Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

Petriix

Hydrogen has pros and cons: yay, it's the most abundant element in the universe; boo, it's so incredibly reactive that it requires very complex infrastructure to store and transport it. Hydrocarbons are, unfortunately, much better in that respect. I reckon the future will be fusion drives.

silverwhistle

NigeWick said:

Depends on one's use. I drive the 4.7 mile return trip to my allotment in the car.

I drive, cycle and (yesterday) jog to my allotment, depending on what I'm carrying. With panniers on the bike I can take quite a few small tools and seedlings for planting, plus I feel virtuous and get some much needed exercise! Yesterday was just to water and hoe for an hour so tried jogging and will try and do it more often, two birds with one stone sort of thing, or better one bird with a stone less..

I've a posh electric bike on order which, like my hankered after EV, is not actually necessary for my mobility, but was a treat on a sort of significant birthday. But it will extend my range, although not to the extent of all my potential journeys. I will certainly reduce my overall mileage by car and can see that being a more general change, which can only be welcomed.

Solarchaser

silverwhistle said:

NigeWick said:

Depends on one's use. I drive the 4.7 mile return trip to my allotment in the car.

, plus I feel virtuous.

This made me 😆 

joefizz

Solarchaser said:

the big problem hydrogen has is conversion efficiency, until they improve that, its not nearly comparable to batts, and that's before you even get into burning efficiency in an engine

Doesnt matter.

Its about using the excess RE generated electricity. Hydrogen can be used in areas that batteries cant. (when I was in Iceland they were talking about moving the fishing fleet to hydrogen as well as the hire car fleet). Small local generation stations so no issue with transportation and storage as generation will be ad hoc depending on usage and models.

The UK, in particular Scotland and NI would also be ideal for this.

Much cheaper to produce a hydrogen ice in monetary terms and planetary impact terms compared to batteries.
This probably will be the vhs vs beta fight towards the end of this decade.

joefizz

silverwhistle said:

NigeWick said:

Depends on one's use. I drive the 4.7 mile return trip to my allotment in the car.

I've a posh electric bike on order which, like my hankered after EV, is not actually necessary for my mobility, but was a treat on a sort of significant birthday. But it will extend my range, although not to the extent of all my potential journeys. I will certainly reduce my overall mileage by car and can see that being a more general change, which can only be welcomed.

I have to say loving my e-bike for all of the reasons you mention above. Did my longest journey out on it yesterday (about 12 miles) and have already done a small amount of shopping with it. The battery is modular so can be replaced and keep the bike frame so reducing the long term lifecycle impact, ideal battery utilisation.
Im about to go out and put the battery chargers on the cars as I havent used any car in over a month now. Most of the places I would need the car to transport heavy stuff to/from are now doing deliveries where they didnt before.

Martyn1981

For cars I think the fight is over and FCV's have lost. They can't match ICE performance due to the cost of the FC, and they don't remove the need to visit fuel stations. These issues can be improved upon a bit by adding bigger batts (more cost), and even the ability to plug in, but then you get closer to a BEV, or larger FC, but more costs again.

The FCV's do offer an environmental angle, but only when H2 production goes green, rather than from FF methane, and even then, if going green is the target, then BEV's offer that already. And BEV's are starting to get cheaper than ICEV's in terms of TCO, whereas FCV's are expensive.

I wonder if longer haul trucking such as in the USA might use H2, but Nikola's FCV still has 320kWh of batts, and they've now launched BEV models .... or rather have added BEV's to their still to be fully launched range. Their argument is that they will be lighter than a fully BEV truck, but something like 80-90% of US loads are volume limited, not space limited, so again it may be that costs, and a 'mega-charger' network such as Tesla are planning, will win out for batts.

Shipping may be the winner for H2, possibly carried as ammonia, and that would allow for a smaller number of H2 production units (from excess RE), but bigger and more economical.

The main issue for H2, is that whilst it will offer a fantastic volume of storage for excess RE*, it will only be needed once RE deployment has reached levels where intra-day storage such as batts (perhaps BEV's) has been exhausted, since the losses make it far less suitable/economical at the moment. Leccy to BEV's gives around 3x the mileage, v's leccy to H2 to FCV's and back to leccy for motive power.

[*Edit - CAES and LAES might offer better efficiency, perhaps twice the efficiency of H2 converted back to leccy (via FC's) at large RE generation sites, but these technologies are still growing, and H2 seems simpler, so almost certain to be used whether or not it wins out completely for longer/larger term storage needs.]

[Edit 2 (sorry) - The reason H2 makes for great longer term storage (v's batts) is that the same amount of kit can process the H2, it's only the storage that needs to be expanded (cheaply) for greater volume, whereas for batts, more storage means more batts which are of course expensive. But that might be where flow batteries come in, as they use two large tanks to hold the energy, so a bit like H2, they can be expanded in energy, without the need to expand power, so also cheaper to go bigger and bigger. Flow batts would be significantly more efficient than H2 on a full leccy to storage to leccy basis, but of course the cost needs to be considered, and time will tell.]

I was quite keen on H2 and FCV's about 10yrs ago, but the BEV problem it solves (range) has now been addressed via bigger batts and faster charge rates.

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 said:

 Leccy to BEV's gives around 3x the mileage, v's leccy to H2 to FCV's and back to leccy for motive power.

If anyone's interested, I've found an old article from 'Real Engineering' that does a great job of breaking down all the issues of H2 for automotive use, and the losses incurred. Just re-watched and I was pretty close, as it gives an overall efficiency for BEV's of ~75%, with losses through transmission, battery charging, battery losses and DC to AC for the motors to use.
The corresponding figure for FC's is ~25% best case. Best case reflects H2 production on site, but this would mean smaller kit and therefore higher cost of production. A comparison of BEV (Tesla Model 3) to FCV (Toyota Mirai) costs at the beginning of the vid (in the US) had the FCV at approx 8x the cost per mile.

The vid is a year old, but very good and worth a watch, as is the channel in general.

The Truth about Hydrogen

Martyn1981

The other end of the BEV market, where cheap and simple is crucial:

Mobility For Africa Shows How Electric Vehicles Can Transform Lives Where It Matters Most

A lot of startups pop up from time to time with the “Next Big Thing” or the next big service offering in EVs. Most of the time they will be hyping some futuristic and to some extent, mythical new six-figure price tagged EV packed with all the “Bells and Whistles” that promises to do 0 to 100 km/h in under 2 seconds! Sometimes we wonder why more people aren’t looking into some more practical solutions to everyday problems like an EV for ordinary people and not some futuristic vaporware some startups promise in perpetuity. People just want to be able to get about safely and efficiently!

Solarchaser

Thanks Mart, saved me a long explanation. 

Essentially where some say conversion efficiency doesn't matter, we need hydrogen,  i fall back to, why would you waste 75% of your energy instead of only wasting 25%.

Batts are expensive,  but i wonder how long the cost would take to balance out against a hydrogen plant, when the batteries are using 50-70% more of the energy.

Horses for courses, sure, but if you have excess intermittent re,  then it makes sense to use it for battery back up imo, rather than "wasting" on hydrogen. 

If the conversion on hydrogen comes up to 70%+ then its a different discussion imo

Hexane

I am increasingly finding that this thread is a listing of news items from cleantechnica. I think that's a worthy aim, if that's what people are after. tbh I tuned out of most of the other threads here when they became a listing of news items from similar clearing houses. I am a homeowner with an expensive PV installation and planning a BEV in the future. In the past I saw this forum as a place for discussion, not a place for being bombarded with links and quotes from mostly one source.