Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Hydrogen cars

The current (no pun) issue with hydrogen is the cost of production. Electrolysis needs electricity so the renewable sources such as wind and solar would help there. Other methods using chemicals are less attractive due to dealing with them pre and post use.
Economies of scale would help and there are several old oil refinery sites that would make good sites. Again just a revamp of existing infrastructure.

I think it is the re-purposing of existing infrastructure that helps support the argument for Hydrogen, putting a similar infrastructure in place for electric cars requires massive investment and disturbance.

Looking at the way the Government has pushed Cell phone network upgrades and fibre broadband I don't believe that a descent electric car charging network will ever be achieved outside the urban areas.
As has been said, we do have existing fuel distribution facilities, using them to produce and supply H2 makes sense.
It will be a 20 year evolution to move the majority from gasoline/diesel to hydrogen/electric, it is not a black and white issue.
I have 3 perfectly good petrol cars, two are Euro 6 and one is Euro 5 compliant. The big V8 can be converted to run on hydrogen instead of petrol - LPG is also possible, but I'm not sure it is cost effective.
So why rush to change them?

Another bonus for hydrogen: there is also a market for the by-product, oxygen: it is a widely used industrial gas.

You cant use that infrastructure. The production plants are completely different, So are the tankers. So are the tanks, pumps and kit requred to put it in the cars. In fact the distribution system for leccy is largely there allready - the national grid - whilsy hydrogen will require something far more high tech and completely new.

Hydrogen is really dangerous, far more so than petrol. A hydrogen car is a mobile bomb and I shudder to think what is likely to happen when they become second and third hand and your local mechanic is trying to work on them.

Energy density of liquid hydrogen is poor. If you take a Tesla 3 battery of 75kwh you would need 35 litres of liquid H2 to have the equivalent energy or 8 litres of petrol. Even if you assume that both the leccy and H2 vehicles are 100 % efficient ( they wont be) and the petrol engine is 40% then the petrol quantity equivalent becomes 21 litres

The best short term action we could take to cut emnissions is to enforce a maxi,mum car weight of 1000kg. The size and weight of a Range Rover is obscene and the energy used to move it reflects directly its 2.5t mass

I'll vote for that except that I think 1000 kg is a bit low. Even with all the weight saving in the world it would be hard to get the average family size station wagon under about 1800kg.

Hmm?

A useful summary here:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-storage

What ever the arguments between the viability of hydrogen versus electricity, we are beginning a very interesting era for us all. I find it all very fascinating and can’t wait to see what the future brings.

I read recently that Hydrogen is very expensive to transport so it really needs to be produced at the filling station by renewable electric.