[Travel] What Is The Most Environmentally Friendly Vehicle?

[beorhthelm]

Re the move to Hydrogen fuel cell powered cars, I think there is a long way to go, and some possibly insurmountable issues.

Firstly the entire lifecycle of a Hydrogen powered car is hugely inefficient. I was going to go into details here, but in looking for a diagram to illustrate the point I came across a couple of articles that make the point far more effectively than I could.

https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-73-hydrogen-22-ice-13/

https://www.greenoptimistic.com/hydrogen-cars-efficiency/

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I personally don't believe Hydrogen is a good fit for cars and other smaller vehicles, due to the high cost and inefficiency of the fuel across its lifecycle, BUT, as has already been adopted for larger vehicles due to the longer range hydrogen can offer. Fleets of buses or lorries all powered by large fuel cells, allow central storage and distribution of hydrogen, overcoming some of the infrastructure challenges.

looking at efficency alone is overlooking flexibility, storage potential of hydrogen. electricity is very difficult to store, is relativly inflexible to move and charge times poor. if you can capture excess energy, transport to point of use to be consumed on demand, this offsets the inefficency. petrol burning ICE is also poor efficency but its so energy dense and practical we've overlooked the deficencies. a compromise might be large local hydrogen fuel cells to hold renewable energy until required by the local vehicle fleet.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

looking at efficency alone is overlooking flexibility, storage potential of hydrogen. electricity is very difficult to store, is relativly inflexible to move and charge times poor. if you can capture excess energy, transport to point of use to be consumed on demand, this offsets the inefficency. petrol burning ICE is also poor efficency but its so energy dense and practical we've overlooked the deficencies. a compromise might be large local hydrogen fuel cells to hold renewable energy until required by the local vehicle fleet.

Are you saying the Hydrogen (pressurised) is easy to store? Safe?

 

[beorhthelm]

Are you saying the Hydrogen (pressurised) is easy to store? Safe?

its easier to store and transport energy than electricity. or rather it can be used to store and transport energy potential that can be converted back to electricity. batteries and grid have less loses but slow or inflexible respectively.

 

[Stat Brother]

 

[beorhthelm]

Ellen McArthur Foundation is promoting AI controlled Uber fleet there.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Ellen McArthur Foundation is promoting AI controlled Uber fleet there.

I know it's not exactly what was asked, but shared usage of vehicles (EV, Hydrogen whatever) IS the future. As [MENTION=435]Stat Brother[/MENTION] shows, we hardly use our cars in the current model.

 

[Stat Brother]

I know it's not exactly what was asked, but shared usage of vehicles (EV, Hydrogen whatever) IS the future. As [MENTION=435]Stat Brother[/MENTION] shows, we hardly use our cars in the current model.

The bottom right hand statistic is the proper shitehouse.

[tweet] 1092418565058281473[/tweet]

 

[blue-shifted]

I know it's not exactly what was asked, but shared usage of vehicles (EV, Hydrogen whatever) IS the future. As [MENTION=435]Stat Brother[/MENTION] shows, we hardly use our cars in the current model.

Not the near future I don't think mate

And not even for the practical difficulties, (taking car seats in and out all the time etc which I think people could get over in a generation), it's the process of stripping a car of it's role as a status symbol that will take a long long time.

The best hope is Hydrogen. A good article about it the Guardian this morning (nearly as good as the Adam Webster write up) talking about having enough wind turbines around the UK that electricity becomes so cheap that it's economically viable to create Hydrogen fuel

 

[Papa Lazarou]

The latest Fully Charged video talks about where Hydrogen can fit in

 

[blue-shifted]

100 new charging points to appear in Brighton.

Would this help tempt you into getting an EV?

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18014820.new-charge-spaces/

 

[Bry Nylon]

[tweet] 1092418565058281473[/tweet]

Is that the Arsenal squad?