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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Toyotaâs hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation
elzbardico wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
Toyota should have bought a page from pre-brain-damage Elon Musk's book
and built a nationwide hydrogen-fueling infra-structure.
Teslas may not be anymore the future of EVs, but we can't deny that by
building the Power Charger infrastructure, Tesla gave consumers the
confidence to buy an EV knowing that it wouldn't be basically a
geofenced vehicle.
m4rtink wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
It looks like Mirai has no future after all...
I am sorry. ;-)
ycui1986 wrote 15 hours 31 min ago:
the reality is no where to get the fuel. hydrogen stations are shutting
down not building up.
m463 wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
It's really simple.
1 Kg of hydrogen is SUPER EXPENSIVE (equivalent ~ 1 gallon of gas)
$17/gallong when I looked at the pumps
When the Mirai first came out, owners didn't care because the fuel was
free.
But after that ended, they had to buy it for themselves.
who wants to pay that?
(also, stations weren't plentiful like EV chargers, and even though you
could fill up faster than an EV charge, who cares when you can't go
very far (distance-wise from home).
killingtime74 wrote 18 hours 41 min ago:
I went to the Toyota museum where they actually have one of these cars
as a cross section. I would never drive one. It's like driving around
with a massive bomb under the rear seat. Forget thermal runway from
batteries, I wonder how big the crater of the explosion from one these
would be.
sandworm101 wrote 18 hours 35 min ago:
Safer than liquid fuel. There are videos out there of what a
leak+fire looks like on a hydrogen and gasoline car. You would rather
be trapped in the hydrogen car.
HTML [1]: https://youtu.be/OA8dNFiVaF0
bitmasher9 wrote 18 hours 46 min ago:
Hydrogen fuel solves a long term strategic problem for Japan, which is
why the Mirai got as far as it did.
Japan imports energy. They have to be very careful about which type of
energy they build infrastructure for, because they must pay to import
that type of energy for decades or centuries. (LNG vs Coal use very
different equipment) This is specifically a strategic problem for Japan
compared to other energy importers because they both use a lot of
energy, and donât have a military option to secure a foreign supply.
Hydrogen fuel could be created by almost any energy source and then
used just like any other fuel source. Ideally Japan would like to pay
energy exporters to convert their energy to Hydrogen so Japan has
maximum flexibility when importing energy.
Projects like the Mirai exist as proof of concepts for Hydrogen, and
the United States was never going to be an early widespread adopter of
this technology.
jillesvangurp wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
Japan has a lot of potential for wind and geothermal power. And much
of it isn't too bad for solar either.
The madness with hydrogen in Japan is that they produce most of it
from imported LNG. If they'd solve domestic clean energy, they'd have
no need for hydrogen in transport. EVs are a lot more efficient than
hydrogen vehicles. So they'd need a lot less clean energy to power
those.
Japan is slowly and belatedly figuring out that physics and economics
just won't favor hydrogen, ever. The Mirai is an exercise in
futility. It doesn't make any economic sense whatsoever. It never
has. Toyota at this point is grudgingly producing more EVs per
quarter than it ever produced hydrogen vehicles (in total). They only
sell a few hundred per year at this point. The only reason they still
make them at all is because they are being subsidized to do that.
alephnerd wrote 18 hours 45 min ago:
^^^ This.
But Japan has also been heavily investing in solid state batteries,
whose supply chain Idemetsu Kosan and Toyota have begun to
productionize [0].
The Japanese government made a decision in the early 2000s to make a
dual-pronged bet on Hydrogen and solid-state battery chemistry
because they lacked the supply chain and a legal method to access IP
for lithium ion batteries.
On the other hand, Samsung and LG got the license for Li-On back
during the NMC days, and BYD was able to piggyback on Samsung and
Berkshire's IP access when both took growth equity stakes in BYD
decades ago.
Another reason that a lot of people overlook is the Hydrogen supply
chain overlaps heavily with the supply chain needed to domestically
produce nitrogen-fixing fertilizers which is heavily concentrated in
a handful of countries (especially Russia with whom Japan has had a
border dispute with since the end of WW2) [1].
[0] - [1] -
HTML [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/idemitsu-build-pi...
HTML [2]: https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/impacts-and-repercussions-pric...
decryption wrote 19 hours 34 min ago:
I'm surprised it's only 65%. There's hardly anywhere to fuel these
things up and the price of hydrogen isn't exactly a bargain.
cryptoegorophy wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
Sorry. EVs won.
jacquesm wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
You only see Mirais within spitting distance of the one place where
they can tank. The network just isn't developed to the point that
owning one of these makes any sense at all.
pazimzadeh wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
This article is too long because it's written by a llm
HoldOnAMinute wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
The last time I checked local ads, they were giving these cars away
free, and you could get a tax deduction. They were paying you to take
it.
seltzered_ wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
Theres something clickbaity and missing from this article, I encourage
watching youtubers like 'mirai club' for better info. What i recall
from his videos is:
- The Mirai made financial sense AS A LEASE for folks in Southern
California back in 2022 (possibly 2023) because:
- Car prices in general (including EVs) were fairly highly priced at
the time due to demand, the chip shortage, etc.
- There were clean vehicle incentives to get a Toyota Mirai,
including things like a hydrogen fuel fill up card to cover expenses.
- At the time there was some assumptions that hydrogen fuel costs
would go down over time, but they actually went up.
Again, I suspect most folks LEASED the Mirai due to it being a very
niche car with limited usage outside of california due to the lack of
hydrogen fuel stations. Youre now seeing some viral videos on the ultra
low cost used Mirai's showing up in states that dont have hydrogen
infrastructure due to some odd car dealer auction buys (Transport
Evolved has a youtube video on this.)
The article does talk about the lack of investment in hydrogen
infrastructure, this is true and theres been a huge split between
announced infrastructure investments and what has actually happened
(see [1] for a chart going through 2021-2024). The current US political
situation and its impact on clean energy probably doesn't help either.
HTML [1]: https://bsky.app/profile/janrosenow.bsky.social/post/3labfzivn...
haneul wrote 17 hours 0 min ago:
There were also really good financing deals during Covid. Net for me
after all costs after resale was $1k for the years I owned the car
(the 2nd gen).
But I got in near the bottom and got out before the market for it
dumped.
jjtheblunt wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
The Mirai was _only_ available as a lease, back in the 2018 timeframe
anyway, in Southern California.
GregDavidson wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
This technology is completely amazing - for large fleet vehicles like
buses, trucks, ferries, etc. Also airplanes! Getting this so compact
and refined is a technological miracle. Now put it where it fits!
dyauspitr wrote 8 hours 16 min ago:
A huge tank of hydrogen is a bomb. This isnât like gasoline that
takes a lot to ignite.
throwaway473825 wrote 20 hours 31 min ago:
Buses are already largely electric (with the US as a notable
exception), and trucks are quickly getting there: [1] Meanwhile,
hydrogen trucks are nowhere to be found...
HTML [1]: https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...
dizhn wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
According to some youtube (doomer) videos I watched a lot of EVs and
luxury cars also had this kind of depreciation lately.
swifferfan wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
Obligatory paper - Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense? (2006) [1]
Nothing fundamental has changed in the last 2 decades to refute the
arguments Bossel made in 2006.
HTML [1]: https://alpha.chem.umb.edu/chemistry/ch471/evans%20files/Proce...
some-guy wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
I lived a block away from a hydrogen fuel station in Oakland, and in
the ten years I was there I maybe saw two different Mirais use it.
dehrmann wrote 1 day ago:
It's got the EV problem, but 100x worse. No only do you have to worry
about where to find a place to refuel, there are far fewer of them, and
level 1 charging isn't a fallback. It also doesn't have the EV upsides.
stevenhubertron wrote 1 day ago:
Cars are not investments.
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
Depends on the car. Some are so special they will have a better ROI
than your retirement plan.
HTML [1]: https://www.myartbroker.com/investing/articles/top-10-most-i...
oceanplexian wrote 1 day ago:
If you think depreciation on a few cars is bad wait until you find out
how many hundreds of millions taxpayers spent to build hydrogen
stations for cars that donât exist.
At least itâs not as blatant of a green energy scam as the high
speed rail to nowhere. In this case they actually built a few stations
that worked.
sksasi wrote 1 day ago:
A full tank would cost $200 for about 300-350 mile range.
whatever1 wrote 1 day ago:
Not that much worse than an ev.
vel0city wrote 1 day ago:
Used models for my five year old EV are still selling for ~50% of
what I paid for, so no, its far worse than most EVs.
empathy_m wrote 1 day ago:
At one point recently the Mirai came with a fuel incentive program:
when you buy the car, Toyota gives you a gift card worth $15,000
towards fuel at hydrogen stations.
An interesting second part of the program was that if you live near a
hydrogen station but it's broken, Toyota will instead reimburse a
rental car and gas for the rental, one week at a time but presumably
for as long the hydrogen fuel station remains broken.
newyankee wrote 1 day ago:
I think a few people were expecting the same cost curves that
happened with batteries to happen with hydrogen but it seems the
challenges are more difficult to overcome. Otherwise I think a Solar
PV plant combined with Captive hydrogen production for refuelling on
major highways sounds interesting, at least in countries like US,
Australia etc. I believe this is not just about PEM or AEM
electrolyser or specific tech, it never got the scaling boost.
Ironically the stack comprising fuel cells of different types is
possibly very well studied since decades.
For me the Wells to wheel efficiency never made hydrogen worthwhile
for short to medium distances and this battle is effectively over.
_aavaa_ wrote 1 day ago:
Forget the type of electrolyzer, even if they were free hydrogen
would still be expensive. The challenges with hydrogen getting
cheaper are thermodynamic and canât be innovated around. The
amount of energy required to electrolyze water simply cannot drop
by 10x.
The other difficulties (low energy density, ability to leak through
many materials, massive explosion risks, near-invisible flames,
etc., etc.) are all inherent to H2 as a molecule.
kccqzy wrote 1 day ago:
$15,000 worth of fuel card sounds generous until you find that
hydrogen stations have jacked up prices to $36/kg.
stbtrax wrote 1 day ago:
still means nothing, what is the mileage or $/mi there?
ErroneousBosh wrote 1 day ago:
Apparently 1kg of hydrogen is about 60 miles range, which seems
like a lot, but apparently fuel cells are that good.
Currently hydrogen fuel if you can get it is about 15 quid a kilo
in the UK, giving a tank range of around 400 miles for £80. This
makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more
expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric.
By comparison Autogas LPG is around 92p/litre (or about £1.80
per kilo) and in a very large heavy 4.6 litre Range Rover you get
around 250-300 miles for your £80 tankful, depending on how
heavy your right foot is.
stoneman24 wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
If you can get a cheap electric overnight home charging tariff
in the UK, then the electric cost is lower. Mid week, I charged
43kWh for the cost of £3.04 (7p per kWh). My home charger does
7kwh in a hour. Usual mileage is about 4 miles per kWh (typical
rush hour drive into Edinburgh). That should give me about 170
miles of range.
Scaling it to 400 miles (400 miles at 4 miles per kWh is 100
kWh which at 7p each is about £7. Pretty much an order of
magnitude better than your estimate. I admit home charging is
the best arrangement and I am fortunate to have it. I did a
holiday trip to the highlands and used public/hotel chargers
which were closer to your numbers but also much faster (up to
150kWh per hour capacity).
I think that even discounting hydrogen engineering
difficulties, the infrastructure for electric is pretty much in
place and the race of the technologies is over.
ErroneousBosh wrote 12 hours 2 min ago:
The problem is that using an EV makes living in the Highlands
far more expensive even allowing for the cost of diesel,
because you're forced to use rapid chargers at great expense
- if they're available, and actually working - or a quick
trip to the shops becomes an overnight stay.
foota wrote 23 hours 51 min ago:
> This makes it a little more expensive than diesel,
considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same
price as electric
Is electric charging more expensive in the UK than petrol?
That's nuts.
ErroneousBosh wrote 12 hours 3 min ago:
It is if you use a rapid charger. If you're fortunate enough
to be able to do what you need with a car within 50 miles or
so of your house and leave it overnight to charge, it's
cheaper.
At present, EVs do not solve any problem I have.
Symbiote wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
Very few people would use 100% rapid charging. Even on a
long journey, they can arrive home with, say, 5-10%
remaining, and recharge at home. (The car calculates this
automatically.)
ErroneousBosh wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
The range of most EVs is only about 120 miles, which
isn't especially useful when they take around six hours
to charge.
michaelt wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
According to [1] it breaks down like this:
EV at rapid/ultra-rapid chargers: 25p/mile
Petrol, diesel: 15p/mile
EV charging at home: 8p/mile
This is because there's a government price cap on home
electricity, but not on commercial electricity - and rapid
chargers are all commercial (and of course for-profit).
HTML [1]: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/e...
smcin wrote 1 day ago:
Full tank capacity of a Mirai is ~5 kg / (120 liters in volume).
alexose wrote 1 day ago:
I've always been fascinated with these things. Is there any way to
make your own H2 to fuel them? I suspect the purity requirements are
too high for at-home electrolysis...
retired wrote 1 day ago:
Cheapest second generation Mirai I could find is â¬9950 including VAT.
It has scuffs all-round but no major or structural damage. Only 103k
km.
This was a â¬71,000 car four years ago. That is 86% of the value gone.
And you were driving around on very expensive hydrogen (compared to
diesel and BEV).
vel0city wrote 1 day ago:
> And you were driving around on very expensive hydrogen
That original owner was probably doing all those miles on the free
hydrogen given by Toyota.
retired wrote 14 hours 0 min ago:
That program was not available in my region
aunty_helen wrote 1 day ago:
Kinda glad this is the case. When people go out of their way to avoid
common sense they should be punished.
Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground.
There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the next oil
and therefore greedy people want to get in early on. But this blinds
them to the basic chemistry and physics.
m4rtink wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
Yeah, it might make sense for some industrial processes as natural
gas or coal replacement, but not really anywhere else just because
all the tricky leaks and invisible fire hazards.
thewhitetulip wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
With solar/wind oligarchs can't charge you every time you charge your
EV at home
Hydrogen was meant to replace Oil so that the oligarchs can keep
their oligarchy rather than "pull themselves up by bootstraps"
rswail wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
Green hydrogen makes sense as a way to ship solar power to places
that don't have it.
Using it as a car fuel only makes sense as an interim step to full
renewable/EVs.
Internal combustion engines, no matter what the fuel, are way more
complicated than electric motors. Doesn't matter how you slice and
dice the argument.
Hendrikto wrote 10 hours 28 min ago:
Also the losses are much higher when converting electricity to
hydrogen and then burning that hydrogen.
laughing_man wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
>When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be
punished.
You could say the same about EVs. Most people in the US who bought
an EV decided to go back to ICE for their next vehicle.
jjtheblunt wrote 18 hours 24 min ago:
> When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should
be punished.
This is the most ridiculous assertion i've seen today.
You'd shut down science, for example, and innovation in general.
fuzzfactor wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
Really, they shouldn't be punished, they should be rewarded if they
can become more sensible.
Positive incentive please :)
That is how EVs got here as soon as they did.
HPsquared wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
Synthetic fuels (including hydrogen) do still make a lot of sense for
heavy stuff like trucks, buses or trains, and aircraft where the
energy density is a big plus. Those are where you'd expect to see
hydrogen take off first, not passenger cars. Same as how diesel
started in trucks - expensive engines but economical when amortized
and worth it for heavy usage applications.
If they couldn't crack those areas, no chance in the highly
competitive passenger car space.
masklinn wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
> Synthetic fuels (including hydrogen) do still make a lot of sense
for heavy stuff like trucks, buses or trains
Synthetic fuels don't "make a lot of sense" for "heavy stuff", rail
electrification has been the norm everywhere the capital costs were
justified (it's at about 30% worldwide, 57% in europe, some
countries like Switzerland are nearly 100% electric).
Synthetic fuels make sense for autonomy reasons when you can't
tether the "heavy stuff", but fuel engines absolutely suck for
heavy work loads, electric transmissions started being a thing
before railway electrification even was.
And of course those are situations where hydrogen sucks, fuel is
useful there because it's a stable and dense form of energy storage
which is reasonably easy to move about without infrastructure, you
can bring a bunch of barrels on a trailer, or tank trailers, to an
off-grid site and fuel all your stuff (including electric
generators). With hydrogen you're now wasting a significant portion
of the energy you brought in trying to keep the hydrogen from going
wild.
aunty_helen wrote 19 hours 8 min ago:
Trucks and busses would be better off with battery swaps at depo
like electric forklifts do. More mileage more towing weight for
trucks, just stack more batteries. Overweight? Use a diesel.
Trains is an easy one, over head lines.
Aircraft, I think short distance trips <1hr maybe otherwise
biofuel. Likely weâll see biofuels widely used by 2040. Electric
motors on a 777, Iâm not sure.
MaKey wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
With the upcoming MCS charging standard you won't need battery
swaps for trucks or busses. Even today you have trucks that can
charge with up to 400 kW, which is good enough for charging
during mandatory pauses or downtimes.
dmix wrote 21 hours 42 min ago:
> When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should
be punished.
Sounds like it was mostly just people reacting to government
incentives. Subsidized markets acting irrational.
aunty_helen wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
Politicians are conduits. Someone wanted this to happen.
But yea, subsidies. I've been on many a call where "there's govt
funding available if we shape this like x" is one of the major
selling points.
dmix wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
Politics has a habit of being very insular once elections are
finished.
There will always be a strong belief in artificially changing
market behaviour by simply throwing money at it and hoping it
sticks. When the money dries up the public tends to go back to
"what's practical and affordable?".
belorn wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
People looked at how the cost of wind and solar went down and made a
assumption that green hydrogen would follow. The reasoning was that
the cost of green hydrogen was energy, and thus at some point green
hydrogen would be too cheap to meter.
The whole energy plan of central/northen Europe, especially Germany,
was built for the last several decades on the idea that they would
combine wind, solar and cheap natural gas and then replace the
natural gas part with green hydrogen. In Sweden there were even
several municipalities that spear headed this by switching mass
transportation and heating towards hydrogen, initially with hydrogen
produced through natural gas, as a way to get ahead on this plan.
The more sensible project were the green steel project. As experts in
green hydrogen said consistently said through those decades, is that
green steel would be the real test to make green hydrogen economical.
The economics of burning it for energy or transportation would come
several decades later, if ever. The green steel project however has
not ended up as planned and gotten severely delayed and has seen a
cost increase by an estimated 10x. municipalities are now giving up
the hydrogen infrastructure and giving it an early retirement, as
maintenance costs was significantly underestimated. There is very
little talk now about replacing natural gas with green hydrogen, and
the new plan is instead to replace the natural gas with bio fuels,
hinted at carbon capture, at some unspecified time.
ACCount37 wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
Agreed on "green steel".
In general, "green hydrogen" makes the most sense if used as a
chemical feedstock that replace natural gas in industrial processes
- not to replace fossil fuels or be burned for heat.
On paper, hydrogen has good energy density, but taking advantage of
that in truth is notoriously hard. And for things that demand
energy dense fuels, there are many less finicky alternatives.
dotancohen wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
I had to Google what is green hydrogen. It is hydrogen produced by
electrolysis.
If you've already got the electricity for electrolysis, would it
not be more efficient and mechanically simpler to store it in a
battery and power an electric motor?
ben_w wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
> If you've already got the electricity for electrolysis, would
it not be more efficient and mechanically simpler to store it in
a battery and power an electric motor?
Yes, if you actually have the batteries.
Between around 2014-2024, the common talking point was "we're not
making enough batteries", and the way the discussions went it
felt like the internal models of people saying this had the same
future projections of batteries as the IEA has infamously
produced for what they think future PV will be: [1] I've not
noticed people making this claim recently. Presumably the scale
of battery production has become sufficient to change the mood
music on this meme.
HTML [1]: https://maartensteinbuch.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-gro...
roryirvine wrote 9 hours 35 min ago:
To be fair, there are still plenty of people on HN talking
about lack of battery capacity as a reason to delay solar/wind
rollout; I suspect it'll take a bit more time for the new
reality to sink in fully.
The fossil industry was always suspiciously keen on green
hydrogen - partly because the path to green hydrogen would
likely have involved a long detour through grey and blue
hydrogen, and partly because it gave them an excuse to lobby
against phasing out natural gas for domestic heating/cooking
("we need to retain that infrastructure to enable the hydrogen
economy!").
You can see the same thing happening in their support for
Carbon Capture and Storage - "we're going to need the oil
producers to enable carbon sequestration, so we might as well
keep drilling new wells to keep their skills fresh!"...
rswail wrote 16 hours 59 min ago:
Green hydrogen is a way to ship solar power elsewhere that
doesn't have it, similar to a battery, but with the advantage of
being able to be piped/pumped/liquified etc.
adrian_b wrote 9 hours 32 min ago:
For that purpose and for long-term storage of energy and for
aircraft/spacecraft, synthetic hydrocarbons are much better.
Making synthetic hydrocarbons was already done at large scale
during WWII, but it was later abandoned due to the availability
of very cheap extracted oil.
So when oil was not available, the economy could still be based
on synthetic hydrocarbons even with the inefficient methods of
that time (it is true however that at that time they captured
CO2 from burning coal or wood, not directly from the air, where
it is diluted).
Today one could develop much more efficient methods for
synthesizing hydrocarbons from CO2 and water, but the level of
investment for such technologies has been negligible in
comparison with the money wasted for research in non-viable
technologies, like using hydrogen instead of hydrocarbons, or
with the money spent in things like AI datacenters.
throwaway473825 wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
Liquid hydrogen loses 1% of its volume per day due to boil-off.
Hydrogen is incredibly difficult to move without huge energy
losses.
pfdietz wrote 9 hours 20 min ago:
It would be moved by pipeline as a compressed gas, not as
LH2. The US already has > 1000 miles of H2 pipelines.
closewith wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
All between co-located industrial generators and consumers.
H2 pipelines are DOA due to the absurd compression costs.
pfdietz wrote 8 hours 4 min ago:
A BTU of hydrogen requires more energy to compress to a
given pressure than a BTU of natural gas, but hydrogen
also has lower viscosity, so less recompression is
needed. The point you raise does not rule out hydrogen
pipelines.
closewith wrote 7 hours 57 min ago:
It does, definitively.
Manuel_D wrote 19 hours 8 min ago:
The value proposition of hydrogen is energy density. Batteries
have low energy per unit of volume and awful energy density by
unit of mass. You will never, ever, fly across the Pacific on a
battery powered aircraft. Transoceanic shipping is also not
feasible with batteries (current and proposed battery powered
shopping lanes are short hops of a couple hundred kilometers or
less).
dotancohen wrote 18 hours 15 min ago:
The Toyota Mirai is a passenger vehicle, not an airplane nor a
transatlantic container ship.
ako wrote 15 hours 5 min ago:
True, but it is a good first step. Start small, increment to
larger solutions.
solatic wrote 15 hours 18 min ago:
Sure, but if the economics of hydrogen motors worked out for
planes and shipping, the argument is that it would also
economically work out for cars.
Manuel_D wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
Is suspect large trucks may eventually move to hydrogen,
but smaller passenger vehicles will stay on batteries. The
nature of hydrogen containment favors larger capacity, on
account of better volume to surface area ratios.
bryanlarsen wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
Many jurisdictions require that commercial drivers take a
30 minute break every 4 hours. Those that don't should.
Those stops make battery trucking feasible.
And if you want to stop for 5 minutes instead of 30 you
can use battery swapping solutions like the one Janus
uses.
Batteries are feasible for long distance trucking today.
Green Hydrogen trucking uses 3X as much electricity as
using it directly. Trucking's biggest expense is fuel,
so that will be the killer factor ensuring battery will
beat hydrogen for long distance trucking.
wao0uuno wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
I worked in one of the top 5 logistics companies in the
world and I can recall them investing in electric trucks
and charging infrastructure. Idea was to have
strategically placed overhead lines that could recharge
trucks without need for them to stop. Can't recall any
mentions of hydrogen.
Thiez wrote 8 hours 22 min ago:
I have seen at least one stretch of highway in Germany
that has overhead power lines for trucks. I think it's
a very interesting concept: the big downside of
batteries is slow charging (compared to diesel) and
limited range. Charging while driving on highways would
largely solve these downsides.
Joker_vD wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
Cargo trolleybuses? An interesting idea.
MaKey wrote 12 hours 2 min ago:
>Is suspect large trucks may eventually move to hydrogen
[...]
They won't, why would they? The number of hydrogen gas
stations is going down and the price is going up.
Batteries are good enough already - the Mercedes eActros
600 with its 600 kWh battery has a range of 500 km.
sandworm101 wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
Life expectancy. A hydrogen tank can be refilled
forever. A battery is normally limited to a few
thousand cycles. A truck, or airplane, is expected to
be fueled/recharged daily for decades. A car is
designed to survive the length of a standard lease.
Those running fleets of trucks/aircraft will always
care more than car owners about long-term ownership
costs.
bjelkeman-again wrote 9 hours 4 min ago:
There is something called hydrogen embrittlement.
Where hydrogen causes cracks in metal.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embri...
closewith wrote 8 hours 38 min ago:
Yeah, Li-ion batteries already have comparable life
cycles to hydrogen tanks 1-2k fills/recharges,
_but_ batteries are improving rapidly and tanks are
already a mature technology.
vel0city wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
This isn't necessarily true. Most cylinders storing
compressed gasses need to be hydrostatically tested
in regular intervals to ensure continued safety and
will need replacement when they fail. Other kinds of
composite cylinders have fixed ages where they should
be replaced.
sandworm101 wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
Inspection is expected. In the transport industry,
all sorts of parts need regular inspection.
Batteries are different. Performance loss over time
leading to replacement decisions is unussual.
Virtually no other part degrades in performance the
moment you use it. Lots of parts have time limits,
especially in aerospace, but few degrade. Those
running fleets see this as unussual and
unpredictable which, at scale, means extra expense.
A tank that needs inspection every decade is a
known problem. A battery that looses 1% to 5%
capacity every year, depending on weather/use
factors, is harder math.
tedk-42 wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
Lol yes lets just casually plug into a 1.2MW charger
and not take down the electricity of the nearby town
while I charge my truck.
Nuclear trucks and boats are what I envision so maybe
I'm the one who needs a reality check.
shaky-carrousel wrote 10 hours 8 min ago:
Well, of course countries would have to modernize
their electrical grid. But that's a good outcome.
throwaway473825 wrote 13 hours 26 min ago:
Hydrogen was marketed as a stopgap until batteries are
good enough. Well, batteries are good enough for trucks
now: [1] Once you go battery electric, you never go back.
It's the most efficient way to move vehicles.
HTML [1]: https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-su...
somat wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
I think that is the way it is headed. But you never know.
Sometimes when comparing it helps me to reduce these things down
to lower levels.
What is a battery? A chemical cell to store hydrogen and
oxygen(true, it does not "have" to be hydrogen and oxygen but it
usually is) to later get energy out of. For example
lead-acid(stores the oxygen in the lead-sulfate plates and the
hydrogen the the sulfuric acid liquid) or nickle-metal(charges
into separate oxygen and hydrogen compounds, discharges into
water) the lithium cell replaces hydrogen with lithium. Consider
a pure hydrogen, oxygen fuel-cell, it could be run in
reverse(charged) to get the hydrogen and oxygen and run
forward(discharged) to get electricity out of it. So it is a sort
of battery, a gas battery. Gas batteries are generally a bad
idea, mainly because they have to be so big. Much time and effort
is spent finding liquids that can undergo the oxidation/reduction
reactions at a reasonable temperature. But now consider that
there is quite a bit of oxygen in the air, if we did not have to
store the oxygen our battery could be much more efficient, This
is the theory behind free-air batteries. But what if our battery
did not have to run at a reasonable temperature. We could then
use a heat engine to get the energy out. And thus the Mirai. They
are shipping half of the charged fluid to run in a high
temperature reaction with the other half(atmospheric oxygen) to
drive a heat engine that provides motive power.
As opposed to having the customer run the full chemical plant to
charge and store the charged fluids to run in a fuel cell to turn
a electric motor for motive power. Honestly they are both insane
in their own way. But shipping high energy fluids tend to have
better energy density. Perhaps the greatest problem in this case
is that it is in gaseous form(not very dense) so has no real
advantage. Unfortunately one of the best ways to retain hydrogen
in a liquid form is carbon.
overfeed wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
Before the introduction of 800V charging architectures, long
charge-time for EVs was a big con. Hydrogen Cell vehicles were
supposed to be EVs with drastically faster fill-up times. The
tradeoff was more complex delivery infrastructure.
xxs wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
Yet, most of the world has had 3 phase (400V phase to phase)
for ages. At the wall.
Symbiote wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
North America has 3 phase power for any necessary purpose
(factory, DC rapid charging station etc). It's 480V/227V.
overfeed wrote 14 hours 47 min ago:
I don't know why you prefixed with "Yet" when I clearly spelt
out the trade-offs and contrasts in distribution between H2
and electricity.
The Mirai goes from empty to full in 5 minutes or less -
which compares very well with fossil-fuel burners. Now that
every OEM has abandoned battery-swapping, how fast can EV
batteries be safely charged with the said 3 phases? How long
were the charging time when the Mirai was debuted? That was
the trade-off Toyota was hoping to fall on the good side of,
nevermind the Japanese government bet on hydrogen and
whatever incentives are available for Toyota.
scraptor wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
The idea was to transition from coal to natural gas while using
solar and wind to reduce fuel consumption, thereby significantly
reducing CO2 emissions. Any claims of hydrogen being burned were
either lies to the public to get the gas plants built despite the
non-green optics or lies to investors as part of a fraud scheme.
pfdietz wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
Hydrogen burning could have a place in an all-renewable grid: it
could be much more economical for very long duration storage than
using batteries. The last 5-10% of the grid becomes much cheaper
to do with renewables if something like hydrogen (or other
e-fuels) is available.
A competitor that might be even better is very long duration high
temperature thermal storage, if capex minimization is the
priority.
jacquesm wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
That was extremely stupid of them then. Hydrogen has been very good
at one thing: subsidy extraction. But I don't think it was or ever
will be a viable fuel for planetary transportation.
throwaway473825 wrote 21 hours 26 min ago:
Sweden has very little natural gas in its energy mix: [1] I highly
doubt that hydrogen heating was ever considered. It's usually
pushed by the gas lobby (since most hydrogen comes from gas), and
Sweden doesn't have a strong gas lobby.
HTML [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-s...
aunty_helen wrote 21 hours 42 min ago:
Good context. It's a shame none of these people did high school
chemistry.
I do remember there being some news about the steel manf.
I wonder if further advancements in rocketry are adding H2 tech
that could help us manage the difficulties of dealing with the
stuff. It still only makes sense in very specific circumstances.
Like when you need energy in tank form.
But I think battery / biofuel is the future.
foota wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
> Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the
ground.
See: the Hindenburg disaster
afternote: There's the potential for an amazing pun in here, but I
don't think I quite did the opportunity justice.
beAbU wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
Pointing to the Hindenburg as an example of why hydrogen is a bad
idea is the same as pointing to Chernobyl as an example of why
nuclear is a bad idea.
wait...
AngryData wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
Ehh, the Hindenburg had a flammable skin. Barrage balloons from the
World Wars were most often filled with hydrogen and yet were
extremely difficult to ignite or take down even with purpose build
incindiary ammo for that purpose shows hydrogen balloons can be
safe. Often they would be riddled with dozens of holes but still
take many hours for them to lose enough hydrogen to float back down
to the ground.
The only real downsides are slow travel speed and vulnerability to
extreme storms since there arent many places to put it with a large
enough hanger even with days of warning beforehand.
cyberax wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
That's because regular bullets are actually pretty cold,
especially by the time they reach the height of anti-air
balloons.
But hydrogen itself is SCARY. It has an extremely wide range of
ignitable concentrations, and it has very low ignition energy. It
also tends to leak through ~everything.
AngryData wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
But hydrogen is also so easy to produce on demand that you can
design your balloon to be at small positive pressure all the
time and always leaks outwards into the open air. If oxygen is
allowed to leaked in undetected, yeah that's a death trap. The
same if hydrogen leaked into semi contained oxygen enclosures.
But leaking through the skin of the balloon to open sky even
with decent size holes and a bit of positive pressure doesn't
ignite particularly well, despite hydrogen's wide range of
ignition conditions.
It is not such a fool proof technology that everybody should
have one, but to me building and operating a hydrogen balloon
isn't dissimilar to running a steam locomotive. It can be
dangerous if done badly or incorrectly, but it can also be done
safely with pretty well known and understood technologies and
methods and practices. And considering the massive efficiency
of lighter-than-air transport I find it hard to dismiss its
potential even so long after their heyday and previous
problems.
nandomrumber wrote 1 day ago:
There is a great way to store, transport, and use hydrogen:
Bind it to various length carbon chains.
When burned as an energy source the two main byproducts are carbon
dioxide which is an essential plant growth nutrient, and water which
is also essential to plant growth.
Environmentalists will love it!
And they can prise my turbo diesel engines from my cold dead hands.
_fizz_buzz_ wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
We live (or at least used live) in a very nice climate equilibrium
with the CO2 level we had. Pushing us into another climate
equilibrium looks very dangerous for human civilization. However I
concede that it might be advantageous for certain plants, but I am
not a plant so I am mostly concerned about human civilization.
masklinn wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
> However I concede that it might be advantageous for certain
plants
Plants are highly dependent on their climactic settings, upending
a climate equilibrium is awful to the average plant. And looking
at past climactic change events, "another climate equilibrium" is
something that happens on kiloyear scales (ages, in
geochronologic units).
ViewTrick1002 wrote 22 hours 13 min ago:
The problem is all the effort = energy you need to spend collecting
carbon atoms.
mapontosevenths wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which makes the world warmer on
average. It also lowers the PH levels of the oceans.
If the oceans die, its very likely that many or even most humans
will also. As a human I am pretty strongly opposed to dying, but
thats just, like, my opinion man.
dredmorbius wrote 19 hours 43 min ago:
It's possible to synthesise hydrocarbon analogues of
petroluem-based fuels. The problem to date has been that this
isn't cost-competitive with petroleum, though the difference is
narrower than you might expect. Most famously, a Google X
Project attempted this and succeeded technically, but the
economics were unfavourable: Project Foghorn: < [1] >. Both
Germany and South Africa have performed synfuel production (from
coal) at industrial scale since the 1930s / 1950s, respectively.
Using non-fossil carbon is largely the same chemistry; the
process does in fact scale.
Fischer-Tropsch and Sabatier process can both operate with
scavenged CO2. There's been some work since the 1990s utilising
seawater as a CO2 source, with CO2 capture being far more
efficient than from atmospheric sources.
Whilst hydrocarbons have numerous downsides (whether sourced from
fossil or renewable sources), they are also quite convenient,
exceedingly well-proven, and tremendously useful. In some
applications, particularly marine and aviation transport, there
are few if any viable alternatives.
I've commented on this numerous times at HN over the years: <
[2] >.
HTML [1]: https://x.company/projects/foghorn/
HTML [2]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=fals...
bobthepanda wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
The major problem with hydrocarbons today is that we are
releasing carbon dioxide stored hundreds of millions of years
ago.
If, theoretically, you could produce hydrocarbons from the carbon
dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere, then it could be a
substantial reduction in net carbon dioxide being added; and it
would be compatible with the fuel infrastructure of today.
thrownthatway wrote 18 hours 1 min ago:
What must have been the composition of the atmosphere all those
hundreds of millions of years ago for all that carbon dioxide
to have been removed from the atmosphere and sequestered as
biological matter, to then be buried and reacted to form vast
quantities of hydrocarbons.
The bind moggles.
mapontosevenths wrote 17 hours 51 min ago:
Your mind should boggle. It's all pretty amazing.
2.5 billion years ago the earth would have been uninhabitable
to most modern life. Single celled life evolved in those
conditions and began creating glucose and oxygen from CO2 and
water. When those primitive lifeforms died some of them
became oil and the CO2 was sequestered.
Over time the CO2 levels dropped until about 20 million years
ago the CO2 levels fell to about 300ppm. That's when life as
we know it really took off. Yes, it took BILLIONS of years to
get there.
Humans have only existed for about 200k years. During that
time our CO2 levels have mostly been below about 280ppm. The
are now at 429ppm and are rising exponentially. [0]
[0]
HTML [1]: https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
thrownthatway wrote 17 hours 42 min ago:
What role, if any, did carbonate mineral formation have in
sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?
adrian_b wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
In the beginning, the oceans were acidic, because they
were formed by the condensation of volcanic gases, which
consisted of water, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and
hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride (i.e. hydrochloric
acid) and a few other less abundant acids.
In time, the oceans have become less and less acidic, by
dissolving from the volcanic silicate rocks the oxides of
the alkaline metals and alkali earth metals, i.e. mainly
of sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium. This
dissolution has affected both the rocks on the bottom of
the oceans and the continental rocks, where rain has
washed the soluble oxides, transporting them through
rivers to the oceans.
At some point, so much of the alkaline and alkali earth
metals from the volcanic rocks have been dissolved that
the oceans have become slightly alkaline instead of
acidic, like they are today.
At that time, the carbonates of calcium and magnesium
have precipitated from sea water, forming sedimentary
rocks. Also around that time, many living beings have
evolved mechanisms for controlling this precipitation
process, in order to build skeletons for themselves. This
has resulted in the fact that many sedimentary rocks are
not formed by direct precipitation from sea water, but by
precipitation from sea water into skeletons, followed by
depositing on the bottom the skeletons of dead living
beings.
Now, with increasing concentration of CO2, there is the
danger that the oceans will become so acidic as to
reverse this, dissolving again a part of the carbonate
rocks, including the skeletons of many living beings that
are made of carbonates.
There is an equilibrium between the concentration of CO2
in water and in air, depending on temperature and
pressure. When the CO2 from water precipitated with
calcium or magnesium into rocks, that has drawn more CO2
from air into the water, until a new equilibrium was
reached, at a reduced concentration of CO2 in the air. If
carbonates would be dissolved by acidic sea water, that
would liberate CO2, a part of which would go into the
air, further increasing the concentration there.
Thus the formation or destruction of carbonate rocks and
skeletons adds a positive feedback to the changes of the
CO2 concentration in the air, which has the potential to
be bad for us.
Even worse is the fact that this is only one of multiple
positive feedback mechanisms that can be triggered by
changes in the CO2 concentration in the air, which make
very difficult or impossible any long term predictions.
Joker_vD wrote 7 hours 46 min ago:
I am fairly certain they teach the gist of all of that
in even in school-level textbooks on biology/geography.
badc0ffee wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
Factually correct, but you also missed the joke.
idiotsecant wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
It was only kinda a joke. It's a joke in the same way that
uncle on Facebook makes jokes. You know the one.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
Take The Great Barrier Reef for example.
Thereâs more of it now than in the reefs recorded history.
Well, 2022 data:
HTML [1]: https://www.aims.gov.au/information-centre/news-and-stor...
mapontosevenths wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
Bad news, there has been a fourth great bleaching event going
on since January of 23. This time 80+% of all reefs have been
impacted and the consensus seems to be that its unlikely there
will be any reefs left at all before too long.
HTML [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/13/co...
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
Yes yes, The Sky Is Fallingâ¢.
All the more reason to give our ounce great nation away to
fuck wits who think shooting up Jews is a reasonable idea,
making electricity expensive chasing a target that will have
approximately no impact on global carbon emissions and
further drive manufacturing out of the country, all the while
making even my generation (Xillenials) worse off now than we
were ten years ago.
Young people and the working poor? They can freeze in the
dark on the streets, fuck them.
Turn up unannounced and utter the shibboleth asylum seeker
and we roll out the red carpet. Low interest loans so they
can start businesses, and priory social housing. Fuck the
locals.
And you cum guzzlers keep voting for more of it.
Thereâs only so much ideology we can take. Check One
Nations recently polling.
Iâm encouraging young people to get in to the trades,
especially brick laying and masonry because if things keep
going they way they areâ¦
Weâre going to need more walls.
Know what Iâm sayinâ.
asploder wrote 12 hours 34 min ago:
I like the false equivalence between reducing air pollution
and not doing hate crimes against Jewish people. I
havenât asked them all individually, but Iâm pretty
sure my Jewish friends all enjoy breathing clean air.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 7 hours 57 min ago:
Youâre going to have to explain how you read from what
I wrote.
From the site guidelines:
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
criticize. Assume good faith.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mapontosevenths wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
> Know what Iâm sayinâ.
I do, and if I were you I would stop to think about your
priors. You have stacked an awful lot of ideas on top of
each other to build a world view that has lies,
misinformation, and unsound science at the base of it.
Worse, a lot of it is selfish, but in a way that only works
if the entire global economy is a zero sum game.
Enlightened self-interest can be right, and even noble, but
only if you know the game well enough to comprehend why
altruism is still important, and you don't. The world is
NOT a zero sum game, and this kind of self-interest is the
bad kind.
Some of the logic at the top of your pyramid would be
sound, if the bottom wasn't a pile of mush. A few minor
points:
1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now (for net
new electricity). It's been that way for awhile now, but
one particular bubble tries really hard to stop people from
learning that. If cost is your concern you should be
pushing for more solar, and less of the fuel you literally
set fire to and have to keep digging up forever until it
runs out.
2) Giving money to hostile Arab nations who hate you is not
going to stop anyone from "took 'er jorbs"ing you. In fact,
you would have more money if your car didn't literally burn
your money constantly and also require expensive oil
changes and other maintenance constantly.
3) Pretty much everything you said about loans and housing
is based on absolute fabrications, or extreme
exaggerations. Even if it weren't, other people receiving
assistance doesn't actually cost you anything. The national
debt has INCREASED at a record pace under Trump, exactly as
it does during every Republican presidency, and it's not
because Trump loves helping people so much.
Republican presidents have added about $1.4 trillion per
four-year term, compared to $1.2 trillion added by
Democrats since 1913. During my lifetime there has never
been a Republican president who was fiscally conservative
in the slightest. Trump is somehow making it worse while
also letting children starve thanks to cutting USAID.
4) There's nothing wrong with the trades, if your body can
physically handle it for 40-50 years. It's good and honest
work, and we need more folks to go into them. It's also
likely to be more stable and less demanding than the kind
of work most of us here do.
5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing
jobs? The only reasons humans have them is that humans (in
some places) are cheaper than robots. Robots are getting
cheaper every day. Moving them here will get us a few (even
richer) billionaires. Not more jobs (at least not the kind
you're probably thinking of). It will also increase the
cost of ALL THE THINGS.
The worst part of this mistake is that while normal people
spend most of their money billionaires spend only a
miniscule fraction of their income. Billionaire money just
idles non-productively most of the time, or is engaged in
parasitic interest gathering via obscure financial
instruments. Giving money to billionaires is kind of like
throwing it in the garbage. Giving it to the middle class
is good for everyone, because they buy things and drive
demand.
Lastly, I'm also a Xennial, and I have to say that I'm
better off now than 10 years ago. Maybe I just made better
choices?
Either way, drink plenty of water before bed. It will help
with the hangover in the morning.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 13 hours 51 min ago:
> Republican presidents have added about $1.4 trillion
per four-year term, compared to $1.2 trillion added by
Democrats since 1913.
That doesnât sound right, so I spend twenty three
seconds looking it up:
New Report Reveals Democrats Generated 90% of Federal
Debt Held by the Public since WWII - [1] As of April 5,
2024, the national debt has grown by about $6.17
trillion, or 21.7%, since Joe Biden was inaugurated in
2021, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. - [2]
Joe Biden - $6.66 trillion -
HTML [1]: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/repu...
HTML [2]: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-...
HTML [3]: https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/banking...
antonvs wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
Your last source contradicts your first (partisan)
source, and also mentions:
> The national debt grew by more than $8.1 trillion
during Donald Trumpâs presidency, the largest
four-year increase in the nationâs history.
Ray20 wrote 14 hours 6 min ago:
> 1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now
No, that's simply not true.
It's cheaper for MOST of the year, but overall, it's more
expensive. Because you can't just tell people, "Well,
now, during this cold January, please don't waste
electricity because our panels are producing almost
nothing." You either need batteries that store energy for
weeks of consumption, or backup with fossil fuels, and in
any case, that makes solar panels more expensive than
fossil fuels.
> Trump is somehow making it worse while also letting
children starve thanks to cutting USAID.
It's very strange. In all cases of interaction with the
USAID that I know about directly from those interacting
with it, and not from media sources, in EVERY case it was
liberal propaganda or direct anti-Trump propaganda. And
none of the starving children that I know about directly
from those who interacted with them, and not from the
media, have ever received any food aid from.
I know, of course, that this is an anecdotal case, but I
prefer to trust people with whom I am at least
superficially acquainted, rather than media companies
that are apparently run by pedophiles.
> 5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing
jobs? The only reasons humans have them is that humans
(in some places) are cheaper than robots.
Because the era of US hegemony is ending, and at some
point you simply won't be able to live off the rest of
the world. At that point, you'll either have production
or you'll simply starve to death. Because food (and
robots) don't fall from the sky. And if you don't produce
it (and don't take it from the rest of the world through
your hegemony), you'll starve and die.
> Billionaire money just idles non-productively most of
the time
American workers spend as much money EACH YEAR as
billionaires accumulated over generations (mostly in the
form of productive capacity, not idling in the piles)
> and I have to say that I'm better off now than 10 years
ago. Maybe I just made better choices?
The best choice is to rob the rest of the world and live
off them? Well, congratulations on making the better
choice that allows you, unlike the REST OF THE WORLD, not
work for less than $2 an hour (as 90% of the Earth's
population does, thanks to American hegemony).
adrian_b wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
You do not need backup with fossil fuels.
You need backup with hydrocarbon fuels synthesized from
water and CO2, like all the living beings have done for
billions of years.
Storing energy in hydrocarbons has a lower efficiency
for short term storage, but it has a better efficiency
for long term storage, in which case batteries would
auto discharge.
So energy storage must use a combination of batteries
for short term (for a few days at most) together with
methods useful for long term (from a few months to many
years), including hydrocarbon synthesis, pumped water,
etc.
Synthesizing hydrocarbons from concentrated CO2 has
already been done at large scale almost a century ago.
Now there are much better methods, e.g. using the
electrolysis of CO2.
The most difficult part remains capturing the CO2 from
normal air and not from exhaust gases where it is
concentrated.
This is a difficult engineering problem, but one solved
by bacteria billions of years ago, and which probably
would already have some good solution if any serious
and well-funded research effort would have been done in
this direction, instead of only talking about how it
would be desirable but without any concrete action.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 13 hours 21 min ago:
> You either need batteries that store energy for weeks
of consumption, or backup with fossil fuels, and in any
case, that makes solar panels more expensive than
fossil fuels.
I love the wild mental gymnastics and cherry picking
data these people put themselves through in order to
delude themselves in to believing solar is cheaper than
gas.
How can it be, when you need to build both. Or freeze
in the dark.
As you said, in practice you either need batteries that
donât exist and would be prohibitively expensive
because they would sit idle most the year where only
hours to days of backup are required, but in winter you
need weeks of storage and the output from the panels
are significantly reduced so you need to massively
overbuildâ¦
OR you need to build gas peaker plants, which also sit
idle most the year, but need to be run frequently and
maintained to ensure theyâre ready to run when
needed.
The real world data is available for anyone who wants
to run the numbers.
I was in Adelaide and participated in the discussions
where Dr Barry Brook[1] and others ran the numbers over
ten years ago. Exhaustively ran the numbers, both with
real world data from recently built solar and wind, and
optimistic projections of future improvements
The fundamentals havenât changed. Even if the panels
themselves were free, the amount or steel and concrete
required to replace total global energy requirements
with solar and wind is⦠itâs incomprehensible.
If I recall correctly, it worked out to requiring
something absurd like more copper, steel, and concrete,
than humans have produced to date (2013 figures) since
the start of the Industrial Revolution, every year for
the next fifty years just to replace existing energy
production and distribution infrastructure, and in so
doing we would double or triple atmospheric carbon
dioxide levels. Weâd then have to work out how to
pull those emissions back out of the atmosphere, which
wound require further resource use to produce the
infrastructure to generate the energy required to
extract and sequester the carbon dioxide.
Compare to what weâre doing now which has barely
scratched the surface in replacing global energy
requirements, with no reduction in carbon dioxide
levels.
It all makes a pretty strong case for existing nuclear
technology (Gen IV / Gen IV+) to give us time (hundreds
of years with existing know uranium reserves) to
perfect fast breeder technology so we can use Thorium
as nuclear fuel for thousands of years.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Brook_(sci...
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 16 hours 1 min ago:
All in good spirit:
> 1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now (for
net new electricity)
Youâre going to have to show your calculations with
references for LCOE - Levelised Cost of Electricity.
Iâve run the numbers, you can find them and references
in my comment history, and Iâm not impressed with
solar. Solar needs batteries, or some other type of
storage, and there are roughly none of those in service
so we can only theoretically predict life time costs. I
canât be fucked repeating myself here at the moment for
the benefit of someone who thinks Iâm a right wing nut
job or whatever. Wind too.
> 2) Giving money more money
Again, youâre going to have to show the numbers here.
Prove that an equivalent electric vehicle I need for my
job is going to be cheaper on a total cost of ownership
basis. This is going to be difficult to prove as there
isnât an equivalent EV that can do the miles per day
required. And even if there is, can it do it for
500,000km on the same engine and gearbox / battery
whatever? Without getting StacheD[1] in my garage while I
sleep? It remains to be seem.
> 3) Pretty much â¦
No no no. The correct answer is: Iâm an Australian
living in Australia, reading my own governments policies,
the social welfare entitlements to new arrivals, seeing
the result of zoning restrictions across the road, and
experiencing the results of the locals having a fertility
rate below replacement, 100,000 abortions a year,
resulting in the âneedâ to import 500,000 foreigners
a year from counties no one wants to live in. I actually
prefer white culture, I think itâs better, and that we
should import more people from the countries we
traditionally have, including India, China, Japan, the
Koreas, Vietnam, and the Europeans too. Iâm not
racists, I just like the level of multiculturalism we had
not this shoot up a Jewish festival / pro Palestine
bullshit.[2]
4) There's nothing wrong with the trades
No shit cunty. I am a tradesman with ⦠28 years
experience in and adjacent to fabrication / manufacturing
/ primary industries. Iâve also worked as remote-hands
for the likes of Google and Akamai in data centres, so a
bit of technical experience. I also have some higher
education qualifications, and acquaintances in academia.
> 5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing
jobs?
Now listen here mate ;) because lots of people, but
particularly men, some women too, enjoy making things,
breaking things, building things, and getting dirty.
Weâve been doing it for millennia and itâs got us
this far. Itâs my belief that taking that away from
society is going to turn out to be a general bad idea, if
it ever eventuates.
> I'm better off now than 10 years ago
So am I, for various reasons. Mostly luck really. But
that doesnât negate the numbers. Houses cost more years
of income, food costs more hours of labour, eggs cost
more than chickens! on a per kg basis. Rent around here
tends to cost more than one third of income, which is the
definition of housing stress. I wouldnât necessarily
want to be a young person starting out today. The young
people around here who are winning are in the trades and
come from families who made at least some good choices
and can offer finance from the Bank of Mum & Dad, so
thereâs some hope for âem.
I donât drink alcohol, and I donât smoke.
____
Edited to add:
> Either way, drink plenty of water before bed. It will
help with the hangover in the morning.
It sort of doesnât though. Most of the effects of
alcohol consumption that result in a hangover are caused
by an accumulation of acetaldehyde[5] in the blood, the
clearance of which is rate limited by an aldehyde
dehydrogenase enzyme[6]. That is to say, the clearance
of acetaldehyde isnât rate limited by water â¦
And the dehydration hypothesis can be debunked
empirically by anyone who drinks, for example, beer,
which, around here, tends to contain less than 7% alcohol
by volume, so beer drinkers are getting a lot of water
already and yet they get hungover too. So it canât be
the water.
You canât say Iâm not thorough, and if you check my
comment history youâll find a multi-year period where
most of my comments contained extensive references,
because that used to be the done thing around here.
_____
Try not to characterise everyone who disagrees with you
as wrong, uneducated, out of touch, or whatever. Some of
us have been watching and living this slow moving train
wreck and we reckon our country deserves better. Weâre
not uneducated, we are politically engaged, we donât
place all the blame on brown people or whatever. We voted
No to the Voice[3] because we see ourselves and each
other as literally one nation. Weâre not racists,
weâre not homophobic or whatever, but the + can go fuck
themselves.[3]
Anyways, I appreciate your thoughtful response, and
appreciate the conversation (Y)
1. StacheD - [1] 2. [2] 3. Referendum on the Indigenous
Voice to Parliament - [3] 4. Aussie comedian Jim Jeffries
on â+â [4] 5. [5] 6. aldehyde dehydrogenase ADLH2 -
ALDH2 plays a crucial role in maintaining low blood
levels of acetaldehyde during alcohol oxidation.[7] In
this pathway (ethanol to acetaldehyde to acetate), the
intermediate structures can be toxic, and health problems
arise when those intermediates cannot be cleared.[3] When
high levels of acetaldehyde occur in the blood, facial
flushing, lightheadedness, palpitations, nausea, and
general "hangover" symptoms occur. It also is thought to
be the cause of a medical condition known as the alcohol
flush reaction, also known as "Asian flush" or "Oriental
flushing syndrome". -
HTML [1]: https://youtube.com/@stachedtraining?si=Lp6dDc5w...
HTML [2]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-16/bondi-bea...
HTML [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Voice_t...
HTML [4]: https://youtube.com/shorts/zoPxLAE6jEM?si=veUBBH...
HTML [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetaldehyde
HTML [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldehyde_dehydroge...
itishappy wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
Yes yes, The Sky Is Fallingâ¢. :)
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
Haha! Yeah, embarrassing to say that then go on to write
that screed.
Time for a top-up!
Intermernet wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
I think you've been listening to the wrong people. That's a
whole lot of dog whistles in that screed.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 18 hours 30 min ago:
Right, donât address the substance of the message, just
drive-by-dismiss the concerns of a growing segment of
voters.
My comment you responded to didnât happen overnight.
Youâre welcome to go through my comment history and
address my concerns as detailed over the previous
thirteen years, many of which are much more level headed
and many contain references to thinkers much more
intelligent and way more eloquent than anything Iâll
ever write.
Braxton1980 wrote 22 hours 42 min ago:
"The picture is complex. Recovery here, fresh losses there.
While the recovery we reported last year was welcome news,
there are challenges ahead. The spectre of global annual coral
bleaching will soon become a reality."
This article also mentions that a recent large recovery was due
to el nino conditions
"Great Barrier Reef was reeling from successive disturbances,
ranging from marine heatwaves and coral bleaching to
crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and cyclone damage, with
widespread death of many corals especially during the heatwaves
of 2016 and 2017.
Since then, the Reef has rebounded. Generally cooler La Niña
conditions mean hard corals have recovered significant ground,
regrowing from very low levels after a decade of cumulative
disturbances to record high levels in 2022 across two-thirds of
the reef."
Not sure if you were trying to imply some long term recovery or
that global warming didn't hurt it because the article says
heatwaves were part of a many other conditions that caused
massive damage
nandomrumber wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
No one ever attract public support and funding by saying:
Donât Panic.
Everything is O.K.
â-
Edited to add: Rate limited so canât reply without creating
more alt accounts than Iâm willing to, so:
@Timon3 - thatâs actually a really good point, and I follow
at least a few folk that could be categorised as such at
least some of the time.
Braxton1980 wrote 10 hours 21 min ago:
Unless you have other evidence that this particular report
is exaggerating without justification you can't solely rely
on the fact that their opinions/results would benefit them
as evidence they are providing misinformation.
It's possible for information to be factual and opinions
to be justified from a source while that source also
benefits from the information/opinions existing.
I can easily provide counter examples from countless
situations that occur each year.
----
If you feel that all scientists and researchers have a
lower level of trust because of negative actions of some,
that's wrong of course because their reputations aren't
connected, but you try to confirm it. For example, find out
if a cooler than normal El Nino season would help coral
feeds (or whatever)
What you did was tell us you don't trust the information,
not because of something specific, but a concept/rule you
believe.
Considering you originally misrepresented their findings,
perhaps by accident, you should have done more to make your
case.
Timon3 wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
No, many people say exactly that and make a lot of money
doing so while also telling us that all the evidence is
fake.
mapontosevenths wrote 19 hours 42 min ago:
Trump asked for a billion. [0] He didn't get the whole
billion (as far as we know), but he's keeping up his end
of the deal.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-a...
dehrmann wrote 1 day ago:
> Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the
ground.
It's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its head around not
making engines. Ironically, the place hydrogen might work is
airplanes where the energy density of batteries doesn't work.
api wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
Biofuel makes more sense for airplanes. No conversion even
necessary. You could fuel up a 737 with properly formulated biofuel
and fly it now, though a lot of validation would be needed to be
generally allowed especially for passenger flights.
If we want easier to produce biofuels then LNG aviation makes
sense. We are flying LNG rockets already. You could go ahead and
design LNG planes now and theyâd emit less carbon even on fossil
natural gas. Existing turbofan jet engines could be retrofitted to
burn methane.
Biogas is incredibly easy to make to the point that there are
pretty easy designs online for off grid biogas digesters you can
use to run a generator. You can literally just turn a barrel upside
down in a slightly larger barrel full of water, shit, and food
waste, attach a hose to it, and as the inner barrel floats up it
fills with biogas under mild pressure that you can plug right into
things. May need to dry it for some applications since it might
contain some water vapor but thatâs not hard.
Industrial scale biogas is basically the same principle. Just large
scale, usually using sewage and farm waste.
LNG rockets also mean âgreenâ space launch is entirely
possible.
lstodd wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
LNG aviation does not make any more sense than H2 aviation. Even
LPG does not make any sense since you neither can haul 16 bar
fuel tanks, nor can you realistically maintain temperature for
1-2atm pressure. And any leak is not 'oh. look, a kerosene stain
on tarmac', it's ready-made fuel-air explosion.
On the plus side we would be able to retire airport fire engines
because they would never be able to get to a crash before it
completely burns out.
fuzzfactor wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
You can't get much better than ready-made, for rocketry.
As if LNG is effectively more dense in flight than ordinary
LPG, which doesn't need to be cryogenic to handle.
Armchair fuel experts do still provide food for thought though
;)
hogehoge51 wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
WTF , you are commenting about FCEV - these things dont have
engines!
The strategy clearly stated by Akio Toyoda is multiple power train
technology. You can listen to his interviews on the subject, some
are in Japanese, but as you have stated a clear and unambiguous
interpretation of Toyota's policy I will assume you have that
fluency.
(Automotive OEMs are assemblers, the parts come from the supply
chain starting with Tier 1 suppliers. In that sense TMC does not do
"making engines", but possibly the nuance and consequences here of
whether not it "wraps it's head" to "makes things", vs if it has
the capability to specify, manufacture distribute something at
scale with a globally localized supply chain AND adjust to consumer
demand/resource availability changes 5 years after the design start
- in this context i ask you, can you "wrap your head" around the
latest models that are coming out in every power train technology
fcev, (p)hev to bev)
WarmWash wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
Toyota has had this hydrogen bug since the early 90's.
What's that old meme?
Stop trying to make ____ happen, it's not going to happen.
hogehoge51 wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
The point I was trying to make was I'm not sure it was ever
about making something happen completely, but being prepared on
all fronts for whatever the outcome is.
Kaizen and JIT are not good for revolutionary change. So I
expect by bootstrapping different options early enough they can
act on real market pressure once the condition to accurately
assess the evidence is available.
For hydrogen getting to that point was a multi decade lead
time.
I suspect most western commentary on this topic comes from
people not understanding both how numerical/empirical based
Toyota are, how self aware of their potential weaknesses they
are, plus the ability of a Japanese business to hold to a multi
decade hedging initiative.
Braxton1980 wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
It might also be because the Japanese government works very hard to
have full employment and EVs require less labor.
dev1ycan wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
They are just too much in bed with big oil to want to switch,
instead they spend rnd on hydrogen in order to mess up with
renewables on purpose.
Braxton1980 wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
Hydrogen only makes electric vehicles look good and the only
alternative. In fact, if this purposeful which I doubt, it
probably helped stopped other companies from making hydrogen
WalterBright wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
> the place hydrogen might work is airplanes where the energy
density of batteries doesn't work.
How is that going to work? Cryogenic liquid hydrogen? High pressure
tanks? Those don't seem practical for an airplane.
What does work for airplanes is to use carbon atoms that hydrogen
atoms can attach to. Then, it becomes a liquid that can easily be
stored at room temperature in lightweight tanks. Very high energy
density, and energy per weight!
(I think it's called kerosene.)
saalweachter wrote 18 hours 18 min ago:
What if you just, like, put the hydrogen in a big balloon?
westmeal wrote 11 hours 8 min ago:
Dude so like, one time some guy did that and like the entire
thing just blew up bro. Seriously knockered.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
Diesel, kerosene, rocket propelled RP1, and fuel oil / bunker
fuel in the case of cargo ships.
Itâs not a coincidence that where easy of handling, storage
safety, and high energy density are needed everything seems to
converge on compression ignition medium to long chain liquid
hydrocarbons.
beAbU wrote 23 hours 36 min ago:
The Mirai is a fuel cell EV. There is no engine. Not sure what your
point is regarding engines?
Plasmoid wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
We're actually not that far off.
Right now, liquid fuels have about 10x the energy density of
batteries. Which absolutely kills it for anything outside of
extreme short hop flights. But electric engines are about 3x more
efficient than liquid fuel engines. So now we're only 3x-4x of a
direct replacement.
That means we are not hugely far off. Boeing's next major plane
won't run on batteries, but the one afterwards definitely will.
rgmerk wrote 21 hours 46 min ago:
Hmmm. If we do simple extrapolation based on a battery density
improvement rate of 5% a year, it takes about 30 years to get
there. So it's not as crazy as it sounds - and it's also worth
noting that there are incremental improvements in aerodynamics
and materials so that gets you there faster...
However, as others have pointed out, the battery-powered plane
doesn't get lighter as it burns fuel.
WalterBright wrote 23 hours 23 min ago:
> So now we're only 3x-4x of a direct replacement.
The math leads out an important factor. As the liquid fuel burns,
the airplane gets lighter. A lot lighter. Less weight => more
range. More like 6x-8x.
Batteries don't get lighter when they discharge.
Qwertious wrote 17 hours 23 min ago:
It's not that simple.
Batteries are inherently more aerodynamic, because they don't
need to suck in oxygen for combustion, and because they need
less cooling than an engine that heats itself up by constantly
burning fuel. You can getvincredible gains just by improving
motor efficiency - the difference between a 98%-efficient motor
and a 99%-efficient motor is the latter requires half the
cooling. That's more important than the ~1% increase in
mileage.
Also, the batteries are static weight, which isn't as
nightmarish as liquid fuel that wants to slosh around in the
exact directions you want it not to. Static weight means that
batteries can be potentially load-bearing structural parts (and
in fact already are, in some EV cars).
The math leaves out a lot of important factors.
giobox wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
Not to mention that jet planes routinely take off heavier than
their max safe landing weight today too, relying on the weight
reduction of consuming the fuel to return the plane to a safe
landing weight again while enjoying the extra range afforded.
This trick doesn't work well with batteries either.
WalterBright wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
There isn't any battery technology on the horizon that would
lead to practical airliners.
seanmcdirmid wrote 18 hours 33 min ago:
You could do it with a ground effect plane for inland sea
jaunts, like Seattle to Victoria. If you can float, then
you donât technically need a huge reserve like is
normally needed.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 23 hours 27 min ago:
More accurately, the calculation needs to factor in the fact that
battery weight doesnât decrease as charge is used.
Commercial aviationâs profitability hinges on being able to
carry only as much fuel as strictly[1] required.
How can batteries compete with that constraint?
Also, commercial aviation aircraft arenât time-restricted by
refuelling requirements. How are batteries going to compete with
that? Realistically, a busy airport would need something like a
closely located gigawatt scale power plant with multi-gigawatt
peaking capacity to recharge multiple 737 / A320 type aircraft
simultaneously.
I donât believe energy density parity with jet fuel is
sufficient. My back of the neocortex estimate is that battery
energy density would need to 10x jet fuel to be of much practical
use in the case of narrow-body-and-up airliner usefulness.
abdullahkhalids wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
An A320 can store 24k liters of fuel. Jet fuel stores 35 MJ/L.
So, the plane carries 8.4E11 J of energy. If that was stored in
a battery that had to be charged in an hour 0.23GW of electric
power would be required.
So indeed, an airport serving dozens or hundreds of electric
aircrafts a day will need obscene amounts of electric energy.
vardump wrote 20 hours 30 min ago:
Jet engines are not 100% efficient.
Electric motors can be pretty close, 98% is realistic. Of
course other parts of the system will lose energy, like
conversion losses.
Of course that doesn't mean batteries are currently a viable
replacement. One should still take efficiency into account in
quick back of the envelope calculations.
WalterBright wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
You laid it out better than I. Thank you!
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 23 hours 6 min ago:
Thanks Walter!
breve wrote 23 hours 27 min ago:
> Boeing's next major plane won't run on batteries, but the one
afterwards definitely will.
Jet engines work better. Boeing's next major plane will have jet
engines, just like their previous major planes.
Synthetic, carbon neutral jet fuel will be the future for
commercial jets.
capitainenemo wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
Well, there's also burning regular fuel in a fuel cell, a FCEV.
That doubles the efficiencies over ICE, so I guess that bumps it
back up to 8x away?
Given the great energy densities and stability in transport of
hydrocarbons, there's already some plants out there synthesising
them directly from green sources, so that could be a solution if
we don't manage to increase battery densities by another order of
magnitude.
WalterBright wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
> there's already some plants out there synthesising them
directly from green sources
I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different from a
regular carbon atom. They both result in CO2 when burned.
defrost wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
> I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different
from a regular carbon atom.
Easy mistake to make, don't beat yourself up over it.
It's not the individual carbon atoms that carry the
signature, it's the atoms in bulk that give the story ... eg:
6 x 10^23 carbon atoms
See:
HTML [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7757245/
fc417fc802 wrote 19 hours 6 min ago:
The problem isn't CO2 it's pulling carbon out of geological
deposits. Thus the carbon atoms in synthetic fuel can be
considered "green" provided an appropriate energy source was
used.
WalterBright wrote 18 hours 1 min ago:
I understand that, but it's a fallacious argument. It's
still emitting the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
You can also bury dead trees in a landfill.
margalabargala wrote 7 hours 50 min ago:
You misunderstand the problem. The act of emitting CO2
into the atmosphere is not a problem.
Significantly increasing the CO2 concentration in the
atmosphere is the problem. This happens when geological
sources are used.
Unfortunately, burying dead trees in a landfill doesn't
solve the problem because they decompose to methane which
escapes. But you're right that geological CO2 production
could be balanced by geologic CO2 sequestration, done
properly.
vel0city wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
But if the CO2 recently came from the atmosphere it's
still a net zero impact though.
Like, take 5 units of carbon out of the atmosphere to
create the fuel. Burn it and release 5 units of carbon to
the atmosphere. What's the net increase again? (-5) + 5 =
?
FWIW I'm not saying these processes actually achieve this
in reality. Just pointing out that it could be carbon
neutral in the end.
fc417fc802 wrote 17 hours 58 min ago:
The point is that emitting CO2 into the atmosphere was
never the problem. Adding geological carbon back into the
carbon cycle is the root cause of the entire thing.
You can certainly bury dead trees. I'm not sure how deep
you'd need to go to accomplish long term (ie geological
timeframe) capture. I somehow doubt the economics work
out since what is all the carbon capture research even
about given that we could just be dumping bamboo chips
into landfills?
jeffbee wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
Its the time shift. Burning a plant releases CO2 and it is
still considered to be carbon neutral.
WalterBright wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
Sorry, that's just verbal sleight of hand. There's no such
thing as "green" CO2.
shmeeed wrote 7 hours 53 min ago:
Yes there is. I used to fall for the same lie, but it's
just not true. It's a question of system boundaries.
Green CO2 was recently (in geological terms) captured
from the atmosphere into biomass, that's why its release
is basically net zero.
Fossil CO2 hasn't been part of the atmosphere in eons
(back in e.g. the Crustacean, the CO2 ratio was many
times higher), so its release is additive.
antonvs wrote 12 hours 33 min ago:
Have you always had difficulty with abstraction?
jeffbee wrote 17 hours 5 min ago:
How do you justify exhaling then?
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 23 hours 8 min ago:
And, the two major byproducts of burning hydrocarbons are
water and carbon dioxide.
Literally essential plant nutrients, essential for life.
Tangentially related, the 2022 Hunga TongaâHunga HaÊ»apai
volcanic eruption ejected so much water vapour in to the
upper atmosphere, it was estimated to have ongoing climate
forcing effects for up to 10 years.
Water vapour is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon
dioxide.
And we heard precisely nothing about that in the media other
than some science specific sources at the time and nothing on
an ongoing basis.
From Wikipedia:
The underwater explosion also sent 146 million tons of water
from the South Pacific Ocean into the stratosphere. The
amount of water vapor ejected was 10 percent of the
stratosphere's typical stock. It was enough to temporarily
warm the surface of Earth. It is estimated that an excess of
water vapour should remain for 5â10 years.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga%E2%80...
robertjpayne wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Please, the media didn't report on this because natural
disasters affecting the climate is not controllable by
humans and thus doesn't warrant a global effort to address
unless it's so large as to be species ending.
Global warming is not fake, there's tons and tons of
evidence it is real and the weather is getting more and
more extreme as humans continue to burn petrol.
jeffbee wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
Also some time after that other guy copied and pasted his
canned Hunga remark into his big spreadsheet of climate
denial comments the international community of climate
scientists concluded that Hunga cooled the atmosphere, on
balance.
"As a consequence of the negative TOA RF, the Hunga
eruption is estimated to have decreased global surface
air temperature by about 0.05 K during 2022-2023; due to
larger interannual variability, this temperature change
cannot be observed."
HTML [1]: https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1049154/files...
nandomrumber wrote 20 hours 51 min ago:
Thanks for linking that document, Iâll have a read.
nandomrumber wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
Yes, and it doesnât fit the narrative.
We should be moving towards being able to terraform Earth
not because of anthropogenic climate forcing, but because
one volcano or one space rock could render our atmosphere
overnight rather uncomfortable.
You wonât find the Swedish Doom Goblin saying anything
about that.
> burn petrol.
Well yeah, so making electricity unreliable and
expensive, and the end-userâs problem (residential
roof-top solar) is somehow supposed help?
Letâs ship all our raw minerals and move all our
manufacturing overseas to counties that care less about
environmental impacts and have dirtier electricity, then
ship the final products back, all using the dirties
bunker fuel there is.
How is that supposed to help?
I mean, I used to work for The Wilderness Society in
South Australia, now I live in Tasmania and am a card
carrying One Nation member.
Because Iâm not a complete fucking idiot.
Wait till you learn about the nepotism going on with the
proposed Bell Bay Windfarm and Cimitiere Plains Solar
projects.
Iâm all for sensible energy project development, but
thereâs only so much corruption Iâm willing to sit
back and watch.
With the amount of gas, coal, and uraniam Australia has,
it should be a manufacturing powerhouse, and host a huge
itinerant worker population with pathways to residency /
citizenship, drawn from the handful of countries that
built this country. And citizens could receive a monthly
stipend as their share of the enormous wealth the country
should be generating.
Japan resells our LNG at a profit. Our government is an
embarrassment.
WalterBright wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
Natural resources are not required to make a country an
economic powerhouse. See Japan, for example. Hong Kong,
Taiwan, S Korea.
What's needed are free markets. Any country that wants
to become a powerhouse has it within their grasp. Free
markets.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 19 hours 57 min ago:
And political will.
The Antipodes have such a problem with successful
people we even invented a term for it. [1] On the
subject of free markets, Australia excels. We even
let foreign entities extract and sell our LNG and pay
no royalties and no tax. [2] Doesnât get any freer
than that!
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syn...
HTML [2]: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/zero-...
WalterBright wrote 17 hours 57 min ago:
Spain stripped S. America of its gold and silver,
and neither Spain nor S. America benefited from it.
TheSpiceIsLife wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
Doesnât South America collectively produce more
gold in one year than the Spanish usurped from
them in their entire conquest period?
Gold production by country: [1] In only the first
half-century or so of the Spanish conquest of the
Americas, over 100 tons of gold were extracted
from the continent. - [2] Context is for kings
though. In the context of what occurred when it
occurred, youâre right.
For a while there, Australia was known as âthe
lucky countryâ because despite the folly of
politicians, and general fallibility of humans,
we had wealth for toil.
Now we just give it away.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_c...
HTML [2]: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/204...
nandomrumber wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
Has the hydrogen storage problem been solved yet?
Last time I checked it needs to be stored in cryo / pressure vessel
and it also leaks through steel and ruins its structural properties
in the process.
cheema33 wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
> Has the hydrogen storage problem been solved yet?
No. Not for using Hydrogen for transportation. People have been
trying to use Hydrogen for transportation for more than 50 years.
These people are trying to bend the laws of physics. And there
are a lot of con artists in the mix who prey on the gullible. See
the convicted fraudster Trevor Milton of Nikola fame.
idiotsecant wrote 22 hours 42 min ago:
We store hydrogen all the time for industrial processes. It's not
some super science, it's just expensive.
nandomrumber wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
We do? Where? Using what fabrication technologies.
Iâve worked mostly in or adjacent to manufacturing and
primary industry.
As far as Iâm aware, the majority of hydrogen production is
use on site, and mostly for ammonia production.
There isnât really much in the way of hydrogen storage and
transportation, itâs mostly used where itâs generated.
And if we use expensive as a proxy for heavy / energy
intensive, which it is in the case of hydrogen, that goes a
long way to preclude it from anything like being useful for
transportation.
idiotsecant wrote 17 hours 43 min ago:
There is hydrogen all over the place in exactly where you'd
expect to see it: petroleum refineries and petrochemical
process plants. The metallurgy of handling and storing
hydrogen is well understood and has been for a long time. You
just have to use alloys resistant to hydrogen embrittlement.
Hydrogen is squirrelly - it doesn't like to stay put but you
can make it stay put long enough to make it useful.
When you are specifying valving or piping in a refinery one
of the big things you have to find out is how much hydrogen
is in the process because a lot of stuff in a refinery has at
least some hydrogen and it will destroy common alloys.
dogma1138 wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
There are some innovation like hydrogen paste but itâs not
going to be useful for a combustion engine cycle.
eptcyka wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
The Mirai does not combust hydrogen.
qingcharles wrote 1 day ago:
The energy density doesn't work for now. Everybody hoping for that
breakthrough, and battery aircraft are moving into certain sectors
(drone delivery, air taxis etc).
WalterBright wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
Jet engine and wing efficiency have increased enormously over the
last 50 years.
nandomrumber wrote 20 hours 42 min ago:
With diminishing results.
Turbofans and supercritical airfoils are done to the point of
engine manufacturers looking to propfans and alternative
materials (carbon fibre) to eke out further efficiencies.
Although carbon fibre has significant down sides.
WalterBright wrote 17 hours 46 min ago:
I have patented the idea of replacing the nitrogen in the
cabin air with helium. I'm waiting for the money to roll in!
nandomrumber wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
Lerc wrote 23 hours 50 min ago:
Structural batteries were supposed to be the solution where the
density wasn't so important. I don't really have a good
understanding of the ration of fuel weight to structural weight
in existing aircraft though.
nomel wrote 22 hours 21 min ago:
casing is around 25% of the mass of a cylindrical cell, with
the rest being actual battery bits that can't have any stresses
applied. is 25% weight saving that significant?
aunty_helen wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
One of the trade offs is that engines are actually ridiculously
heavy. Compact, extreme high power electric motors are starting
to be commercialised. But also, fuel burns so you lose weight as
youâre flying whereas batteries stay the same.
Electric aviation is interesting but as someone who knows a bit
about the industry, biofuels make more sense here.
satvikpendem wrote 1 day ago:
What does this mean? They have electric vehicles too.
breve wrote 1 day ago:
> It's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its head around
not making engines.
Of course they can. Toyota sells BEVs. As time goes on BEVs will
become a greater percentage of their sales.
dehrmann wrote 1 day ago:
The bZ4X? 10+ years after the Nissan Leaf?
breve wrote 23 hours 59 min ago:
And the bZ3, bZ5, bZ7, bZ3X, bZ Woodland, C-HR+, the Lexus RZ,
and soon the Hilux EV:
HTML [1]: https://electrek.co/2026/01/09/toyota-electric-pickup-...
bdcravens wrote 20 hours 39 min ago:
A list of cars that aren't available for purchase yet doesn't
disprove the argument that Toyota is late to the game.
breve wrote 20 hours 16 min ago:
They are available for purchase.
Toyota is in the game of selling cars. Toyota has been the
best selling automaker for the last six years straight.
Toyota had record sales last year: [1] It's possible that
Toyota understands the car business better than you do.
HTML [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportat...
bdcravens wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
All of the bz* models you listed are Chinese models, and
while the Woodland and C-HR are listed on their US
website, they aren't really available for purchase
(though I did find one C-HR if I'm willing to drive 500
miles to buy it). Obviously the world auto market is
greater than the US, but the US is the leading market for
Toyota in terms of total units sold, so it's odd to me
that if I drive to the Toyota dealership 10 minutes from
my house, their game of selling cars only leaves me with
one model to purchase if I'm committed to buying a BEV.
breve wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
China is the biggest EV market, Europe is the second
biggest, and North America is third.
For EVs the US will remain lower priority than China
and Europe for a while yet. Toyota understands how to
sell cars.
It's funny how this thread has gone from "Toyota can't
wrap its head around not making engines" to "Toyota is
not prioritizing small EV markets first".
formerly_proven wrote 1 day ago:
Toyota sells bad EVs and was the last OEM to offer one. Itâs
the most anti-EV OEM by far and engages/engaged in the most EV
FUD.
badc0ffee wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
And yet they had one of the first hybrids (although not a
plug-in hybrid) in the Prius.
seanmcdirmid wrote 18 hours 35 min ago:
Honda also was early in hybrids, but they like Toyota are
also late on EVs.
formerly_proven wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
The difference is probably philosophical. A (non-phev)
hybrid is primarily an ICE car in every way. Building
hybrids is building ICE cars with a little extra. Building
EVs is different.
seanmcdirmid wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
Honda and Toyota invested a lot in hybrid tech, they
probably want to milk that investment more and the
hydrogen distraction kept them from also investing in BEV
tech. China was basically starting a car industry from
scratch so didnât have those sunk costs to worry about.
freetime2 wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
> Toyota sells bad EVs
The 2026 bZ Woodland [1] looks pretty nice in my opinion.
HTML [1]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/02/looks-a-lot-like-...
some-guy wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
I have only purchased Toyota vehicles (currently in the market
for an EV) and it baffles me that Dodge created a Charger in EV
form and Toyota hasnât made even an EV Corolla or Camry.
freetime2 wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
> it baffles me that Dodge created a Charger in EV form and
Toyota hasnât made even an EV Corolla or Camry
Dodge's Charger EV has been a sales flop [1] and pretty much
universally panned by critics as something that nobody asked
for.
The Camry and Corolla were the best-selling sedan and compact
sedan of 2025 [2]. I think this shows that Toyota is
listening to what Corolla and Camry drivers want - something
inexpensive and reliable to get them to and from work every
day without issue.
Some day Toyota will make an EV sedan. I think their 2026 bZ
Woodland [3] shows that they are starting to figure out how
make compelling EVs. And Toyota's EV strategy seems pretty
reasonable to me overall - their delays to develop a decent
EV don't seem to put them under threat from any legacy
automakers. They are being threatened by Chinese EV makers,
but so is Tesla - so even a huge head start likely wouldn't
have benefited Toyota much either in that regard. [1] [2]
HTML [1]: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a69927938/dodge-ch...
HTML [2]: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g64457986/bestsell...
HTML [3]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/02/looks-a-lot-lik...
lostlogin wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
An electric Corolla or Camry is my ultimate. I hate driving.
I want an appliance that just works. The Corolla and Camry
were this for petrol.
I love my Leaf but it isnât a Carolla.
Whatâs with the turning circle on the Leaf?
breve wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
That's essentially the bZ3. But a Corolla branded BEV will
eventually happen:
HTML [1]: https://electrek.co/2025/10/13/toyotas-best-selling-...
Spooky23 wrote 23 hours 50 min ago:
The bZ4X was particularly bad. Toyota adopted a combo of NIH
syndrome and DNGAF. They didnât anticipate cold weather. The
batteries lost like 30% of their capacity in the cold and the
resale value of it tanked.
magicalhippo wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
> The batteries lost like 30% of their capacity in the cold
Here in Norway Toyota was invited to include the bZ4X in this
years winter range test[1], but they declined. Suzuki entered
with their eVitara model, which is a "technological twin" of
the Toyota Urban Cruiser.
The Urban Cruiser really disappointed in a regular test
performed in cold weather[2]. So perhaps unsurprisingly, the
Suzuki eVitara was by far the worst in the winter range test,
with the least range overall and more than 40% reduction
compared to its WLTP range, among the worst in the test.
[1]
HTML [1]: https://www.tek.no/nyheter/nyhet/i/d4mMkA/verdens-st...
HTML [2]: https://www.tek.no/test/i/OkQAwE/toyota-urban-cruise...
aaronbrethorst wrote 23 hours 23 min ago:
Theyâre also just phenomenally ugly cars.
dcrazy wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
It shares the same ugly design language as much of
Toyotaâs lineup.
ForHackernews wrote 1 day ago:
Why is it such a terrible idea? In theory you can generate it via
electrolysis in places with plentiful renewable energy, and then
you've got a very high-density, lightweight fuel. On the surface, it
seems ideal for things like cars or planes where vehicle weight
matters. Batteries are huge and heavy and nowhere near as energy
dense as gasoline.
fuzzfactor wrote 8 hours 21 min ago:
>you've got a very high-density, lightweight fuel.
Correction, a very low density, lightweight fuel.
Burns clean though with no carbon in the exhaust.
But the upstream carbon emissions have not come close to zero when
you look at total hydrogen use in the real world so far.
nkoren wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
Zubrin's "Hydrogen Hoax" from 2007[1] is basically an ironclad
critique. The physics are inescapably poor, and always will be.
(Zubrin makes other points in that article which should probably be
taken with more salt, but his critique of hydrogen stands).
1:
HTML [1]: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-h...
ssl-3 wrote 1 day ago:
Ignoring some of the other issues:
Imagine we have this electrolysis plant, splitting up water to
produce the hydrogen we need for an area. That's fine.
But it needs fed electricity to keep the process going. Lots of
it. It needs more electrical power to split the water than
combining it again produces.
So it starts off being energy-negative, and it takes serious
electricity to make it happen. Our grid isn't necessarily ready
for that.
And then we need to transport the hydrogen. Probably with things
like trucks and trains at first (but maybe pipelines eventually).
This makes it even more energy-negative, and adds having great
volumes of this potentially-explosive gas in our immediate vicinity
some of the time whether we're using it individually or not.
Or: We can just plug in our battery-cars at home, and skip all that
fuel transportation business altogether.
It's still energy-negative, and the grid might not be ready for
everyone to do that either.
But at least we don't need to to implement an entirely new kind of
scale for hydrogen production and distribution before it can be
used.
So that's kind of the way we've been going: We plug out cars into
the existing grid and charge them using the same electricity that
could instead have been used to produce hydrogen.
(It'd be nice if battery recycling were more common, but it turns
out that they have far longer useful lives than anyone reasonably
anticipated and it just isn't a huge problem...yet. And that's not
a huge concern, really: We already have a profitable and profoundly
vast automotive recycling industry. We'll be sourcing lithium from
automotive salvage yards as soon as it is profitable to do so.)
aunty_helen wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
Itâs not even the grid, by the time youâve done the
electrolysis youâd be better off just charging a battery.
Also, compressing and cooling a gas takes another huge hit at the
efficiency. Electrolysis comes out at atmospheric pressures.
Oh and the platinum electrodes you needâ¦
Iâm also just now visualising a hydrogen pipeline fireâ¦
terrible terrible idea.
fuzzfactor wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
Also, what pipeline operator is going to want to move hydrogen
when almost all other products are more valuable?
ssl-3 wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
It's the everything, yeah. There's a lot working against using
hydrogen as the local energy source for automotive propulsion
in the world that we presently have.
Some advantages are that a fuel cell that accepts hydrogen and
air at one end and emits electricity and water at the other can
be lighter-weight than a big battery, and it can [potentially]
be refueled quickly for long trips.
Some disadvantages: We need a compressed hydrogen tank --
which isn't as scary to me as it may be for some people, but
that's still a new kind of risk we need to carry with us
wherever we drive. And we still need a big(ish) battery and
the controls for it in order for regen braking to do its thing
(which hybrids have shown to be very useful).
And, again, the grid: If it were cheaper/better/efficient to
move energy from electrical generating stations to the point of
use using buckets [or trucks or trains] of hydrogen, we'd
already be doing that. But it isn't. So we just plug stuff
in, instead, and use the grid we already have.
A quick Google suggests that a regular 120v US outlet might
charge EVs at a rate somewhere in the range of 3 to 5 miles per
hour. So a dozen or so hours sitting, plugged in at home every
day, is enough to cover most folks' every-day driving. There's
far faster methods, but that's something that lots of regular
people with a normal commute and normal working hours can
already accomplish very easily if they have private parking
with an outlet nearby.
For most folks, with most driving, that's all they ever have to
do. It shifts concerns about refueling speed from "Yeah, but
hydrogen is fast! I waste hardly any time at all while it
refills!" to "What refueling stops? I just unplug my car in
the morning and go. I haven't needed to stop at gas station in
years."
The main advantages of hydrogen are real, but they just aren't
very useful compared to other things that we also have.
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
It's hell to store. The energy density is terrible and as a tiny
molecule it escapes most seals. When it transitions from a liquid
to a gas, it expands manyfold (i.e., explodes).
L-four wrote 1 day ago:
The cheapest way to make hydrogen is to use fossil fuels.
SideburnsOfDoom wrote 1 day ago:
Hydrogen is the minimum viable atom: one proton, one electron. H2
is a tiny molecule. "hydrogen embrittlement" is when it's small
enough to diffuse into solid metal, because it's that much smaller
than iron atoms.
It's hard to work with because of this, and what's the point? For
most uses, electricity supply is already everywhere.
Qwertious wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
>Hydrogen is the minimum viable atom: one proton, one electron.
Wait until you hear about H+
antonvs wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
Thatâs a type of ion, or of course a proton. An ion with no
electrons is not considered an atom normally. GP is correct.
(Atoms must have electrons - the definition in physics and
chemistry is a structural one.)
Rygian wrote 1 day ago:
Check out the "Clean Hydrogen Ladder" document.
Hydrogen wastes a large amount of energy.
cbmuser wrote 1 day ago:
Unless you produce it using the Sulfur-Iodine cycle in a
high-temperature nuclear reactor.
See: [1] and:
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur%E2%80%93iodine_cycl...
HTML [2]: https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/nhc/en/research/hydroge...
stephen_g wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs horrible to work with - dangerous, embrittlement issues
etc., and very energy intensive to compress into very heavy
cryogenic storage containersâ¦
amelius wrote 10 hours 8 min ago:
Yeah it is so bad that it is common that rockets are launched
with a hydrogen leak here or there.
credit_guy wrote 1 day ago:
> dangerous
It is actually less dangerous than other fuels, for the simple
reason that it is extremely light and buoyant. A gasoline fire is
bad, because the gasoline stays where it is until it fully burns.
A hydrogen fire is less bad, because it will tend to move
upwards.
chongli wrote 1 day ago:
That's assuming the hydrogen is just loose in the area, like
it'd been released from a balloon in a chemistry classroom.
That amount of hydrogen is extremely small, from an energy
standpoint. Equivalent to a teaspoon of gasoline or so.
If you assume a realistic fuel capacity for a hydrogen vehicle,
the hydrogen tank will be both much larger than a gas tank and
the hydrogen will be under extreme pressure. A tank like that
in your car would be extremely dangerous even if it were filled
only with inert gas.
jiggawatts wrote 1 day ago:
Hydrogen mixed with air has a very wide range of concentrations
where it is explosive. It accumulates inside containers or just
the roof of the car⦠where the passengers are. It takes just
one lit cigarette for it to go boom.
jcgrillo wrote 1 day ago:
And it burns really hot
CamperBob2 wrote 1 day ago:
Besides being expensive to generate unless you already happen to
have an electrolysis plant handy, hydrogen is awkward and hazardous
to store. Once generated, it costs yet more energy to liquefy, and
then it seeps right through many common metals, weakening them in
the process. It's just not a good consumer-level energy source,
and nobody could figure out why Toyota couldn't see that.
Interestingly, liquid hydrogen is nowhere near the most
energy-dense way to store and transport it. I don't recall the
exact numbers but absorption in a rare-earth metal matrix is said
to be much better on a volumetric basis. [1] Still not exactly
cheap or convenient, but it mitigates at least some of the
drawbacks with liquid H2.
1:
HTML [1]: https://www.fuelcellstore.com/blog-section/what-hydrogen-s...
fuzzfactor wrote 8 hours 3 min ago:
The rare earth metal matrix can be a bit more optimized and I
think progress is being made.
Why wait though ;)
With common metals hydrogen fits in between the matrix naturally
to an extent.
Not like for efficient storage though, just the embrittlement,
which gives researchers even more challenging things to be
careful about.
smcin wrote 1 day ago:
Remember that China briefly embargoed Japan for rare earth metals
in 2010, and Toyota launched the Mirai in 2014. My theory was
that it was developed as a national fallback for Japan in case
that embargo continued or got worse. Think 1930s Volkswagen.
Anyone can comment on that?
seanmcdirmid wrote 1 day ago:
Japan went heavy into hydrogen for a couple of decades ago. The
only reason we are even talking about hydrogen passenger
vehicles now is because Japan thought it was the future, they
made a mistake.
smcin wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
I'm pointing out that the timeline of continuing funding it,
to the point of a major model design and launch, and
nationwide network of hydrogen stations, might well be linked
to China's emergent REE dominance and that Japan doesn't have
those raw materials.
(In some future decade/century, people might conclude that
car dependency on fossil fuels, after electric from renewable
became viable, was a mistake.)
seanmcdirmid wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
I think Japan made their plans in the 2000s, maybe starting
to gain traction in 2010, this is long before China became
an EV power house or even had a dominant share of rare
earth processing.
smcin wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
Independent of that. I'm saying there was some wisdom to
continuing to fund it in Japan post-2010 as a hedge in
case REEs were unavailable.
(Separate to whether the idea originally made sense back
in the 2000s.)
marcosdumay wrote 1 day ago:
> There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the next
oil
There's a very well financed propaganda campaign.
KennyBlanken wrote 17 hours 24 min ago:
Same with nuclear. The most expensive form of electricity
generation there is. No grid operator wants to touch it, but the
nuclear industry has been very busy lobbying congress and both the
current and last administration.
elzbardico wrote 8 hours 0 min ago:
The only reason nuclear is expensive is because of ignorant and
neurotic ativists FUD and the idiot politics listening to them.
wisplike wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
Nuclear is incredibly energy dense, can be stockpiled for a long
time and is extremely safe.
Yes its expensive but its one those industries any serious nation
needs to subsidise for the energy security it offers and the
countless high skill jobs it fosters.
fuzzfactor wrote 8 hours 44 min ago:
Well, no it's never been extremely safe by any stretch of the
imagination.
That's just an extreme interpretation of the way it's not as
extremely unsafe as it could be.
Plus at the rate it's being addressed by a few enthusiasts, it
could be getting remarkably safer, maybe even in one person's
lifetime someday.
Developments may be positive but it makes the most sense to be
realistic and avoid the completely unfounded hype involved.
Plus when nuclear works best the high-skill jobs resulting have
to be as non-countless as possible, that's one of the big
factors which might someday allow the economics to be less
unfavorable.
elzbardico wrote 7 hours 59 min ago:
Well, this is just boomer lunatic anti-nuclear FUD. It is not
what the numbers say.
margalabargala wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
It's extremely safe, except in the event of a black swan
event, in which case it becomes extremely unsafe.
This is compared to, for example, a coal plant, which is
quite unsafe to be near constantly, all the time.
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, it's not the new oil, it's the same oil in "green" packaging.
Plus some comforting lies about carbon capture.
aunty_helen wrote 23 hours 8 min ago:
Even if it was fully green, you canât run an electrolysis
system from home. So you have to buy it, so thereâs a market
and an expensive solution.
Electricity comes out the wall.
crimsonnoodle58 wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
> Electricity comes out the wall.
Which unless you have solar, you are paying for. Even if you
have solar, you are paying off the panels, batteries and
inverter/chargers over a period of time.
Nothing is free.
thrownthatway wrote 21 hours 18 min ago:
What do you mean?
You can run electrolysis from a cup.
MagicMoonlight wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
You canât make and store bulk hydrogen at home
thrownthatway wrote 17 hours 55 min ago:
You canât.
Iâm willing to give it a go.
Iâve got the excess solar from the rooftop solar panels,
the electrical and electronic knowledge, and the gas fitter
and metal fabrication experience.
I have an oil free air compressor, and anyone can by a
helium based cryo-cooler. I have an account with an
industrial gas supplier.
Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
If Nile Red hasnât blown his lab up by the time I publish
this comment, I reckon I stand a chance.
closewith wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
No air compressor can compress hydrogen, nowhere near the
necessary tip velocity.
adrianN wrote 9 hours 0 min ago:
I hope youâre not my neighbor.
KennyBlanken wrote 17 hours 28 min ago:
Round trip efficiency of hydrogen is at best 50% and at
worse half that. You have the horrendous efficiency of
electrolysis and then the equally bad efficiency in the
fuel cell.
Efficiency pumping your excess solar into the EV itself
is more like 80-85%, most of which is loss in the
electronics, not the battery - those typically have a
coulombic efficiency of over 95%.
Hydrogen a boondoggle. It's not nearly as stupid as
making ethanol from corn (which is an energy-negative
process) but it's close.
Also, "gas fitter and metal fabrication" experience isn't
worth anything unless it was hydrogen-specific. It is far
leakier than natural gas/propane. One of the biggest
hassles of a hydrogen fuel chain is that the stuff leaks
through everything.
Ray20 wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
> Round trip efficiency of hydrogen is at best 50%
In fact, even this level of efficiency may be
sufficient. Solar panels are so cheap that if we had
affordable, long-term energy storage options, even with
such efficiency, we would have completely abandoned
fossil fuels. But, unfortunately, storing hydrogen is
difficult and dangerous. It is not like natural gas.
> It's not nearly as stupid as making ethanol from corn
(which is an energy-negative process) but it's close.
Ethanol is produced from corn not for energy purposes,
but for food security. It's like a placeholder for real
corn so that if there's a crop failure for a couple of
years, the low-iq idiots who think it's stupid to make
ethanol from corn don't starve to death.
mrks_hy wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
> Ethanol is produced from corn not for energy
purposes, but for food security
Source? First time I read this, might make sense.
Although I don't see how this corn should be
unaffected by crop failure if all other corn harvests
failed.
ben_w wrote 10 hours 53 min ago:
> Although I don't see how this corn should be
unaffected by crop failure if all other corn
harvests failed.
I believe the argument being made here is "we need
to overproduce corn in order to get food security;
what can we do with the spare capacity in the good
years given we're already eating too much?"
I don't know if this argument is correct, but I
believe that's what's being claimed.
CamperBob2 wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
You're not my HOA
aunty_helen wrote 20 hours 45 min ago:
I know, I have one of those weird H shaped flasks with the
plat electrodes.
I also have a gas bbq, yet couldn't fill up a LNG car at my
house. Maybe there's something more to it than just making
small amounts of room temperature / pressure H2.
constantcrying wrote 1 day ago:
When comparing EVs to hydrogen cars it is very obvious that one is the
superior solution.
An EV is a clear simplification of an ICE. Add a Battery and replace
the mechanical complexity of a combustion engine with a relatively
simple electric motor. So many components are now unnecessary and so
many problems just go away. EVs also make charging simpler.
Hydrogen cars on the other hand are very complex and also quite
inefficient, requiring many steps to go from hydrogen generation to
motor movement. And they require a very sophisticated network of
charging infrastructure, which has to deal with an explosive gas at
high pressures. Something which is dangerous even in highly controlled
industrial environments.
I just do not see a single reason why hydrogen cars would catch on. EVs
are good already and come with many benefits.
glitchc wrote 1 day ago:
> An EV is a clear simplification of an ICE. Add a Battery and
replace the mechanical complexity of a combustion engine with a
relatively simple electric motor. So many components are now
unnecessary and so many problems just go away. EVs also make charging
simpler.
Is it? Then why isn't it cheaper to produce and cheaper to own?
> Hydrogen cars on the other hand are very complex and also quite
inefficient, requiring many steps to go from hydrogen generation to
motor movement. And they require a very sophisticated network of
charging infrastructure, which has to deal with an explosive gas at
high pressures. Something which is dangerous even in highly
controlled industrial environments.
It's a standard combustion engine, nothing special.
constantcrying wrote 11 hours 6 min ago:
>Is it? Then why isn't it cheaper to produce and cheaper to own?
Because batteries are very expensive. But they aren't particularly
complex.
This argument just does not make any sense at all. Of course simple
components can be more expensive. The cost of ownership is even
less relevant, since it depends almost entirely on outside factors,
which vary by region and government.
>It's a standard combustion engine, nothing special.
This is totally false. The hydrogen storage alone is enormously
complicated. Hydrogen, especially at the pressures needed for a car
to be viable is far more complex to store safely then fuel storage
for a regular diesel/gasoline car.
Pretending this is not the case is just delusional.
MindSpunk wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
You're both wrong, the Mirai uses a fuel cell as the voltage source
for an otherwise EV drive train. The Mirai is an EV with a fuel
cell instead of a battery.
There is no ICE in a Mirai.
vel0city wrote 1 day ago:
My EV has cost me ~$1,100/yr less to operate over the last few
years for the same mileage compared to my ICE, and I didn't even
have any major issues with my ICE. Meanwhile its been charged with
almost exclusively 100% renewable, zero-emission energy.
mjamesaustin wrote 1 day ago:
EVs are cheaper to own â the fuel savings are enormous.
EVs aren't cheaper to produce yet, but battery costs are still
falling and they will reach parity with ICE vehicles soon.
bdangubic wrote 1 day ago:
EVs are so much more cheaper to own that it is difficult to
explain to people who own ICE cars as they, in majority of cases,
just cannot comprehend it
SilverElfin wrote 1 day ago:
I still feel hydrogen fuel cells are the better choice. The convenience
of refilling quickly is great. Maybe thatâll matter less if PHEVs are
allowed to exist but with some places banning gas cars entirely, I
donât have hope.
vel0city wrote 1 day ago:
I'll take the convenience of being able to charge my car every night
compared to having to drive out of my way to go to the extremely rare
hydrogen fuel station.
I spend more of my time pumping gas in my ICE car than I do waiting
on my EV to charge. Quite a bit more time despite having a
similar-ish mileage.
SideburnsOfDoom wrote 1 day ago:
> The convenience of refilling quickly is great.
Is it more convenient than plugging in an EV overnight at home, and
having a full "tank" every morning?
It is not.
Electricity supply is everywhere. More so than Gasoline supply, and
far far more so than hydrogen supply.
audunw wrote 1 day ago:
The convenience of filling is only there if you have the fuel
stations. Considering how expensive it is Iâd argue that itâs far
better to spend that money on EV charging infrastructure, you get a
lot more bang for gour buck. And EVs are arguable significantly more
convenient when you have the infrastructure. Would you buy a phone
that lasted a week or two, but you had to go to a phone filling
station to refill it?
And yes, EVs can be more convenient also for street parking. Itâs
just an infrastructure problem and by now there are dozens of
different solutions for every parking situation imaginable.
Itâs frankly absurd reading debates about this online from Norway.
Itâs over. Yeah Norway has money and cheap electricity, thatâs
what makes it possible to âspeed runâ the technology transition.
But other than that itâs a worst case scenario for EVs. Lots of
people with only street parking in Oslo. Winter thatâs brutal on
range. People who love to drive hours and hours to their cabin every
weekend. With skis on the roof. Part of schengen so people drive all
the way down to croatia in summer. We gave EVs and Hydrogen cars the
same chance. Same benefits. EVs won. End of story. Though a hydrogen
station near me blew up in a spectacularly loud explosion so maybe
that makes me a bit biased.
elsonrodriguez wrote 1 day ago:
The inefficiency of creating, transporting, and converting hydrogen
into motion is way too much to bear for the purpose of eliminating a
45 minute charging stop.
joecool1029 wrote 1 day ago:
Why was it made? I ask because GMâs EV-1 was discussed earlier and it
basically existed due to Californiaâs zero-emission requirement in
the 90âs. Is this just Toyota doing some random R&D while fulfilling
a state minimum requirement?
numpad0 wrote 1 day ago:
I think that + it's an EV that Toyota don't have to source the
battery cells. FCEVs are full EVs just like Tesla, that uses a
different kind of battery than Li-ion.
beAbU wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
The latest model comes with a li-ion battery pack. Previous model
had Nimh cells I think.
numpad0 wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
The point is, it is a full EV. The "hydrogen fuel cell" thing is
a type of a battery. A lot of people somehow misses this, and
thinks it of an EV-ICE hybrid. It's not.
The FC is a magic non-moving fin stack that generates electricity
proportional to the amount of H2 and O2 fed through it. It's a
type of a primary(non-reusable) battery. Nominal cell voltage is
3.7V and pack voltage is 370V for Mirai.
Not that it makes the car great, but it is literally an EV.
testing22321 wrote 1 day ago:
To trick people into thinking hydrogen cars are the future so they
donât buy an EV now.
Iâve driven my own vehicles through 65 countries on 5 continents,
and even the most remote villages in Africa and South America had
electricity of some form.
Iâve never seen a hydrogen filling station in my life.
The idea we can build out that infrastructure faster than bolster the
electric grid is laughably stupid. Downright deceptive.
avidiax wrote 1 day ago:
I think there's some truth to this. Toyota desperately needs the
future to play to their strengths, something more complicated than
EVs, which I think is behind their obsession with hybrids.
Not sure that a fuel cell vehicle isn't just an EV with extra
steps, however.
haunter wrote 1 day ago:
Beautiful car but for example I live in Hungary and there is a grand
total of one charging station in the whole coutry in Budapest. Yes
it's free to charge but probably only makes sense to get a Mirai if you
are a Bolt or Uber driver. Nice tech demo though.
Here is the european charging station map [1] Benelux countries,
Switzerland, and the Ruhr area are most likely the best places to own
this car
HTML [1]: https://h2.live/en/
BadBadJellyBean wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think hydrogen will ever be a thing for personal cars. Apart
from the abysmal "well to wheel" efficiency it's also just such a
hassle to create a fuel network for it. Gasoline is bad enough but a
gas that will just leak away whatever you do seems like a stretch. It
is just so much simpler with electricity. Pretty much every gas station
already has it. No driving it around with trucks. Just maybe once
install a bigger cable or a battery/capacitor.
Tuna-Fish wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
And more to the point, if you want to use synthetic fuels, why on
earth would you pick hydrogen?
Yes, it burns to clean water, but if the carbon feedstock is
renewable, synthetic hydrocarbons are renewable too. The efficiency
loss from doing the additional steps to build hydrocarbons is not
large compared to the efficiency losses of using hydrogen, and
storage can be so much easier with something denser.
BadBadJellyBean wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
I'd assume because it is complicated. Capturing enough carbon,
splitting it, generating enough H2, combining it with the carbon to
make long enough chains. That all sounds complicated and expensive
and probably needs even more surplus green power that we don't
have. It also doesn't solve the problem of local pollution when
burning carbon based fuels.
ACCount37 wrote 12 hours 48 min ago:
Why go for long synthetic chains?
Methane has good energy density, doesn't demand cryogenics or
diffuse through steel, burns very cleanly, and can be used in
modified gasoline ICEs - without even sacrificing the gasoline
fuel capability.
fuzzfactor wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
Without cryogenics, methane has such low energy density that a
low-pressure fuel tank would still have to be as big as a bus
for your compact methane-powered vehicle to go as far as you
could on a few gallons of gasoline.
cbmuser wrote 1 day ago:
> It is just so much simpler with electricity.
Yet the market still thinks differently. Lots of countries still keep
subsidizing EV despite them already being mature technology for such
a long time.
We didn't have to subsidize the smart phone to make it successful, we
shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars either.
DangitBobby wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
ICE love is cultural, and there's a bunch of FUD from entrenched
interests.
jiggawatts wrote 1 day ago:
> we shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars either.
Smart phones were subsidised, just less obviously. Much of the
fundamental research into the radio systems was done by government
labs, for example.
Not to mention that governments provide maaaaasssive subsidies to
the entire fossil fuel industry, including multi-trillion dollar
wars in the middle east to control the oil!
Look at it from the perspective of pollution control in cities.
China just invested tens of billions - maybe hundreds â into
clearing out the smog they were notorious for. Electric vehicles
are a part of the solution.
The alternative is everyone living a decade less because⦠the
market forces will it.
kibibu wrote 1 day ago:
We also wouldn't need to if environmental externalities were costed
into petroleum prices.
pjerem wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe if we had smartphones that emitted greenhouse and toxic gases
by using a mini ICE engine that were so cheap nobody would buy
anything else, we would subsidize the electric ones. We may even
ban the gas phones.
mappu wrote 1 day ago:
Gaseous form is a problem, but have you seen the Fraunhofer
POWERPASTE? I was optimistic when the news was first announced, but
that was a decade ago and of course it's not widely used.
XorNot wrote 1 day ago:
At that point you're just building a weird battery storage system
again though.
helterskelter wrote 1 day ago:
I always figured it would make more sense for hydrogen to be an
option for renewable infra if the problems with leaking and
embrittlement could be solved. Currently, moving renewable power over
very long distances and storing it at scale is a non-trivial issue
which hydrogen could help solve.
This way, for example, Alaska in the winter could conceivably get
solar power from panels in Arizona.
stetrain wrote 1 day ago:
Moving renewable power is easy, we have a grid for that.
Infrastructure for movement of electricity is ubiquitous in places
that have never seen a hydrogen pump.
If the grid is insufficient in a particular place or corridor,
investing in upgrading it will provide a better long term solution
than converting electricity to hydrogen, driving that hydrogen
around on roads, and converting it back into electricity.
Storage is a bigger issue for sure.
fsh wrote 1 day ago:
These problems are grossly exaggerated in popular discussions.
Hydrogen has been routinely transported and stored in standard
steel cylinders for over a century. Most cities originally used
coal gas (50% hydrogen by volume) for heating and illumination
before switching to natural gas after World War II. What kills the
idea is the abysmal efficiency of electrolysis and hydrogen fuel
cells. Standard high-voltage DC power lines would be much better
suited for getting solar power from Arizona to Alaska.
BadBadJellyBean wrote 1 day ago:
Only if we had a true oversupply of green energy. Converting
electricity to H2 and then back is so incredible inefficient. It's
less work to just create better electrical transmission systems.
China did that with their high voltage DC lines.
pfdietz wrote 1 day ago:
Storage is the bigger problem, specifically very long duration or
rarely used storage (to cover Dunkelflauten, for example) for which
batteries are poorly suited. Hydrogen (or more generally e-fuels)
is one way to do that, but another very attractive one is very low
capex thermal storage. Personally, I feel the latter would beat
hydrogen: the round trip efficiency is similar or better, the
complexity is very low, power-related capex should be lower, and
there's no need for possibly locally unavailable geology (salt
formations) for hydrogen storage.
With this sort of storage, Alaska in winter gets its energy from
Alaska in summer.
buckle8017 wrote 1 day ago:
> Pretty much every gas station already has [electricity].
Sure but they don't have electric vehicle recharging electricity.
They have run the pumps and power the lights electricity.
MBCook wrote 1 day ago:
True, but they already exist.
Hydrogen stations donât. If you have to build new ones,
especially if you have to supply them with enough power to create
their own hydrogen for water, whatâs the difference from just
building EV chargers?
And if youâre going to add hydrogen to existing gasoline stations
then same question.
If hydrogen was somehow able to use existing gasoline
infrastructure it would make a lot more sense. But itâs not.
glitchc wrote 1 day ago:
H2 can be transported by trucks. Must lay expensive hydro
infrastructure to do the same for electricity.
XorNot wrote 1 day ago:
But not by the same trailers, not stored in the same tanks as
gasoline, nor transferred by the same pumps.
This like saying obviously we can distribute grain using
gasoline infrastructure: after all, also both transported by
trucks.
BadBadJellyBean wrote 1 day ago:
Still seems like a smaller investment to get a bigger cable than H2
infrastructure (Tanks, Pumps, maybe even electrolysis system).
buckle8017 wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
Bigger cable is a laugh.
Bigger cable, upgraded delivery infrastructure to support that
cable (think more or stronger poles), transformer upgrades, and
finally the charging stations which unlike the home ones aren't
just a complicated switch because DC fast charging.
H2 is a stupid fuel, but the idea that high power vehicle
charging stations are a cheap or simple upgrade to a gas station
is ridiculous.
bombcar wrote 1 day ago:
My understanding is most hydrogen fueling stations produce the
hydrogen onsite via electrolysis of water.
EDIT: My understanding was wrong - it's produced locally onsite but
via steam-methane reforming:
HTML [1]: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-na...
jasonwatkinspdx wrote 1 day ago:
Completely wrong.
Globally over 95% of hydrogen is sourced from fossil fuels,
particularly natural gas wells. Electrolysis is very limited to
niche applications or token projects.
bombcar wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe that's what it was - produced onsite via steam extraction
from piped in natural gas (which means you could just as easily
burn the natural gas in the vehicle).
Either way there aren't many trucks full of hydrogen zipping
around.
mmooss wrote 1 day ago:
The electrolysis needs power and could be fueled by fossil fuels.
aunty_helen wrote 1 day ago:
Thatâs not a thing. Anyone whoâs seen hydrogen being split from
electrolysis knows it takes a lot lot lot of electricity and is
very slow. If two people needed to fill up in the same day it would
run the well dry.
deadbabe wrote 1 day ago:
Isnât this bad? This means H2O molecules are being destroyed and
the water is not returning to the water cycle to be reused. We will
literally run out of water if everyone did this.
dxdm wrote 1 day ago:
Water gets split into oxygen and hydrogen using energy. The
hydrogen then gets burned to release usable energy, which creates
water. At least as far as I remember from chemistry class ages
ago.
vardump wrote 20 hours 14 min ago:
There's some truth to what the gp said. Some hydrogen will
escape, enter the upper atmosphere, and be blown away by the
solar wind and thus be permanently lost.
dxdm wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
I assume that this has been happening to all gases in the
atmosphere for aeons, and thus, while technically correct, it
is completely negligible for the relevant time scale.
hannob wrote 1 day ago:
Your understanding is entirely wrong.
Most hydrogen fueling stations receive it from the next steam
reformer, which will make it from fossil gas.
BadBadJellyBean wrote 1 day ago:
Okay not driving it around then. But somehow it's worse. You still
have to build the special tank and the special pump and also get an
electrolysis device that is big enough to create enough hydrogen
and also you have to get heaps of power somewhere that could
instead be just straight put into a battery in a car. Make it make
sense. What's the point? Who is willing to do that?
mmooss wrote 1 day ago:
> battery
Batteries create a lot of toxic waste. I'm willing to live with
that if it doesn't cause climate change but there is an advantage
to hydrogen? What is the impact of H2 fuel cells?
XorNot wrote 1 day ago:
Batteries do not create a lot of toxic waste and are
essentially fully recyclable.
The lead in automotive lead acid batteries today is almost
entirely recovered and remanufactured into new batteries.
MBCook wrote 1 day ago:
Donât forget keeping everything cold enough.
On the vehicle side, you can make a gasoline tank in pretty much
any shape you want. We have lots of experience making batteries
in different shapes thanks to cell phones.
High-pressure tanks only want to be in one shape. And itâs not
especially convenient.
BadBadJellyBean wrote 1 day ago:
Is the shape round? I bet it's round.
flir wrote 1 day ago:
Ultimately, it's shrapnel-shaped.
BadBadJellyBean wrote 1 day ago:
Is that shrapnel arranged in a roundish pattern?
blibble wrote 1 day ago:
this is the case while they're in the hype building phase, when
people are paying attention
if hydrogen even gained widespread adoption, it would be mass
produced via steam reforming of natural gas
(which is why the oil majors are the ones desperately pushing it)
toast0 wrote 1 day ago:
Natural gas vehicles make way more sense than hydrogen. But they
didn't survive in the (US) market outside specific fleet
applications.
Turns out compressed gas fuel is a big PITA.
seanmcdirmid wrote 1 day ago:
They were popular in Thailand and Cambodia for awhile due to
domestic natural gas reserves. But after those wells began to
dry up Thailand at least decided EVs were the future instead.
b112 wrote 1 day ago:
That makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2, every
car would be H2 by now.
H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that can
be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make H2. Yes,
I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really care, it's
just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of made up paranoia.
We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road.
Dylan16807 wrote 1 day ago:
> We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the
road.
Only if it's also feasible to fuel that car in a clean way.
And looking at where the hydrogen would come from is not "made
up" or "paranoia".
b112 wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
It is entirely feasible. And it is made up to claim that
"Well, this second it looks like there's no infra for green
h2, so it can never happen! So there!"
If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with 50km
range, and 1000lbs of batteries.
Dylan16807 wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
I haven't seen any cost models where green hydrogen is
feasible without a lot of super cheap excess electricity.
And those situations also boost batteries. Do you have one
you can show me? It's not just lack of infrastructure,
even if you solved the problem of building everything out
green hydrogen is still not worth it under conditions close
to the present day.
And I didn't say it could never under any circumstances be
feasible.
> If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with
50km range, and 1000lbs of batteries.
I don't follow your logic here. Nobody went out and built
tons of lithium ion batteries for cars until they were
actually feasible. We're living in the world where
companies wait, and it worked out for electric cars.
b112 wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
Research. Battery tech was terrible. Horrible. It was
only through endless research, trillions spent, that
battery tech can do what it does today.
Now apply the same logic to h2.
constantcrying wrote 1 day ago:
>We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the
road.
No. We should embrace the technically most feasible, which
opens up new technology to the most people.
EVs are the clear winners. Every cent spent on hydrogen
infrastructure is a cent wasted, because it could go to making
the one feasible technology better. Arbitrary openness to
technology long after it has been clearly established that the
technology is inferior is not a good thing, it is a path to
stay on ICEs forever.
Hydrogen is a bad idea. The only way to defend it is by
pretending modern EVs do not exist, since they solved all the
existing problems and offer numerous benefits over hydrogen.
Additionally the customer has already chosen and he has chosen
the right technology, because the value proposition of an EV is
far greater than that of a hydrogen car.
blibble wrote 1 day ago:
say you're Shell
you are vertically integrated, you have billions invested in
oilfields, refineries, distribution, and the retail channel
("gas stations")
if transport switches to electric, what's your role?
answer: there isn't one, you are completely redundant
but what if hydrogen took off instead?
if you produce via electrolysis, you only keep the retail
channel
but if you can get H2 established, then you can do a switcheroo
and feed in H2 produced from your existing natural gas
infrastructure, and massively undercut everyone's electrolysis
business
at which point you're back to the old days, just instead of
selling gasoline from your oilfields, you're supplying hydrogen
produced from their gas
... and that's exactly what they're trying to do
matthewdgreen wrote 1 day ago:
H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas
is more affordable. Both are alternatives to BEVs, which are
the better approach to electrifying transport. If Toyota had
gone all in on BEVs when it began its H2 strategy, it would be
selling more EVs than Tesla. Instead it entirely ceded the
field to others, first Tesla and BYD.
b112 wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas
is more affordable.
Irrelevant. It seems like everyone who argues against H2 is
stuck on "now". Had that been the case with battery powered
cars, they'd have never got off of the ground.
Batteries were terrible, wildly expensive, extremely
unreliable. It's only been the immense research poured into
them, that has brought their costs down.
Meanwhile, the cost of storage on an H2 car is nothing,
compared to the immense and exorbitant cost of all those
batteries. Batteries which make a car extremely heavy.
Batteries which cannot be charged below -20C, and require
heaters. Batteries which are incredibly dangerous in car
accidents. Batteries which are costly, and damaging to the
environment to create, difficult to recycle, and damaging to
the environment to recycle.
Compared to battery tech of any type, H2 is a dream from the
gods.
Yet because there hasn't been 17 trillion dollars of cash
thrown into h2 generation tech, people prattle on about how
expensive h2 generation is.
And it doesn't matter where h2 comes from now. It matters
where it can and will come from. The goal isn't to make
sources of power to generate h2 clean, the goal is to get
end-polluters, cars, clean.
If the only goal was "clean", then most electric batteries
charging right now, would fail that very goal. After all,
there are still coal and gas power plants this very moment,
and if we pulled all electric cars off the road, those would
close.
No, the goal is to work towards more and more solar power,
wind, etc. And in parallel, get cars ready for the day when
power they're charged from isn't polluting.
The myopic view of what I deem hyper-environmentalists, is
disturbing to me. It is paramount that we don't let short
sighted views fog the reality around us.
Anyone arguing 1000lbs of batteries, all environmentally
damaging in their construction, recycling cost, and disposal,
is superior to h2, is arguing from a pedestal of sandy,
earthquake prone, unstable support.
fragmede wrote 17 hours 31 min ago:
You raise dying
some good points, but hydrogen is really hard to store. It
leaks out of everything. You have to very carefully design
three containment vessel in order for it not to go wrong.
Tade0 wrote 1 day ago:
There's no point. EVs go 50% further on the same amount of
energy, are easier to charge and are, of course, cheaper.
b112 wrote 18 hours 50 min ago:
EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic.
They are not cheaper long term, for they rely upon thousands
of pounds of heavy batteries.
If they go further now, that is not a given down the road.
Were you to employ this logic when electric cars first came
out, there wouldn't be a single one on the road. It's only
through trillions of research dollars, that current battery
tech is where it is.
But sure, let's not work on multiple paths. Let's discount
other attempts at clean tech. Even if they're older, cost
less to the environment to build (batteries are terrible,
environmentally), and so on.
Tade0 wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
> EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips
unrealistic.
You'll find EVs that will go 700km+ with just one, 15min
stop, as they charge at over 350kW in this day and age: [1]
You'd want to make that 15min stop at least once on such a
trip. Or fly instead.
> It's only through trillions of research dollars, that
current battery tech is where it is.
Problem is that while batteries only needed scale and
improvements in manufacturing processes to become cheaper,
there's no such path with hydrogen.
The tank and the fuel cell are inherently expensive. The
fueling station costs literally 10x that of a fast charger
and in this day and age doesn't even charge faster as while
the first customer will be done in less than 15min, the
next needs to wait for the system to repressurize and that
takes time. Also it goes kaboom if it fails, which is
something we know, because it already happened. The fuel
itself cannot be cheaper than electricity unless you want
to make it from natural gas, in which case you better just
use that instead.
> (batteries are terrible, environmentally)
The sheer energy that's wasted by a hydrogen car vs EV over
its life cycle is enough to produce and safely dispose of a
battery.
And this is what it really boils down to: hydrogen is not
energetically efficient, therefore you can't make it
cheaper unless you use fossil fuels. We already have fossil
fuel cars.
HTML [1]: https://ev-database.org/#group=vehicle-group&av-1=...
b112 wrote 11 hours 37 min ago:
There is only one car in that database that has even
close to a 700km range on long trips, and that is only
under perfect conditions.
As with any car, you don't wait until out of fuel to
recharge. Instead, you seek to do so well before. These
pages at least understand a little of that, and cite a
real-world range under perfect conditions of 450km before
recharging, with a range of 300km afterwards.
Yet these figures are with no heat or AC, with it not
below -10C, and with an incredibly slow speed of
110km/hr, which is illegal on some freeways in the US and
Canada (yes, too slow on a freeway is illegal). At
least, according to this page.
And yes, this is a "long trip" after all. I often have
circumstances where I drive 1600km a day.
For current situations, although the future can be
different, if you click on the details, it's actually 22
minutes to get an 80% charge, and of course with 400kw
thrown at it. You have to get to the charger, hope one
is free, then start this business. Just the on/off plus
charging would realistically be 30 minutes, and taking 1
1/2 hours off to charge is ridiculous.
The current real world problems are, you'll never find
that level of charging anywhere along the route of your
long trip. Not with assurances it actually works, and
that you don't have to redirect 100s of kms out of the
path you wish to take. I cite current, because the
future is just that. However, you'll literally have to
spend trillions on infra just to do anything more than
that, because if you're having literal parking lots full
of cars charging at turn-offs on interstates, that's
going to require massive, new long-haul electricity
infra.
Which is really the point. Very slow to charge, hard to
get charged, and once the infra is in place, there's
still issues. Like recycling. And weight of car. And
peak demand vs storage (such as with h2). And more.
Each tech stands poorly against gas cars, in terms of
usability, reliability, range, fueling issues, and so on.
That's to be expected though, with over 100 years of
relentless development of carbon beasts, in planes,
ships, cars, engines of all sorts.
It will take decades at the very least to get as good
with electric in any form.
Yet what do I hear and see?
What madness do I see relentlessly spouted?
That one tech is the only answer, that R&D will change
nothing, that even though range is an issue, the person
is the problem, not the range, and so on.
Like the crass "use an airplane" comment.
Ah well.
BadBadJellyBean wrote 1 day ago:
But isn't that a counter point? Just putting the electricity
directly into a car seems sensible instead of converting it to
H2 and then back to electricity. Especially now that wo don't
usually have a huge oversupply of green energy. We can think of
ways to use the oversupply when it really becomes a problem.
But I'd assume then BEV will be so dominant the no one will go
through the hassle of supporting H2.
hvb2 wrote 1 day ago:
If you can do that at a meaningful rate you might as well install
ev charging and just not electrolyse when cars are charging
b112 wrote 1 day ago:
He didn't say it doesn't have local tanks. Only that it makes h2
local. You can still make h2 to replenish, and have storage.
This is akin to how almost all power used to charge cars, is
not-green. For example, there are still Ng, coal, and other
types of power plants. If cars switched to gas, instead of
electric charging, then some of those could be shut down.
But the true point, is as we convert to more and more solar,
we'll eventually shut down the last of the fossil fuel burner
plants, and eventually the cars will all be green power sourced.
Same with h2. Getting non-polling cars out the door and into
people's hands, is key. Eventually, where the power comes from
will be clean. And really, we're already having issues with
power infra, even before AI, so re-purposing Ng pipelines for H2
would be a great thing.
estimator7292 wrote 1 day ago:
We won't get rid of natural gas any time soon. Ng pipelines are
not in any way similar to H2 pipelines except the word 'pipe'.
You can't just put hydrogen in them. You can't even retrofit
them. You're looking at laying an entirely new pipeline either
way.
Furthermore, most H2 is produced by fossil fuel extraction. We
aren't cracking water to get H2, we're pulling it out of the
ground. Cracking water is hideously expensive.
All in all, combustion engines are more efficient than green
hydrogen. That's the core problem. We simply don't have the
absurd amounts of unused energy required for green H2
production. If we did, we'd be pumping fully half of that
energy into the atmosphere as waste heat.
Hydrogen cars aren't going to happen. We won't have grid-scale
hydrogen. It's just a terrible idea. Hydrogen is too difficult
to handle and incredibly dangerous to store. The efficiency is
so ludicrously bad that you would genuinely do better to create
syngas from captured atmospheric carbon and burn it in regular
combustion vehicles.
Avoiding carbon emissions is not the only concern in regards to
the climate. Focusing on carbon and nothing else leads you to
really dumb and bad ideas like piping hydrogen gas across the
continent.
fsh wrote 1 day ago:
This is not quite true. The original gas pipes in most cities
were built for "town gas" which was produced from coal and is
50% hydrogen by volume. The infrastructure could handle
hydrogen just fine, but the low conversion efficiencies make
it impractical.
b112 wrote 1 day ago:
h2 can be co-mingled with Ng and extracted with a molar
filter at the other end.
Ng pipelines are everywhere, so it makes perfect sense.
adastra22 wrote 1 day ago:
None of the pipes or valves are designed for hydrogen. It
will steal leak. And leaking a very flammable gas isnât
great.
mike50 wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
Let alone the compressors or the flow measurement
equipment. Also significant portions of the pipesline
(especially in neighborhoods / last mile) aren't metal
anymore.
LTL_FTC wrote 1 day ago:
Toyota restricted the sale of its hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to
specific, qualified customers who lived or worked near existing,
functional hydrogen refueling stations. I remember looking into them
when first released but realized I wasnât eligible and the fact that
Toyota restricted the sale meant there was a huge risk in buying them.
With all the recent outrage and lawsuits, I wonder how many buyers
actually did their due diligence and weighed the risk before committing
to them? Or maybe the huge fuel subsidy was seen as a win even if this
event played out? Idk but I commend Toyota for taking the risk and
going for it.
Edit: typo
decimalenough wrote 1 day ago:
Approximately zero regular consumers purchased hydrogen cars. They
were all fleet purchases designed primarily to publish burnish
eco-friendly credentials, like this:
"This new initiative reinforces Air Liquide's commitment to
decarbonizing transportation and accelerating the shift toward
sustainable and low-carbon mobility solutions." [1] Of course, Air
Liquide would also profit massively from building hydrogen infra if
it did become commonplace.
HTML [1]: https://www.airliquide.com/group/press-releases-news/2025-11...
LTL_FTC wrote 1 day ago:
Well⦠I did/do see many around the Bay Area. Especially during
the morning commute. But I agree, overall it was a low volume car.
kotaKat wrote 1 day ago:
Funny thing, Air Liquide. They were going to build a massive green
hydrogen plant in upstate NY and backed out when the tax credits
disappeared...
HTML [1]: https://www.airproducts.com/company/news-center/2025/02/02...
Aurornis wrote 1 day ago:
> and backed out when the tax credits disappeared...
As they should. If the terms of the deal change, you need to
start over with the business case and financials.
If you want someone to be mad at, itâs the politicians making
these bad tax credit decisions. Not the companies trying to
respond to the tax credit incentives. Getting companies to build
things they otherwise wouldnât is the entire purpose of tax
credits.
butvacuum wrote 1 day ago:
Hydrogen systems just don't make sense. Neither do molecular
Hydrogen Fuel Cells.
Now, green hydrogen for ammonia, and Ammonia fuel cells? Yes.
wlesieutre wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs not really fair to compare depreciation against MSRP when they
were being sold new at massive discounts. You couldâve gotten one of
these for $40,000 off.
HTML [1]: https://www.carscoops.com/2024/02/toyota-offers-crazy-40k-disc...
stetrain wrote 1 day ago:
This is a source of a lot of similar press around EV depreciation.
They compare the MSRP of an EV 3 years ago with the current used
market price, ignoring that the actual price paid is often
significantly less due a combination of discounts, tax credits, and
rebates.
jillesvangurp wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
EV depreciation is a very different beast. Basically, EVs are still
being sold at a higher price point than their actual cost justifies
in some markets. Part of that is manufacturers being a bit behind
on their cost cutting and part of that is just because the market
is incentivizing selling vehicles at inflated prices.
If you strip that away, you get to more reasonable price points
already getting common all over Asia, Australia, and even the EU
market right now. There you might find reasonably priced new
vehicles at around 25K euros or even below 20K. A few years ago,
those vehicles didn't exist and ASPs were closer to 40-50K for a
cheap one. So, the second hand value of those older vehicles has
indeed depreciated enormously. Because they simply are not worth as
much relative to the much cheaper newer generation of cars. These
vehicles got obsoleted by a better and cheaper generation of cars.
With hydrogen cars, companies sell them at a loss. They always
have. That's why Toyota, the biggest proponent, sells more EVs than
they ever built hydrogen cars. Pretty much every quarter now.
The better/cheaper generation of hydrogen cars never materialized.
And it probably never will. The hydrogen distribution network never
happened either. Because as it turns out, making hydrogen is really
expensive. So aside from a few heavily subsidized filling stations,
the economics for those is so terrible that they tend to shut down
as soon as the subsidies run out. So, that's why they are
relatively worthless as a second hand car. You are better off
buying a second hand EV. And since those have depreciated a lot,
hydrogen cars simply aren't worth more second hand.
And since there is no realistic prospect of ever producing hydrogen
cars or hydrogen at price points that can match those of EVs and
electricity, hydrogen based transport is at this point dead as a
door nail.
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
My state assesses annual car taxes based on MSRP rather than real
market value, unfortunately, so these fake MSRPs matter to me. :-(
cosmic_cheese wrote 1 day ago:
The part that's interesting to me is how much the depreciation is
posed as negative rather than positive.
The long term value of a car is only really relevant if one is
constantly cycling through cars and needs the trade-in/resale
value. If a car isn't viewed as an investment and/or the intention
is to drive it into the ground, depreciation is purely positive
because it means that there's insanely good deals on some great
cars right now. Of course everybody's needs are different, but for
a lot of people there's nothing that comes remotely close of the
value of a gently driven, practically new 1-3 year old lease return
EV.
freetime2 wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
> The long term value of a car is only really relevant if one is
constantly cycling through cars and needs the trade-in/resale
value.
Depreciation is based on real-world qualities of a vehicle that
determine how desireable it is to own over time. Toyotas tend to
depreciate slower than Mercedes-Benz, for example, because
maintenance and repair costs tend to be lower. For someone
looking to buy a car new and drive it for 10+ years, they are
probably going to be drawn to car models that have a reputation
for reliability and thus hold their value. Even if you don't care
about the resale value of a car, you probably do care about the
underlying factors driving that resale price.
With EVs the factors driving depreciation are concerns about
rapid tech obsolescence, battery degredation and replacement
costs, incentives and new price cuts, and charging
infrastructure. You also hear stories about Tesla drivers waiting
6+ months for a replacement part, Rivians being totaled because
of a dent in a rear quarter panel, etc. These are all reasonable
things for a buyer to be concerned with, in my opinion.
But I agree that if you are ok with all of the above in a used EV
(range and charging speed may not matter if you have a place to
charge at home, for example), there are good deals to be found.
cosmic_cheese wrote 23 hours 12 min ago:
I would point out a subtlety here: deprecation is based on
perceived value, and this perception tracks much more closely
with the glacial knowledge of the larger public than it does
with that of an informed individual.
Battery degradation is extremely overrepresented in the minds
of the public for example and based mostly on the performance
of early entrants like the original Nissan Leaf. Since then,
chemistries and management systems have progressed dramatically
and rendered it a moot point â most EVs made in the past
several years will have their batteries outlast the useful life
of the vehicle. In the case the Ariya, Nissan appears to have
overcorrected for the Leaf's reputation to such an extreme that
they can be fast charged to 100% for many dozens of cycles and
still show no capacity loss.
This is a gap in knowledge that smart buyers who are willing to
do a little bit of research can exploit and get much more car
for their money than would otherwise be possible.
Spivak wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
I don't understand why this is grey, this is exactly correct.
Depreciation is good actually ignores the realities of why a
car's value is tanking in the first place. The only time high
depreciation is good for you as a buyer is if you think the
market is mispricing cars and they're actually far more
valuable than the cost they're being sold for. But best keep
that secret because the market will be quick to correct once
it's discovered.
appcustodian2 wrote 1 day ago:
It's extremely fair to compare depreciation against MSRP. What's not
fair is to say that they were being "sold new at massive discounts"
when in reality it's an asterisk-ridden rebate process that applied
to one model year under specific circumstances. That article was spam
when it was written, can you provide a first party source for these
massive discounts?
Aurornis wrote 1 day ago:
Depreciation is measured against the price someone actually paid.
The MSRP doesnât matter. The S stands for suggested.
themafia wrote 1 day ago:
In the US. How does their value fare in Japan?
numpad0 wrote 1 day ago:
HTML [1]: https://www.carsensor.net/usedcar/bTO/s235/index.html
decimalenough wrote 1 day ago:
Given the complete collapse in sales last year (-83% to 432 units, in
a market of over 4M cars sold), I'd venture to guess they're faring
pretty badly.
HTML [1]: https://www.automotiveworld.com/news/fcev-sales-in-japan-fal...
helterskelter wrote 1 day ago:
I've seen exactly one of these in person while in San Diego for a month
or so. I never did see a fueling station for it though.
kotaKat wrote 1 day ago:
There's only... well, 51 of them. If you're lucky, you're near one of
the 42 that are actually online and available for fueling (as of this
comment).
Stations running out of fuel and stations going offline for hardware
failures runs rampant.
Oh, and some stations might not be able to provide the highest
pressure H2, so you might be stuck taking an 85% tank fill... and at
nearly $30/kg and a 5.6kg (full) tank, that's an expensive fill.
HTML [1]: https://h2-ca.com/
peterfirefly wrote 1 day ago:
And they are not even supposed to explode anymore!
giancarlostoro wrote 1 day ago:
This is one of those cars that's interesting to me, but I don't know
that we'll ever go this route in a significant amount. Problem is how
complex it is to create hydrogen, although 'green hydrogen' is a thing,
it would take quite a bit regardless. Interesting to note that if we
could extract only 2% of the hydrogen burried under the earth, we could
power the entire world for over 200 years. Which is crazy to think
about.
The other interesting thing about these cars is the output is water out
of the tailpipe.
Rohansi wrote 1 day ago:
Creating hydrogen isn't the only problem. Storage and transportation
is a big one since it is an actual gas instead of a liquid. Needs to
be compressed, causes embrittlement, highly flammable, etc...
mono442 wrote 1 day ago:
It's possible to create hydrogen from coal and carbon capture is
supposed to be feasible. Though I don't know how commercially viable
this is.
peterfirefly wrote 1 day ago:
Carbon doesn't really contain all that much hydrogen.
Feasibility is key.
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSV2kVkO1w
pfdietz wrote 1 day ago:
> Carbon doesn't really contain all that much hydrogen.
The hydrogen also comes from water reacted (mildly
endothermically) with carbon, and by further reaction of carbon
monoxide with water.
C + H2O --> CO + H2
CO + H2O --> CO2 + H2
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
It's very easy to create hydrogen from fossil natural gas. Which is
the real motivation behind 99% of H2 projects; continue to emit CO2,
just hidden from the end user.
Battery electric is now pretty much inevitable.
2muchcoffeeman wrote 1 day ago:
How do you solve aeronautical and maritime applications?
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
The Toyota Mirai neither flies nor floats.
There's a bit of a movement for battery electric ships, but
currently limited to short haul ferries. I have a suspicion this
simply won't be "solved" for quite some time after car and
heating electrification.
fsh wrote 1 day ago:
Hydrogen is not great for airplanes since the extremely low
density makes the tanks too large. The best solution would be
synthetic hydrocarbons (synthesized using hydrogen) which can
outperform fossil jet fuel.
danhor wrote 1 day ago:
Certainly not with hydrogen directly. It might be involved in the
production chain, but it's such a pain. If it's at all possible
to electrify, that'll very likely win.
For flights, a combination of batteries for smaller, regional
planes starting with "islands hoppers" now and SAF from either
Biofuel or produced from Electricity (with Hydrogen as an
intermediate step). Although I think that we might first see
moves to reduce the 2x non CO2 Climate Impacts which can be much
cheaper to tackle (such as Contrails).
For maritime applications, batteries when regularly near ports,
probably hybrids with methanol for cross-ocean passage far away
from coasts.
pfdietz wrote 1 day ago:
In fairness, hydrogen from gas would enable the CO2 to be
sequestered. If the vehicle itself burned the natural gas that
would require recapturing the CO2 from the atmosphere itself, which
is much more challenging.
None of this is to detract from the attractiveness of battery
vehicles.
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
Carbon sequestration is another of those "if we did this, it
might solve the problem, but there's no serious move to do it and
pay for it on the scale required, plus it's prone to cheating".
sremani wrote 1 day ago:
I once did some research on Mirai and found at that time Plano, TX
where Toyota NA is Headquartered did not have a Hydrogen station. Not
sure if they have one now. It is such a limited car and because of the
infrastructure stuck to LA and San Diego, I guess.
Pure range is 500+ miles but not many Hydrogen stations.
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