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Cars: Audi, BMW, Mercedes

Ponty said:
That’s the problem, very few really do. Govts key priority is maximising consumerism and resulting tax revenues in the current electoral period, they really don’t GAF about the environment. 20 years ago we were told to swap to diesels. A few years ago it was back to petrol, now EV’s are flavour of the month just as they desperately need people to spend spend spend. How long before EV’s are the Devil’s spawn? If someone can show me the total environmental footprint and damage of keeping my current petrol and diesel vehicles for 10 years versus 2 new leased EV’s every 3 years, I’d love to understand it. I suspect the key winners will be govts, car manufacturers and banks, not the environment. To help the environment, people need to consume less of everything, manufactured goods and travel included.
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Well said!
 
martin clark said:
I'd like to understand how a putative move to 'hydrogen' compares in end-to-end efficiency compared with just synthesizing light fractions that will substitute 'petrol/ diesel'' via Fischer-Tropsch - a process well-known, understood and widely-exploited for over a century, that fundamentally requires water (of no great / any quality, sea water will do), carbon dioxide, and energy as inputs.

It just interests me that there may be such rich, very-well-understood branches of organic chemistry that must also surely, be in play for usefully-absorbing low-quality/problem feedstocks, and might be exploited using low carbon/ renewable energy sources - to solve particular issues in a low-total-emissions way, even just as a bridging/generational technology - and as yet not talked-about much.
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Hydrogen is prefereable to oil of course, my comments are related to the use in cars vs battery technology.

Hydrogen needs to be cracked from water which takes a lot of power, needs compressing, storing, transporting, a filling station and then finally used in a car either as a FCEV (preferable) or even as an ICE fuel but much less efficient than FCEV and BEV and still with emmissions. The car needs a fuel cell and high pressure fuel tank or a traditional ICE engine over and above any electric motors.

A BEV just needs to plug in and charge, equipment is a battery and a motor or two, that's it and it will be as green as the generation method.

It remains to be seen with Hydrogen, if the wider industry can start to use Hydrogen instead of gas and oil and help develop a decent hydrogen distribution network we could see it take off for cars as well. I am excited to see the developments.
 
cutting42 said:
Hydrogen needs to be cracked from water
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Most hydrogen comes from petroleum feedstocks. The key to hydrogen success is finding a suitably "green" source. I hope they do, because I confess to preferring it to batteries as a motive power.
 
A BEV just needs to plug in and charge, equipment is a battery and a motor or two, that's it and it will be as green as the generation method.
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It's the battery that's the problem though, in several ways:
  • Restricted range due to restricted capacity
  • Impact on potential re-sale value due to concerns about replacement costs of batteries (which could mean cars having a shorter lifespan)
  • Extra weight in lugging them around
  • Environmental concerns relating to their manufacturing etc.
Of course in order for hydrogen to be viable we'd need an extensive capacity of renewable electricity (wind, wave, nuclear) in order to separate it out from water, but that seems to be the way the world is heading anyway.
 
I understand lighter, high-capacity, fast-charging solid state batteries are about 5 years away. My hope is that these might be retrofittable to early generation BEVs so second and third users can extend their life considerably.
 
The problem with hydrogen as fuel in vehicles is it's low energy density. It takes up a lot of space in heavy tanks. Not unlike batteries there, but hardly better. But, Toyota seem to be heavy into it, so I might have missed something.

Remember, the current EV 'craze' wasn't started by governments or established auto makers, it was some over rich tech guys in California that made an EV that people actually wanted (as opposed to previous attempts) and some where even prepared to pay for the privilege. And sales in the US of chargable (including hybrids) vehicles is a mere 2%, so the war is hardly over.

In 20 years time? I don't dare guess.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I understand lighter, high-capacity, fast-charging solid state batteries are about 5 years away. My hope is that these might be retrofittable to early generation BEVs so second and third users can extend their life considerably.
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Or the old ones will be so cheap that even low wage people that just needs something to get to work can afford one?
 
I see hydrogen and fuel cells as energy sources in commercial vehicles as opposed to private cars, due to the weight and bulk issues. Could see a truck using batteries to drive, and a fuel cell to top them up while stationary overnight, say.
 
tones said:
Most hydrogen comes from petroleum feedstocks. The key to hydrogen success is finding a suitably "green" source. I hope they do, because I confess to preferring it to batteries as a motive power.
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Yes I am aware of that currently but most pro H arguments require the cracking from water for it to make sense as a sustainable solution
 
As I live in a country with two large lorry makers, I did a quick check.

Volvo trucks (with Daimler) is into fuel cells with hydrogen. Scania, seemed to be doing IC engines burning hydrogen.

The 'other' Volvo is Chinese.
 
cutting42 said:
Yes I am aware of that currently but most pro H arguments require the cracking from water for it to make sense as a sustainable solution
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I personally think processes which remove atmospheric CO2 and combine it with water to make fuels, eg jet fuels, will have a key role to play, too.
 
SteveG said:
It's the battery that's the problem though, in several ways:
  • Restricted range due to restricted capacity
  • Impact on potential re-sale value due to concerns about replacement costs of batteries (which could mean cars having a shorter lifespan)
  • Extra weight in lugging them around
  • Environmental concerns relating to their manufacturing etc.
Of course in order for hydrogen to be viable we'd need an extensive capacity of renewable electricity (wind, wave, nuclear) in order to separate it out from water, but that seems to be the way the world is heading anyway.
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  • Range is improving all the time and for cars we are not far off from enough range for most needs
  • Agreed, it is a concern as we don't yet know the full impact
  • They are heavier but you also lose weight by not carrying around engine gearbox fuel etc. Again this is improving with battery developments.
  • Completely agree but needs balancing against the gains
I am less convinced that H is the direction we are heading. If you have all these renewable sources, all generating electricity, the efficiency to run your industry directly from the electricity is much better than going via other processes such as cracking H which all cost power. I am sure there are industries that can convert from oil and gas to Hydrogen, the economics will drive any changes.

At the end of the day hydrogen, batteries and petrol are all energy stores to help us use energy in different ways or at different times. Whichever can be made to work in the most efficient and cost effective manner will be used. I suspect a blend of both battery and Hydrogen in the near future, who knows 30 years out.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I personally think processes which remove atmospheric CO2 and combine it with water to make fuels, eg jet fuels, will have a key role to play, too.
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Thats exactly the kind of use I was thinking of, along with Sources of cleaner fiels for legacy/historical interest use and so on.
 
I just dont see how you make a hydrogen distribution network, it attacks most metals, finds every leak and cannot sensibly be liquified.
 
RJohan said:
As I live in a country with two large lorry makers, I did a quick check.

Volvo trucks (with Daimler) is into fuel cells with hydrogen. Scania, seemed to be doing IC engines burning hydrogen.

The 'other' Volvo is Chinese.
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So Musk has got it all wrong then with his EV Truck that's always "Coming Soon" :)
 
cutting42 said:
Thant sounds interesting, not come across that yet
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Mother Nature is much better at this chemistry business than we are (I guess a few billion years of practice helps). When you think of it, what Sue Pertwee-Tyr is suggesting is essentially what all that greenery around you is doing all the time, taking CO2, adding water and then assembling it into all sorts of wonderful things far more complex that mere fuels. Nature does this by employing enzymes, catalysts of mind-blowingly complex structure that catalyse very specific reactions. This implies that we need a biotechnological process of some sort will be needed - all we need is a bug to do it...
 
tones said:
Mother Nature is much better at this chemistry business than we are (I guess a few billion years of practice helps). When you think of it, what Sue Pertwee-Tyr is suggesting is essentially what all that greenery around you is doing all the time, taking CO2, adding water and then assembling it into all sorts of wonderful things far more complex that mere fuels. Nature does this by employing enzymes, catalysts of mind-blowingly complex structure that catalyse very specific reactions. This implies that we need a biotechnological process of some sort will be needed - all we need is a bug to do it...
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Well yes that is true. I have been in the pharma industry most of my working life and back in the 80's natural products were being looked at as miracle sources for active compounds to help creating therapies. Fantastic efficacy but no hope of every synthesising it.

Nature is brilliant, if only we understood it better
 
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