I don’t at all preach to know the answers. But yes, hydrogen seems a good bet. I am very interested to see what comes of the synthetic fuels being developed by the likes of Porsche. I spent some time in the automotive sector, both as a race coach but also working for manufactures free lance. Full time years ago I worked in r&d for numerous manufactures, one of which was bilstein which gave me a good look in. Even back then I didn’t speak to a single manufactures r&d team who actually thought electric was the future. They all stated that the government grants and pressure meant they pretty much had to. This was again echoed by the manufactures I worked for freelance. I went on to work in IT networks after that and am now in to waste and renewables (funny old path) but it has given me a broad view on things.
True. The big challenge with hydrogen is storing it. Well, keeping it stable anyway. Usually in quantities.
What happens to the whole EV thing without government subsidies ? All the materials that go into EVs are going up in price - computer chips, rare earths and especially the 63 kg of lithium required for each car. Can governments continue to subsidise this whilst they are so hugely in debt ?
And the rest. They would have to be 5 MASSIVE nuclear power stations. Nuclear waste is a huge headache too. As will harvesting all the lithium to make a billion fuck off batteries. There are huge lithium reserves are in Afghanistan, which could be a problem And here's the irony- The Taliban won't give a fuck about EV's. Or vaccines. Or masks. Or social distancing It's alright for Bojo, Macron, Merkel et al telling us it's 'the right thing' but when you think about it, it's all wind and piss. Or blah bla bla as Greta would say....
the same thing that happened to home solar…………. I think electric cars will prove to be the diesel of the future, one minute the answer to all our problems, the next the scourge of the earth. And much like now there will be adverts in the media “miss sold an electric car, you could be due compensation”
I've recently had a conversation with our local Toyota dealer as we had a new Yaris Hybrid on order to replace an older Yaris. Basically I decided to cancel the order as wanted to wait and see what electric options will be coming, the salesman advised that Toyota won't be bringing mainstream cars like the Yaris as electric only. He says they are developing Hydrogen for mainstream like the Yaris. Also a family member works for Jaguar Land Rover and says they're also developing Hydrogen.
The thing with hydrogen and indeed synthetic fuels is that current cars can be modified to run on it without enormous changes.
Two big wins right there. if by making things ‘good’ and going ev you’ve got to make things considerably worse and all for a short sighted tail pipe emission… you may as well not bother. Governments etc need to start looking at the bigger picture. It’s amazing how narrow sighted the western world is
I'm sure I read you need Co2 to generate hydrogen and it's pretty expensive to produce, saying that Toyota have a commercially available hydrogen car for sale in the UK, James May has one. The issue is refuelling, as it's a gas it's under pressure so the supplying tank has to be under way more pressure than the receiving tank in a vehicle, the JCB video demonstrates this saying they had to build a substantial pump to fill the tractors fuel cell.
Compare these hurdles against ev’s though which have flaws throughout. not to mention that ev’s have had bucket loads of development and money/resource thrown at them for a considerable time now.
The Taliban rely on donkeys a fair bit so they already have more than their fair share of eeyore vehicles. They might not care about electric cars but I'm sure they'll happily accept billions of yuan from the Chinese for the lithium
Whilst it may be the case that existing IC engines can be modified to run on hydrogen, I think most manufacturers are going down the fuel cell route, so the fuel cell uses hydrogen in the tank to generate electricity to propel the car via an electric motor. Similar benefits as current electric cars but no waiting for batteries to charge, less weight, etc. IC engine efficiency most likely much lower that fuel cell and electric motor, but also far less moving parts with the latter so reduced costs, so can't see any major manufacturers going down the hydrogen IC route for new production. Manufacturer supported retrofit of IC to hydrogen pretty unlikely I imagine, so probably limited to small companies similar to those providing duel fuel (LPG) for your gas guzzling Pontiac Firebird, V8 Land Rover......or Aston! May be some more benefit of converting IC to hydrogen if LEZ's start popping up everywhere but by the time the infrastructure exists probably simpler just to switch to hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
Sorry if it's been posted before, but regarding Toyota and hydrogen (internal combustion), this is quite a good presentation:
