Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electric Cars

Hyundai Nexo review
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/hyundai/nexo


Picture Autocar

Another positive step away from batteries.
414 miles "range", so real world probably high 300s, with a 5 min refueling time.
A perfectly viable electric car.
Other than the filling infrastructure.

The big problem with Hydrogen is that we are too far from a realistic solution. The climate emergency requires action now, and practical hydrogen is too far off. That's why manufacturers are developing battery cars. They aren't perfect, but they give us a route to the future.

Sorry, Tim, I have to disagree.
Battery electric cars are a transient and useful step, but they are not the long term solution. Hydrogen is the only non carbon based liquid energy store that will allow travel as we know it to continue. It can power fuel cells, jet turbines and, internal combustion engines. Batteries are expensive and polluting to make, heavy and have re-cycling issues.
Global warming, and its consequences, is not going to be slowed by focussing on reducing CO2 output from automotive transport in developed and developing countries.

IF Ms Thunberg and her friends at Extinction Rebellion are right, radical change is needed, NOW.
Immediately stopping the mining of coal and fossil fuels and its burning to make electricity, steel, chemicals and so forth, coupled with the banning of all forms of air and sea travel that use fossil fuels will do it.
The resultant social chaos, economic collapse and global pandemics will return our CO2 levels to pre-industrial revolution levels.

I'm glad I'll be dead before that happens.

I agree that battery cars are a transient and useful step to hydrogen vehicles. It is important to remember that hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles will still need a reasonable size battery (but smaller than an EV) and therefore the advances in technology on battery vehicles will not be lost in the transition to fuel cell vehicles for longer range applications.

The first fuel cell hydrogen powered busses will be in active use in the UK within the next 6 months.

Which is what I was saying, so no disagreement there



No disagreement there either



Don't forget the 97% of the world's climate scientists, and an enormous body of data that supports the models. Greta Thunberg simply wants us to follow the science, not the politics.



This must be where we disagree. I don't believe we need to go back to pre-industrial primitivism, I believe we need to focus technological development on alternatives. But whatever happens we are indeed going to see a big change in our lifestyles over the next 20 years.

Tim, I think if the politicians stopped focussing on battery powered vehicles for a moment and started planning for hydrogen the manufacturers would quickly switch resources and research into fuel cells. It seems to me that practical fuel cell cars are already available and it just needs serious input into infrastructure and mass production to reduce costs. As time passes the next generation will be even lighter and more efficient.

The trouble with that notion is that we don't have any socialist governments in the west. You are proposing a level of centralised planning of the economy that simply doesn't exist. The government sets emission limits, it's up to the manufacturers to decide how to meet them.

Excellent news. So is this too much of a dream or is this a long term possible future? All roads are replaced with solar panels that can be driven on that are connected to charging/fuel stations that uses the solar power to produce Hydrogen and charge battery's. Cars pull in and either fill with Hydrogen or if a BEV charge the battery. To me the advantages of this is

1 - All our potholed badly maintained roads get replaced with something hopefully a lot stronger than the tar currently used. A lot more expensive initially but hopefully a lot less maintenance
2 - No need for tankers at all to transport fuel as the petrol stations actually become fuel generation stations, so no more tanker to have an accident on the highway and closes it for a day or two while the mess of cleaned up.
3 - the area of land used by roads is basically wasted land anyway so might as well use it usefully allowing the green areas to stay nice and green rather than being covered in solar or wind farms.

Also if the planners want they could put LED arrows in the solar panels and change roads usage, for example a 6 lane highway is 4 lanes one way in the morning and 2 the other and reversed in the afternoon. Even if Hydrogen tankers are still needed for some high useage fuelling stations at least the mess is quicker to clean up that petrol if there is an accident as it just evaporates into the atmosphere

Then if Hydrogen is available at many fuelling stations how hard would it be to convert classic cars to run on Hydrogen. Then car nuts could own an efficient daily driver car that use a fuel cell and an electric motor but if they want also own a classic an occasionally use it running on Hydrogen with less nasty gases than petrol coming out the exhaust.

On an other alternative fuel what happened to E85? My sons car runs on it and I know he can get it reasonably easy but only from two petrol stations in our town. The power his car produces is pretty stupid so it works pretty well and the exhaust smells different but not an annoying smell, a fair bit of water vapour comes out when the car is cold. I thought it was going to be the next future fuel that is renewable and green but it hasn't really taken off apart from racing cars and modified cars like my sons.

Burning hydrogen in an ICE is quite a different matter from a fuel cell though. I can imagine this would be a flippin' expensive proposition.

Though hydrogen fuel cells are a clever solution to the long range use of vehicles, I'm still struggling to see the appeal for people like me.

Once I have all the kit installed I can make electricity for nothing at home, use it to provide for a very large proportion of all my domestic electricity use and store it in my powerwall / BEV at no cost. I can also make money from the equipment by selling my excess generated power back to the grid.

The cost of the domestic solar PV array + the cost of a BEV (Kia e-Nero is around £35k, 10KW solar array + powerwall say £30k) is broadly the same as buying an HFC vehicle (Toyota Mirai £65k). My electricity provider gives me free on the road charging at its network of chargers.

Filling up an HFC is broadly the same cost at the moment as filling up an ICE car in terms of pence/mile, so that's an extra cost on top.

So from my perspective one would be spending quite a lot of money and losing quite a lot of benefit to solve the range problem, where the alternative is simply to do a bit of forward planning when making infrequent long journeys.