Electric or hydrogen cars?

[FishInferno]

What do you think is better: Hydrogen fueled or electric cars?

Debate below:)

[Albert VDS]

Here's a video of Elon explaining why a hydrogen fuel cell is dumb: https://youtu.be/Y_e7rA4fBAo?t=11m15s

The potential danger is reason enough to not even consider hydrogen.

[SeaDog]

They both suck. Cars take up space, both in terms of parking and in terms of roads. The more space you need in a city per capita, the longer the distances to everything will be, and the more roads you need, which takes up space, etc... Future cities will need to be based around bikes, public transportation and high and dense city blocks. What we use for fuel in the few cars we have left by then is unimportant. Might as well use what little fossil fuels we have left for that. If there's anything they're good for it is transportation, actually.

But if I have to choose, i'd say electric. I don't think it's impossible that electric cars will take over primarily because they simply perform better and are easier to maintain.

[Albert VDS]

Really bikes? That reminds me of this Back to the Future scene:

So what you are saying is we are going to stick to our own small patch of land and not go anywhere.

That's so backwards from what we've been doing since forever.

[lajoswinkler]

Electric or hydrogen fuel cell, they have sense only if your dominating energy source is environmentally friendly, energy dense and plentiful (nuclear fission). Having electric cars powered by hippie power sources is a pipedream, engineering nightmare and an environmental disaster (luckily for stupid Westerners, immediate threat is outsourced to China which is the main producer of those power sources).

But if I had to choose between them, I'd choose electric storage. Hydrogen is a bad idea from a technological point, but also it's an environmental nightmare because it's a horrific ozone depleting agent. It's not cumulative like freons and halons that it causes problems for decades after emission stop, but it's extremely reactive in contact with ozone. Because hydrogen leaking is impossible to avoid and being the lightest gas, large scale implementation of such technology would cause a severe degradation of the ozone layer.

[magnemoe]

Agree with him, if you want an clean energy source for hybrid cars use ethane or propane it can either been taken from natural gas or created biological, you can also use alcohols if you need an liquid.

No producing hydrogen with renewable energy don't generate co2, however it could be used to replace fossil sources instead if its not charging batteries.

More fun the cheapest way to make hydrogen is from methane. I guess this process is less efficient than burning the methane directly so you end up releasing more co2 but most of the pumps will be methane hydrogen.

Danger can be handled, high density batteries is as dangerous as solid rocket fuel. Both contains lots of energy and don't need oxygen to burn. Main issue might be hydrogen brittleness in old cars. Cars tend to last 15-20 years and the last part they don't get service,

[Wesreidau]

Electric is better than hydrogen fuel cells. Of course, all of the petroleum fuels are better than electric unless you have a radically different value system than I do. But that's what makes it my opinion, isn't it? One simply can't beat the energy density of a steel cylinder full of hydrocarbons unless you think car crashes are boring and need more fireballs.

[Streetwind]

They both suck. Cars take up space, both in terms of parking and in terms of roads. The more space you need in a city per capita, the longer the distances to everything will be, and the more roads you need, which takes up space, etc... Future cities will need to be based around bikes, public transportation and high and dense city blocks. What we use for fuel in the few cars we have left by then is unimportant. Might as well use what little fossil fuels we have left for that. If there's anything they're good for it is transportation, actually.

People will not accept bikes. Main reason: wheather. You need to be able to commute even while it's pouring buckets or while it's -20°C on a crisp winter morning.

Now, cabin scooters or microcars, that I can see... Something like this. Though it's sales statistic says a lot about how ready mankind is for that sort of thing.

And, as someone who's commuted by public transport for over a year straight at one point... until that becomes a superior option to cars, public transport must improve. A lot. Like, orders of magnitude. We have fantastic public transport where I live, by international standards. And yet, going the same distance by car takes me one third of the time, never runs late on me, is quieter, smells nicer, always has a free seat, isn't filled with drunk people trying to tell me their life story and swag kids playing hiphop on cellphone loudspeakers, doesn't require me to sprint through the rain to change buses or trains multiple times per trip, doesn't get wrecked with grafitty and chewing gums and burnmarks in a matter of days, has proper proper climate control and, get this - costs me half as much on a daily basis.

Public transport has an even longer way to come towards the cities of the future than we as people have.

[vger]

Electric 100%.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while, the idea that everyone complains about them.

"Doesn't matter if your car is electric, when you plug it in, its getting its power from a dirty energy source anyway."

Well yeah, that's a valid argument, but only in the short-term. I think we can all agree that a "Mr. Fusion" car engine is a bad idea. Even if we technically could do it, vehicles generating power with volatile energy sources is quite obviously a bad idea. However, what happens when/if fusion power becomes a practical reality? Electric cars will still be able to harness that power.

Except for some really extreme discovery, ANY future energy source, no matter how powerful, will probably simply be converted to electricity. Electric cars can tap into that. This is good for the advancement of civilization because electric cars will be able to access the power source no matter what, without any need to make changes to our current infrastructure. No worrying about if the gas station is selling hydrogen, ethanol, gasoline, matter-antimatter particles, etc. Just plug the car into an outlet, and go!

[RainDreamer]

I can't wait till the day we figured out teleporters.

[InterCity]

I'm for electricity for reasons mentioned above, namely ozone and fireballs (It's not KSP ). There is the problem with making electricity, though. Our best option right now is fission, but simply too many people don't realize it. Hippie sources are simply not powerful enough to fuel 7 billion power-hungry people, unless we cover the earth in solar panels. Sure, we almost have that ITER thingy, but it's far from a cheap, reliable and safe energy source. We're stuck with uranium, folks.

[magnemoe]

They both suck. Cars take up space, both in terms of parking and in terms of roads. The more space you need in a city per capita, the longer the distances to everything will be, and the more roads you need, which takes up space, etc... Future cities will need to be based around bikes, public transportation and high and dense city blocks. What we use for fuel in the few cars we have left by then is unimportant. Might as well use what little fossil fuels we have left for that. If there's anything they're good for it is transportation, actually.

But if I have to choose, i'd say electric. I don't think it's impossible that electric cars will take over primarily because they simply perform better and are easier to maintain.

Urban areas already have car problem, cleaner cars will reduce pollution but not the queues. Electrical bikes work very well for shorter distances in good weather, not so fun in -20 centigrade or heavy icing. They are also dangerous, treated as bicycles with bicycle attitude and safety gear but has scooter performance, yes its strict legal limits and unless you buy budget everybody break them, and yes you can select an stronger engine.

I agree with the drivetrain, they also have an major benefit in part of Europe with high car taxes, Norway has the highest, we also buy half of the Tesla's with 5 million population.

Brings up an interesting idea, modify the voltage regulator on the Tesla S to run the engines on higher voltage for an short time, yes I know the car has 700 hp stock

Got the idea from a childhood memory, got an electronic for dummies book, did drag-racing with cars on track, it was 6 volt, I connected an 12 v car battery.

It was an straight track and the cars run off it and into an pillow at end, not that they would manage any turn anyway, had been fun to repeat this with an 700 hp car

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff300/fv00214.htm related freefall strip.

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I can't wait till the day we figured out teleporters.

LOL, another memory, was running an business with an friend, was stuck in traffic jam, friend had problem understanding I was stuck so I delayed talking and he wondered why, my reply was that I was looking for the teleportation menu on my phone, today we would say app but this was around 2002 and I had just gotten an Nokia communicator who was an phone made as an miniature laptop pretty much the most powerful mobile device you could get back then while he had an very small and stylish phone.

[Guest]

Hydrogen cars solve problems while electric create them.

If you developed battery problem in Tesla, you have to pull over, stop, get out of the car (it might be cold outside), do not forget to retrieve your cat cage and notebook, then you have to start a tedious process of calling an emergency services, car dealer, insurance, relatives, all while your cat annoyingly meowing while looking at burning car.

On other hand, if hydrogen car develops a leak, it suddenly solves all the problems: you don't have to pay taxes anymore, nor repay your loans and put up with health problems. You can forget about your divorce process and leaking water tap at your home. Everything is just fine now. You dead.

[tater]

Given that choice, electric, but if most cars switched we'd need more nuclear power, period, as "renwable" is neither cost or space effective, and with full adoption would barely cope with normal increases in need---and could not cope with a few hundred million pure electric cars.

Not having cars is a cute idea that only people in densely populated areas can even entertain. There are counties in my state almost as big as Slovenia. We routinely take day trips that would be impossible in a Tesla. We know a few people with tesla s models, but they all have at least 1 other car (most have 2 others).

[Torquemadus]

Hydrogen has to be made either by electrolyzing water, or through the chemical breakdown of fossil fuels. Using either method is very energy intensive; it takes a lot more energy to make the hydrogen than you get back from burning it as a fuel.

Producing hydrogen via electrolysis is prohibitively expensive. Whereas, the disadvantages of making hydrogen by reforming hydrocarbons from fossil fuels should be all too obvious!

Once the hydrogen has been made, it needs to be stored. It can be liquefied at -253 degrees Celsius, but this requires a great deal of electricity for refrigeration. The liquid hydrogen would also gradually boil away during transport and storage.

The alternative would be to compress the gas with high pressure pumps, which use a lesser amount of electricity than the refrigeration method. This could then be stored in enormously heavy steel compressed gas tanks, weighing many times more than the gas they contain.

Instead of hydrogen, it might be more feasible to switch to clean burning carbon neutral biofuels such as ethanol and methanol. Ethanol can be made from agricultural products, while methanol can be made from any kind of biomass. Methanol can also be used to produce dimethyl ether, which is a clean burning diesel fuel.

Robert Zubrin wrote an excellent book on this subject called Energy Victory.

[AngelLestat]

Let me point some common misconceptions about opinions on these technologies.

1-Elon musk said that we lost 50% of the energy making and transporting hydrogen instead use direct power.

False, you can extract hydrogen from fossil fuels, in fact the 95% of the hydrogen produced come from these sources, it has a 80% of efficiency, higher than 60% of the best thermal plants. Then you lose like a 5% in the compression and another 5% in the transportation.

Guess what? you had similar energy loses transporting the energy with transmission lines.

Also a lot of new renewable energy sources has a lot of sense if they produce directly hydrogen instead try to storage the energy in other way and then send it by wires.

2-Electric or hydrogen fuel cell, they have sense only if your dominating energy source is environmentally friendly.

Not at all, even if all our energy comes from fossil fuels (which doesn´t), a normal thermal plant efficiency is about 45%, the best reach 61% with a extra of 300mw of thermal energy, which it rise its efficiency at 85%

All the other sources had a conversion of 90 to 95%, which it give us an average of 70%, less 10% on transmission loss plus car storage nad conversion we have 50%

We need to compare this 50% against the 25% to 30% of efficiency than fuel cars had with its otto engine, plus electric cars can recover the brake energy, which is a 30% of the whole energy consumed, so we can reach the conclusion that electric cars are 30% more efficient than fuel cars, also the co2 emmited by thermal power plants using the same fuel that cars does is much lower.

3-other type of energy sources as propane or ethane can had similar benefics than hydrogen.

Is true that if you have an hybrid car, it will be more efficient that a normal car. But lets not forget that hydrogen+oxigen combustion waste is water.

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So.. which is better? Electric battery cars or hydrogen electric cars?

For cars, I would said Electric.

Anything a bit heavy than cars (+1500 kg) as truck or bus, etc. Hydrogen is better.

There are huge advances coming in the storage of electric energy and hydrogen managment and conversion.

Batteries and capacitors will have a huge improvement, also with fuel cells.

They found a good remplacement of the expensive platinum catalyst using graphene composite.

This same material can be used to capture hydrogen from the air (wet) and then storage in the car tank.

Graphene oxide can be used as a paint to avoid any hydrogen leak from tanks.´

So I guess both technologies will have huge potential in our future.

PD: a fun toy

Edited March 20, 2015 by AngelLestat

[Deddly]

This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while, the idea that everyone complains about them.

"Doesn't matter if your car is electric, when you plug it in, its getting its power from a dirty energy source anyway."

Well yeah, that's a valid argument, but only in the short-term.

Interestingly, although it may or may not be getting power from a dirty grid, an electric car will use that power very efficiently, meaning the net pollution will be lower than an equivalent hydrocarbon-fuelled car (which are much less efficient with the available energy).

In many cases, though, the grid power is much cleaner than a compustion engine because large power plants can have a great deal of technology added on to clean the emmissions - technology simply not available or too large/costly for a single vehicle.

But yeah, coal is a pretty awful fuel to burn for power, however it is used.

Being a KSP forum, though, I'm surprised there's no "rocket vehicles" option in the poll

[RAINCRAFTER]

This all sounds super cool, but why not a solar car? Slow, but even less harmful to the environment.

[tater]

Electric cars are only useful for short trips. That's why hybrids would be so much better. A tesla with a small gas generator so that you need not worry about being stranded. Without basically a full battery swap capability, in the time it takes to fill up a gas tank, they are not useful for many people in north america. Particularly in the summer where powerful AC is not optional (caveat, I live in the SW US where it can get hot, even a mile above sea level).

Kids have break this next week, and we are visiting friends in Colorado. That's over 1800km round trip with side journeys in Denver, etc. That's 5 full recharges. We are going to be gone 5 days, only 2 of which are long drives. Impossible with any electric car. Even if there were charging stations, we've get a 1/2 charge in 30-45 min. That's 4 hours of charging at rest stops. If they existed, which they don't.

Anything that doesn't give me full range in a couple minutes is a nonstarter to me as other than a novelty (or as an extra car).

Obviously people who live in small places with lots of people might have a different opinion, and have more utility. I love the Tesla S, BTW. It's awesome, but we'd need it as 1 of 2 cars at least (1 of which would always have to be gas unless they manage to vastly improve range (with anything other than near instant recharging, range needs to be the most you might drive in a single day (say ~10 hours on the highway)).

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This all sounds super cool, but why not a solar car? Slow, but even less harmful to the environment.

A Tesla S has an 85 kWh battery. How much solar might you get, 2-3 square meters? At what efficiency? In Colorado as an example, insolation is ~2200 kWh/m^2 per year. At 20%, that's 3.6kWh for our car with 3m^2 of panels per day or so, that's about 10 miles of driving in that Tesla S.

[Technical Ben]

What do you think is better: Hydrogen fueled or electric cars?

Debate below:)

They are the same. They are both battery based cars. One uses batteries of acid/lithium one uses a hydrogen battery. Both require power from an external source. Both have benefits and draw backs. Both can be more efficient than fossil fuels to some degree. But require power from the "grid" to be green for them to really be a "better" option.

[Rakaydos]

Electric cars are only useful for short trips.

(...)

Kids have break this next week, and we are visiting friends in Colorado. That's over 1800km round trip with side journeys in Denver, etc. That's 5 full recharges. We are going to be gone 5 days, only 2 of which are long drives. Impossible with any electric car. Even if there were charging stations, we've get a 1/2 charge in 30-45 min. That's 4 hours of charging at rest stops. If they existed, which they don't.

Might be easier than you'd think.

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html

As for waiting for an hour for a charge... you were going to have supper, were you not? 300 mile range at freeway speeds is a bit under 5 hours of travel... so drive, have a big breckfast while the car charges, drive more, have lunch and sight see, drive more, have supper... you'll be there in 2 days.

[tater]

The dedicated, fast tesla stations do half a charge in 30-45 minutes. Half. Range is 265 miles (worse with AC blazing away, or if really cold out). That means under 3 hours driving, then 30 minutes stop, then 1.5 hours driving. Not useful. My dad drives out to visit from the east coast. He drives to NM in 2.5 days. 1 long day, then one not too long day, then a half a day. It would take a week with an electric car.

So I should spend 4 days of a 5 day trip driving instead of 2?

[Dkmdlb]

In this thread:

"I can think of something for which technology X is not good solution. Therefore technology X is not a good solution and/or doomed to fail."

[Bill Phil]

Hydrogen is expensive....

Electric cars have been around for about a hundred years, hydrogen cars about two hundred. Of course, they didn't really catch on for a while...

And there were electric cars in the 30s that could go faster than 100 kph.

So, electric. On the grounds of Hydrogen being expensive.

[Drunken Hobo]

I still think biofuels will be the real answer, but out of these two it's electric by a long way. Whilst batteries will keep getting better & better, hydrogen's problems are simply insurmountable. It takes a lot of energy to compress, which just reduces efficiency. It also requires very heavy-duty tanks to store it safely, meaning it's absolutely hopeless as a transport fuel as 90% of the mass is storage tank and only 10% is fuel. So if you want to transport hydrogen over any great distance, you're lugging around a lot of dead weight. It's also extremely difficult to pipe anywhere, so that's out of the question.

These are problems created by the physical properties of hydrogen and cannot be changed.