The future of hydrogen and electric commercial vehicles | Fully Charged PLUS
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- In this episode Robert talks to Lars Stenqvist the Executive Vice President at Volvo Group Trucks Technology. Among other topics they discuss the pros and cons for electric or hydrogen trucks, The charging infrastructure for electric trucks and Autonomous driving for commercial vehicles.
Become a Patreon: / fullychargedshow
Become a UA-cam member: use JOIN button above
Subscribe to Fully Charged & the Fully Charged PLUS channels
Buy the Fully Charged Guide to Electric Vehicles & Clean Energy : buff.ly/2GybGt0
Browse the Fully Charged store: shop.fullychar...
Visit our LIVE exhibitions in the UK, USA & Europe: FullyCharged.S...
Subscribe for episode alerts and the Fully Charged newsletter: fullycharged.s...
Visit: FullyCharged.Show
Find us on Twitter: / fullychargedshw
Follow us on Instagram: / fullychargedshow - Наука та технологія
Excellent! I don't feel confident about COP26 but this was about the most grownup discussion I've listened to in far too long a time. Thanks Volvo!
Thanks Robert and Volvo, this is one of the best. Seeing electric and hydrogen being used in tandem. The future for using both is wonderful.
Hydrogen IS "Electric".
It's just much less efficient "Electric".
10GWH from the grid, 3GWH "at the wheels". There's no away around the physics (chemistry?) required to get the energy to the "Electric" motors of a HFC vehicle.
Thank you Rob for having Lars on the show!
Good to hear a pragmatic approach from a manufacturer.
Except it's not.
Hydrogen (or ammonia) would make sense for shipping too. Stick some desalinisation plants producing hydrogen on sunny desert coasts with solar farms near shipping lanes. A couple in the red sea, one off Dakar and South Africa, another in the persian gulf and Panama with smaller ones scattered around near ports.
Salt from these plants being dumped into the sea causes increases salinity and causes environmental damage to the oceans . The production of hydrogen needs another solution
@CMW This is exactly what Twiggy Forrest from Australia is doing with his iron ore ships.
One thing that I got from the episode which I am excited about is autonomous trucks. They can travel long distance safely because they are travelling at a constant speed and never worry about overtaking other vehicles. If they are stopped for a long time I imagine a human supervisor would take over until it’s sorted out. A great future!
Great episode Rob, I think if some of the big heavy industries start investing more in Hydrogen capture and distribution it could be a great way forward.
This was a very intelligent conversation about the move towards the goal to "stop burning Stuff". Intersting to hear electric is the way forward for a lot of travel and hydrogen then for heavy long haul. Thank you Robert and Volvo
Very positive. Love the synergy with Ovako.
Great interview. I like the positive and cooperation-oriented attitude! Way to go, Europe!
Great episode. Thank you Robert.The challenges in the scaling up of the production of green hydrogen would be a great episode.
No such thing.
It's a "greenwash" myth
@@rogerstarkey5390 Troll
@@markumbers5362
No.
"Green" Hydrogen converts the proton of baseload it uses to 30% output "at the wheels".
That energy (70%) SHOULD be stored and used to offset fossil generation.
It leaves fossil power on the grid which could be removed.
NOT green.
No way around it.
@@rogerstarkey5390 rubbish. Everyone knows that. It is for applications that other more efficient energy storage methods can not be used effectively. There are lots of them as this episode presents.
@@markumbers5362
Except it doesn't "present" a realistic alternative.
It's greenwashing.
If Lars says it will take too much electricity to charge all these vehicles, it will take even more to make, pressurise, store and distribute the hydrogen. Also a pan European hydrogen infrastructure would cost billions if not trillions and take decades to build (think HS2 on steroids). I think we will see long distance transport taken by train (hopefully electrified) or electified lanes on motorways (i.e. pantographs above the truck lane).
In Lübeck, Germany, there's one of several eHighway test projects:
overhead catenary wires, where electric trucks with pantographs can pull power directly from the grid.
ua-cam.com/video/_3P_S7pL7Yg/v-deo.html
A really interesting dialogue.
Thank you Fully Charged !
Sadly, I suspect only government subsides will increase H2 in transport. As alternative storage tech (daily, not longer time -- too leaky.
Ferry, utility scale storage - perhaps some trucking - rail would be interesting to explore.
Great podcast as usual! Especially good to hear about green tech developments in commercial vehicles as they are huge pollutors.
The thing about burning hydron as fuel in an ICE you getting the worst possible returns on energy in ie energy to make the fuel vs energy out ie parasitic losses and only if your burning 100% hydron you still gets Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) out of the tail pipe
I'm sure burning 100% hydrogen would be problematic, you would need some oxygen in order for anything to burn. It's the oxygen that gives you the O in H2O.
but VGTT said thee will use a FC not an engine.... so your spreading FUD about it... smh
Happy Halloween Troll
@@nc3826 in order for something to burn you need oxygen.
If you only have hydrogen and no oxygen then nothing will burn.
The original comment mentioned things burning in 100% hydrogen.
Your comment then referred to fuel cells, and you still need oxygen otherwise the hydrogen doesn't have any thing to react with and you'll still have hydrogen.
Basically if you only have 100% hydrogen then nothing will happen.
Obviously you could mix the hydrogen with air and that will be where your oxygen comes from but then remember the original comment was referring to 100% hydrogen.
@@matthewbaynham6286 nope, since remember the OC called it "100% hydron" not 100% hydrogen.... so even your specious argument is based on an incorrect statement of fact...
also the validity of what I stated was not predicated on the validity of what the OC stated...
lastly good luck getting a life my pedantic friend ;)
@@nc3826 whether it's hydrogen or hydron you still need the oxygen either for it to burn or to use it in a fuel cell.
You can Google "hydron" if you don't know what it is.
Brilliant presentation and such an interesting guest!🇨🇦
Great interview!!! Lars has a lot of passion about this subject. I am very happy to see that. Volvo is a great company. congratulations!!
Great interview interesting hearing about their journey to becoming a sustainable business fit for 21st century. Esp about this steel mill collaboration similar to evraz with solar in Colorado. It would be good if Tata at Port Talbot couldn’t embrace and harness the wild welsh elements to power their processes than asking EV drivers on the M4 to slow down passing it for air quality
A long while back, BMW ran a small fleet of V12 7-Series cars using hydrogen instead of petrol. Did they release their findings outside of the company? I know JCB has had a modified ICE unit running H2 for a few years, and have demonstrated it at work in small to medium plant. The issues of NOx emissions should be well understood, but also the role of catalytic converters on controlling that output.
I have been enjoyed, so thank you for delivering.
Why does Lars sound like he has Welsh inflections🧐must be me..
I kept thinking Carribbean, aka Death in Paradise. 😁
I was thinking the same - the rhythm and timing of his speech was Welsh, but with the Italian emphasis on some of the word endings! 😃
I think his "English" teacher had a strong Welsh accent. I have spoken with people who were taught English by people with strong Brummie accents before and a Chinese guy running a chnese take away shop in Portree on the island of Sky who speaks a strong local Scottish / Chinese that is very nearly completely unintelligible to anyone but locals. Lol
He has a strong gothenburg accent which influences his English. He speaks English the same way he speaks Swedish.
@@mwikborg so a little like the Swedish accent of the chef on the muppets!! - Makes so much sense now. I was thinking Welsh as others but your explanation makes more sense.
With regards HGVs, as I see it, trunking needs chargers at depots (the haulage company sorts that out, relatively easy to work out what's needed), tramping needs charging at services and other truck stops (bigger problem to sort out, whoever installs needs to consider location, capacity and usage). However, the mid-shift 45min break recharge only needs to get enough extra in to finish the day off, so most likely starting the second stint with even less than 80% battery, to cover the last 4hrs (224 miles / 360km max in most European countries), load/temp dependant.
While your talking, my thoughts.
At the "delivery locations" charging options, sitting at the loading dock. Give a discount to the customer (who is taking the delivery).
I get the feeling they are "hedging their bets" on the battery supply.
I have a sneaky feeling they don't have HUGE orders in for the next 5 years.
What about fitting our motorways with overhead power lines for electric HGV's? The trucks could also have a large battery fitted, which would allow the truck to leave the motorway.
In Lübeck, Germany, there's one of several eHighway test projects:
overhead catenary wires, where electric trucks with pantographs can pull power directly from the grid.
ua-cam.com/video/_3P_S7pL7Yg/v-deo.html
@@ncammann I saw that last week and I was very impressed. I know there are efficiency losses over rail freight, but since we move sooo much via the trunk routes, it seems to make sense. Probably direct power via pantograph is more efficient than pure batteries.
Just.....no.
@@JohnnyMotel99
Germany, France, Spain, Italy, UK.
That's about 50,000 miles of motorway...... two directions, 100,000 miles.
How many lanes would get the system?
Imagine the cost?
Then consider that it's limited to certain vehicles, restricted by the tallest.
Imagine a "big/wide" load?
How would lower trucks reach the supply?
Point of failure?
The system goes down, it doesn't affect one vehicle, but every one of that section.
Power generation?
Really interesting Podcast. It just goes to show that with correct thinking all these forma of power can be used.
It's not "power". It's a storage medium, a very inefficient one, and there's no getting away from that.
What a great guy I really enjoyed Lars enthusiasm.
Isn’t hydrogen made with huge amounts of electricity? so how will hydrogen reduce the demand on the grid. I understand that hydrogen gives higher mileage against BEVs but surely hydrogen mean more demand on the grid.
As it takes at least 3kWh of electricity to make 1kWh of hydrogen and storing it is very hard, why are they not looking at Ammonia
Hydrogen electrolysis means more total demand on the grid, but it is moveable demand. A battery electric truck on a rapid charger needs a buttload of power *right now*, but a hydrogen electrolyser can wait if the grid is stressed and soak up cheap power when it's available. With moveable demands like that, as well as storage technology, it becomes more viable to oversize wind and solar installations. You never have to shut down the wind/solar generation - on a windy/sunny day, charge all the batteries and electrolyse a load of hydrogen, then on still/dark days, get the batteries/hydrogen/etc. to wait and you'll probably have just enough power for everything else. Hydrogen infrastructure can install large tanks, capable of storing enough gas for a day or more, which increases flexibility and scales better than battery storage.
Hydrogen electrolysis is inefficient. Fact. Particularly when you factor in compressing it into a tank or chilling it for cryogenic storage. But synthetic fuels, like ammonia, are even more inefficient, partly because they use hydrogen - the simplest synthetic fuel - as part of their synthesis! The Haber-Bosch process is the main method of creating ammonia, and it mostly uses grey hydrogen as a feedstock. There will be no synthetic fuel without hydrogen (and we will need it for certain applications).
Here in Aus, the production of green hydrogen is designed to be independent of the grid, utilising solar and wind.
@@gigabyte2248 I do understand the need for Hydrogen for trucks, boats ect but what seamed to be implied was that hydrogen would ease the pressure on the grid. I also understand that hydrogen can be use when wind power is available at night but is that not also the case with BEVs. My point was that Hydrogen is only about 40 % efficient on electricity whereas battery is nearer to 90% so at night when all this hydrogen is being produced it will need more rather than less power that Batteries would. The point seemed to be made that hydrogen would ease the load on the grid and I just can’t see that as being the case. Don’t get me wrong though I’m for both hydrogen and batteries for the future of our energy needs I just feel it’s misleading to think hydrogen would mean less strain on the grid. I’m sure that over the next 10-20 years we’ll see major improvements to the national grid to accommodate all our energy needs and that includes home heating another possible user of hydrogen. Very big changes are afoot almost another industrial revolution! I’ve already installed a large solar system with a Powerwall and changed my diesel car for electric my next project is to install a heat pump.
@@wobby1516 I think we're mostly on the same page. If a BEV can charge overnight then, absolutely, go BEV and not hydrogen. Hydrogen has an advantage over BEVs in high-utilisation applications, where a BEV would *need* to be rapid charged. Anything where you have multiple shifts per day, leaving you with only an hour or so inbetween to get the vehicle ready again. Then (and only then) does hydrogen stress the grid less than BEVs.
I have worked in constructed industry in Asia where we constructing underground tunnel using Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) which have electrical motor to drive them 10m to 50m a day through igneous to sedimentary to metamorphic rock.
I thought Robert was being fairly diplomatic at times during this conversation. In truth there simply isn't really a place for any internal combustion engine anymore, what ever it burns. And H2 combustion isn't exactly problem free either [oops just read down the page and Glen Douglas has already highlighted some of this]. Also, unless you have oodles of the cheapest clean renewable electricity generation to call upon, the making of hydrogen isn't exactly pennies, even if it can be a by-product. Indeed, for the amount of electrical energy required to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen you might as well stick it straight into a battery and use it, which will be far more efficient. And where does our Volvo spokesperson expect H2 trucks to compete on fuel costs anyway? And he talks about greater range in a world where the vast majority of truckers [who are left in the business] want to go home every night, so they hand over the load rather than taking it the full distance. Thereby not requiring the most massive of ranges. H2 was a good idea in trucks about 10-15 years ago, but I feel that battery innovation and events are passing it by. I don't see it happening in an all pervasive way now, even though construction machine company JCB has committed to it.
Thankfully fuel-calls don’t rely on internal combustion/burning hydrogen so no problem there...infrastructure and ‘green’ hydrogen production on the other hand need to progress!
They were primarily talking about battery electric trucks and fuel cell electric trucks of course. The internal combustion engine vehicles that they discussed would only be for the scenarios where neither of the electric options would work successfully. An ICE is never going to be as efficient and still has to have NOX removal features but once we have genuine large scale green hydrogen production it may have something to offer IMHO.
I got the feeling Lars did not have a full grasp of the technology, but was rather repeating selling points. Bobby talks about batteries balancing the chargers and Lars responds about off grid solutions. Bobby asks about refueling infrastructure for hydrogen and he responds with the refueling time for hydrogen… I was not impressed even though I am biassed as a Swede :)
Of course, as an outsider Robert is not familiar enough to ask good/deep questions. So as a representative of the technology, he Lars should have guided the conversation, but instead he was vague and un-engineer like.
@@iteerrex8166 there is a good reason why he was talking "un-engineer like" almost all of the audience is not an engineer and wouldn't understand a single word. And the ones who were engineers wouldn't need to watch this show because they already know all of this.
@@matthewbaynham6286 You must be related to him, coz you talk like him.
Not sure the logic is sound here Robert. If you consider that a battery at a charging station can be used to charge a car without placing high peaks on the grid, then that scales to trucks too. If you scale up batteries, the buffer also scales. It appears the only benefit to hydrogen is weight per kWh, but that advantage may disappear in the future, so investing in hydrogen is a dangerous endeavour. Also, it's easy to just put off making improvements in aerodynamics by making the efficiency cost external to the vehicle, as it is with current trucks. If diesel was 5x higher in cost, the TCO would put the pressure back on manufacturers to internalize the energy cost, and make those changes. Betting on hydrogen fuel cells is a business as usual approach.
I remember I once had a silly idea: overhead cables on highways, such as Siemens e-highway. Talk about that. I want to know about its disadvantages, because its advantages are known in its website.
They're a good idea, they only issue is that it needs to be fully standardised for height and voltage so that the trucks (and buses (and coaches)) are all compatible. Equally that they are fault tolerant so shorts aren't catastrophic.
Watch Tom Scott's latest video. 😎
It's a really, really good idea, but it's going to be expensive and difficult to build out. Look at how smoothly (or not so smoothly) railway electrification has gone. I can see it working best in Europe, where goods need to be transported long distances, but the entire area is well built up and has good electricity infrastructure. Somewhere sparsely-populated like the USA or Australia would probably benefit from a smaller number of hydrogen rest stations/checkpoints, though.
Now, if you want a silly, pie-in-the-sky idea, try solar canopies for highways. The land isn't being used for anything else anyway, they can supply the electric trucks driving underneath them, the cars charging at the service stations next to them and the towns and villages near them, and they can shelter vehicles, road surfaces and truck cables from the elements.
Välkommen till Götet, Robert! :-)
Robert being quite diplomatic and holding back his preference for EVs over H tech
Bobby...Sweden's "west coast" is called Norway....lol
There is a part (south) of Sweden at the west side of the country that does not have borders with Norway.
Except it's not...
IT'S a FUCKING JOKE. hence the lol at the end...so go stick it where the sun don't shine, preferably outside of this solar system
@@melbournewolf Naw... Sorry no one laught at your joke buddy.
car to car charging could be very useful in the future. if your out of electric, your friend/parents can come down and charge you up a little to get to the next charger
Regenerative breaking is a blessing for BEVs. I'd assume this should be possible for HEVs as well, either by using the same technology and using a battery buffer or by collecting the recombined water and electrolyze it back to H2 and O. Does anybody know?
If you use a relatively small battery as a buffer to compensate for slow response if a fuel cell when powering the vehicle, reach a given speed, then try to recapture all the energy through regen, you'll need more battery.
If you try to recombine to hydrogen....
1) A LOT of excess plant on board.
2) You're taking the electrical energy that's already only 25-39% efficient due to the liberation/ restorative process, then applying that process AGAIN. The overall round trip efficiency of the regen energy would be tiny.
Keep it simple.
Grid power > Battery > Motor.
Hydrogen vehicles do use a battery buffer. This also allows the fuel cell to operate at a steadier, more efficient load
@@gigabyte2248
Which was my point.
It's an EV, just a very inefficient one.
Has anyone mention longevity?
The reports I've seen indicate a fuel cell is good for about 150,000 miles.
Thank you both for your replies. Always good to learn something new :)
Truck drivers under EU rules can driver for 4.5 hours before needing a 45 minute break, you can then do a further 4.5 hours, that's a total of 9 hours in a day, you can then extend that to 10 hours twice a week. That is DRIVE time, not work time, you can work up to 15 hours in a day under working time directive.
I cover drive for a milk collection company in West Wales, and use around 130 litres of fuel in one shift. I would love to see electric trucks here but we run at 32tonne gross and its really hilly, stop start work. We also need to carry as much milk as possible, payload is critical.
I think hydrogen may be the solution in our area after listening to this.
ps. I really loved the show by the way, I love the truck industry as well as the plant and equipment industry and also the agricultural sector. I'm really interested in EV's and cant wait to see more development in these areas.
Farms 63A Connection för 15min, vill milk the battry all day long.
Green hydrogen produced at major transport hubs that can refuel the trucks when they are being [un]loaded would be a great idea. Using stored rainwater from the roofs of these huge units, combined with either rooftop solar or keeping a peak demand on the grid to keep all our wind turbines in use would be ideal. There's usually enough open space at these hubs to utilise wind power on site too.
Plenty of space around many of these transport hubs to do all of this. Even overnight charging for their more local fleets. These units could be used to grid balance and even possibly export extra energy.
A big investment to start, but it will pay dividends down the line.
NEL.OL (NEL ASA) are the EU market leader in building and installing Hydrogen filling stations for cars and heavy goods (buses too) vehicles. They are great at what they do and working on R&D to develop further
I'd love to know how they can "develop further".
Are they going to change the laws of physics?
Robert, about fuel cells - many years ago you reviewed AFC Energy, Ceres Power and ITM power; how about an update.
In addition, JCB have already developed a hydrogen fuelled ICE engine.
thanks for the updates!!
How do they deal with carrying 16x more volume of H around?
How do they store it without embrittlement issues?
How do they deal with the expense of the fuel cell with it’s expensive materials like platinum?
How do they deal with the inefficiency of converting from Electricity to Hydrogen and then compressing it?
This will consume more Electricity than EVs for the inefficiencies above.
As always, an interesting and well reasoned discussion.
It's an energy source issue, after all. (Mostly electricity for which there is a well-developed distribtion infrastructure).
But are we missing a trick here - Nuclear Fusion?
The bad news is that H2 combustion can produce dangerously high levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx). Two European studies have found that burning hydrogen-enriched natural gas in an industrial setting can lead to NOx emissions up to six times that of methane (the most common element in natural gas mixes).
Fuel cells don’t ‘burn’ hydrogen, so that’s a relief 😅
Burning pure hydrogen with air is better with NOx emissions below current limits, but you can't get rid of them completely.
@@SparkyFlight so don’t use it and use battery electric
The thing these people do not tell you about their Hydrogen inspirations is that its going to be 5x as expensive to operate than an battery powered vehicle. And by the time they scale out the infrastructure battery technology will render it obsolete.
But would the lorry drivers need to be certified to handle hydrogen?
Insurance...
@@Bajotaz thank you for replying with one word, but that didn't answer my question.
They would need to be trained in how to dispense it, but this is pretty much trivial. You need, I think, a short training course from ITM power before they let you use their (tiny) refuelling station 'network', and I imagine this would be similar for lorries. Everything else is handled by engineering controls: pressure sensors, leak detectors, shut-off valves, comms. session between vehicle and dispenser etc. They wouldn't need compressed gas or explosive gas training.
Would it not be a good idea to invest more in electric rail freight for long distances over say 300miles , the USA seems to have more freight on trains than Europe ?
Especially moving overnight , and maybe better and larger storage facilities for stock and parts !?
The point that you need a lot of energy to charge 1000 electrical trucks is flawed. You need the same power to "charge" 1000 hydrogen trucks. Hydrogen is an energy storage, not an energy source.
Actually, with the low efficiency of the hydrogen fuel cycle, you need 3 times as much energy from the grid for hydrogen vehicles than you do for battery vehicles. Hydrogen is a con, you simply can't beat physics.
Exactly. All past and current hydrogen plans are pure smoke and mirrors. Instead of fooling us though, they are fooling only themselves. The inefficiency of hydrogen as an energy storage system will be the death nail. Physics doesn't care what we think might be best. The natural solution will likely be batteries for all transport.
Hydrogen addresses the issue of peak demand. 1000 electric trucks are all getting their power straight from the grid, but 1000 hydrogen trucks are getting it from a tank that was filled earlier that day (or week). You still need the energy, but you spread out the demand and ease pressure on the grid.
@@gigabyte2248
No, it doesn't, because you need THREE TIMES the energy, so 3 times the generating capacity.
As for "1000 electric trucks getting power straight from the grid"....
You could literally Install NEW (green) dedicated generation capacity AND battery storage for the same price as the all new hydrogen infrastructure and *3x* generation it needs.
The sums for hydrogen just don't add up!
Not to mention the EXTRA trucks to ship it, reducing efficiency further.
The more exciting aspect of Hydrogen use in Sweden is in the production of the steel used in trucks and cars. Hydrogen replaces coke in the production of the steel and steel production is a major source of carbon pollution. Hydrogen could probably replace the use of fossil fuel in the production of cement - also a major source of pollution.
Unfortunately, the hydrogen to oxygen ratio in water isn't so great - by mass it equals 8kg of oxygen for every 1 kg of hydrogen.
Didn’t you interview a Hydrogen expert last week that said it was rubbish for transportation?
Enjoyed.
Brilliant 🤩
I really hope the internal combustion engine is dead in the road transport sector as its the only way we can reduce pollution enough to get close to the revised 2021 World Health Organisation air quality guidelines with an annual average NO2 limit of just 10 μg/m3 and a PM2.5 annual average limit of 5 μg/m3. Experimental hydrogen internal combustion engines have typically emitted 6x more NO2 than the equivalent petrol engine. We don't want a repeat of dieselgate with manufactures cheating to get their hydrogen engines to pass emissions tests.
where in the welsh valleys does your Swedish gentleman come from?
The deathnell for Hydrogen has been rung in Birmingham UK the Council has invested in a lot of Hydrogen fueled busses. The drivers and customers absolutely love them however they are all out of use and parked up. Why? Because there is no way a Hydrogen refueling station can be made safe enough (considering the volumes they would need to store), anywhere near the city. So planning permission has been refused. No fuel.. no buses.
This is going to be a huge problem (and rightly so) in the uptake of liquid Hydrogen fuel celled vehicles. Perhaps some of the new methods of dissolving hydrogen into solids or possibly a liquid (look up Henry's law) that can make the process very much safer. Until then Hydrogen is at a dead-end for now.
Perhaps the answer to the problem of EV truck charging stations is a small self contained Nuclear reactor which are currently under development for local grid use?
I modelled this ten years ago and hydrogen doesn't even work on railways.
...bit of a 'd'oh!' moment there for Birmingham!
Talk about putting the cart before the horse........!
(Ooh! - horse and carts, THERE'S an idea.....!)
@@steverichmond7142 it is one of the most difficult elements (next to Fluorine I suspect) to store and handle. It can make iron brittle and also defuse directly through some metals! Add the thermal shock of refueling when there can be a sudden drop in the temperature of pipework to -200°C and extreme pressure. Well all I can see is accidents just waiting to happen.
If the main problem with "EV truck charging stations" is the amount of baseload energy required, how is hydrogen a solution?
It's common knowledge that you require 3 times the baseload to move a vehicle the same distance as a straight BEV.
When will the power come from?
If you can't generate Electricity for 1000 trucks on location, you certainly can't generate 3 times the amount for Hydrogen.
I can't believe clever people fall for this.
The overriding requirement for the coming decades is efficient use of the clean energy to allow replacement of fossil generation.
Hydrogen just does not do that.
William.
Alternatively
The "Small contained nuclear reactor" could power the same number of BEV trucks .... And the nearest town? With similar output?
Hydrogen, or Ammonia, in 40 degrees negative. I suspect that the "Exhaust" emitting from such vehicles could make roads challenging. Really, the challenges would appear when conditions for frozen water present itself.
It's STILL "how to move a vehicle using 3 times the baseload"
Build the batteries ONCE (Not lithium based!) STORE the "extra/ spare energy" (which then disrupts peakers at 3 times the rate!) and power full BEV's.
Hydrogen doesn't work until the grid is 100% green, at which point, it's 100% green, so it's not needed!
I could have done without the rather distracting background music during Robert's introduction :(
Whenever I hear proposals about these 'wagon-trains' - one driver in the front truck, and three or four more following autonomously - then I think about the crazy driving we regularly see, where would-be racing car drivers try to overtake a line of trucks, find oncoming opposing traffic, and try to shove in between - - what would happen to the auto-truck that is following? Would it perform a crash-stop and lose 'connection', (and then what - just sit there?) - or keep on blindly trundling along, squashing the car? - - - A way around not having hydrogen storage in towns (big bang, like when Norway tried it!) is to have the storage out on it's own somewhere, and use a road tanker - as already exist - to shuttle top-ups to a much smaller refuelling station. But as stated in other comments, you have to have electricity to create hydrogen, and due to inherant losses - nothing is free - you cannot use that hydrogen to make electricity to make the hydrogen - or you have the perpetual motion machine!
Why do you think Hydrogen is more dangerous to store than any other combustible gas in a city?
@@andymacleod2365 - Are you asking me or Fully Charged? All I can base on is that Norway installed two hydrogen plants. One catastrophically exploded with significant collateral damage, and the other was hastily shut down! Bjorn Nyland reported on it a couple of years back.
Volvo? Ah, so you're talking hydrogen because Volvo and Daimler are together in Cellcentric, a fuel-cell joint venture. I like Daimler's idea of using liquid hydrogen, and I don't understand why Volvo don't do the same. Perhaps they explain in the podcast.
Hydrogen comes out of the electrolyser at atmospheric pressure. Compressing it in a compressed gas tank requires less energy than liquifying it (which requires cryogenic techniques). Daimler want the hydrogen producers to take on the burden of liquifying the hydrogen, so they can fit smaller, easier-to-fill tanks. Volvo are, IMO, being more pragmatic about how hydrogen can and should be stored.
The best way to take advantage of savings made by using your Solar PV generated energy is to use it in the middle of the working day when you are paying the highest rate for your KWh. Using it at night when you can buy electricity at very low rates is a waste of your investment.
Deleting posts?
Really?
Can anyone tell me what the benefit of hydrogen ICE is, vs. hydrogen fuel cell? I've been searching all day and haven't found a satisfactory answer. In theory, using established ICE technology reduces the manufacture cost, compared to fuel cells, but the hydrogen engine would need more than a little engineering work (pulling up the cost) and fuel cells have much more scope to reduce in cost as volumes go up. ICE has demonstrated that it can deliver huge amounts of power and torque, for off-highway vehicles, but I see no reason why motors, inverters and fuel cell stacks can't be scaled up to 1MW or greater. Some of the underground environments these off-highway vehicles will need to operate in will be harsh and full of dust, but how much better would a hydrogen ICE cope with these conditions than a fuel cell stack, when they both have air inlet filters. Hydrogen ICE just has lower efficiency than fuel cells, and I can't see anything substantial it offers that fuel cells don't.
You're almost there.....
Apply the same logic to the relative efficiency of straight batteries compared to HFC
Batteries 80%+
HFC 30% at best (plus fossil remains on the grid)
H combustion........ Below 20%?
@@rogerstarkey5390 Yes, obviously, batteries are more efficient and cost-effective in all applications which they suit. Hydrogen is only viable for high-utilisation applications, where the vehicle is being used for multiple shifts and has less than an hour to recharge between them. Construction/mining equipment is a good example. But once you accept that premise, I still fail to see what hydrogen ICE offers that fuel cells don't. Volvo obviously think there's something to it. Shorter time to market? Higher margin for them? Is there any practical advantage for the user?
It taks a Swede to call -38 degrees as being "cool"
If only the governments of the world would take this sort of attitude to the challenges facing us, to save our plant from catastrophic changes which we are driving into at full speed, or should I say; with our foot on the gas.
Openness, collaboration, risk taking and commitment are all needed if we are to minimise the disaster phase of climate change; which we are already encroaching on..
I do feel frustrated by my lack of knowledge. When talking about using electricity to split water to produce Oxygen to use to burn propane more efficiently I am totally confused. Decades ago I worked on the edges of the steel industry. Even then they used electric arc furnaces to melt the scrap, they used magnetic induction (electric) to maintain the molten state and to mix the metal. Why introduce all these other processes to burn propane more efficiently. Obviously there is a reason, but its out of my reach.
Converting H2 to NH3 for storage purposes strikes me as potentially dangerous. Again I'm ignorant of the facts, but I'm guessing that a N liberated from an NH3 molecule, inside a hot combustion chamber is quite likely to combine with any spare O to produce the dreaded NO, NO2, NO3. The efficient storage of H2 will obviously be crucial to the whole electrolysis route.
An elegant solution to getting green hydrogen
let's just make loads of tunnels under the main road arteries and have the containers run through these exclusively. this will eliminate the need for heavy vehicles on the roads. it's these vehicles that roads use a lot of energy in maintenance...
I guess musks Boring company is already onto this but we need lots of tunnels and one company aint going to cut it.
Just a thought - the astronomical cost of this, plus the HUGE disruption it would cause - not to mention the energy used to achieve it, might negate the point a bit.....?!
Underground freight? That's an even more ludicrous idea than going back to using our old canal network. Ignore Ego Muskrat's ridiculous tunnel agenda - he hasn't got a clue.
@@EleanorPeterson it's possible. and his achievements would suggest he does indeed have a clue.
@@andymccabe6712 not really, that's really the point of what Musk's Boring company is trying to achieve. the cost of the tunnels is in the millions rather than billions from traditional tunnelling.
it seems feasible.. there'd no disruption since the tunnelling would be a long way down and not interrupt the current road network.
Turns out that when Prince Charles said that when he talks to his plants, they grow faster, he wasn't as nutty as he appeared. Whilst talking to the plants he was breathing out high concentration CO2 from his breath, which as we all know is not pollution but super concentrated plant fuel.
Lol. End world starvation, buy a V8 and grow food faster.
All this stuff about balancing the grid with hydrogen production is nonsense. Who is going to build all this hydrogen cracking infrastructure, costing probably tens of billions of pounds/euros/dollars and then only run it when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining? This is not how capitalist economies work! You build the plant and then you run the thing 24/7 to get the highest efficiency. Anyone who has done 5 minutes of accounting training or economics studying knows this.
The private sector is never going to fund the infrastructure if it is entirely dependent on the whims of the energy market with prices that fluctuate constantly. The only other option then is government funding and no government is going to bet the farm on this.
This is what is going to happen:
1) The government (UK anyway) is going to switch to hydrogen with promises of green hydrogen down the road.
2) Green hydrogen will then be mandated a token amount in the hydrogen fuel mix. Probably 5% or something ridiculous like that. This will be produced at a loss and funded by taxpayers.
3) The fossil fuel companies will continue cracking gas to make hydrogen and we'll be left paying higher prices for a fuel that is still incredibly damaging to the environment and causes climate change. It's worse than just burning gas in the first place as it wastes energy!
This is such a bad idea that it beggars belief that anyone with a green agenda is giving it credence!
Let's be realistic. The first application likely to adopt green hydrogen is probably steel smelting or industrial chemistry. Their cost-benefit analysis will take the up-front cost of the electrolyser, then compare the cost of fossil fuels against the cost of electricity. There will be an optimum trade-off in electrolyser uptime: run it too much and it's using expensive peak-hours electricity, run it too little and there's loads of downtime on your expensive electrolyser. Right now, electrolysers are very expensive, and this trade-off only goes hydrogen's way for sites with high fossil fuel prices and low electricity prices, but the cost of electrolysers *will* fall. At the moment, they're low-demand items, made in small quantities with a lot of engineering work behind them, but the raw materials are relatively simple and relatively cheap - even expensive catalyst metals like platinum, or expensive electrolysis membranes are only used in very small quantities.
The cost of electricity (off-peak) will also fall, as more renewables are added to the grid, and the price of fossil fuels is likely to rise, as subsidies are withdrawn, sanctions are put in and easy reserves run dry. As this happens, more industrial applications will tip over to hydrogen. While this process is happening in industrial usage, the same benefits will be reaped for transportation: reduced electrolyser cost, lower electricity prices, higher fossil fuel prices. This makes electrolyser installations more cost-effective and, like Lars said, there will probably also be supply from other sources, such as surplus hydrogen from industrial sites. All these factors point to hydrogen eventually achieving price parity against fossil fuels in more and more applications.
There are a number of applications, though, where hydrogen will never make economic sense, and I have to point to space heating as an example. A 50% efficient electrolysis system turns 1kWh of electricity into 0.5kWh of heat, whereas a heat pump with a COP of 4 turns 1kWh of electricity into 4kWh of heat. Total no-brainer, even ignoring all the other problems with hydrogen piping and boilers. For the same reason, blending hydrogen into natural gas supplies is a waste of time, money and effort. Spend that time, money and effort on green steel production instead, to kick-start the hydrogen economy.
@@gigabyte2248
Hydrogen.
THROW 60% BASELOAD AWAY.
The calculations do not add up!
The Tesla semi will have 4 motors they are the same as the car directly mounted to the drive wheels power will be well over 1000 hp, the new 4680 cells could give range up to 600 miles plus, with further chemistry mods a 1000 mile range could be seen, this is a death blow to hydrogen power cells, hydrogen cells best used on trains boats large plant possibly planes, all the wasted investments into hydrogen power cell is because ice companies will not pay licences to use Tesla tech, personally I think it’s criminal to do so, if they all embrace Tesla and join hands the transition would speed up 10 x and save trillions from wasted research,
What can we consumers do?
We can't force them to enter joint ventures with Tesla.
Lol, the Tesla semi with that range AND price will not exist in this decade. It was promised two years ago but is still nowhere to be seen... Also, the original numbers for the long range version was 500 miles WITH the 4680 cells. The fact they can't produce them for sustainable costs in sustainable numbers yet is the whole reason of the delay.
And then you can just look at motorway speed tests of regular EV's (including Teslas) and se how far of that 500 miles number will be for truckers in the real world.
And then we havn't even got to the part of creating the infrastructure of charging 50-100 500kWh battery packs at the same time at 1 Megawatt each . This is what a normal autobahn truck stop looks like in Europe... media.istockphoto.com/photos/highway-and-truck-stop-full-of-semi-trucks-picture-id1142284079
No, There will be a market big enough for both power cells and battery ev's for at least a decade and probably after that aswell.
@@BilldalSWE time will tell like the stock value don’t bet against Ellon 👍
The semi doesn't need a 1000 mile range.
It need it 6 hours of driving at the speed limit, plus a buffer, so about 450 miles, then the ability to add sufficient range while the driver takes a mandatory break, to run the rest of the day.
Since it will charge 40% in 30 minutes, that's easy.
Outrange the driver, charge, repeat, just as we're now seeing with the cars.
JCB !
Hi, Julian! Are you referring to the Harry's Farm video of about 3 months ago? Yes, that was certainly interesting. My main worry is that they might start painting JCBs bright green instead of yellow... 😲
No they just signed a contract to buy a huge amount of green hydrogen from Australia.
Tempted to use another exclamation mark after Australia.
@@EleanorPeterson interviewer "we are talking big money."
JCB "er, yes, we are."
Hydrogen is still based on hopes and dreams, ultimately you cannot change the laws a physics, this is why there are no demonstrated Hydrogen vehicles that are longer range than battery vehicles. We should simply ignore any "hopes and dreams" until someone demonstrates practicality. The very fact there are no plug-in Hydrogen vehicle (which already have substantial batteries), demonstrates that Hydrogen refuelling infrastructure needs huge volume to payback.
Robert please try to arrange to have an Engineer on a call with no financial interest in Hydrogen.
As for steel production, something doesn't add up. If you have the electricity its better just to use that for heating. If they have a surplus they are either simply producing too much or they are using oxygen for steel carbon reduction which emits CO2. If they want storage, they should use batteries.
We don't need any Hydrogen (except for it chemical properties) and we don't need to burn stuff.
For steel production, the hydrogen is not used for heating, but for taking the oxide out of the iron.
@@mwikborg I am aware of that but Volvo are saying they(The Hydrogen supplier) are using it for heating aswell. Low carbon steel making uses Hydrogen for reduction, traditional steel making uses oxygen.
@@tonystanley5337 as far as I’m aware there are several techniques being proposed, and most use (electric) arc furnaces, don’t they?
Agreed, it's a fools errand.
@@mwikborg Yes for heating, but other chemicals (eg Hydrogen) are needed for reactions in processing.
We run a solar farm wash company and have been asked by the farm operators to use battery tractors, so far none of them come close to a days wash time, they will set up charge points on each farm , would like to work with the tractor makers to develop these systems, the main problem is the full weight of the tractor with wash systems fitted and batteries must be no more than 4 tons and give a full days work up to 10 hrs running a water pump and hydronic pump at 40 ltr a minute with 4 wheel drive, our thinking is removable battery systems buy one man to be charged during the day for the next days work, charging over night on a solar. Farm does not work lol, unless the farm operates make mains power available or a storage system, this needs to be looked at, the move to this set up is gathering interest by the larger operators, however smaller ones struggle to see the need for washing panels, early days for them, we are ready to jump in ???
Please. Please. I beg you. Change the my energy ad. Has it been a year now listening to the same thing?
Global sea level rise ? Why are Roman ports found inland from present day coasts by many hundreds of yards in many cases, on dry land, built circa 1800 years ago in southern England ? No glacial ice ever there on the last glaciation either to blame it on weight decrompression ? We also know that during Roman times it was warmer ( the Roman warm period ).
Shame Robert doesn't go to jcb and look at the hydrogen engines there producing now like Harry's farm did. They developed a change of head to fit on a normal engine block and been running on the test bed since 2017 constant. Doesn't have to goto Sweden to see that?
35:20 Is the ignorant on the Nitrogen-oxyde being produced, or ignorant of it being a greenhouse gas? Remember methane being 30x more potent than CO2? Well, N2O is 10x more potent than methane.
Unlike methane, NOx can be reacted down with a catalytic converter, and the engine can be tuned to limit NOx production. Moreover, the majority of NOx emissions are NO and NO2, not N2O, and I can only find patchy data, but NOx in general seems closer to a GWP of ~30 for 20 years time horizon and ~10 for 100 years (methane is ~70 for 20 yrs and ~30 for 100 years, and CO2 has a GWP of 1 by definition). That said, I do agree that NOx emissions are bad, and are a pollution trap that could be easily fallen into, so I'm glad Volvo's interest in hydrogen ICE seems limited to off-highway ultra-heavy vehicles.
@@gigabyte2248 @Gigabyte22 thanks for adding detailand correcting me. Yeah, N2O is more an agricultural fertilizer issue. Its average life is 114 years.
@@TheJAMF No worries! I think the focus on N2O is for its use as an aerosol propellant and, like you say, agricultural use.
Hydrogen for transportation, even trucks, has no long term future. The technology is more complex and expensive and does need some ongoing maintenance. Batteries are improving so fast that even big earthmovers etc will go all-electric. Hydrogen supply is expensive and not yet present apart from some fire/explosion risks in problematic circumstances.
Nice to here the direction Volvo Group Trucks Technology is going... But it was predictable EU automaker groupthink planning.....
I really prefer to hear about outliers, such as BEV battery swapping plans from NIO or Geely, around the world.... or Auways Methanol Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles...
are in lock step with each other...But I really prefer to hear about outliers, such as BEV battery swapping plans from NIO or Gieey around the world.... or Auways Methanol Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles...
yeah can someone tell the greens ideologues we need nuclear power, especially Small modular nuclear reactors.
On the other hand, can someone ask the "nuclear optimists" where the "small modular reactors" are?
How long be fore a production version is ready?
Will the design be donated for the good of the planet?
How many are needed?
How long to authorise, plan, build and test a global network?
It's not a "finger snap" solution.
Remember that every year we wait for "the miracle" is another year of pollution to "catch up".
I like the idea of burning hydrogen in a ICE vehicle, we need a system where you can replace the gasoline tank on a vehicle with a hydrogen one. Then you can run all your old vehicles all you want and the engines in them will last longer. My understanding is it is the storage of hydrogen is the problem.
Storage of hydrogen is a big problem, and hydrogen is not a drop-in replacement for petrol. Hydrogen has to go into compressed gas tanks, at 700 times atmospheric pressure (350 bar hydrogen tanks/fittings/etc. also exist, but then you're storing less hydrogen), so you need one or more tanks to hold it, pipework that will withstand the pressure, the right filling nozzle, a bit of electronics to manage the negotiations with the fuel pump (for safety) and the car's on-board hydrogen safety kit. Hydrogen diffuses out readily, so, if there is a leak, only the spot right on top of the leak will be flammable, but its ignition energy is very low, so only a small spark is needed. Hydrogen is also explosive at a wide range of concentrations, so if it does catch fire, there will probably be a big explosion, so high-standard safety gear is a must - do-able for a big manufacturer like Volvo, cranking out many vehicles a day, but a pain in the butt for a car conversion.
Similarly, hydrogen's combustion quirks affect how it's burned in the engine itself. I'm pretty sure Engineering Explained did a great video about this, so I won't talk out of my arse here.
It might not emit CO2, but in reality it is really not a good option as it produces NOx. NOx kills somewhere in the region of 23.5K people a year in the UK. We have to get away from burning stuff in the vast majority of use cases. Hydrogen Fuel Cells are far superior to burning hydrogen.
Somehow there's not enough energy to charge EVs but somehow there's enough energy to create hydrogen to refuel fuel cell vehicles?
What am I missing here?
David Stewart
You're missing ...... Absolutely nothing.
And it's not just the amount. It's what could be done with the difference....... Like removing fossil peakers.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Right? This is what stopped me in my tracks listening to this podcast the other day. It takes 4x energy to power a HCEV over a EV - so 4x grid demand..
@@stedavid13
Exactly, and it essentially leaves fossil plants in the system, which leads to the logical conclusion that green hydrogen is anything but green.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Roger, what is the green option to produce steel and cement that we are not hearing about? It seemed to me that if those two industries work in cooperation with the long haul heavy truck industry that this inefficiency would be a good compromise. I am assuming that the steel and cement and long haul trucking organizations would build their own renewable electricity supply as well a electrolysis and hydrogen distribution infrastructure thereby not impacting or competing with efforts to address the greening of the electricity grid. I 100% agree that hydrogen for anything less than the largest machinery and energy intensive operations (steel and cement etc) is completely impractical and will negatively impact the transition away from Fossil Fuels. Very interested in your thoughts on this.
"the absolute majority of vehicles will be electric ".......
i unsubbed and thumbs down everything you make now after your lies about TOYOTA
Stop lying about Toyota EV's and make a positive review of their 3x EV's that are currently in production if you want my support back
"3x"?
Where?
They make "some" in China (because they have to)
From memory, I recall that in the recent mission statement, they suggested they're aiming for production equivalent of about 20% of their current total (all types) for "electrified" vehicles, including full EVs and hybrids.
Not exactly "ambitious"?
Oh, their new EV? BYD batteries (and chassis?)
@@rogerstarkey5390 LEXUS UX300e is a TOYOTA EV for sale for a year in Europe and UK and just went on sale in Australia
plus the two CH-R EV's from China from two factories
plus the BZ4x goes into production right now for Deliveries in JAPAN and China by end of this year
@@TimBorg
As I said, BYD technology.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Toyota has partners with many Battery suppliers, more than Tesla has and which includes all the companies Tesla has so CATL too and PANASONIC for the Beyond Zero BZ EV eTGNA Platform from Japan
They stated this on their Toyota Motor Corporation Channel recent video about going net Zero
The cheap way to make hydrogen is from methane or natural gas. And that dumps a lot of co2 into the atmosphere. I don't believe they will make it from sea water because it's way more expensive and what will they do with all the salt and other leftover stuff from the process? They will need to treat them as hazardous materials because of how bad they are for the environment. Hydrogen fuel may work in the future but for now, it's way too expensive and environmentally dangerous to produce.