Summary
- Nissan’s pride and denial hindered merger talks, sources say
- Honda pushed Nissan for deeper cuts to jobs, factory capacity, sources say
- Nissan unwilling to consider factory closures, sources say
- Honda’s proposal to make Nissan a subsidiary caused tensions, sources say
I think hydrogen has a future, but more for long haul trucking than personal cars. The general idea is to generate a ton of solar power during the day and use the excess to produce hydrogen, and then use the hydrogen to fuel heavy equipment, trucks, and cover for low solar production days.
This solves many of the issues with hydrogen:
Hydrogen remains a solution desperately in search of a problem.
If your aim is to generate locally, why not just use batteries? They’re cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable. Why have the lossy and very high maintenance electrolysis and hydrogen storage/transfer process involved?
Battery-powered vehicles require an unreasonable amount of water to control a fire. 1 burning Tesla needs 1 fire truck of water, so imagine what a bigger vehicle would need.
I don’t think the size of the vehicle matters, but where it’s placed. A sufficiently large battery (e.g. something powering a warehouse) is unlikely to be right next to a bunch of important stuff, so they’ll just let it burn out. A Tesla, however, is much more likely to be next to a bunch of other cars, so they need to contain it.
Are they cheaper? Even over 1M miles or whatever a truck engine is expected to go? And for running a warehouse overnight? I find that hard to believe.
But even if true, you need to take range into account. Hydrogen cars get better range than comparable BEVs, and that would surely add up for a truck hauling a massive load. And as hydrogen scales up, it’ll get cheaper. It’s currently a bit more expensive than gas (about 3-4x), but that’s with hydrogen transported from some plant somewhere. If it’s locally generated from solar, it’ll probably be quite a bit cheaper.
Yes, significantly so. Hydrogen fuel cells have a much shorter lifespan and higher manufacturing/replacement cost than lithium ion batteries. The compressed gas tanks are also very expensive and have a limited lifespan (albeit a relatively long one, compared to the fuel cells).
Market rate hydrogen is currently about as cheap as it’s possible to get, because it is almost exclusively from fossil fuel sources which are gradually winding down.
Locally produced electrolysis hydrogen suffers from very low efficiency rates; about 2/3rds of the power used to produce the hydrogen is lost in the process. Assuming you don’t have an enormous overabundance of power being generated, it’s more efficient to store the power locally in batteries (which don’t have to be lithium ion if it’s for static storage; other chemistries become competitive if they don’t need to move around) than it is to store it as hydrogen. And if you’re generating a huge overabundance of power such that throwing 2/3rds of it away seems sensible, in most cases the question would be why you don’t make a grid connection and feed in anyway (extreme remote locations notwithstanding).
Hydrogen fuel cells in retail cars are intended to last “the lifetime of the vehicle,” or something like 150-200k miles. Lithium batteries last 10-20 years, which is pretty similar (assuming 10-15k miles/year). They seem to be roughly equivalent in terms of longevity, at least from a quick search.
I don’t know what fuel cells cost to replace, but hydrogen cars cost about the same as an equivalent EV, maybe a little cheaper (Toyota Mirai is ~$50k and apparently drives like a Lexus), so I have to assume the fuel cells aren’t that expensive relative to lithium ion batteries. Also, lithium ion batteries lose range over time, whereas I’d assume fuel cells don’t, but instead lose some generation capacity (i.e. lower top end output).
I thought it was generally about 75% efficient. This article claims the current rate is 39.4kWh for 52.5kWh input. Is that incorrect?
So outside of storage losses (should be minimal if it’s constantly being cycled in and out), 75% seems really good. Current fuel cells seem to be about 40-60% efficient, and I doubt we’ll get significantly higher than that, so is that where you’re getting the “2/3” number from? (40% of 75% = 30%).
The benefits of hydrogen over batteries are:
These don’t really matter for regular cars (can recharge at home over night, etc), but it’s quite useful for an org with high mobile energy needs looking to switch to green energy.
Assuming the same process (i.e. extract from fossile fuels), right? Direct electrolysis comes down to the cost of the energy you use to generate it, and if that’s essentially “free” (i.e. solar power that would otherwise be wasted), that starts to be really compelling.
That way though you would have to haul around the electrolyzing equipment with you which seems redundant and it’s pretty heavy. I’m not sure that would necessarily work.
Also in that scenario you would have to keep the water on board so that you could electrolyze it again. That adds even more weight. A molecule of water weighs 18 times more than a single hydrogen atom so every single time you run this process your vehicle suddenly gets massively heavier.
I think you misunderstood me. I’m saying good trucks would use the fuel, not generate it. They’d stop at warehouses and hubs and whatnot to refuel using “waste” energy from the warehouse or hub.
The whole point is that trucks largely take routine routes, so it’s fine if availability is limited because they can plan trips around refueling points. Also, they’re massive, so there are plenty of options for storing the hydrogen since space isn’t really an issue.