Electricity.

Hyundai are pretty committed to Hydrogen powered trucks.

Warning; This is John Cadogen, he isn't a Tesla fan. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wcgmZ0ZIQvA

Not sure how much traction (excuse the pun) these vehicles will get. Both are hydrogen powered 

This Baja SUV from Glickenhaus https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1131174_glickenhaus-reveals-baja-ready-pickup-concept-fueled-by-hydrogen

and this modified Ford Ranger from H2X https://www.slashgear.com/h2x-global-warrego-is-a-hydrogen-powered-ford-ranger-02684860/ 

more here about H2X https://h2xglobal.com 

The Glickenhaus is a purpose built race vehicle, its absolutely not even attempting to be a production road vehicle.

But if your keen the Nikola Badger page is still up if you want to put in a deposit?

RobDickinson:

The Glickenhaus is a purpose built race vehicle, its absolutely not even attempting to be a production road vehicle.

But if your keen the Nikola Badger page is still up if you want to put in a deposit?

Technofreak:

 

Correct. This is where development of technology happens. That development eventually flows into mainstream products.

The development of FCEV's is pretty much mature.

I could go to a dealer and buy a Toyota Mirai (this year's 2nd gen is rwd and sporty), Hyundai Nexo (MSRP $75K) or a discounted end-of-the-line FCEV Clarity right now (sales end this month) if I wanted to.
They're all nice cars, built by reputable manufacturers

The other day I popped in to a Shell/HTEC hydrogen filling station (because I was in the area and wanted to see some cutting-edge geeks filling up)

I left after an hour without seeing one. That’s because in British Columbia there are four (4) public hydrogen stations, and just 40 hydrogen cars – there are over 55,000 light EV’s, and they’re selling like hot cakes.
For now EVs have an insurmountable head start.

Infrastructure is the problem. It's all egg and no chicken.

You might think cars can just fill up at heavy transport filling stations - like bus H2 pumps. Nope, light vehicles (cars) fill at 700 bar, commercial vehicles at 35..

Incidentally H2 at the pump was $12.75/kg.
If my back of the envelope calculation was correct, about the same cost per Km as gasoline.

I do believe H2's going to be answer for heavy duty - long distance transport, industrial and construction equipment, shipping, maybe aircraft..
In fact I've put my money where my mouth is on that bet.
But by the time that trickles down to light vehicle H2 filling stations on every corner.. well I'm not holding my breath..

sporty? The mirai?  did someone change what that word meant?

RobDickinson:

 

sporty? The mirai?  did someone change what that word meant?

 

It's running against a pretty small field over here if you want to buy (or more likely lease) a FCEV with full warranty, servicing etc.

As they say “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.”

If anybody wants to see a Toyota Mirai in Auckland, Toyota have one on display in the cloud as part of the publicly accessible bit of the Olympics fan zone.

Its a 2020 Gen 1, with a cityhop card reader in the windscreen, so my be destined for that duty. Would be keen to dust off my old cityhop card and take one for a drive if it does.

Have resisted wading into this thread until now. Have quite strong feelings. I feel that the auto industry / petrochemical industry has used hydrogen vehicles as as justification to avoid harsher regulation, of policies that discourage private car ownership / use over several decades. Hydrogen ticks a lot of boxes for the industry. Same retail based fuel model, ability to make it from methane which the oil & gas industry has heaps of, unlikely to quickly take over for several reasons meaning automakers can keep making big money on petrol and diesel cars...

Recently in NZ firstgas has jumped on the same bandwagon, launching a marketing campaign "Gas is changing" that they have been slapped on the hand for... Basically saying, to consumer & regulators - we have this climate change thing under control, no need to do anything at your end... (despite that being a dubious approch technically)

It was only really when electric cars started hitting the roads that automakers backing hydrogen had to put up or shut up... And they did. Only problem is that EV's have advanced so quickly that Hydrogen car's are a weak offing in comparison.

Range of longer range EV's is getting into the same ballpark is the hydrogen car's, and EV's have the massive advantage of being able to charge at home, and now have much more expansive public fueling networks in most of the world. And of course EV's are cheaper to fuel, and nicer ones have performance in spades...

Should note that sales volumes of both hydrogen car's and hydrogen fuel are so low it is quite possible that industry players are distorting both vehicle and fuel pricing, to make the cars seem move viable than they are. As an example for the 2021 model year (I think this was the introduction of the 2nd gen car on the better platfrom in the USA?) Toyota dropped the California price of the Mirai by US$9,000 to US$50445 for the base trim. A pritty massive drop in percentage terms. It also comes bundled with $15k in fuel, and 21 days of car rentals too. Fair bet this is a loss leader for toyota.

In my mind the following barriers for Hydrogen light vehicles are long term deal breakers for the tech in that space:

• Green hydrogen is always going to cost more than electricity.
• Hydrogen is very hard to store and transport large amounts of it (cryogenics or massive volumes and pressures).
• Plugging in at home is just convenient compared to public fueling. 

In the shorter term EV infrastructure piggy backs off existing electric infrastructure, so charging network roll outs will be a lot easier.

I think there is a place for hydrogen long term in sectors that are hard to serve with batteries. Rockets, long hall Aviation, long range high speed ferries, some shipping (cruise ships?). All these will need to use cryogenic temperatures, and for stuff like boats and planes, operational costs will be massively higher than using oil products today - so won't happen unless the industries are forced by regulation.

Should note that I am a mechanical engineer who has worked on hydrogen pipework in industrial settings, so I have a greater technical knowledge than typical on hydrogen stuff.

With regards to (1st and 2nd gen) Biofuels, turning waste into fuel (i.e. gulls alliance with DB Breweries to make it's E10 product) are great, but there are limits to how much this can be scaled. In terms of using virgin feedstock, we ran the numbers in first year, and the amount of land used to replace petrochemicals is epic. No way we could do it in NZ. (and we didn't even consider the net Energy return on investment of biofuels. - often the energy consumed planting, harvesting & processing 2nd and third gen biofuels can get close to, or exceed the energy contained in the fuel priduced).

3rd gen bio-fuels could be game changing. (think specially engineered oil producing micro-organisms living on top of large sewage ponds, and producing oil using a combination of energy from the city's sewage, and the sun...). I was hoping that there would have been more progress in this area over the last couple of decades.

Sadly we don't really have time to wait for game changing tech like 3rd gen biofuels to come online. The tech we have ready to go now is electric cars & our current power grid, so we need to latch onto that for applications where it is workable. If 3rd gen biofuels come through, hopefully they can be used in more demanding industries like remote area's, long hall aviation etc.

RobDickinson:

 

sporty? The mirai?  did someone change what that word meant?

 

The 2nd gen is on the GA-L platform, same as the Lexus LC and Lexus LS. So blend of luxary and sport (more luxary).

Still the Marai is going to have serious power to weight ratio issues compared to its lexus badged siblings (and Pure ev competitors). 1920 -1950kg cerb (empty) weight, and just 136kW.

The 1st gen Mirai in Cali was a disaster.

$60k+, included $15k of fuel,  worth $11-12k after just 3 years,  hardly ever fuel available (so much so they refunded 6 months of lease to people etc).

And now they are struggling to almost give away the mk2. This is a hand built car made in hundreds it'll be costing them about 4 times the sale price. 


And as for 'sporty' it weighs near 2 tons and is what 8.5s to 100kph? A camry hybrid is quicker. 

Theres not a single point for this vehicles existence. 


As for the Auto industry it was companies like GM and Toyota who convinced Cali that hydrogen was the way to go back in the late 90s and ended up with GM scrapping their EV1 program. 3 decades on and it is still used as a distraction. Luckily the world has moved on.

No doubt it will have its uses but I can't see hydrogen being anything other than a niche for specific industrial applications, air travel and maybe haulage.

I'm fairly certain that in 10-15 years time the overwhelming majority of new vehicles and second hand imports coming into the country will be BEVs.

Call me Mr. Cynical, but all this talk about using the power currently going to Tiwai Point to make "green hydrogen" is at best a distraction and at worst a ploy from Contact and Meridian to use that power in a way that won't result in lower wholesale electricity prices.     

evilengineer:

 

Call me Mr. Cynical, but all this talk about using the power currently going to Tiwai Point to make "green hydrogen" is at best a distraction and at worst a ploy from Contact and Meridian to use that power in a way that won't result in lower wholesale electricity prices.     

 

Just the small matter of Manapouri being wired directly to the smelter at the opposite end of the country from the demand. And a massive upgrade of transmission capability required to get there. So it’s impact on the wholesale electricity rate may not be as big as you think.
A greater impact will be hydro companies holding back storage to sell at a higher rate when unreliable renewables (wind and solar) aren’t performing. 

I would see green hydrogen as another string to NZ’s energy bow.

Dingbatt:

 

Just the small matter of Manapouri being wired directly to the smelter at the opposite end of the country from the demand. And a massive upgrade of transmission capability required to get there. So it’s impact on the wholesale electricity rate may not be as big as you think.

IIRC, TransPower said it would cost about $600M to fully integrate Manapouri to the national grid, that may have included some upgrades to the Cook Strait power transmission infrastructure.

I really hope that they are deep into detailed design for that

Dingbatt:
A greater impact will be hydro companies holding back storage to sell at a higher rate when unreliable renewables (wind and solar) aren’t performing. 

Surely you aren't suggesting that the 51%-government-owned gentailers might deliberately allow an Undesirable Trading Situation to arise? I'm shocked, just SHOCKED that you should even think such a thing.
Oh, yes, like the Undesirable Trading Situation that began on 10 November 2019 and was continuing as at 12 December 2019. 😡
https://www.ea.govt.nz/code-and-compliance/uts/undesirable-trading-situations-decisions/10-november-2019/

Edit: Spelling

They talk about hydrogen in this article --

https://www.wired.com/story/toyota-whiffed-on-electric-vehicles-now-trying-slow-their-rise/

"Hydrogen Dead End

Having spent the last decade ignoring or dismissing EVs, Toyota now finds itself a laggard in an industry that's swiftly preparing for an electric—not just electrified—transition."