timb
Statesman
Posts: 512
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Post by timb on Jul 17, 2021 16:13:24 GMT
I was going to leave it there but I don't want to be misquoted.
'Batteries are not a 'fuel source', they are a storage medium.' I did not say they were, only that relying on a finite fuel source is wrong - hydrogen is not a finite fuel source, it is the most abundant element in the universe.
'Efficiency IS the point for trucks and vans.' as I said - The efficiency may not be there, hydrogen fuel cells will not be the way forward in their current form.
'Hydrogen can never be as cheap as when you're using the electricity in batteries, fact.' Unless you have a crystal ball this is a foolish statement to make - fact. Batteries will either discharge permanently or need recharging, as you said yourself they are merely a storage vessel for electrons. Set up a solar panel with 2 electrodes in water and you are making hydrogen for free, I can do this now in my garden.
'Battery production now minimises the amount of Cobalt, and some don't use it at all. Nickel and Lithium are abundant, and those will be recycled at the end of the battery life. It's not fair to target batteries as not being Green.' Lithium is relatively rare (15 000Kt worldwide) and nickel is used pedominantly in stainless steel manufacture and is the highest cost additive due to cost of extraction etc. There is much scientific discussion currently on the recycling of lithium, one thing is certain that it cannot be recycled indefinitely.
'The Catalysts in fuel cells currently use Platinum, which is hardly Green! All of these technologies will develop to use Greener materials over time.' I already stated that hydrogen fuel cells are not the way forward.
I am certainly not a proponent of hydrogen as a fuel or against batteries for that matter, I guess we evaluate things differently is all.
Now that is it from me!
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Post by Roger on Jul 17, 2021 16:32:47 GMT
My personal view on Musk is not good, he's clearly not the 'full ticket' but then he said so himself... Anyway we are getting close to his first space x trip to mars, 2026, mind you it used to be 2024? Well these things do slip don't they?... With 1 million people on mars by 2050....no wonder share holders hold their breath each time be opens his mouth...🤣🤣🤣 Elon Musk is certainly different. However, he has a track record of doing what he sets out to do. His time scales are usually over optimistic, but I think that's deliberately done to force a sense of urgency in his workforce. Do you think the world would have millions of EVs if it wasn't for Elon Musk? I don't. The Car industry didn't know how to do it, and frankly they didn't care. They had a nice little business, selling service parts, and that's all going to dry up now. I think we should give credit where credit is due. Elon Musk set out the plan for Tesla, and he's done exactly what he set out to do. Everyone thought he'd fail, but he's now got the brand leader by a very big margin, and is likely to remain so for many years. As for SpaceX, haven't you seen the dozens of Falcon 9 launches and booster recoveries? Everyone thought it was crazy to try to land a booster, but now it's routine, and the rest of the launch companies look obsolete. They've even beat Boeing to resupply the ISS and they've got the NASA contract to land on the Moon. Take a look at these weekly updates about the Mars Mission, the rate of progress is breathtaking. Not only have they developed the first full flow cycle Rocket Engine, they're gearing up to mass produce them. This is what it takes to put materials and people in any numbers on Mars. As a side note, the SpaceX rocket has twice the thrust of the Saturn V rocket, and it's fully reusable. It's already flown and landed the upper stage, and it's shortly going to start testing the booster which will eventually have 33 Raptor Engines, each with 230Tons of force. So, to be honest, I think it is mean spirited to slate Elon as being 'not good', because clearly he's shown the Car Industry how to make EVs, Panasonic how to make batteries and NASA how to make rockets. so he's taken a little longer to do it than he promised. Big deal. I wonder what anyone would have to do to be rated as 'good' in your eyes?
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Post by andyhigham on Jul 17, 2021 16:45:38 GMT
People said Karl Benz was mad with his Motorwagen. Horses and carriages were cheaper and could carry more people
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Post by Roger on Jul 17, 2021 17:23:20 GMT
I was going to leave it there but I don't want to be misquoted. 'Batteries are not a 'fuel source', they are a storage medium.' I did not say they were, only that relying on a finite fuel source is wrong - hydrogen is not a finite fuel source, it is the most abundant element in the universe. 'Efficiency IS the point for trucks and vans.' as I said - The efficiency may not be there, hydrogen fuel cells will not be the way forward in their current form. 'Hydrogen can never be as cheap as when you're using the electricity in batteries, fact.' Unless you have a crystal ball this is a foolish statement to make - fact. Batteries will either discharge permanently or need recharging, as you said yourself they are merely a storage vessel for electrons. Set up a solar panel with 2 electrodes in water and you are making hydrogen for free, I can do this now in my garden. 'Battery production now minimises the amount of Cobalt, and some don't use it at all. Nickel and Lithium are abundant, and those will be recycled at the end of the battery life. It's not fair to target batteries as not being Green.' Lithium is relatively rare (15 000Kt worldwide) and nickel is used pedominantly in stainless steel manufacture and is the highest cost additive due to cost of extraction etc. There is much scientific discussion currently on the recycling of lithium, one thing is certain that it cannot be recycled indefinitely. 'The Catalysts in fuel cells currently use Platinum, which is hardly Green! All of these technologies will develop to use Greener materials over time.' I already stated that hydrogen fuel cells are not the way forward. I am certainly not a proponent of hydrogen as a fuel or against batteries for that matter, I guess we evaluate things differently is all. Now that is it from me! 'The efficiency may not be there, hydrogen fuel cells will not be the way forward in their current form.' - Which begs the question as to what form they will take? Their current efficiency is less than 60%. What is the theoretical limit for their efficiency in any form? Even if it's in the high 90's, you've still got to make and compress the Hydrogen. Compression is not free. 'Hydrogen can never be as cheap as when you're using the electricity in batteries, fact.' - ' Unless you have a crystal ball this is a foolish statement to make - fact. - Not so. Electricity is required for making and compressing Hydrogen or storing in batteries. It doesn't matter whether you get that from Solar Panels or any other source, it's the same for both. If it's free for one, it's free for the other, you can't have it both ways. Whatever your source of electricity, you have to electrolyse and compress it when you make Hydrogen. The efficiency of that process is always going to be less than the efficiency of charging a battery. The resistance of the electrolysis cell alone is likely to be similar to the battery resistance on its own, without the pumping losses. So unless you break the laws of Physics, it's impossible to make and compress Hydrogen more efficiently than you can just store the electricity directly with say 90% efficiency. If anyone knows otherwise, I'd like to see how that is. Even if you consider home Solar to be viable and free, you would get a lot more range out of an EV because of this. Personally, I doubt if you could get enough energy to produce enough compressed hydrogen. One decent sized Solar Panel only produces about 250Watts in bright sunlight. That's not much when you're wanting to power an EV. Tesla have bought their own Lithium deposits in the USA and are developing novel and cheap extraction processes. It's not especially rare, and most of it will get recycled. Nickel is more of an issue, but that's why Tesla are using Lithium Iron Phosphate cells wherever possible. All of these technologies are emerging, it's not a static picture. The resulting end technologies are never perfect, they can only aim to make them as good as possible. Personally, I don't see how converting Electricity to any other form, using power in the process, makes sense when you can use it directly from a battery. Battery efficiency and longevity is only going to improve, witness the 4680 cell with the ultra low internal resistance. It will be very interesting to see what the efficiency of charging those cells is.
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Post by andyhigham on Jul 17, 2021 17:45:48 GMT
Taking a simplistic view, a hydrogen production facility and a hydrogen fuel cell together form the equivalent of a battery. To be viable the efficiency of the electrolysis and the efficiency of the fuel cell need to exceed the efficiency of the battery charging and discharging. To use Hydrogen to directly fuel a car will still require a clutch and gearbox, unlike an electric power train. An electric motor is around 85% efficient, An ICE is around 40% efficient. To put that in context a 100HP engine is wasting 150HP or 112Kw
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Post by simplyloco on Jul 17, 2021 18:34:18 GMT
People said Karl Benz was mad with his Motorwagen. Horses and carriages were cheaper and could carry more people If Karl Benz hadn't produced the car then all the major cities in the world would have been 2 feet deep in horse manure by 1910!
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JonL
Elder Statesman
WWSME (Wiltshire)
Posts: 2,909
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Post by JonL on Jul 17, 2021 18:55:55 GMT
I suspect you lot are arguing over whether Blue is better than Green when in fact I reckon it will be something completely different that blindsides us.
If Tesla's energy transmission experiments had gone further I suspect we wouldn't need to worry about carrying our energy at all... it would be beamed to us. Or even inductively transmitted through the road surface... alright so it's not efficient at the moment, but isn't the centre of this debate that the things we have haven't had enough development yet...
I think you will all be wrong and it will be a technology none of us have even considered that saves mass transportation...
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Post by Roger on Jul 17, 2021 18:59:04 GMT
I suspect you lot are arguing over whether Blue is better than Green when in fact I reckon it will be something completely different that blindsides us. If Tesla's energy transmission experiments had gone further I suspect we wouldn't need to worry about carrying our energy at all... it would be beamed to us. Or even inductively transmitted through the road surface... alright so it's not efficient at the moment, but isn't the centre of this debate that the things we have haven't had enough development yet... I think you will all be wrong and it will be a technology none of us have even considered that saves mass transportation... Fast forward 200 years and I'm sure you're right. However, it's clear where our current trajectory is.
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uuu
Elder Statesman
your message here...
Posts: 2,810
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Post by uuu on Jul 17, 2021 19:12:02 GMT
Bring back the trolleybus!
Wilf
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Post by Roger on Jul 17, 2021 19:19:27 GMT
Just a couple of videos to leave you with, both of which explain the issues, the second being more in depth and showing some scope for Hydrogen applications. One from Real EngineeringAnother from Two Bit Da Vinci
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lesstoneuk
Part of the e-furniture
Retired Omnibus navigation & velocity adjustment technician
Posts: 373
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Post by lesstoneuk on Jul 17, 2021 19:57:45 GMT
Bring back the trolleybus! Wilf I can remember them in Uxbridge, down by the cinema. They had a small turning circle opposite. In fact the cinema was the one outside of which a scene of "Carry on at your Convenience" was filmed. It's the one where Bernard Breslaw rides off on his motorbike taking Kenneth Cope trousers with him.
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Gary L
Elder Statesman
Posts: 1,208
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Post by Gary L on Jul 18, 2021 11:49:31 GMT
Bring back the trolleybus! Wilf Maybe not a joke. Something very like trolleybus wires on motorways has been proposed for long distance EV freight transport. It would certainly put a stop to 'governor races' in the 2 nearside lanes... Gary
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Post by andyhigham on Jul 18, 2021 12:50:42 GMT
2 nearside lanes? ? Where they have made these so called "Smart" (dumb) motorways and made the hard shoulder into a running lane, there are "governor races" in 3 lanes
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Post by simplyloco on Jul 18, 2021 12:55:26 GMT
Bring back the trolleybus! Wilf I can remember them in Uxbridge, down by the cinema. They had a small turning circle opposite. In fact the cinema was the one outside of which a scene of "Carry on at your Convenience" was filmed. It's the one where Bernard Breslaw rides off on his motorbike taking Kenneth Cope trousers with him. Many's the time we watched the bus being reconnected to the overhead wires. Apparently the drivers wouldn't do it because of the danger of electrocution: it was usually delegated to the bad conductors...
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jem
Elder Statesman
Posts: 1,065
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Post by jem on Jul 18, 2021 14:42:56 GMT
The problem with lorries and goods is that batteries are very heavy, which means less goods in an ev lorry, so perhaps here hydrogen is better, or maybe keep to diesel but make it cleaner, there is still plenty of oil around. Indecently co2 did not go down through covet, so perhaps co2 is not so man made, we have just been brain washed, or at least most people have!!!!!!!!
Jem
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Post by Roger on Jul 18, 2021 15:10:01 GMT
The problem with lorries and goods is that batteries are very heavy, which means less goods in an ev lorry, so perhaps here hydrogen is better, or maybe keep to diesel but make it cleaner, there is still plenty of oil around. Indecently co2 did not go down through covet, so perhaps co2 is not so man made, we have just been brain washed, or at least most people have!!!!!!!! Jem You can find the calculations on the Tesla Semi, and it's not as bad as you might think. What really helps is rapid charging, because you can reduce the necessary range. With the compulsory stops and time loading and unloading, they can make it work. The key thing with heavy lorries is the cost of fuel. That represents a very significant proportion of the running costs. That's a huge advantage over hydrogen, enough to negate any other issues. Hydrogen will only win if pure electric can't be made to work, and that's not the case. Out of interest, Tesla is planning to use a convoy system, with a lead truck and slave trucks flowing without a driver. There are huge aerodynamic and driver savings when you do that.
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Post by cplmickey on Jul 18, 2021 21:45:21 GMT
The problem with lorries and goods is that batteries are very heavy, which means less goods in an ev lorry, so perhaps here hydrogen is better, or maybe keep to diesel but make it cleaner, there is still plenty of oil around. Indecently co2 did not go down through covet, so perhaps co2 is not so man made, we have just been brain washed, or at least most people have!!!!!!!! Jem I think there's something in this. I saw an article that said CO2 makes up 0.4% of the earths atmosphere and that only 3% of that is man made, the rest being made in nature. It strikes me then that any imbalance in our small proportion is more likely to be easily balanced by the huge force of nature that provides the other 97%. I suspect it's people using statistics to further their personal arguments and unfortunately some of those people have the ear of government. There is, by no means a 100% consensus among scientists about this and more and more people are challenging the accepted "facts". I fancy this as my next read www.goodreads.com/book/show/56918041-fake-invisible-catastrophes-and-threats-of-doom
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Post by simplyloco on Jul 18, 2021 22:54:15 GMT
The problem with lorries and goods is that batteries are very heavy, which means less goods in an ev lorry, so perhaps here hydrogen is better, or maybe keep to diesel but make it cleaner, there is still plenty of oil around. Indecently co2 did not go down through covet, so perhaps co2 is not so man made, we have just been brain washed, or at least most people have!!!!!!!! Jem I think there's something in this. I saw an article that said CO2 makes up 0.4% of the earths atmosphere and that only 3% of that is man made, the rest being made in nature. It strikes me then that any imbalance in our small proportion is more likely to be easily balanced by the huge force of nature that provides the other 97%. I suspect it's people using statistics to further their personal arguments and unfortunately some of those people have the ear of government. There is, by no means a 100% consensus among scientists about this and more and more people are challenging the accepted "facts". I fancy this as my next read www.goodreads.com/book/show/56918041-fake-invisible-catastrophes-and-threats-of-doomStatistics can be likened to a drunk leaning against a lamp post: used more for support than illumination...
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Post by steamer5 on Jul 19, 2021 8:43:40 GMT
Don’t forget…
There are lies, dam lies & statistics, ….. now there’s a new additional one…..political statistics!
Our current government has just given EV buyers feebates for buying them, this will be taxpayer neutral as bigger vehicle, IC, buyers will pay more. Yeah right! An article last week in the local rag, had an article on EV’s saying there are approx 360 charging station in the whole of the country. A quick look at the app that they talked about for my city shows the vast majority of charging points are in motels & or hotels……unlikely to be available to most…….one I looked at was charging 0.25cents / kw PLUS the same again per minute. We have just been to our daughters for the weekend, 380kms one way, usually takes about 41/2 hrs with one coffee stop, about 1.45 hrs in, there is just one EV point in that town…….at a motel! Would think it would be pushing any EV to get to my daughters in one go, guess I’d have to stop at least a couple of times to “top up”. Just had a look on the app, there is ONLY 3 charge points on the route we use! A side track to couple of small towns gives a couple more, & the one bigger town gives has 8, once again at accommodation places & hard to tell if they are open to the public. HPEV,s appear to better idea down here if you want to travel any distance, to say nothing of want to tow a trailer, let alone the caravan.
Cheers Kerrin
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Post by Roger on Jul 19, 2021 16:15:48 GMT
Don’t forget… There are lies, dam lies & statistics, ….. now there’s a new additional one…..political statistics! Our current government has just given EV buyers feebates for buying them, this will be taxpayer neutral as bigger vehicle, IC, buyers will pay more. Yeah right! An article last week in the local rag, had an article on EV’s saying there are approx 360 charging station in the whole of the country. A quick look at the app that they talked about for my city shows the vast majority of charging points are in motels & or hotels……unlikely to be available to most…….one I looked at was charging 0.25cents / kw PLUS the same again per minute. We have just been to our daughters for the weekend, 380kms one way, usually takes about 41/2 hrs with one coffee stop, about 1.45 hrs in, there is just one EV point in that town…….at a motel! Would think it would be pushing any EV to get to my daughters in one go, guess I’d have to stop at least a couple of times to “top up”. Just had a look on the app, there is ONLY 3 charge points on the route we use! A side track to couple of small towns gives a couple more, & the one bigger town gives has 8, once again at accommodation places & hard to tell if they are open to the public. HPEV,s appear to better idea down here if you want to travel any distance, to say nothing of want to tow a trailer, let alone the caravan. Cheers Kerrin Quite right, and things will need to change. However, would you invest heavily in infrastructure in a sparsely populated country, where people travel long distances, rather than in ones where the opposite is true? It will surely take off in time, but it's going to happen elsewhere first. It doesn't matter whether it's EVs or Hydrogen, it's not an attractive market compared to elsewhere.
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