l lpg fuelled engine out of my long suffering workhorse mondeo estate with 180,000 miles on it when the head gasket blew and we had another low mileage engine to drop in, expecting it to be worn out, we lifted the cylinder head out of curiosity and it had very little measurable wear.
Then the tax relief stopped, "clean" diesel was the new thing, Insurance demanded that installs had to be certified and made by an approved manufacturer and inspected, suddenly it became significantly more expensive to run a lpg fuelled vehicle than a diesel.
Hydrogen fuel? yes, I'd give that a spin, but as a gas to be ingested in existing IC engines. You would need about twice as much air as before to reduce formation of NOx to optimum, so screw type supercharger or turbo , maybe some changes to valve material, a "hotter" igntion system, different injection system (rather like my dedicated lpg setup) and different plugs, but there are converted IC engines running this way already. I'd burn gas in my v8 toys too if it keeps them viable longer, as it does look like legislation will eliminate them sooner or later.
Probably not as attractive to everyone wanting to sell you new cars though. And probably will be illegal to implement yourself.
Assuming that the boffins can somehow deal with all the issues and objections to hydrogen fueled fuel cells, then I assume that the optimum approach is to use them in conjunction with electric car technology allowing a vastly smaller battery pack, while offering improved range and quicker "fill ups".
The advantage is that the fuel cell can presumably sit there quietly recharging the battery pack even while the car is parked. The maximum power output required from the fuel cells is not much more than about double the minimum 'gently cruising along' power requirement (further analysis goes here).
As noted above, hydrogen is more of a fuel than an energy course. Where does it come from, and how much CO2 is released in its manufacture? Very first post at the very top is quite lovely.
Assuming that the boffins can somehow deal with all the issues and objections to hydrogen fueled fuel cells
Well, seeing as hydrogen is the main problem that's going to be difficult. Hydrogen just as too many drawbacks: low energy density, incredibly difficult to store and the tendency to destroy containing vessels. I seem to recall work being done on using methanol as the storage and cracking it to get the hydrogen. This would be great if it worked because methanol can be transported easily and is relatively safe and easy to make.
I actually thought methanol as a fuel (either direct or in a fuel cell) was still more dangerous than petrol as it is actually more flammable. Could well be wrong here but my understanding was that if you have a leak in the petrol line and it sprays onto the exhaust manifold then it won't catch fire (a spark, of course, would be a different matter) but that methanol would catch fire in that circumstance.
And I guess diesel would be even better, in this contrived scenario at least, as even a spark won't light it.
actually thought methanol as a fuel (either direct or in a fuel cell) was still more dangerous than petrol as it is actually more flammable
You could very well be right because it has a lower boiling point, but also far lower energy density than petrol. But I think the design made this a bit moot because the engine never runs that hot. I never looked at this in detail so I happy to be corrected.
HFCVs do indeed have "hybrid" battery packs and yes the idea is that the fuel cell can be less powerful and use a simple on-off. Similar to the idea with EREVs where the ICE acts as a generator and can either be off or run at a constant RPM for efficiency.
Really, this trial is redundant as a trial. There have been enough trials around the world over the past 20 years to demonstrate that HFCVs technically work. It's all been about cost. There have been improvements, but the fuel cell stack is still expensive, the filling stations are still expensive and fuel is still expensive.
Seriously, if someone is going to spend £60k on a car, they don't need an £8k handout from the government.
Since when has need ever had anything to do with it? Lots of subsidies go to those who don't need them. Think of all the lolly that landowners like Paul Dacre get for doing nothing.
Elsewhere Mr Orlowksi has ranted about how subsidies for renewable energies act like a tax on the poor. I don't agree with all the arguments (simplified for effect) but subsidies almost always tend to lead to distortions. This is generally true but isn't itself an argument against subsidies as they can still help to change behaviour. That said, the subsidies for electric cars in most countries have basically functioned as tax breaks for value signalling.
That said, the subsidies for electric cars in most countries have basically functioned as tax breaks for retard signalling.
Fixed it for you.
But even the most cheese brained Tesla owner has nothing on the sort of idiot that'd buy a hydrogen car.
Incidentally someone mentioned LPG. I'd happily put it on my new car - to help the environment - but I can't afford to and the government won't fund the £1200 but will fund £6-8k for a teslidiot.. I am so pleased I don't bother voting because none of the utter traffic pollution hellmouth we're diving into is my fault.
There are so many perfectly good vehicles that can, could anyone be bothered to do the work, be easily updated with more efficient engines - multispeed transmissions (6+) - even putting up tyre pressure across the board by 5psi can get you 4%. Make engine pre heaters compulsory - that'll get you anything up to 30% depending on engine and journey (I know, I've done it).
But no, it's teslidiot hugging and hydrotards for the win. What could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah, uncontrollable global warming..
Well, LPG reduces pollution since it's cleaner-burning than other petroleum products, but it's still a petroleum product. Doesn't do shit to help global warming.
The subsidies for HFCVs and PEVs aren't so wealthy people can have even more expensive cars, it's because governments are desperately looking for a way out of the current mess caused by energy supply problems. Electrification via cheap batteries and/or cheap fuel cells would have massive benefits.
it's a good start to capture that otherwise useless (because of it's unreliability) "renewable" energy. (looks at wind farms).
Surely the best way to store hydrogen is .... as hydrocarbons. You know. Like nature does.
Where's that too-cheap-to-meter energy we were promised in the 70s (or was it 80s. Or 90s ????)
There are now two commercial cars, not just the Toyota Mirai, but also one from Honda (based on the chassis from their hybrid car), with the latter having slightly greater range and looking like a normal car. Also I seem to remember the aim is to have around 200 hydrogen filling stations around Japan by the time of the Olympics, so over there it is a viable car. As to transporting the hydrogen, I believe that the stations are also the production plants (if I'm wrong, they have been talking about taking that route), removing the risk of transport.
I've also been informed that the hydrogen used by the Toyota and Honda systems does not need to be as pure as used in industry with the result that a lot less power is required to produce suitable quality - which maybe why they can produce at the POS.
Production at point of use or centrally is up for debate. The reason people are looking to point of use production is that distribution of hydrogen is such a huge challenge.
200 stations? There are currently around 35,000 petrol stations in Japan. Filling stations need to be convenient because they're used to power every mile. 200 could give good coverage, but not good convenience.
It would be good if the 8 million is going to look at ways of extracting hydrogen cleanly at the fuelling sites, or even in the vehicle itself as transporting it is the major stumbling block for mass uptake.
Even if EV are the future of transport the current crop of batteries are by no means environmentally friendly. The mining of the raw material to make batteries causes lots of pollution and the batteries have a finite life and we haven't really had consumer EVs for long enough to see what the costs are going to be to replace the batteries when they reach the end of their life.
True.
I doubt there's even a Lithium battery recycling factory in the UK. IIRC the car and truck batteries go to France for reprocessing (but I believe it's quite an effective process).
OTOH I'd bet recovering the major raw materials from old EV battery packs is a lot cheaper than first mining them from the ground. I'd guess the "rare earth" magnet motors could be quite recyclable as well.
I doubt there's even a Lithium battery recycling factory in the UK
Yet a moment's internet search would reveal "Europe's first facility for the recycling of lithium ion batteries was opened at Golspie, Scotland in 2004 by AEA Technology" and "Batteries will be recycled from November 2017 at Belmont's Kilwinning site near Glasgow following a £300,000 site revamp. ", the latter site being able to handle the UK's entire battery recycling needs, not just lithium.
But no, slagging the country off is so much more fun than actually looking at the facts :-(
"we haven't really had consumer EVs for long enough to see what the costs are going to be to replace the batteries when they reach the end of their life."
Actually, we have. The original scare figures have dropped by 75% and are still falling.
The actual cycle designs in cars are so conservative that few of them have actually needed more than a couple of cells changed out and so far that's proven doable with crash-salvage items.
LI-ion batteries are 100% recycleable and have a fairly good scrap value.
Like plastic bottles... stick a load of energy and cost into splitting the package apart and then even more to rebuild it and the environmental benefits pop out of the window.
You know my car at 260,000 miles is not the highest mileage petrol car I have had (370,000 - and sold running when I moved country). It has not had a new engine (or anything else for that matter) nothing needed recycling yet.
Then you can look back at the trolley busses, trams and steam trains of old that are still running and realise that these are better technologies than batteries are ever going to be
Hence...fireless steam is the way forward for ordinary cars, rail for lorries and trolley buses and trams for cities, nothing new needs inventing
1: Whenever Hydrogen is mentioned as fuel, the word "Hindenburg" must be used. This is Daily Mail - no - sub-Daily Mail - stuff. Let's stop propagating fake, near-century-old news in order to look clever guys. Look at the real cause of the Hindenburg deaths and move on.
2: "EV charge times are measured in hours" - linked to a US article that shows if you plug your 85Kwh Telsa into a 110v socket it will take a long time. True
But: US folks don't use 110v outlets for their domestic EV charging. And: how long, pray, does it take to refuel your petrol car *at home*? Compare apples with apples please, at "filling stations" on a journey. EVs do take longer, but once range reaches ~300 miles any sane driver will stop for a 30 minute break, so the fact that the EV takes 30 minutes and the petrol one takes 4 minutes becomes irrelevant.
As for all the other commentards, what a load of guff. For a start, Thatcher died a good while ago, and had nothing useful to say about the actual subject of the article, for obvious reasons.
I have long been a fan of El Reg's humour, but this sort of thing is really grating.
1 I agree with
2 is balls
I dont stop at 300 miles now, why should I in the future? It also implies that I will want to stop when the car has done 300 miles since I last charged which might mean some random point on a much shorter journey if I am not able to charge while I am parked up at a campsite or similar.
Electric cars withplugins are a deadend and are never going to be affordable or practical.
Rockets were impossible once.
Mechanical flight - couldn't be done.
Supersonic speeds? Nope, not worth the time.
Where's the passion, the ability to see past current standards and limitations? Too many people still say 'it can't be done because I read a book once - or attended Universtity and a person next to a large blackboard told me it isn't possible, therefore it's a waste of my tax money.
Too many people deciding we've learned all there is to learn, no point wasting time finding anything else.. Laws of Thermodynamics? Established and unchangeable, and completely correct. Quantum thermodynamics? Yes.. we've heard of it. Einstein mumbled something about it once... no idea how it all WORKS though.. but it's ok, we don't need to.
Right?
The basic laws of physics is EXACTLY what I'm talking about - and once again, you've demostrated the typical human response to them. Laws of physics, which were discovered by a human. Since a human is not infallible, it stands to reason that the laws of physics are not 100% irrefutable. To decide we've done enough, no need to worry any more, is how a species dies out. To tell OTER PEOPLE that the laws of physics as we understand them right now, are never, ever going to be rewritten is hubris of the highest order.
The laws of physics work, they are understandable, but we DO NOT know everything yet. And I daresay we ever will. But to shut minds off to the possibility of learning more, and accepting we do NOT know everything is just going to doom everyone, eventually.
I get your point, it's just that some of these issues won't be solved in our lifetimes, so that makes them irrelevant.
Do you remember how Tomorrow's World in the 1970s was always predicting that flying cars were just around the corner?
Someone in the Downton Abbey era probably predicted that telephones would become portable, but most of them would never live to see the day it happened.
£8.8m? Is this supposed to make a noticeable difference to a car manufacturer somewhere? And they're doing this at a time when it's obvious that all-electric will win out in the end anyway? They could spend it on a few extra hospital nurses or on compensation for Grenfell victims or something that might conceivably matter to someone but instead they're just throwing it away. Nice.
It would give a BRITISH startup a start, better than keep sending money abroad... oh no, thats the only thing the BRITISh government seems able to do with BRITISH tax payers money - send it abroad for foreign police cars, foreign passport printing... in fact but foreign at any cost is the government motto
Would be even better to put some money into a BRITISH based startup to use one of the disused Vauxhall, or Peigeot or Rover or LDV or ERF or Foden or Bedford plants to build the vehicles
Still dont see what the problem is with steam... its a whole lot easier to use fireless steam than any of these new fangled ideas.
Actually true.
Unfortunately you're looking at looking at another pressure vessel, but at 200atm, not 666atm.
And it'll be around 300c.
About the operating conditions (without the radiation) inside a PWR (while a modern coal fired power station runs around 540c and is therefor much more efficient, and cheaper, than a nuke).
Not impossible, but a challenge.
I think you are somewhat going over board. The fireless steam locos the Victorians built did not have those pressures. You fill it full of very hot water under pressure (rather than literally steam) and it evaporates off as you use the steam to power the vehicle. Add to the story the greater understanding and better materials of today to provide more efficient engines (multi expansion, better seals so less wasted steam, lighter materials, better valve control and even articulated con rods to give variable stroke) and the ranges are easily attainable. The French already have compressed air cars for cities
The Germans, French and Italians all through, indeed are still throwing, money at their industries, they are growing and employing large numbers of people. Nissan, Mini, JLR, Honda, Toyota have all shown a level of basic investment and a sensible management structure create the most efficient car plants in the worl right here in the UK.
Given your anti Brit attitude I guess I could also believe you will tell us next that the UK can't possibly invent anything and must wait for the EU to drip some wisdom in our direction
I went to an ImechE lecture in 1974 titled “Hydrogen – the fuel of the future”. Still waiting for it to happen although (potentially) commercial fuel cells have since arrived on the scene
LPG is not a “clean” fuel. It is a variant of petrol (Butane / Propane end of the paraffin group) and has all the problems associated with petrol emissions. It is less energy dense and more difficult to carry as it needs pressurised containers. The Government of the day was taken in by snake oil salesmen rather than their own in house engineering staff (said salesmen were also selling a largely unwanted by-product at the time) and had information that showed that the LPG conversions of the time took a state of the art “clean” petrol engine and made it several orders worse on HC and CO / CO2 emissions under the standard tests of the day.
Energy density and production costs / efficiencies of Hydrogen is a major issue and will be very difficult to overcome. Safety has its own wide field to consider. Your average common rail diesel runs at about 1700 – 2000 bar at the rail so high pressures and associated fatigue cycles are well known and in use. Tanks are composite materials for lightness and as noted by others are literally bulletproof. However one thing that has not been touched on so far in the comments is the day to day consequences of lots of tanks of Hydrogen in general circulation. Not the Hindenburg type explosion or the exploding cars in collisions featured in so many films but the accumulation of small leaks. When we were looking to authorise the use of Hydrogen Fuel Celled buses in London in the very early 2000s we had to consider the overnight parking and workshop facilities. As many have noted, Hydrogen WILL leak out from just about anything. Putting it under high pressure will of course increase the risk of leakage. Leaked hydrogen will rise. Workshops and garages had to be redesigned to put ventilation in roof spaces to avoid accumulation of hydrogen in such spaces. “Traditional” workshops had ventilation at low level since dangerous gases such as CO and HC collect at low level. Now would you want you Hydrogen powered car stored in your ground level integrated garage? What about multi storey car parks? All the dealerships workshops and MoT centres? All in old tech with no built in high level ventilation. The buses incidentally didn’t have a very long operating range and the tanks were in the roof – in case of leaks and risk of someone having a crafty fag at the back of the bus.
AT teh end of the day (although I wouldn't turn down a personal payment :-) )£8m is nothing in Government spending terms. The governments of the day have spent far more to influence better, safer and cleaner car designs. For example In the 1970s and 80s few vehicle manufacturers were interested in safety until pushed by Government funded NCAP (National Crash Assessment Programme?) and later EuroNCAP forced them into making better vehicles. That was a LOT more than £8m and extremely successful.
"said salesmen were also selling a largely unwanted by-product at the time"
Funnily enough, petrol was an unwanted byproduct of its time too, whilst the market wanted kerosene (for lighting) for the first 100 years of the oil industry's lifespan.
Some years later, kerosene was the byproduct and sales were petrol and diesel for motive power. As such it was a cheap fuel to run gas turbines (and rockets!) on.
If the fuel is cheap enough, someone will develop an engine that will use it.
That said, highly compressed hydrogen will NEVER be cheap, because of the production costs.
Why is anyone interested in this technology? What puroose does it serve? Based on the current outrage of the Greens, this technology will ultimately be deemed 'dirtier' than burning fossil fuel.
First, atmospheric CO2 is released during the production of hydrogen. But here's another issue not pointed out: It's hard to contain Hydrogen. It's leaky, being able to escape throughout the process of production, transport, storage, and useage. What happens to that hydrogen? Oh, it just oxidizes and becomes water vapor. No big deal, except water vapor is a bigger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
So, again, why? I can see future headlines: flooding rains made worse by hydrogen cars. Ugh. Seems like after the diesel fiasco government would stay out of the auto industry.
8.8 million is a drop in the ocean for what's needed.
Hydrogen power cells are the way of the future. They have cars that already run on hydrogen very well, and they produce enough power that they can power the house when its parked in the garage.
The investment needs to go into a realistic hydrogen generation system without producing tonnes of greenhouse gasses and distribution system with safe storage of it to make it into a consumer level appliance.
When they start pouring money into that, then I will believe the government is serious about green energy...
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