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Broken clocks and whatnot. Hydrogen cars are trash and completely unfeasible, not because they explode but because of the terrible efficiency and fueling problems
But nobody's actually taking about subsidising or making them, so there's no point in ranting about it.
Hydrogen buses were a thing for a while, but it's probably cheaper to just go with batteries now.
Feels like something that was surpassed before it ever got popular.
I could see hydrogen being useful for some applications where you don't need the public infrastructure. Buses that refuel at a central depot could be one of those if there's issues with battery electric being too heavy and stuff like that.
But for ordinary people that can charge their car at home or work without needing to go to a third place it's hard to beat that convenience.
Hydrogen also has a history of being pushed by fossil fuel companies, probably because initially most hydrogen would be generated using fossil fuels, so it's not exactly a fast track to reducing emissions.
Yeah, the home and workplace charging has basically won the day for anyone that doesn't spend most of their life driving.
Slightly sidetracking, I suspect nuclear power is also being pushed by the fossil fuel club as well, after 40 years of going "But Chernobyl!" Simply because it keeps people on gas and coal for about 20-30 years while it all gets built, is enormously expensive, and probably wouldn't be enough to meet demand anyway. And they can also veto any large green projects with "But the nuclear is on the way!"
Yeah, that's definitely been the strategy of the liberals/nationals in Australia. In a country that historically has never had nuclear, has a bunch of state and federal bans against nuclear and no infrastructure at all to deal with nuclear waste or fuel, they want to build a nuclear plants (oh , and those will be micro plants which don't actually exist anywhere!) instead of continuing to build more renewables. And they're pushing hydrogen as well.
It's actually disgusting that an industry that knows it has no long term future decided that they should just delay the inevitable for just a few more years/decades at the cost of our only planet. I just can't fathom being this fucked in the head to make that calculation.
And would need a huge new infrastructure for production and distribution. I’m convinced that most of the push for hydrogen is from oil and gas interests wanting to have essentially the same business they do now.
Clearly one of the advantages of EVs is how cheap and easy the infrastructure is compared to any other alternative (and somehow we’re still finding it difficult)
and the need to build an entire new distribution network, but one that handles cryogenic fuel.
nah, no thanks.
Actually they can retro fit oil and gas infrastructure to work with hydrogen. Guess who is pushing the “huRdUGyun iS thE fuTuRe” narrative. Yeah the people who own the oil and gas infra.
Actually they can retro fit oil and gas infrastructure to work with hydrogen.
citation requested because this defies literal physics. I'd give you the benefit of the doubt if you suggested propane, but gasoline storage is NOT cryogenic, would not hold large enough volumes of it, and aren't capable of the pressures involved.
Sure, you can bury a hydrogen tank and support plumbing NEXT to a gasoline storage tank, but you still have to deal with handling cryogenic fuel. Do they really claim that?
So even if that's an agenda, it's fucking bent. Green Hydrogen literally ISN'T.
Seems like every solution the petroleum industry pushes is really just another excuse to pump more oil to burn in an already choking atmosphere.
fuuuuuck.
Lil bro remembers being traumatized by the hindenburg explosion when he was growing up. Fucking luddite.
Did you know: the Hindenburg was built before plastics were a thing. Most think that the metal shell held the gas but no. It full of animal bladders/intestines that were filled with hydrogen and tied up .
Hydrogen cars aren't even something likely to catch on at this point anyway I'd think, despite Toyota's attempts to the contrary. Battery-electric cars have improved a lot of late making the advantage in range from using an energy dense chemical fuel less apparent, and hydrogen has to deal with both lower energy efficiency and the fact that hydrogen storage is rather difficult, while the infrastructure getting built has overwhelmingly been EV charging rather than hydrogen filling stations.
I can see it making sense for long distance hauling, semi trucks for example, where batteries can't really compete very well. But for the average person that doesn't need to put on thousands of miles in a short time hydrogen doesn't make much sense.
Hydrogen is completely unsuitable for land based transportation because building the infrastructure and actually making the stuff is pretty hard to do at scale. The electricity grid, on the other hand, already exists. And once you've built the charger, you don't need to send a truck to refill it on a regular basis.
The electricity grid, on the other hand, already exists
...largely in the same appalling, copper-line state it has been in since its original installation 100 years ago. Which is woefully and catastrophically unprepared for an America full of EV drivers.
Not disagreeing with your core point, but just saying. The American electrical backbone system is absolutely in no way prepared for a mass shift to electric vehicles at this time. We're getting there, and if EV adoption continues at its current pace we run a pretty good chance of being fine so long as proper upgrades are actually being made, but we're not there yet and demand for EVs absolutely could still outpace the ability of our electrical infrastructure to support them.
Wait till he hears about gasoline
The material safety sheet for gasoline is a lot scarier than the one for hydrogen
'THE ONE TIP FUEL MAKERS DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT!'
From watching movies from the 60s-2020s, internal COMBUSTION engine's also have a tendency to explode. I haven't seen many hydrogen using vehicles exploding since the Hindenburg.
Theoretically a hydrogen fuel vehicle could explode because it has a pretty large tank of hydrogen on board. Practically it'll just burn up because it won't all be released at once. And I've never heard of a single case of that actually happening in the field. And you can be damn sure it would be all over the news.
It's also a pressure vessel. Rupturing that might be scarier than just fire.
I have a hydrogen car. H2 explodes more readily than it burns. The containment tanks are designed to mitigate this, and they are routinely tested with high-caliber rifles to make sure. There are YouTube videos of the tests.
What hydrogen cars?
The sum total of Toyota and whoever else's efforts still amount to an inconsequential fraction of the vehicles currently in operation, probably not even a notable portion of a percentage point.
We're dealing with a man who saw pictures of a spray bottle and the sun and decided it meant injecting bleach and putting a lightbulb inside you. Do not presume he thinks rationally.
Wow, even when he's accidentally correct (hydrogen cars really aren't good), his "reasoning" (if you can call it that) is dumb as Hell.
The real problem with hydrogen cars (aside from H~2~ storage being a pain in the ass) is that they're mostly a greenwashing scam, since the vast majority of H~2~ produced is not "green" hydrogen produced via electrolysis powered by renewables, but instead so-called "blue" hydrogen produced from natural gas or coal. If you're gonna do that, you might as well just fucking burn the hydrocarbon in an internal combustion engine directly and save yourself all the damn hassle!
Give me my coal powered steam car, assholes!
Hmm, dumbass gives rant against green energy, I see rise in dumbass arguments against green solutions, hmm.
Could he not? It's not just that he's wrong. It's that we'll have to defend the factual errors around a deadend solution.
Because we've never had vehicles powered by a highly volatile fuel source before. /s
Toyota didn't like that.
Nuking hurricanes is cool though.
I actually read the safety reports from the NTSB, and they did an awful lot of testing on this Toyota hydrogen fuel cell cars. Even far surpassing the test parameters, the fuel cells remained intact and undamaged. In fact, it was pretty incredible.
nothing short of a .50 Cal armour piercing bullet gets through those tanks. And even then a chance of an explosion is very very low, it would probably just produce a fire just like gasoline (which can also explode under the right conditions). But that safety requirement is still a barrier, as it raises the cost of an already extremely expensive technology. Personally I can see hydrogen catching on for some niche applications, but for every day driving I don't see the price ever going low enough for it to make sense compared to electric.