Hydrogen

Electric cars are promoted as lower maintenance costs but where is the cost of battery replacement factored in as I can't believe they would last the vehicles life and would there be a tail-off of performance as the batteries reach end-of-life?

And would the recycling/refurbishment of batteries be completely green?

Roger

And , the BIG one , the State hasn't factored in the loss of fuel duty onto the price of electrical energy used to charge your car.

Which means...........road pricing is on the way.

The way I see it the primary problem facing humanity is Global Warming which is an existential issue. As such the 'greeness' of solutions are of secondary importance. Clearly one would like them to be as environmently freindly as reasonable but not to the cost of solving the primary issue. If the planet become uninhabitable it matters not a jot what the level of pollutants are including nuclear.

Reminds me if the film Apollo 13 where the main problem was AmpHours left in the batteries and getting the power consumption down. If they couldn't solve that everything else was irrelevant.

regards Martin

The world has moved on the battery replacement problem, they last pretty well generally, but can fail like engines and gearbox's fail. yes they do tail off, but so does an engine and suspension parts. Plenty of Teslas have run up enormous mileages on original batteries. There is a good trade in upgrade batteries for Nissan Leafs. Apparently they make good taxis and can do amazing mileages.

No recycling is completely green. it needs people and they have a carbon foot print.

I do like the Apollo 13 analogy.

Edited By Roger Best on 25/07/2021 01:46:18

The State has - it’s been under discussion for some time. VED raises circa £6 billion and fuel duty £30billion, not absolutely clear whether the VAT on fuel is included in that figure. It’s just revenue. Gov has never had a problem inventing taxes just a problem in selling the tax to the public and whatever groups have strong membership and lobbyists. Claiming vehicle revenue pays for roads is as sellable as claiming parking meters pay for car parks and just as untrue - it's revenue raising and manipulation of people's behaviour. On the other hand there'd be riots and demonstrations if Gov created a wheelchair tax to pay for all those ramps in public buildings. The only certainty is that road pricing will affect every vehicle and won't lead to a reduction in fossil fuel duty.

income tax is the single largest source of government revenue in the United Kingdom, making up about 30 percent of the total, followed by National Insurance contributions at around 20 percent.

Total tax receipts are £550Billion so a 2% increase in income tax would recover fuel duty but not sellable. Call it 1% for the NHS and you have half your money back. The public never look at where it's spent.....

Direct and stealth taxes are going to slam into us all. National debt reported this am as £2.2Trillion equals every man, woman and child UK owing £32,000 The interest alone is £1500 a year per head.. Now take out the population too young to be earning and those below tax thresholds and those rich enough to hide their money - well there are only about 10 million taxpayers UK.

The math is frightening. The solution equally frightening - inflation to reduce the value of the debt, increases in VAT, income and national insurance, insurance tax rises, taxes on energy, pension taxes, death duties up....

Re road usage tax.

Tesla can do it. So could the government. That is including software that can effectively prevent the vehicle using the roads. Computer software to monitor road usage and compare to tax paid. No payment snd vehicle could be immobilised. Simple enough?

Also the computer would obviously know where the vehicle was located - if in a public space it could simply be recovered and scrapped/crushed/re-sold/recycled to pay the debt - or whatever the government dreams up.

Systems such as this will be implemented - probably sooner than later.🙂

I watched a good video last week showing an interviewed by Harry Metcalf (of Harry's Garage fame) on the work JCB have done on hydrogen engines for their plant. It seem this is the way to go but the hydrogen does have to be produced so that bit needs to be carbon neutral He suggests that even existing diesel engines could be converted and the video shows a large JCB digger working very well on hydrogen at the test quarry.

https://youtu.be/19Q7nAYjAJY

Hello Peter Venn. Have a look at the 1st post i entered on this thread. Hence the whole debate on the pro's & cons of Hydrogen.

Steve.

UPDATE :

**LINK**

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/ex-lobbyist-slams-blue-hydrogen-says-it-would-lock-in-fossil-fuel-dependence/

MichaelG.

The claims that Blue Hydrogen will be associated with carbon capture are probably the usual greenwashing. Equally, lobbyists changing sides is probably more with where their allegiance has been bought than any true belief.
Reality is that we have huge numbers of diesel lorries on UK roads (with current worries about a lack of drivers) and at least blue hydrogen would move pollution out of cities.
As for the dangers of hydrogen explosions and fires - remember Buncefield?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire

Internal combustion engines, although better than the steam engines that they superseded, are still appallingly inefficient and even a modest improvement would reduce fuel usage and pollution. So whether fuelled by petrol or hydrogen the issue is rather academic.

However electric traction, as demonstrated by very early transport showed excellent environmental benefits but until recently this has been a non-runner for personal transport which we can't seem to live without. If battery technology can be improved according to Moore's law then the future looks better. However there are issues with the "refuelling" of electric cars if provided by our current power distribution network as a huge amount of energy can be easily transported by a fuel tanker. When motor vehicles first came on the scene one refuelled at the chemist but the quite quickly the arrangement evolved and adapted and so it is likely to do for electric cars etc.

The main theme for future energy generation and usage must be towards better efficiency and not necessarily towards reduction although that might be a good this in the short term.

Although climate change is an important issue to be tackled the world population may be the largest Sword of Damocles that we face. As David Attenborough said "in his lifetime the worlds population had tripled" and I'm sure our consumption of the worlds resources to lift our standard of living has followed a similar curve which doesn't bode well for the future.

The meek might end up inheriting the earth and not have to pay the taxes as our "civilised" society may have self destructed. Hopefully the human race won't be stupid enough to let it get that far.

I have a picture in my head of Jeremy Clarkson using the last gallon of petrol in the world to show how fast he can drive around the test track at Dunsfold !

Clive

Hydrogen combustion may be wasteful, but hydrogen fuel cells use 25% less energy albeit the costs and resources of the fuel cell.

pgk

One issue with fuel cells is the amount of heat that they produce. As a guide for evey kW of electricity produced they generate another kW of heat that has to be delt with. To make it worse the current leading cell technology, PEM, runs at low temperatures. Getting rid of heat with low temperature differentials is difficult. The result is most current designs top out at about 100kW.

Robert G8RPI.

Modular and scalable 200kW to mW.

https://www.ballard.com/fuel-cell-solutions/fuel-cell-power-products/marine-modules Other makes available!

Allegedly over 60% efficiency which whilst not ideal is almost twice as efficient as a diesel. Biggest problem with fuel cells is they do not react well to transient loads and they have a relatively slow ramp up to full power, hence requiring a battery bank to even out the load. Interestingly they have a service life somewhere akin to the heavy overhaul interval of a large diesel and with the on cost of battery renewal that skews the lower maintenance cost argument and if you bolt on to that the difference in fuel cost between h2 (whatever colour you want to choose) and marine fuel your container costs will increase! How that compares to current ten fold rise over 2 years is not clear because that is driven by other reasons.

Paul.

Those are marine units. The one mobile application where there is a readily available heat sink, the ocean.
Cars, planes and trucks are another matter.

I did refer to marine several times but it's not an insurmountable problem for vehicles and aircraft benefit from significantly lower air temperatures than at ground level. Toyota have done it for vehicles (in development) and there are others working towards it too. Whether it's a good idea or not is a different debate.

Paul.