Has JCB saved engines?
Discussion
Evanivitch said:
cossey said:
hydrogen as a combustion fuel will have no impact on passenger cars where BEV is already a clearly growing and better solution for system efficiency. The only possible area is ultra low cost city cars where the battery cost is too high but this is not clear..
But then you're going to have crazy expensive hydrogen costs, because you're going to need something approaching 6 times the amount of electricity input into hydrogen to get the same output as an electric car.The small size low weight etc will offset some of the running cost.
It will be short term only, if batteries really get to 50$/kWhr then they will all be BEVs.
NickCQ said:
It's more about the difficulty of installing charging solutions for vehicles parked on streets in cities.
I think city/flat based folk will be later to switch as they will be reliant on actually going somewhere to get a charge which would kind of make having a greater range more important, its already important but its easy when you plonk your car on charge and top it up on your path if you are lucky enough to have one.I guess people manage not having a petrol pump outside their house so that bit isnt that much different in concept, its just that it takes longer to fill an EV so when you do, you want to put more than 130 miles worth in.
The tech will improve and the bar will lower price and compromise wise, fashions are changing as well.
I really cant see it doing a massive about turn in favour of Hydrogen, I think the electric motor will power cars going forward, just need the batteries to improve, which I cant see not happening as when humans focus on something it generally gets sorted, especially when the money involved is so huge.
NickCQ said:
It's usually a safe bet to assume that the laws of physics will continue to apply...
Yes, but for batteries aswell. We should not forget that we need something like an improvement of the factor 10 in energy density to make batteries a real alternative. I don't say this is impossible but neither are advancements in industrial chemical processes to deliver clean and cheap fuels.All i want to say is, that in my opinion, there is not one single solution to a problem this big.
Volvolover said:
Not an easy one, but also not a total wash-out.Smart meters that know which car they're feeding, and bill the right person, are possible.
Charging elsewhere is also more than possible.
There are some big downsides, of course. But most of those cars in that picture do 2 / 5 / 10 / 15 miles a day, so need a couple of hours charging per week, not six hours a day.
J4CKO said:
NickCQ said:
It's more about the difficulty of installing charging solutions for vehicles parked on streets in cities.
I think city/flat based folk will be later to switch as they will be reliant on actually going somewhere to get a charge which would kind of make having a greater range more important, its already important but its easy when you plonk your car on charge and top it up on your path if you are lucky enough to have one.I guess people manage not having a petrol pump outside their house so that bit isnt that much different in concept, its just that it takes longer to fill an EV so when you do, you want to put more than 130 miles worth in.
The tech will improve and the bar will lower price and compromise wise, fashions are changing as well.
I really cant see it doing a massive about turn in favour of Hydrogen I think the electric motor will power cars going forward, just need the batteries to improve, which I cant see not happening as when humans focus on something it generally gets sorted, especially when the money involved is so huge.
My wife's car does 99.95 of journeys to the shops, friends houses and baby groups, nursery, etc.......she doesn't have time in the day to leave the car somewhere for 30 minutes that isn't at home or one of those places and that is just the journey profile that fits EV usage......and we aren't all going to be able to be EV charging when we go to Tesco
burning hydrogen in combustion engines is not good, even if you have large amounts of green hydrogen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ajq46qHp0c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ajq46qHp0c
Burning hydrogen in conventional ICE engines isn't anything new though. BMW were doing it more than 15 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7
The trouble is that if you're doing this the hydrogen consumption is huge. That causes two problems:
- The BMW needed to be a LWB with the seats moved forward a bit, no boot and uprated suspension to accommodate the hydrogen tanks, and it would do 125 miles.
- Hydrogen is quite expensive (we don't have vast amounts of spare clean electricity to do electrolysis), it costs about £10/kilo here, that BMW needs 8kg for its 125 miles - equivalent to about 8mpg on petrol based on cost.
Fuel cells do much better (Toyota claim 400 miles from 5.6kg for the new Mirai) but obviously cost a lot more.
Unless JCB have found a way to massively improve the efficiency of burning hydrogen in a piston engine, they're either going to need enormous tanks or on-site electrolysers for frequent top-ups. This won't be a top up in the morning then run all day proposition.
Oh, and fwiw, JCB already do quite a big line of battery electric stuff. You can use them indoors with no issues. https://www.jcb.com/en-gb/campaigns/etech-range Scaling up the battery packs (using space gained by losing the engine) seems to make more sense than hydrogen for the job.
Hydrogen will doubtless have a place in some bigger/industrial applications. But it'll be through fuel cells, not piston engines. This is a non-starter for cost, for packaging, for practicality. But nice fantasy material for people that cling to the idea of piston engines that use an expensive fuel you can only get from special pumps.
The trouble is that if you're doing this the hydrogen consumption is huge. That causes two problems:
- The BMW needed to be a LWB with the seats moved forward a bit, no boot and uprated suspension to accommodate the hydrogen tanks, and it would do 125 miles.
- Hydrogen is quite expensive (we don't have vast amounts of spare clean electricity to do electrolysis), it costs about £10/kilo here, that BMW needs 8kg for its 125 miles - equivalent to about 8mpg on petrol based on cost.
Fuel cells do much better (Toyota claim 400 miles from 5.6kg for the new Mirai) but obviously cost a lot more.
Unless JCB have found a way to massively improve the efficiency of burning hydrogen in a piston engine, they're either going to need enormous tanks or on-site electrolysers for frequent top-ups. This won't be a top up in the morning then run all day proposition.
Oh, and fwiw, JCB already do quite a big line of battery electric stuff. You can use them indoors with no issues. https://www.jcb.com/en-gb/campaigns/etech-range Scaling up the battery packs (using space gained by losing the engine) seems to make more sense than hydrogen for the job.
Hydrogen will doubtless have a place in some bigger/industrial applications. But it'll be through fuel cells, not piston engines. This is a non-starter for cost, for packaging, for practicality. But nice fantasy material for people that cling to the idea of piston engines that use an expensive fuel you can only get from special pumps.
Edited by sjg on Wednesday 2nd June 11:05
Volvolover said:
extremely easily Nio has a battery swap system that works in 3 mins and has already swapped over 2 million batteries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXptUuKGrc
xstian said:
Chris32345 said:
And the problem with hydrogen is is really isn't cost effective to produce currently and progress so far is slow improving it
And the trouble with EV is the batteries are too heavy and take too long to change and that's before we get into being able to produce enough electricity to charge everyone's car. I think hydrogen is the way forward. Its going to be so much more useful for trains, lorries, ships, airplanes, domestic boilers, power stations, etc. You could argue we're going to need hydrogen before EV can be fully utilised, at which point they become obsolete.
Of course there might always be a use for EV in towns and cities, and if the battery tech come maybe elsewhere as well. But ultimately that will be determined by cost.
And let's not forget, once you can pump hydrogen, its going to be much easier to tax.
NickCQ said:
Maybe as batteries get lighter at some point the idea of standardised swappable batteries (like Calor gas cylinders) becomes feasible?
its already feasialbe and being done in China, they are currently working on a standard swapable battery spec for all EV manufacturers to use the more you read into this you do wonder why the goverment are pushing for millions of charging points when a few thousand swap stations would work for those with no home charging
We haven't even got close to what we can achieve with 'Batteries'...... The current lithium batteries are the tip of what can be done, include graphene and include super-capacitors into the mix and batteries will be light, powerfull and will recharge in minutes rather than hours and be vastly cheaper.....
Buy an EV now and your buying old technology and will be out of date by 2030.
Buy an EV now and your buying old technology and will be out of date by 2030.
J4CKO said:
I think city/flat based folk will be later to switch as they will be reliant on actually going somewhere to get a charge which would kind of make having a greater range more important, its already important but its easy when you plonk your car on charge and top it up on your path if you are lucky enough to have one.
I guess people manage not having a petrol pump outside their house so that bit isnt that much different in concept, its just that it takes longer to fill an EV so when you do, you want to put more than 130 miles worth in.
The tech will improve and the bar will lower price and compromise wise, fashions are changing as well.
I really cant see it doing a massive about turn in favour of Hydrogen, I think the electric motor will power cars going forward, just need the batteries to improve, which I cant see not happening as when humans focus on something it generally gets sorted, especially when the money involved is so huge.
Barely any advocates for hydrogen instead of battery in this thread so why do you keep ignoring posts saying cars are suitable for EV but bigger stuff, the subject of the thread, is less so?I guess people manage not having a petrol pump outside their house so that bit isnt that much different in concept, its just that it takes longer to fill an EV so when you do, you want to put more than 130 miles worth in.
The tech will improve and the bar will lower price and compromise wise, fashions are changing as well.
I really cant see it doing a massive about turn in favour of Hydrogen, I think the electric motor will power cars going forward, just need the batteries to improve, which I cant see not happening as when humans focus on something it generally gets sorted, especially when the money involved is so huge.
Dave Hedgehog said:
Volvolover said:
extremely easily Nio has a battery swap system that works in 3 mins and has already swapped over 2 million batteries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTXptUuKGrc
How many manufacturers have committed to this?
Volvolover said:
My wife's car does 99.95 of journeys to the shops, friends houses and baby groups, nursery, etc.......she doesn't have time in the day to leave the car somewhere for 30 minutes that isn't at home or one of those places and that is just the journey profile that fits EV usage......and we aren't all going to be able to be EV charging when we go to Tesco
As over 60% of homes in the UK have off street parking, even if you used the entire range of your car to get to the shops, that means only 40% of people would need to charge there.. In reality, even that is a ridiculous overkill. A typical privately owned Passenger car spends 98% of it's entire life parked.......How many miles a day does you wife do?
A typical 50kW charger adds charge at a rate of around 200 miles per hour. IME a 12 min stop is enough for 40 miles added.
Volvolover said:
How do people get Virgin TV (I am talking about the principle, not comparing car charging with cable broadband)? Building infrastructure is not an impossible task. If the demand and profitability is there, it can be built. Volvolover said:
Its not extremely easy at all, potentially has legs yes but at present how many EV's can you drop a generic battery out and swap in 3 minutes?
How many manufacturers have committed to this?
The tech is clearly not there yet, but then again there hasn't been the commercial incentive to develop it yet, as manufacturers are targeting the 60% of people with off-street parking. As EV penetration increases, the other 40% will become a more attractive potential market.How many manufacturers have committed to this?
You could think of mixed models where the battery is split into multiple swappable cells that are a manageable weight, rather than one 600 kg lump. Or perhaps a small "range extender" battery that can be taken into the home at night for charging, with <5 miles range to get to your nearest fast charger.
Volvolover said:
its not extremely easy at all, potentially has legs yes but at present how many EV's can you drop a generic battery out and swap in 3 minutes?
How many manufacturers have committed to this?
most of the big chineses manufacturers will agree a standard by the end of this yearHow many manufacturers have committed to this?
looking at the efficiency of uk politics it will take Bojo 5+ years to even realise this possible
looking at the efficency of the EU if they start defining a standard now it should be ready for 2030, maybe,
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