What will power our vehicles in the future?

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › What will power our vehicles in the future?

Technofreak

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#288766 21-Jul-2021 22:39

Will the vehicles of the future be Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV), or an EV using a fuel cell or ICE burning a clean fuel or some thing else altogether?

To get started on the discussion here's an interesting article about hydrogen ICE's and why it may be the fuel of the future for some vehicles.

https://youtu.be/19Q7nAYjAJY

Footnote:

While this thread is in the Transport (cars, bikes and boats) section my intention was to be able to discuss the energy source for any form of vehicle, be that car, truck, aircraft, ship, train, scooter etc, not just limited to one variant e.g. the private motor car.

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#2747899 21-Jul-2021 23:08

Considering hydrogen vehicles have been "coming soon" since the early 90s and yet there are still around the same number of hydrogen vehicles as there were in the early 90s, I'm going to take a punt and say that it's not going to be hydrogen.

Not only for that reason though. Making hydrogen is either dirty or it's very inefficient. The easy way to get it is as a by-product of the fossil fuel refinement process, but that's dirty and defeats the purpose of having a clean fuel. The green way involves using renewable electricity to make it via electrolysis but it's incredibly inefficient. The same electricity used to make enough hydrogen to move a hydrogen car 100km could be used to move a BEV 300km.

Battery technology on the other hand has developed significantly over that same period. Their density keeps increasing while their weight reduces. Many of the negatives of a BEV vs Hydrogen are disappearing as the tech evolves. The only negative left is the time to recharge and even that is soon to be solved as solid state batteries start to mature.

I think hydrogen will have a big part in our future but it won't be transport. Instead, I think it's better off being used in high heat applications like steel smelting, boilers, etc where coal and natural gas is currently used.

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Senecio

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#2747922 22-Jul-2021 07:59

There is no doubt that passenger vehicles are going to be BEV powered. We all know how important momentum is and BEVs have gained so much momentum from manufacturers and legislators that even if a better technology was to come along it would likely not be able to gain traction.

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#2747960 22-Jul-2021 08:26

Which vehicles?
I think different types of vehicles / transport will have different solutions

For the "family car" the future is IMO definitely BEV, and I think this also applies to light & medium commercial road vehicles too.

For long-haul & heavy haulage, I think the jury is still out: batteries, LH2 fuel cell and sustainable biodiesel are all in play.

Then there's the question of what kind of road surfaces they will run on.
No more hotmix bitumen or the "spray" part of a spray-and-chips surface

I think rail will be a mixture of mains electric and LH2 fuel cell, with some niche battery usage

There are other sectors where sustainable bio-fuels appear to be the only viable alternative: long-haul commercial and military aviation; anywhere that an outboard motor is the right answer; some sorts of agricultural and construction machinery; and military & coastguard ships come to mind.
If there are no available bio-fuels that are both ecologically and economically sustainable, these industry sectors would have to be radically reshaped or disappear

Long-haul commercial shipping is interesting. Currently these ships often use Furnace Fuel Oil (FFO), which is pretty much thin tar sometimes even with heaters in the fuel tanks to keep it liquid. I suspect LH2 fuel cells are probably the long, long-term future, but they're still building these FFO-fueled vessels right now and those will have an expected life of at least 30 years.

RobDickinson

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#2747964 22-Jul-2021 08:30

Theres an entire rainbow of colours for hydrogen, until we have an established non fossil fuel sourced substantial quantity of it all it is is a distraction by our current energy providers to delay update of clean technologies and provide fossil fuels by by proxy.

Hydrogen, the actual green stuff, will be a useful and valuable part of a sustainable future but used for steel, shipping etc, not burned in some archaic process we have much better solutions to already.

scuwp

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#2748089 22-Jul-2021 11:35

Senecio:

There is no doubt that passenger vehicles are going to be BEV powered. We all know how important momentum is and BEVs have gained so much momentum from manufacturers and legislators that even if a better technology was to come along it would likely not be able to gain traction.

Disagree. Electric engines definitely, but not battery powered. I consider that battery as a fuel source has a 10 - 20 year lifespan max, unless we can resolve issues around charging time, range, precious metals mining, and environmental impacts from production and disposal. We are already seeing fields of abandoned EV's in some countries and stockpiles of batteries that are an environmental disaster waiting to happen if we don't figure out a sustainable environmental plan from start to finish.

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#2748096 22-Jul-2021 11:42

Obraik: The only negative left is the time to recharge and even that is soon to be solved as solid state batteries start to mature.

There are some more, namely around the rare materials used to create them, and what happens when the batteries are discarded (environmental impacts)

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RobDickinson

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#2748105 22-Jul-2021 11:50

scuwp:

Disagree. Electric engines definitely, but not battery powered. I consider that battery as a fuel source has a 10 - 20 year lifespan max, unless we can resolve issues around charging time, range, precious metals mining, and environmental impacts from production and disposal. We are already seeing fields of abandoned EV's in some countries and stockpiles of batteries that are an environmental disaster waiting to happen if we don't figure out a sustainable environmental plan from start to finish.

we are NOT seeing fields of abandoned evs. We have one field of Evs from a failed ride share platform that had nothing to do with the ev part of the scheme. Those batteries afik ave long been recycled.

"unless we can resolve issues around charging time"

Ioniq 5 charges 10-80% in about 15min. Personal experience on a old fashioned 120kw charger in my car is its charged before I am finished with a break.

"range"

Theres almost nowhere I cant drive to on the south island in one go, everywhere else I would be fine with a short break I'd be having already.

In 10 years we'll have 800-1000km range cars that can charge at 350kw. New Zealdn (well the world) is only so big and people can only travel so far in a day.

"precious metals mining"

What precious metals? Our most popular new ev battery is made up of very cheap plentiful materials.

Can we talk about the precious metals involved in fuel cells? Like platinum?

"environmental impacts from production and disposal."

Everything has an environmental impact. Theres no proof that a hydrogen fuelled transport system would have less (actually plenty that shows it would need 4 times the energy overall).

Now show me this damned stockpile of batteries.. because it doesnt exist. We dont have large scale (ev)battery recycling right now for the sole reason we dont need it.

Obraik

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#2748108 22-Jul-2021 11:53

scuwp:

Disagree. Electric engines definitely, but not battery powered. I consider that battery as a fuel source has a 10 - 20 year lifespan max, unless we can resolve issues around charging time, range, precious metals mining, and environmental impacts from production and disposal. We are already seeing fields of abandoned EV's in some countries and stockpiles of batteries that are an environmental disaster waiting to happen if we don't figure out a sustainable environmental plan from start to finish.

If it's the "fields of abandoned EVs" I think you're referring to, you've been had.

The batteries are over 95% recyclable so the environmental impact at their end of life will be fairly minimal. Tesla's battery roadmap shows that in the future they see that the packs they make will mostly be from materials they recycle out of old cars. Making an EV can be completely emissions free as power sources switch to renewables and mining machinery is electrified.

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RobDickinson

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#2748110 22-Jul-2021 11:56

There is a bidding war on every EV battery pack that goes on the market in NZ because they are incredibly sought after parts.

Even if they dont work at all they are a high concentration of valuable resources.

no one is abandoning them or throwing them into landfill

afe66

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#2748120 22-Jul-2021 12:31

Having had an ev as my primary car for 4 years (2014 leaf), my vote is electric battery.

The longest distance I need if I was buying a modern ev would be able to drive dunedin to chch or wanaka at usual speeds. Happy for a stop for pee and pie to topup if needed.

And there are many that can do that already. If I had to drive further, I would fly and get rental.

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#2748133 22-Jul-2021 12:55

Aircraft? Not 30 minute trainer hops, but short haul, long haul, freight. Its hard to see batteries doing that. Hydrogen would seem a logical step, unless you can make a true biofuel, 100% organic. Unsure how power from weight matches up with current aircraft fuel

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RobDickinson

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#2748136 22-Jul-2021 13:00

NZ already has some orders in for the ES-19 short haul electric plane.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/125663239/electric-passenger-aircraft-on-the-horizon-for-regional-routes-aviation-industry-says

There are shorter haul larger ev aircraft in development but larger and longer trips will likely be hydrogen fuelled - but that depends on pace of development, which seems doubly slow for a combination of aircraft and hydrogen.

The issue with batteries is the energy density (we really need 400hw/kg or more) , we'll get there but it might take quite some time.

The 'logical step' for hydrogen just seems so slow to happen its use cases vanish before its a working application.

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#2748147 22-Jul-2021 13:26

Like everyone here, I have an opinion. Like many, my opinion is based on nothing more than the fact that it is my opinion. I have no idea if it is correct, no research data, nothing but just a feeling that it seems to make sense.

My opinion is that most 'solutions' seem to be all-or-nothing propositions, with a big load of political correctness thrown in for good measure. The only thing really wrong with fossil fuels is that we use so damned much of them. It is good and necessary that we should be looking for viable alternatives. We should have done that long ago. But once all the uses for which there are better options have been covered, what is left is a small proportion of use cases in which there really is not any good alternative to fossil fuels. Once the total demand has been brought back to manageable levels, there is no reason why oil could not continue to be the best choice for selected special needs. The planet can handle a certain amount of all forms of pollution, just not the enormous quantities currently being dumped on it. So my prediction for the far future is that most, nearly all, energy needs will be met by non-fossil fuel alternatives, but a few will still rely on carefully supervised oil-based products.

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#2748153 22-Jul-2021 13:43

all nonsense you guys.

i'm just gonna teleport.

mudguard

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#2748157 22-Jul-2021 13:49

Ha I knew before I opened the link it would be Harry's Garage. I do enjoy his channel.

That line about a JCB digger that is rated for twenty tonnes would need eight tonnes of battery. Which then takes it to twenty eight tonnes, which means it needs bigger everything else!

Hydrogen does seem an excellent application for that. He said that electric for personal cars is quite easy, they might see 150 hours per year of use. He mentions that some of their equipment in India sees 3000 hours of use a year. There would be too much down time charging.

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