Hydrogen Vehicles

[mlee]

Who needs electric when you have 2000 hp hydrogen cars.

Apparently this is in CA now but a fueling station is set to be built in Texas.

https://youtu.be/Qvk3LWOSewc?si=zj-RSEJOiAEMZWrv

[silversleeper]

I was seriously looking at a Hydrogen car



they had some closeouts and rebates but you gotta find a very high pressure station to recharge it and there are very few except a handful that had commercial vehicles running it. Same with natural gas. I thought why not just compress it from my house but sadly it gets depressurized from an already high pressure in the main pipelines down to a couple PSI for our houses and pressurizing it back thousands psi isn't trivial. Storage tanks for your vehicle is another obstacle. They don't hold much.
There was some promising research using activated carbon like in filters to grasp onto the gas molecules so it wouldn't need such high pressure but IDK how far that research went and it would again be short range per tankful.
I heard they break apart natural gas molecules to get hydrogen for commercial use but it can of course be done by using electricity and water but IDK if it's less efficient or why they don't do it that way. I like any new or old technology if there is some reason it's better than gas or diesel. It could happen any second like a catalyst could be found that uses little energy to break apart the water and have the Oxygen and Hydrogen gases go right back into an engine. Or the gases can power fuel cells to electricity to power an EV, fill up with water and drive your EV.

[Martinjlm]

Hydrogen is coming, but primarily for commercial vehicles. Companies like Nikola, Daimler Truck, Paccar, and Quantron are already in the market with Class 8 semis and buses.

Also, GM & Honda are in production making fuel stacks for both commercial and passenger vehicles. They have collaborated to improve the design from cell stacks tha were the size of a garbage compactor to now about the size of a large desktop printer. GM will likely focus on commercial and military applications. Honda will also focus on commercial vehicle operations but might also consider a next gen of their passenger vehicles ( Honda Clarity).


There are a few basic roadblocks for hydrogen.

1. Making hydrogen: Sure, hydrogen is the most plentiful element, but isolating it for use as a fuel is a very complicated, very expensive process.
2. Storing Hydrogen: Hydrogen is the lightest element and smallest molecules. They escape. Storing hydrogen for transport as well as on vehicle requires specialized high pressure tanks. Carbon fiber is commonly used for constructing vehicle hydrogen tanks.
3. Transporting Hydrogen: Pipelines, pressurized gas and liquid are all options. All are expensive
4. Dispensing Hydrogen: The cost of building hydrogen dispensing stations ranges $2-3 M per station. Compare that to about $250,000 - $1M for a gas station and $45,000 - $100,000 per charger for DC Fast Chargers.

[Iron Lung Jimmy]

So if all vehicles were hydrogen powered would every road be perpetually wet?

Winter would be interesting.

[mlee]

Doesn't sound too economical. A guy in my neighborhood works for the company in the video I posted and connected with the station being built here.

Hope to find out more as it progresses

[GreenZLE]

A better application would be to eliminate all the existing catalysts off ICE's and replace that system with supplemental hydrogen in the combustion process. You wouldnt need to waste fuel keeping the emissions systems from melting down and the addition of hydrogen does wonders for cleaning up the tailpipe.