Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

Now can you imagine if Elon Musk decried to hedge his bets and do hydrogen as well? The infrastructure would probably be there in 3 months.

I still think there is time to develop hydrogen as electric cars still only constitute a very small percentage of the cars on the road. Hydrogen vehicles may be an easier sell than electric to a world brought up on gas guzzlers. There is no shortage of raw material and with solar and wind becoming cheaper and more abundant hydrogen plants might have an important part to play in soaking up excess generation so the hydrogen is produced at minimal cost. 

I think the biggest obstacle to Tesla doing hydrogen though is that Nikola has gone down the dual fuel route first and Elon would lose face. 

buglawton

Video review, British guy giving this a real world road test:

Could a £7,000 City Car switch you on to Electric?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkIarb-8Ot8
Guess it's certain to fail EU crash tests, new Chinese models always do.

Martyn1981

Elon's opinion on HFC's 'hydrogen fool sells'.

And it's important to remember that Nikola was all in on H2 (even though their semi needs 320kWh of batts to function), but since then they have announced the hybrid plug in, and then the BEV only ....... a slippery slope it seems. Of course they are yet to actually build anything, despite their apparent retreat from HFC only.

Maybe things will change as the CEO is selling shares and stepping down given the high share value based on their incredible claims, and their interesting method for valuing orders - they don't base it on the deposits taken (zero), they base it on the lifetime sales of vehicle, H2 and servicing, so the Anheuser Busch order of 'upto' 800 trucks, is valued at $1 per mile, or $800m.

michaels

buglawton said:

Video review, British guy giving this a real world road test:

Could a £7,000 City Car switch you on to Electric?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkIarb-8Ot8
Guess it's certain to fail EU crash tests, new Chinese models always do.

I wonder if there was an agreement that he was not allowed to mention crash worthiness or wltp range - seems odd for a motoring journalist to ignore such things.

Martyn1981

joefizz said:

Martyn1981 said:

Hi Z, in fairness to Joe, perhaps he's referring to the 2016 launch event of the Nikola One HFC semi.

Nope. Never heard of it until your post.

That's a bit weird. So you keep pushing HFC's on a BEV thread, and suggest there will never be battery trains, busses, heavy transport etc etc.. But you've never heard of the one HFC company/product aimed at the trucking industry, that has made any big news.

joefizz

Martyn1981 said:

That's a bit weird. So you keep pushing HFC's on a BEV thread, and suggest there will never be battery trains, busses, heavy transport etc etc.. But you've never heard of the one HFC company/product aimed at the trucking industry, that has made any big news.

I dont rely on nonsense posts on the internet Martyn, you should know that by now.

If you want to really find out up to date information put EU Hydrogen Strategy into your favourite search engine, or try another one if Google doesnt want to show you it ;-)

To give you a start the European Commissions equivalent of an RFC went out at the end of May and all the responses from EU stakeholders have been published on their site in the last week or so.
Its all part of the EU Green Deal 2030/2050 in response to Covid.

So anything from 2 years ago, a year ago, 6 months ago, 3 months ago pertains to a different world.

Oh and I never said there wouldnt be battery trains etc, thats again a very basic misunderstanding of yours and misrepresentation of my posts. What I have repeatedly said is that with recent developments the one nation/one trading block will come to the fore as a result of Covid/collapsing global supply trains/not wanting to poison indigenous people in DRC or deprive them of water in the Altiplano. Increasingly the availablity of securing transport supply within your own border (in the case of UK and Ireland) and trading block (EU) will mean that the likes of hydrogen will come more to the fore than it would have necessarily done only 3 short months ago. Battery trains. heavy transport etc will suit areas of the US with plenty of wind/solar with no access to water but other places will be better suited (islands with wind/solar for instance) will be better suited to others.

EVandPV

joefizz said:

Oh and I never said there wouldnt be battery trains etc, .

Oh I think you did .....

joefizz said:

They are also dependent on subsidy, will prove increasingly expensive and not available to everyone (probably will never be battery trains, busses, heavy transport etc etc).

Martyn1981

joefizz said:

Martyn1981 said:

That's a bit weird. So you keep pushing HFC's on a BEV thread, and suggest there will never be battery trains, busses, heavy transport etc etc.. But you've never heard of the one HFC company/product aimed at the trucking industry, that has made any big news.

I dont rely on nonsense posts on the internet Martyn, you should know that by now. 

But all of your 'claims' are based almost entirely on what you've previously claimed/posted.

ABrass

JKenH said:

Now can you imagine if Elon Musk decried to hedge his bets and do hydrogen as well? The infrastructure would probably be there in 3 months.

I still think there is time to develop hydrogen as electric cars still only constitute a very small percentage of the cars on the road. Hydrogen vehicles may be an easier sell than electric to a world brought up on gas guzzlers. There is no shortage of raw material and with solar and wind becoming cheaper and more abundant hydrogen plants might have an important part to play in soaking up excess generation so the hydrogen is produced at minimal cost. 

I think the biggest obstacle to Tesla doing hydrogen though is that Nikola has gone down the dual fuel route first and Elon would lose face. 

The biggest obstacle would be cost. HFCs are very expensive, more so than a battery for a similar BEV. Adding both in one car would be the worst of both worlds.  Redesigning their existing cars to add a range extender is also a lot of money. Plus there's no need.

Edit: sorry, just realized you meant an entirely separate HFC line. As other people have mentioned that's not going to happen. Musk is just as likely to invest in an ICE car line as HFC.

JKenH

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

Now can you imagine if Elon Musk decried to hedge his bets and do hydrogen as well? The infrastructure would probably be there in 3 months.

I still think there is time to develop hydrogen as electric cars still only constitute a very small percentage of the cars on the road. Hydrogen vehicles may be an easier sell than electric to a world brought up on gas guzzlers. There is no shortage of raw material and with solar and wind becoming cheaper and more abundant hydrogen plants might have an important part to play in soaking up excess generation so the hydrogen is produced at minimal cost. 

I think the biggest obstacle to Tesla doing hydrogen though is that Nikola has gone down the dual fuel route first and Elon would lose face. 

The biggest obstacle would be cost. HFCs are very expensive, more so than a battery for a similar BEV. Adding both in one car would be the worst of both worlds.  Redesigning their existing cars to add a range extender is also a lot of money. Plus there's no need.

Edit: sorry, just realized you meant an entirely separate HFC line. As other people have mentioned that's not going to happen. Musk is just as likely to invest in an ICE car line as HFC.

No need to redesign the Tesla cars, they are just fine. I see a long term future for electric cars, particularly for commuting with home charging. I just think it might be a bit too early to rule out hydrogen vehicles completely, especially longer range commercial vehicles. 

Twenty years ago would we have expected EVs to be the practical proposition they are now? Never say never.