When will people learn that hydrogen is safer than petrol/gas

[Northstar1989]

I thought electric personal vehicles would never be a practical replacement for internal combustion, but I'm coming around to the idea as batteries get better and better. Tesla's supercharger stations make me think that long distance trips aren't out of the question, either.

I'd imagine that the transition will happen slowly, with most 2+ car families retaining at least one combustion vehicle, with 1 car families being slower to make the change.

If you're talking about cars (I thought this might have been a discussion of rockets- i.e. Kerosene vs. LH2 stages...), then batteries matter less than you think...

There was this great idea called "Project Better Place" for a while. Unfortunately, due a combination of the global economic meltdown (which greatly restricted their access to startup financing) and poor marketing of their cars in Israel (I know this on both a public and personal level- I talked to a friend of mine who visited the country just as the cars were about to hit the road, and he had never seen a single advertisement for them while he was there, despite the plan only working with a relatively large market share...), it never made it off the ground, and the company went bankrupt...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/01/shai-agassi-project-better-place/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/business/global/israeli-electric-car-company-files-for-liquidation.html?_r=0

It looks to be the case, however, that the company has found a buyer. So the plan might continue... (I hope it does- because it's probably the only way the world will escape the otherwise inevitable thermonuclear war when the oil is almost dry and the major powers start fighting over it...)

http://gas2.org/2013/07/16/project-better-place-saved-15-charging-stations-to-stay-online/

EDIT: Nope, that info was outdated. That sale fell through at the last minute for some reason... I found an interesting analysis of why the company failed though- looks like it was mostly bad management. In the words of one former employee "The technology worked, customers were satisfied".

http://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-place

Something seems rotten about the whole deal... Somehow I have a hard time believing that all the things went wrong were just coincidence. Oil companies screwing it over behind the scenes, anyone?

Regards,

Northstar

Edited May 30, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Red Iron Crown]

Better batteries = Better range = More useful to more people.

Battery swap depends on all the manufacturers agreeing to battery design and, to some degree, packaging in the vehicle. Unlikely unless mandated by law (which might be a good idea, might not).

[Northstar1989]

Better batteries = Better range = More useful to more people.

Battery swap depends on all the manufacturers agreeing to battery design and, to some degree, packaging in the vehicle. Unlikely unless mandated by law (which might be a good idea, might not).

You should read up on the idea behind Better Place. It was a great, amazing idea- unfortunately ruined by a horrible, narcissistic CEO (Shai Agassi) with a Steve Jobs complex...

It looks like TESLA MOTORS in implementing the technology, though. They'll probably take it a lot further:

Tesla's Model S car, it turns out, has a swappable battery. Musk never seemed to put much stock in that technology, but he had the intellectual flexibility to allow that Agassi might have been right about a few things. In June 2013, just three weeks after Better Place's bankruptcy filing, Musk hosted an event in which someone drove a Tesla onstage and a contraption below the stage swapped its battery in 90 seconds. The plan is to roll out a handful of battery-switch stations this year between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Customers will be able to choose between a free charge or a paid swap.

As for battery range- it doesn't matter much if you use battery swap. Sure, it helps- but the vast majority of all driving is less than 30 miles at a time. The 80 mile range on the batteries used by Better Place cars were easily able to handle that.

No law needed mandate battery standardization for swap technology- the company managing the infrastructure can easily arrange that. Better Place, had the company not went under, would have negotiated standardized batter design/packaging with a variety of car companies...

It's such a shame- I've rarely seen such a wonderful idea, and yet it failed miserably thanks to an arrogant CEO...

Read the articles if you haven't. Read up more on the company. It's such a great idea you won't regret learning more about it.

Simply because the company failed doesn't mean the idea was rotten- just the opposite, it took an astoundingly horrible CEO to ruin such an otherwise great idea...

Regards,

Northstar

[Red Iron Crown]

Thanks for assuming I didn't read anything, I appreciate that.

For battery swap stations to work, the batteries pretty much have to be standardized, much as fuel fillers are in IC cars. I consider it unlikely that all manufacturers will agree to standardize, unless mandated by law or if a large enough swap infrastructure already exists (which is a bit of a chicken/egg problem).

Even then, there's still issues like trading in the new battery on your brand new car and getting a five year old battery in return. Someone gets caught holding the bag when the battery dies.

[Northstar1989]

Thanks for assuming I didn't read anything, I appreciate that.

For battery swap stations to work, the batteries pretty much have to be standardized, much as fuel fillers are in IC cars. I consider it unlikely that all manufacturers will agree to standardize, unless mandated by law or if a large enough swap infrastructure already exists (which is a bit of a chicken/egg problem).

Even then, there's still issues like trading in the new battery on your brand new car and getting a five year old battery in return. Someone gets caught holding the bag when the battery dies.

I didn't think you read because most people don't, and because some of your comments betrayed that you hadn't read nearly as much about it as I had... (I assumed you read at least a little- but a *little* understanding is sometimes the most dangerous...)

First of all, because battery-swap technology is still in its infancy, now is the perfect time to standardize. There's no reason why it couldn't develop as a standardized infrastructure (as it would have if Better Place had succeeded). Companies are farsighted enough to know they need to plan for the future like that...

As for the "left holding the bag" problem, it's hardly an issue at all. The main batter-swap system proposed so far (by Better Place) worked by having customers not own the actual battery, but only a subscription to battery use. this avoids the customer having to pay the high up-front cost of purchasing an Electric Vehicle battery. It's not unlikely that any future plan would eventually imitate this same model. For all its mismanagement, Better Place was based on a fundamentally sound idea...

But ideas are just that until successfully implemented, no matter how good they may be... (several reusable rocket launch technologies come to mind when I say that, after all this is KSP...)

I appreciate your focus on identifying potential problems, but these are issues that have already been solved. The greater obstacles are things like getting customers to buy into the plan (Tesla Motors had a good idea with generating a lot of publicity and then selling *binding* early buyer contracts with a $5000 down-payment. Better Place would have been wise to imitate...)

Regards,

Northstar

[Drunken Hobo]

One of the biggest problems with hydrogen is that you can't transport it efficiently. With oil/petrol you can just stick it in a thin metal tank and transport it anywhere around the world with relative safety. To do the same with compressed hydrogen, you need really heavy pressure vessels. That means most of the energy used in transport is just to transport the container & not the product.

I think ethanol or other bio-fuels are the future. Hydrogen is a technological dead-end.

[Northstar1989]

One of the biggest problems with hydrogen is that you can't transport it efficiently. With oil/petrol you can just stick it in a thin metal tank and transport it anywhere around the world with relative safety. To do the same with compressed hydrogen, you need really heavy pressure vessels. That means most of the energy used in transport is just to transport the container & not the product.

Indeed.

I think ethanol or other bio-fuels are the future. Hydrogen is a technological dead-end.

Nahhh, I'm telling you, it's all about the electrics man!

But seriously, chemical fuels don't make sense from an energetic perspective if you have to synthesize them. You put all that energy in to make them, and then lose most of what you manage to store when you combust the fuel again. You're much better off with electrical vehicles.

The main thing people seem to worry about, with electrics, is the "range problem", i.e. that they won't be able to make that 2000-mile road-trip that they've been always planning, but never got around to. There's an easy solution to that though: battery-swap. Better Place had the right idea- just bad management/execution.

Regards,

Northstar

[LethalDose]

One of the biggest problems with hydrogen is that you can't transport it efficiently. With oil/petrol you can just stick it in a thin metal tank and transport it anywhere around the world with relative safety. To do the same with compressed hydrogen, you need really heavy pressure vessels. That means most of the energy used in transport is just to transport the container & not the product.

I think ethanol or other bio-fuels are the future. Hydrogen is a technological dead-end.

An option to compressed molecular hydrogen is metal hydride storage cells. I haven't kept up on the tech, but it's a direction that may make hydrogen storage more practical.

IMO, ethanol, bio-fuels, hydrogen cells (whatever their form), gassifcation of sea water CO2 and raw electrics with batteries all have a place in future energy solutions, for various applications.

For cars, I think the immediate future is going to be variations on the hybrids (are CNG hybrids possible?) and rechargable batteries like the Telsa is using.

[Seret]

a subscription to battery use. this avoids the customer having to pay the high up-front cost of purchasing an Electric Vehicle battery. It's not unlikely that any future plan would eventually imitate this same model. For all its mismanagement, Better Place was based on a fundamentally sound idea...

That's actually not a novel business model in the EV space, Renault sell all their (non-swap) EVs with leased batteries.

Better Place was always a bit of a long shot. Fundamental infrastructure changes like that need a lot of support from manufacturers and government to get traction. A lot of alternative vehicle propulsion systems like this fail because of the chicken-and-egg infrastructure problem. That's not to say it's impossible, some countries have healthy CNG, LPG or ethanol infrastructures, so there's no reason a hydrogen or battery swap infrastructure is out of the question. It's just really risky for the pioneers, as Better Place showed.

(are CNG hybrids possible?)

Absolutely. Dual-fuel ICE vehicles that can switch on the fly from petrol to CNG or LPG are also common in some places.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Seret

[LethalDose]

Absolutely. Dual-fuel ICE vehicles that can switch on the fly from petrol to CNG or LPG are also common in some places.

Oh that's cool, I didn't know about those. I actually meant hybrid electric vehicles, like the Prius, that have a ICE and an electric propulsion system. I was curious if it was practical to replace the gasoline ICE with a CNG/LNG engine.

[Rakaydos]

Most train locomotives are Diesel-Electric (hybrid) vehicals- Diesel power plants running high torque electric motors, pulling hundreds of tons of cargo.

[Seret]

Oh that's cool, I didn't know about those. I actually meant hybrid electric vehicles, like the Prius, that have a ICE and an electric propulsion system. I was curious if it was practical to replace the gasoline ICE with a CNG/LNG engine.

I know, I was just making the point that running an internal combustion engine on CNG was pretty trivial, whether it's part of a hybrid drivetrain or not.

[phoenix_ca]

When it comes to electric cars, bring on the nanobatteries. The whole range problem is likely to be solved soon enough. Whether anyone will actually be able to afford those fancy-shmancy nanobatteries is a different story altogether. Electric cars certainly do seem to be the way to go, especially since they already use infrastructure that's widely available. Where these won't work at all is in areas where electricity isn't so readily available, including remote locations far from civilization, and cities or countries with little-to-no electrical grid. There, IC will still reign supreme for decades to come, and for ultra-long-distance treks (like say, taking your jeep deep into the Sahara or Australia Outback, where taking an electric car is a bad, bad idea, and not just for the range issue), maybe hydrogen fuel will see some use.

As for hydrogen, that compressed-hydrogen-isn't-feasible bugbear came up again, so it's broken record time:

There are other ways of storing hydrogen:

See also:

Reading:

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2009/june/feather-fibers-fluff-up-hydrogen-storage-capacity.html

http://cleantechnica.com/2009/06/24/hydrogen-fuel-tanks-made-from-chicken-feathers-could-save-55-million/

[Nuke]

seems desert environments you could just have a fold out solar recharge panel for emergencies. you could even have them integrated right into the vehicle's roof, not only is it good for emergency recharging, but also to maintain charge to keep the battery in prime condition (free trickle charging, eliminate the issues with charge loss). for infrequently used vehicles it may be possible to keep the batteries charged in certain climates without plugging it in at all. i also rather like having a removable gas apu that you can install in your electric vehicle as a range extension if range is required, or otherwise left in your garage. you might even see these kind of things as standard equipment for electric vehicles in the not too distant future.

i think the range issues are sufficiently solvable such that its not even worth bringing them up. the real concern is beefing up the power grid to support electric vehicle infrastructure. use gasoline in power plants where efficiency and pollution can be controlled, replace coal with nuclear plants designed in this century (*points at canada and claps*), use renewables wherever viable and use storage tech to maximize their effectiveness, get fusion working at all costs. if there is a thing you can do to make the grid more efficient, do it.

[phoenix_ca]

Good points about the solar power in the desert, but my concern was more with battery explody-ness with high-heat. That too could be solved with nanobatteries though.

(*points at canada and claps*)

To be fair, while most of our base load here comes from either hydro or nuclear (and yeah, we have some tentative plans for building ACR-1000 reactors to replace the older CANDU designs), Alberta still uses great heaping piles of coal power. Like, massive, massive piles of it. The vast majority of their power comes from coal, and this from the province that also extracts bitumen (not crude oil; you actually have to dissolve bitumen in gasoline before you can use a pipeline to move it) from the tar sands leaving a vast toxic mess.

[Nuke]

even if the majority of people are in favor of owning electric vehicles there are still going to be those people in harsh climates that will still need to use gasoline because of limits in battery technology. i kinda spent a few years in phoenix and know what kind of mayhem hundred degree weather can play on a regular car battery.

im kinda curious about using active temperature control of the battery compartment. if a well insulated battery can maintain its temperature within its safe operating range using the regular air conditioning hardware you usually find under the hood of most vehicles, it could solve the problem, of course at the cost of range and weight. in a hot sunny climate it may be possible to maintain the temperature of the batteries with that backup solar panel i mentioned earlier. so you can maintain charge, maintain battery health, and keep them from blowing up.

Edited May 31, 2014 by Nuke

[Seret]

use gasoline in power plants where efficiency and pollution can be controlled

Oil fired plants aren't really economical or clean enough, it's not something we'll be doing in the future. If you want to burn a fossil fuel gas is the least bad option, it burns much cleaner, the efficiency of the plants is higher and the fuel is cheaper. Oil-fired electricity generation is a dinosaur, the only countries using it in any great quantities are the gulf states that have a surplus of cheap oil.

[Fizwalker]

I thought electric personal vehicles would never be a practical replacement for internal combustion, but I'm coming around to the idea as batteries get better and better. Tesla's supercharger stations make me think that long distance trips aren't out of the question, either.

I'd imagine that the transition will happen slowly, with most 2+ car families retaining at least one combustion vehicle, with 1 car families being slower to make the change.

Here's something cool that will make electric cars more attractive (there's a possibility of being able to recharge your electric car while you drive it Take a look at this invention.

and

[Red Iron Crown]

Oil fired plants aren't really economical or clean enough, it's not something we'll be doing in the future. If you want to burn a fossil fuel gas is the least bad option, it burns much cleaner, the efficiency of the plants is higher and the fuel is cheaper. Oil-fired electricity generation is a dinosaur, the only countries using it in any great quantities are the gulf states that have a surplus of cheap oil.

I live in Canada, and almost all of the electricity I buy is generated by burning Bunker-C.

Here's something cool that will make electric cars more attractive (there's a possibility of being able to recharge your electric car while you drive it Take a look at this invention.

and

I've seen the videos, they seem to have gone viral. I'm not sure how feasible the project is, but it would be awesome if it works as advertised.

[Fizwalker]

I live in Canada, and almost all of the electricity I buy is generated by burning Bunker-C.

I've seen the videos, they seem to have gone viral. I'm not sure how feasible the project is, but it would be awesome if it works as advertised.

I found them through an article that was written regarding a tweet from George Takei and apparently, generated over $1 Million in capital for the project. I agree that it would be great if it works as you say. The advantages appear obvious, but.... We're talking about governments... and just how honest? an proposition like this is. Frankly, I think it might get more traction over in Europe, than over here.... If it is real.

[ZedNova]

Here's something cool that will make electric cars more attractive (there's a possibility of being able to recharge your electric car while you drive it Take a look at this invention.

and

Thunderf00t exposes pretty much every single problem for this, and explains why it's not feasible;

[Seret]

I live in Canada, and almost all of the electricity I buy is generated by burning Bunker-C.

You may well do, but if so it would make you somewhat atypical. Of Canada's 560ish TWh of annual electricity production, only about 2.3 TWh is generated from fuel oil. That's about 0.5%, which is even lower than the overall world figure of 5%.

Edited June 2, 2014 by Seret

[Moon Goddess]

Lawnmowers, outboard engines and farm machinery tend to be stored half the year then just started again.

Please please drain your lawnmower, outboard, farm equipment, etc. before putting it away for the fall, it will vastly increase the lifespan of your equipment, due to that separation.

[Fizwalker]

Thunderf00t exposes pretty much every single problem for this, and explains why it's not feasible;

Indeed there are many technical difficulties to be overcome, and the inventors might not have all the answers at this point in time--Or even most of the answers! Heck, the Wright Brothers didn't invent the aileron when they invented the airplane! I don't mean to suggest that what they propose will happen. However, I think it's something to watch. Perhaps the idea is before it's time (much like the submarine was prior to the late 1800's and a little over one hundred years later, said tech helps protect the U.S.N.'s nuclear deterrent with names that were previously used to name the primary ships of the battle fleet.)

Thunderfoot brings up a lot of obstacles that must be over come in order to be implemented on any kind of scale, which in and of themselves don't mean the basic idea is wrong.

A humorous kind of look at inventions can be seen in the following clip...

https://myspace.com/bobnewhartmusic/music/song/merchandising-the-wright-brothers-31078829-31536821

I suppose bottom line is, that while all of Thunderfoot's reasons why it isn't feasible now are valid, it doesn't mean it won't be feasible in the future. So, while I might not support putting Solar Freakin' Roadways in their current form in place as the tech base is right this moment, I might be interested in what the refinements will be after, more research is done.

[lajoswinkler]

Indeed there are many technical difficulties to be overcome, and the inventors might not have all the answers at this point in time--Or even most of the answers! Heck, the Wright Brothers didn't invent the aileron when they invented the airplane! I don't mean to suggest that what they propose will happen. However, I think it's something to watch. Perhaps the idea is before it's time (much like the submarine was prior to the late 1800's and a little over one hundred years later, said tech helps protect the U.S.N.'s nuclear deterrent with names that were previously used to name the primary ships of the battle fleet.)

Thunderfoot brings up a lot of obstacles that must be over come in order to be implemented on any kind of scale, which in and of themselves don't mean the basic idea is wrong.

A humorous kind of look at inventions can be seen in the following clip...

https://myspace.com/bobnewhartmusic/music/song/merchandising-the-wright-brothers-31078829-31536821

I suppose bottom line is, that while all of Thunderfoot's reasons why it isn't feasible now are valid, it doesn't mean it won't be feasible in the future. So, while I might not support putting Solar Freakin' Roadways in their current form in place as the tech base is right this moment, I might be interested in what the refinements will be after, more research is done.

No, what thunderf00t said is exactly a set of obstacles that can't be avoided. I was waiting for someone to make that video because I was facepalming so hard when douchebags started spreading the original viral video around. It's unbelieveably stupid.

Those roads not only present impossible technological problems, but also try to violate the basic thermodynamic principles. thunderf00t explained it brilliantly with such clear arguments.

The whole solar power electrical business is poorly feasible (or not at all) outside highly insolated areas, let alone a road covered with tempered glass which would be a driving hazard.

The whole thing is not comparable to Wright brothers, to Galileo or any other token guy out there that people like to pull out from their sleeves when they're faced with arguments.

Edited June 2, 2014 by lajoswinkler