This solution was fully developed and used in Germany in WWII, and could be on our roads by next month if the ‘problem’ was actually urgent.Is this just another ‘stakeholder’ PR lobby, of no actual use to the populace ?
Overall maintenance costs are much cheaper, as they are for electric trucks, because there are fewer moving parts. The organisation adds that as a first step, the CO2 emission standards will cover large lorries, which account for 65-to-70 per cent of all CO2 emissions from heavy-duty vehicles. As for hydrogen leakage, don’t get me started!Trevor’s energy analysis is good – but only gives a lower bound on the (energy) cost; the efficiency of the process is important too (I believe it is around 60%).Did you know that the popular Tesla Model 3 has a 480 kg battery pack? By 2025, according to the Federal Ministry of Transport, Germany will be covered by a 400-strong network. There’s only one way to do it, and that’s battery electric trucks
Just one promising development is ‘surface storage’, in which a kind of metal dust made of various compounds can be converted to hydrogen by adding water. Zero-emission “hydrail” projects will kick off in the U.S. in southern California in 2024, when a hydrogen-powered FLIRT train from Stadler will begin operation. Therefore an electric current of 1 AMP will in 1 SECOND produce 0.5/96485 = 5.18E-06 moles H2. The electric motors are the same as those installed in electric vehicles. In fact, Hyundai is practically betting its future on fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). And that can’t be fast enough for the International Energy Agency, a backer of hydrogen. Not good. “They are the only zero-emission option.” So how long will it take? Currently there are six ITM Power-operated refuelling stations in the UK, with two more due to open soon at Gatwick and Birmingham.
It is only government lack of willing that is the bottleneck. The price of hydrogen, which is sold in kg rather than litres, is £10 to £15/kg, making it more expensive than all-electric and diesel. Dead cars will be littering the streets, and we will be asking “whose idea was this?”. On the long run, with renewables (cheap solar panels, etc.)
Although that’s changing, it will be some time before all hydrogen is derived from renewables, mainly because there’s not enough renewable energy to go around. There’s no clear timeline for fuel cell-powered trucks achieving price parity with diesel but, predicts Guy McAree, director of investor relations at Ballard says: “Cost-of-ownership comparisons show fuel cell-powered buses coming down to comparable cost levels with battery-powered alternatives by 2020.” Refuelling is similar to topping up with diesel or natural gas, and both simpler and faster than recharging a battery. And Nikola is already working with an industry consortium on a worldwide fuelling network that aims to have 700 stations up and running in the US by 2028 that will produce their own hydrogen by electrolysis and store the fuel on-site.
Earlier this year the IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol cited the absence of adequate refuelling infrastructure as a problem. Currently, for longer distances, hydrogen is transported as a liquid in super-insulated, cryogenic tanker trucks. They were used in the original space shuttles in the early 1960s and helped get the first men to the moon. “Hauliers don’t want to have to stop every 190 miles for one or two hours to recharge,” says Dixon of H2powergroup. Nikola claims a 15-minute refuel will take one of its trucks up to 750 miles, more than twice as far as current all-electric trucks. But, as Ballard’s McAree points out, a lot of trucks work from base. The only tailpipe emission is water vapour, albeit heated.
As a hydrogen vehicle can be refuelled quickly, fleet operators can also plan for similar numbers of vehicles to their current operation, rather than needing to increase fleet size to cover lengthy charging times for EVs.
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It costs nothing to put your name down for a Nikola truck, however, so the 14,000-strong order book may prove somewhat illusory. Hydrogen fuel cells are lighter than batteries but, because the motor is still electric, the trucks have more horsepower and accelerate faster than diesel trucks – roughly twice as fast, in fact. What’s not to like?Ref the last paragraph: what will the other 87 to 95% of trucks be running on, in 2050?TonyN: “The Armoured Might of Lance Corporal Jones” Unfortunately this might be the fuel equivalent of the VHS/Betamax wars with the worst option winning!Notwithstanding any (unspecified) dramatic improvements, one Faraday (96,485 Coulombs) is Well, Trevor…please add some enlightening information after..”basic arithmetic”, because I have no idea what you are getting atI would like to point out that the mass energy density of hydrogen is not necessarily the important issue but the volumetric density. It is within two years of putting trucks in showrooms.
As for the cost of the trucks, the full price of Hyundai’s FCEVs is unclear because they will be leased. Almost by themselves, Shell and clean-fuel group ITM Power are developing a refuelling network in Britain for hydrogen trucks as well as buses, trains and ships – but there’s a long way to go, especially compared with other countries.
Another is electrolysis, a process that extracts hydrogen from water. To create hydrogen you start with a fuel and then you waste energy in conversion. And Switzerland is where it starts. One FARADAY (96,485 COULOMBS) is required to produce one mole of hydrogen atoms – or half a mole of hydrogen molecules (H2).