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Hydrogen trucks are coming

Green hydrogen fuelling now available in the North Island for big trucks

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/green-hydrogen-fuelling-has-arrived-in-the-north-island-for-heavy-transport/SWG44H7VVBFYLIPTMJDKWK36U4/

Two 'firsts' this week for budding green hydrogen energy road industry.

Green hydrogen fuelling now available in the North Island for big trucks

Hiringa, with partners fuel supplier Waitomo Group and Australasia’s largest heavy vehicle fleet owner TR Group, on Tuesday opened three green hydrogen stations, with a fourth under way, within the North Island’s economic “golden triangle” of freight movement.

44 comments

Ilovethebomb

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For anyone who thinks hydrogen is a good idea, please read this. There's another article I'm trying to find that goes into the many technical issues with hydrogen fuel, such as pumps icing up.

this is the article I was looking for

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/analysis-it-is-now-almost-14-times-more-expensive-to-drive-a-toyota-hydrogen-car-in-california-than-a-comparable-tesla-ev/2-1-1519315

Rangelus

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There are problems with these articles, and it almost always comes down to scale. There currently isn't the scale and infrastructure to bring the cost of hydrogen to make it cost effective compared to pure electric. With time that could change if there is a will to do so.

But regardless, as I mentioned in my other comment, hydrogen has a much better use case in large scale transport. Trains and ships, for example, where volume isn't a problem and where the weight of batteries becomes untenable. This is, I think, where hydrogen will be viable.

Viper_NZ

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It'll never be cost effective compared to pure electric. It's simply far less efficient so the energy costs will remain higher.

Rangelus

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That's not entirely true. If you are purely looking at $/kWh then yes, of course this is the case. However that is not the only consideration when it comes to transport. Weight of the drive unit, use of rare earth metals, lifespan of the drive unit, energy density by weight, speed of recharge, ease of transport energy, and more are all considerations.

I'm not arguing that vehicles will become hydrogen electric. I agree they are not suitable without some serious technological advances. What I'm saying is that at a certain point, larger vehicles (trucks, trains, ships, even aeroplanes) will become more suitable to hydrogen.

Viper_NZ

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Hydrogen has its own problems with rare metals like platinum and palladium.

Even setting aside the energy loss, the cost of compression, chilling, storage etc is much more expensive than both fossil and ev charging infrastructure. Scale will help but it’s simply not there.

I can see a future in aviation for fuel cells but for shipping I think it far more likely we’ll see something like ammonia fuel cells taking centre stage. It’s vastly more easy to transport and a leak at sea isn’t as big a deal.

Light passenger vehicles? Never going to happen. It arrived 20 years too late.

Rangelus

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Ammonia is significantly more harmful in the event of a leak. Yes, it's more hydrogen dense than pure liquid hydrogen.

Ultimately I don't see a reason to dismiss hydrogen like some are doing. Is it the perfect solution in all cases? Of course not. Does that mean it is not a viable fuel source for transport? Absolutely not.

Scale solves most problems. Hydrogen also has other uses, such as steel production, which further increases the scale.

For light vehicles batter EV is likely to be the leading type for some time, as volume is more of an issue then weight for the ranges we need.

Viper_NZ

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It’s why I don’t see ammonia being used outside of shipping.

Scale won’t get to fix FCEV light vehicle transport because is simply chicken and egg.

Unless governments pump billions into hydrogen infrastructure there’s simply no financial return for any investors. And why should governments do that when BEVs are already solving the decarbonisation issue?

Battery technologies like Lithium Iron Phosphate and Sodium Ion are here and solve the material issues. And once the materials are mined they enter a circular economy.

Fast forward 30 years and most new car batteries will be made from old ones.

Rangelus

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Look again. I'm not talking about light vehicles.

A BEV truck can weigh up to 5 tons more than a FCEV. Why would that not be a case use for hydrogen? Now scale up to a ship where volume is no issue. BEV shipping is a non-starter.

New battery tech is fantastic. But why would you assume new battery tech, currently prohibitively expensive, will come down with scale but hydrogen won't?

Dave

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How does the weight of fuel cells compare to batteries?

Rangelus

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I can't find the exact figures, as it depends on battery range and battery tech. One study I've seen found a battery truck would weigh over 5000kg more than a hydrogen-electric version.

I've also seen figures of double the weight for a Li-Ion battery EV compared to HEV at ranges above 300 miles.

Dave

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I couldn't read the article because of the paywall but hydrogen seems the best option for trucks. There are already companies using hydrogen hybrid trucks, with hydrogen generators at the home base.

From what I've read, the hybrid trucks need deisel for the hills as the hydrogen isn't powerful enough. I wonder if this is a barrier for full hydrogen use or if the limitations can be built around.

Rangelus

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There seems to be a general push against hydrogen electric transport recently. I agree that it isn't suitable for small-scale transport, such as cars or even busses, but I do think there is a use-case for large transport.

Ultimately the problem comes how do we get the electricity from the generator to the vehicle where it needs to be. Obviously batteries are more efficient, but they come with their own problems. They weigh a lot, which damages infrastructure, they require rare metals, they have a maximum capacity per unit weight.

Of course they have advantages, but I think as the vehicle gets larger, and the charging time requirements drastically increase, I think there comes a point where hydrogen electric systems are worth looking at. Trains and shipping being the main ones, and potentially trucks.

Of course, if the hydrogen is not generated cleanly then it's moot, but the same is true for pure electric systems as well.

Ultimately, I would like to see renewable generation that turns excess power into hydrogen for a train and coastal shipping fleet.

Dave

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Recently I saw on Lemmy that California has an excess of power generation. Sounds like a good opportunity to jam it into hydrogen generators.

Ilovethebomb

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Or, you know, literally any other means of storage. 25% round trip efficiency is absolutely dire.

Besides, they can sell power to neighbouring states.

Dave

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Where does the 25% figure come from? This article has it at 38% (it's also an article arguing hard against hydrogen).

One up side is you don't need the rare materials that are needed for batteries, but in the next 10 or 20 years I'd guess a lot will change with batteries anyway. There are already designs that don't need them, just no one can scale them yet.

Also if you tack a few thousand dollars of solar panels onto your shipping container sized hydrogen generator, does the efficiency become less important?

The article is only addressing light vehicles. While I agree the equation seems to favour batteries, truck sized batteries are also obscenely expensive so I'm not convinced it's a clear line. Batteries may currently be winning but that likely comes mostly from scale. All the batteries for electric vehicles plus all the same batteries in our laptops and phones and vapes and other electronics leads to economies of scale. I'd expect hydrogen systems would be a lot cheaper if we built a lot more of them, which would make the cost part of the equation less important.

Rangelus

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Absolutely. If there was the political will in this country, we would have an excess of cheap, renewable, power.

Ilovethebomb

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it's going badly for light vehicles

Rangelus

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Yes, as I said above, this is true because a) hydrogen doesn't currently have the scale to bring the cost down, and b) is more suitable for large vehicles anyway. It's failure to be a viable consumer option doesn't mean it wouldn't work in mass freight transport.

Ilovethebomb

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Spending longer filling up than an EV because the pump keeps freezing up, and $200 USD to do so, isn't an issue of scale.

Rangelus

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Of course it is, don't be daft.

Price will come down with scale. Currently hydrogen is only produced at a very small scale. As production increases, price will drop. Simple really.

Freezing pumps is a problem I'm certain will be solved. In its infancy, EV charging stations were slow. Look how far the technology has come in a short number of years. As uptake increases and infrastructure is built, I am certain these problems will be overcome.

Ilovethebomb

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They won't, because EVs will always be the better option, and the niche applications where an EV simply isn't viable will be served by biofuels rather than hydrogen. It's a mongrel of a product to manufacture, store, transport, and transfer into the vehicle, whereas liquid fuels can be stored in a fuel can, and transported by every means of transport known to man.

Hydrogen has been the fuel of the future for the last fifty years, and it's still not a viable option.

Rangelus

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It is technically challenging, I don't disagree, but it has high energy density by weight. It also, of course, has lots of other applications. Steel manufacture being one.

But to be honest, even if it never eventuates and we get carbon neutral biofuels, I'll be happy. Anything is better than what we're doing right now.

Maalus

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EVs won't, because internal combustion cars will always be the better options, and the niche applications where ICE simply isn't viable will be served by bunker fuel rather than EVs. It's a mongrel of a product to manufacture, store, transport and charge the vehicle, wheras liquid fuels can be stored in a fuel can, and transported by every means of transport known to man.

EVs have been the propulsion of the future for the last fifty years, and it's still not a viable option.

TagMeInSkipIGotThis

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Yeah it comes down to energy density and time to replace expended energy. That's why the most successful electric trucks i've seen basically go to a depot where the entire battery pack is swapped out for a pre-charged one.

Of course there's a whole other piece of calculus that is ignored in New Zealand - and that is energy efficiency. Reducing the size of, and need for, long distance trucking by utilising far more fuel efficient rail & coastal shipping would also reduce emissions; and would allow us to decrease maintenance and new build costs for roads.

Rangelus

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I'm all for increasing rail and coastal shipping for cargo. Having lived overseas, it's criminal how much we rely on trucks here.

TagMeInSkipIGotThis

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Yup; and the previous increases to size & weight of freight trucks bought in by National governments is a large factor in the cost of building and maintaining roads now. While at the same time we continue to let most of our rail network degenerate and have done nothing to try to recover coastal shipping from when it was destroyed in the 80s to de-power the maritime unions.

zurohki

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"I want my fuel bill to dramatically increase." - no fleet operator ever.

Battery trucks might not be able to do all routes yet, but they're dramatically cheaper to operate on the routes they can do. Hydrogen vehicles cost so much per mile that they wind up just parked in a field and forgotten as soon as trials finish and funding dries up.

inclementimmigrant

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Citation needed.

Dave

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The operator I was reading was generating their own hydrogen. They spent something like $20k for a shipping container sized hydrogen generator - water and electricity in, hydrogen out.

What makes hydrogen expensive after up front costs?

Ilovethebomb

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You get a quarter of the energy you put in back out the other end, assuming you're using a fuel cell. And the entire system is horrendously expensive, even more so than an electric power train.

It's a stupid idea.

zurohki

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The inefficiency.

If you need 100 kWh into the truck's electric motor to drive somewhere, with a battery electric truck you need to generate around 120 kWh at the power station. After transmission losses, transformer losses, charging and discharging the battery, etc you wind up with your 100 kWh.

If you're driving a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, you still have an electric motor and you still need 100 kWh to reach your destination. But you need to generate something like 400 kWh to actually get 100 kWh into the motor, and that 400 kWh of generation and grid transmission is what you need to pay for. Turning electricity into hydrogen and back into electricity is incredibly wasteful.

absGeekNZ

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This is hydrogens main problem.

It just costs so much more to make it.

There are some places in the world where it can be drilled for, eliminating some of the costs of production, but then you have to store and transport it. Hydrogen can't be stored easily (just big metal tanks), it requires pressure vessels made of exotic composites to reduce leakage, or worse cryogenic tanks that take a constant energy supply to stay cold.

Unlike nitrogen which we store as a liquid easily at industrial scales, hydrogen would be a nightmare to liquefy and store as any kind of scale. Nitrogen is liquid at -77 C, put it into a big metal tank and you are happy. Hydrogen is liquid at 20K (-253 C), metals are (mostly) to brittle at this temperature to be safely used. So exotic composites are required again to make cryogenic storage tanks.

The energy required to liquefy hydrogen is ridiculous, taking something to 20K is difficult and energy intensive.

I could go on, but beyond very specific use-cases hydrogen is a non-starter from a cost perspective.

pluckytree

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Clean coal, green hydrogen, natural gas. An adjective doesn’t make something good for the environment.

MonkderDritte

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Green hydrogen is not brown hydrogen, so there's that.

jose1324

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Sadly

Wahots

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https://archive.ph/Djlb5

fluffyb

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This is a great video about hydrogen powered vehicles: https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE?si=oqnXgBoVs4F_XK8r

inclementimmigrant

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Okay, so let's talk about a whole four stations here and what energy source the hydrogen being generated is coming from.

Still going to be interesting to see how this pans out vs all of the other hydrogen attempts there have been so far.

NigelFrobisher

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The humanity!