Toyota/Lexus Abandon Hydrogen!

[Malc1]

I’m sure Toyota will be bringing us Hydrogen Power cars in volume  here in the uk sometime soon ….. well maybe 2or 3 years away 

They’re more clever than most other manufacturers ….. I hope 👍

Malc 

[Guest]

On 7/11/2024 at 4:28 PM, Malc1 said:

BP is developing it's hydrogen plant production in the North of England somewhere . and have 1200+ petrol stations in this Kingdom !

We'll get the availability sometime soon, well, in the next 3 years methinks !

Malc

 

That's awesome.  Be it hydrogen fuel cells like the Mirai or some sort of new hydrogen combustion engine, it's exciting. 

I hope the new government allows it to thrive as a competing alternative and doesn't just force death by BEV...  After all, 'diversity' of energy sources should be seen as sensible and important too..

[Malc1]

I’ll be keenly watching out for my new Hydrogen Ls700 ….. in about 3 years  😄

Malc 

[Malc1]

Further to all this …….. reading today that BP alongside Aberdeen Council are pushing forward with the local Green Hydrogen manufacturing and research facilities 

Aberdeen the hub for Green Hydrogen in the UK it seems 

It’s a’coming within a very short few years 👍

Malc 

[Malc1]

…….. being the demise of the EV on the clear UK horizon 🤞

Malc 

[dutchie01]

Sorry Malc but i fear Hydro for cars is a dead end and will never see mainstream adoption because there are just too many problems. More realistic could be the latest developments of Toyota that are working on the next generation petrol/hybrid engines. Apparently they are aiming for a carbon neutral one now that would be something ? 

[Linas.P]

8 hours ago, dutchie01 said:

because there are just too many problems.

Rather - one single fundamental huge problem... making hydrogen fuel uses more energy than is stored in the fuel itself and because of energy production is not carbon neutral, this basically means that running hydrogen car produces more net pollution than simply burning whatever fuel we have directly in the cars, or using it as electricity.

And whatever hydrogen is created as by product of other industrial processes (most of which oil extraction... which is that thing we trying to reduce and stop) is not sufficient to even 5% of the cars.

The hydrogen cell is fairly solved technology, we only need abundant clear energy source... and last time I have checked - we don't have one... not even for electricity demand not related with transport. 

[Malc1]

But BP has actually stated with its Aberdeen development that it’s producing Green Hydrogen ……. whatever that might be 🤔

Malc 

[Linas.P]

5 hours ago, Malc1 said:

But BP has actually stated with its Aberdeen development that it’s producing Green Hydrogen ……. whatever that might be 🤔

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrogen-colour-spectrum

That would be from renewables, but that's falls back to the fundamental problem I just mentioned above - they can make 1kwh of "green electricity" and supply it to the grid, or they can spend that 1kwh making hydrogen, which when burned will produce (best case scenario) about 0.42kwh of electricity.

So they are just playing with terminology, one cannot produce "green hydrogen" in integrated grid where 25% of energy comes from hydrocarbons.

I think the most suitable source of hydrogen would be "pink hydrogen" from nuclear power, because currently about 40% of all nuclear energy produced is wasted (reactor has to run, but there is no demand at night), so that wasted energy can be turned into hydrogen and it technically comes for free and at one large location. The same problem still exists, so in theory it would be better if people would run dryers, washing machines and charge their dirty BEVs overnight, but as it stands today there is that spare capacity of extremely low emissions hydrogen... that said it is still not enough for anything. Even if they add hydrogen plant next to every nuclear power plant we have in UK, and just run them 24/7 only producing hydrogen, it would still not be enough to replace/supply all road transport in UK.

Math looks something like this - ~45.6 billion litters of fuel is burned in UK every year, very roughly (a lot of variables) for every 10L you need 1kg of hydrogen (as replacement), so we need 4.56 billion kilograms of hydrogen, a single kilogram takes 55KWh to make, total UK nuclear capacity (not spare during the night, total annual) is 6.5GW - that is 6.5 million KW, so even if we dedicate all nuclear to just hydrogen we can only make 118,000 kilograms... or ~ 0.002% of required 4,560,000,000 kilograms, even if my estimate is wrong and we can replace 20L with 1kg (drive smaller cars), we still not making even 1% (electrolysis is just horribly inefficient way of making hydrogen). On the other hand "grey hydrogen" that is produced as part of oil and gas extraction already has capacity of 27TWh (3000 times more than nuclear can produce), which is enough for ~490 million kg, still way way short of 4.56 billion... and this is obviously "dirty" hydrogen. 

Anyway - away from all these huge numbers... point is - we can barely produce 10% what we need, but 99% of what we produce is dirty and production of clean hydrogen is basically irrelevant, drop in the ocean. 

[Malc1]

Then our delightful petrol V8s are still  “ good to go “  🤣😂👍

Malc 

[Linas.P]

It would be stupid not to use 490 million tones of hydrogen whilst we can, but UK government fundamentally failed to enable this use case. I guess it makes more sense to run buses on it than cars (just from logistics perspective), but for passenger cars I really can't see the use case.