Maybe the future is not relying on any one technology as our only option.
Nah, that doesn't make sense at all.
Agreed. BEVs make sense as short-ranged urban commuter cars. You don't want a car with a giant, expensive battery. But this is a niche, so you quickly realize that something else must be the answer.
For a lot of cases, it is either mass transit or e-bikes. But if you must have a car, it must be something that matches the functionality of ICE cars while being zero emissions.
Since when is a 300 mile range “short range”? And it only takes a half hour or so at a good charger to regain the majority of that range. Modern electric cars are perfectly reasonable for long distance trips, provided there’s charging infrastructure, of course.
Do any of them actually have 300 mile range? Like an actual human being can drive them on real roads for 300 miles without charging?
It depends on how heavy your foot is, really. Hilariously, the FCEV Mirai doesn't top the charts, especially for high speeds.
Mostly when people see the price of top end EVs they decide that they aren't in that much of a hurry and taking a break every couple of hours would be okay. Same thing happens when you put an expensive battery swap station next to a cheap fast charger, people look at the price difference and decide they aren't in that much of a hurry.
But this guy who's off his meds thinks people will pay a premium for hydrogen instead of just peeing and stretching their legs while they wait.
Personally, my 200 mile EV has taken me everywhere I've wanted to go and when I stop and charge it's ready to go again before I am.
Personally, my 200 mile EV has taken me everywhere I've wanted to go and when I stop and charge it's ready to go again before I am.
And that's the key.
As long as EV range > Bladder range and they charge fast enough that the toilet break time is similar to charging time, then it doesn't matter.
It just feels like way too low to me. Maybe you're right and it's not, but nowadays I get some 600 km (some 370 miles according to Google) from my petrol-based car for a full tank and I'm quite used to that.
Anyway, to paraphrase you a bit, I've looked at the prices of EVs and decided I'm not in that much of a hurry to switch to them.
The main difference is you mostly don't take them somewhere special to fill them up, so you aren't thinking about "how long before I have to fill up again".
An EV charges overnight and starts off each day with a full charge, so it's all about daily usage and long trips. Going days without charging isn't a useful thing to do, where filling a gas car every day would be a pain in the ass.
Prices are still fairly high, but they're dropping fast and the used market is picking up steam.
A few, very expensive BEVs do. Think Lucid Air and the like. But they're not economically viable vehicles.
To get a long-ranged BEV, you need a giant battery. That means massive repair bills down the road. Only by limiting range to a small number can this be avoided. Saying that BEVs can have 300 miles of range is missing the point. It is just too expensive to get there.
There is now technology that can let you refuel in 5 minutes, give you 300-400 miles of range, while also being a type of EV. As a result, it no longer matters that BEVs are "good enough." It is simply not the most practical idea. Something else is flat-out better.
Your alternative is not better, because it’s not in mass production. When it’s in production it might be better.
But there are still a lot of problems to work out with hydrogen fuel, and the infrastructure is extremely expensive and complicated compared to simple charging stations.
It will be mass produced. The main difference is that there will be much less need for raw materials. So it will be much cheaper.
There's very little left to solve for hydrogen cars. It's mostly outdated bullshit coming from competing industries. The only real problem left is getting it to mass production. Once that happens, hydrogen cars will be as cheap as ICE cars, and hydrogen fuel will be cheaper than gasoline.
You're completely ignoring the fact that it takes 3 to 5 times as much energy to actually drive a hydrogen car, because of the (in)efficiencies of the hydrogen production, supply and consumption chains.
And given that the driving of a car is what consumes the most energy in its lifetime, the much higher efficiency of a BEV 'pays off' the higher production costs, both monetarily and ecologically.
That's just bullshit from BEV companies. At best, it's something like 2x. At worse, it will take less energy, because you have waste energy from renewables. Wind and solar farms have a tendency to produce energy all-at-once, and shut down all-at-once too. You need massive amounts of energy storage to solve this. And the cheapest way of doing this is with hydrogen.
So as a result, you just get a lot of super-cheap hydrogen that otherwise can't be used. BEV don't solve this problem at all, leading to a lot of wasted energy.
Finally, fuel cells are also electrochemical systems, just like batteries. The notion that batteries will always be more efficient is just another lie from the BEV companies. In the long-run, this will be a unanimous win from fuel cells, because they will be equally efficient while also been much cheaper.
No, that is physics.
You could stand to learn some of it.
Physics state that both are types of EVs. Both fuel cells and batteries are electrochemical systems. In fact, you can literally call a hydrogen fuel cell a hydrogen-air battery.
So whoever comes out and say "but muh physics" has no idea what he's talking about. If you really knew physics, you'd know that there's holding back FCEVs in physics.
Battery technology will be improved. Look at how much better today's lithium ion batteries are than the NiCad batteries of the 90s.
At some point, we'll develop something that doesn't wear out for tens of thousands of charge cycles.
And fuel cells will also improve. Why not invest in an alternative? At the very least, you have a backup plan.
Also, fuel cells are electrochemical devices just like batteries. They arguable are batteries. So there's no reason to not accept fuel cells.
Batteries will improve. So there's no reason to not accept them.
I smell an angry Nikola investor.
They will just end up being a niche idea that won't solve climate change.
No car will.
Hydrogen can solve a lot of industrial problems too. BEVs only work for cars. As a result, it is an expensive distraction.
Hydrogen can not be improved. It will still seep through containers no matter what material you use because hydrogen atoms are just so damn small.
They are 2 fundamentally different problems, and only one can be actually improved. And that is the battery storage.
That's gibberish. All technology improves. And with hydrogen, you already start off with the highest possible energy density. And fuel cells are electrochemical systems, just like batteries. Saying batteries can improve also imply fuel cells can improve.
Massive repair bills like you would have with an ICE engine and transmission or hydrogen fuel cell. Turns out vehicles, regardless of what they're powered with, are expensive to fix.
Maybe the future is not relying on any one technology as our only option.
Nah, that doesn't make sense at all.
Agreed. BEVs make sense as short-ranged urban commuter cars. You don't want a car with a giant, expensive battery. But this is a niche, so you quickly realize that something else must be the answer.
For a lot of cases, it is either mass transit or e-bikes. But if you must have a car, it must be something that matches the functionality of ICE cars while being zero emissions.
Since when is a 300 mile range “short range”? And it only takes a half hour or so at a good charger to regain the majority of that range. Modern electric cars are perfectly reasonable for long distance trips, provided there’s charging infrastructure, of course.
Do any of them actually have 300 mile range? Like an actual human being can drive them on real roads for 300 miles without charging?
Behold, Bjørn Nyland's test result spreadsheet.
It depends on how heavy your foot is, really. Hilariously, the FCEV Mirai doesn't top the charts, especially for high speeds.
Mostly when people see the price of top end EVs they decide that they aren't in that much of a hurry and taking a break every couple of hours would be okay. Same thing happens when you put an expensive battery swap station next to a cheap fast charger, people look at the price difference and decide they aren't in that much of a hurry.
But this guy who's off his meds thinks people will pay a premium for hydrogen instead of just peeing and stretching their legs while they wait.
Personally, my 200 mile EV has taken me everywhere I've wanted to go and when I stop and charge it's ready to go again before I am.
And that's the key.
As long as EV range > Bladder range and they charge fast enough that the toilet break time is similar to charging time, then it doesn't matter.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Bjørn Nyland's
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It just feels like way too low to me. Maybe you're right and it's not, but nowadays I get some 600 km (some 370 miles according to Google) from my petrol-based car for a full tank and I'm quite used to that.
Anyway, to paraphrase you a bit, I've looked at the prices of EVs and decided I'm not in that much of a hurry to switch to them.
The main difference is you mostly don't take them somewhere special to fill them up, so you aren't thinking about "how long before I have to fill up again".
An EV charges overnight and starts off each day with a full charge, so it's all about daily usage and long trips. Going days without charging isn't a useful thing to do, where filling a gas car every day would be a pain in the ass.
Prices are still fairly high, but they're dropping fast and the used market is picking up steam.
A few, very expensive BEVs do. Think Lucid Air and the like. But they're not economically viable vehicles.
To get a long-ranged BEV, you need a giant battery. That means massive repair bills down the road. Only by limiting range to a small number can this be avoided. Saying that BEVs can have 300 miles of range is missing the point. It is just too expensive to get there.
There is now technology that can let you refuel in 5 minutes, give you 300-400 miles of range, while also being a type of EV. As a result, it no longer matters that BEVs are "good enough." It is simply not the most practical idea. Something else is flat-out better.
Your alternative is not better, because it’s not in mass production. When it’s in production it might be better.
But there are still a lot of problems to work out with hydrogen fuel, and the infrastructure is extremely expensive and complicated compared to simple charging stations.
It will be mass produced. The main difference is that there will be much less need for raw materials. So it will be much cheaper.
There's very little left to solve for hydrogen cars. It's mostly outdated bullshit coming from competing industries. The only real problem left is getting it to mass production. Once that happens, hydrogen cars will be as cheap as ICE cars, and hydrogen fuel will be cheaper than gasoline.
You're completely ignoring the fact that it takes 3 to 5 times as much energy to actually drive a hydrogen car, because of the (in)efficiencies of the hydrogen production, supply and consumption chains.
And given that the driving of a car is what consumes the most energy in its lifetime, the much higher efficiency of a BEV 'pays off' the higher production costs, both monetarily and ecologically.
That's just bullshit from BEV companies. At best, it's something like 2x. At worse, it will take less energy, because you have waste energy from renewables. Wind and solar farms have a tendency to produce energy all-at-once, and shut down all-at-once too. You need massive amounts of energy storage to solve this. And the cheapest way of doing this is with hydrogen.
So as a result, you just get a lot of super-cheap hydrogen that otherwise can't be used. BEV don't solve this problem at all, leading to a lot of wasted energy.
Finally, fuel cells are also electrochemical systems, just like batteries. The notion that batteries will always be more efficient is just another lie from the BEV companies. In the long-run, this will be a unanimous win from fuel cells, because they will be equally efficient while also been much cheaper.
No, that is physics.
You could stand to learn some of it.
Physics state that both are types of EVs. Both fuel cells and batteries are electrochemical systems. In fact, you can literally call a hydrogen fuel cell a hydrogen-air battery.
So whoever comes out and say "but muh physics" has no idea what he's talking about. If you really knew physics, you'd know that there's holding back FCEVs in physics.
Battery technology will be improved. Look at how much better today's lithium ion batteries are than the NiCad batteries of the 90s.
At some point, we'll develop something that doesn't wear out for tens of thousands of charge cycles.
And fuel cells will also improve. Why not invest in an alternative? At the very least, you have a backup plan.
Also, fuel cells are electrochemical devices just like batteries. They arguable are batteries. So there's no reason to not accept fuel cells.
Batteries will improve. So there's no reason to not accept them.
I smell an angry Nikola investor.
They will just end up being a niche idea that won't solve climate change.
No car will.
Hydrogen can solve a lot of industrial problems too. BEVs only work for cars. As a result, it is an expensive distraction.
Hydrogen can not be improved. It will still seep through containers no matter what material you use because hydrogen atoms are just so damn small.
They are 2 fundamentally different problems, and only one can be actually improved. And that is the battery storage.
That's gibberish. All technology improves. And with hydrogen, you already start off with the highest possible energy density. And fuel cells are electrochemical systems, just like batteries. Saying batteries can improve also imply fuel cells can improve.
Massive repair bills like you would have with an ICE engine and transmission or hydrogen fuel cell. Turns out vehicles, regardless of what they're powered with, are expensive to fix.
Short range urban commuting is the domain of subways and ebikes