Hydrogen refueling is here

[Otispunkmeyer]

Poppiecock said:

Mainland Europe has a lot, actually - either direct from the factory, or as a manufacturer certified dealer-fit option.

Not 100% sure on the very latest, as the list I have here still lists the MiTo, but:

Alfa. MiTo / Giulietta
Dacia. Dokker / Lodgy / Sandero / Duster / Logan
Fiat. 500L / Panda / Tipo / Punto
Lancia. Ypsilon
Ford. B-Max / C-Max / Fiesta / Focus
Kia. Rio / Picanto / Venga
Lada. Kalina / Niva / Granta
Mitsubishi. ASX / Outlander / Space Star
Nissan. Juke / Micra / Note
Opel. Adam / Corsa / Astra / Insignia / Karl (Viva) / Meriva / Mokka / Zafira / Crossland
Piaggio. Porter
Renault. Clio / Megane
SsangYong Korrando / Tivoli / XLV G16
Subaru. Forester / Outback / XV
Honda. Civic
Hyundai. i10 / i20
Citroen. C3 / C-Elysee / 208
Suzuki. Cross / Jimmy / Celerio / Vitara / Baleno
Skoda. CitiGo / Fabia / Octavia / Rapid

Also a load of Chinese stuff, too.

VAG sell CNG versions of some of their cars as well and places like Germany and Italy have many CNG filling stations.

[jamoor]

LPG and CNG only have a price advantage over electric cars rather than anything else.

Electric cars are extremely efficient so you dont waste 60% of the energy you just paid for.

[bigdog3]

Development of internal combustion car engines burning just hydrogen looked promising but died about 10 years ago. Anyone know why?

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1024505_new-bm...

[Dave Hedgehog]

bigdog3 said:

Development of internal combustion car engines burning just hydrogen looked promising but died about 10 years ago. Anyone know why?

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1024505_new-bm...

Explained here

https://youtu.be/1Ajq46qHp0c

And more detail here

https://youtu.be/l6ECwRnJ0Sg

Also atm 95% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuel

Edited by Dave Hedgehog on Tuesday 27th August 06:47

[ChimpOnGas]

All gaseous fuels (LPG, CNG, Hydrogen) need to be compressed to turn them into their liquid state or you'd need a huge Dad's Army balloon on top of the vehicle just to travel 50 miles. LPG becomes a liquid when you compress the gas between 32 - 50psi so it's typically delivered at the pump and stored in the car's LPG tank at 60psi, that's a very low pressure when you compare it with the 3,000 psi you need to compress CNG to to get it to turn into its liquid state.

But get ready folks, hydrogen needs to be stored in your car at an insane 5,000psi to ensure it remains a liquid! This means you'd need very special tanks, regular steel LPG tanks just wouldn't cut it unless they were made so thick their weight would become impractical, this is why CNG tanks are made from carbon fibre.

You'd also need a vaporiser that's capable of bringing the Hydrogen pressure down from 5,000psi to 125psi before it's delivered to the injectors., to put the vaporiser element into perspective my LPG vaporiser only needs to drop the pressure from the liquid state 60psi to 22psi where its delivered to the injectors as a gas.

Another difference is LPG in it's gaseous state caries 18% less calorific value than petrol which is why I designed my conversion to carry 18% more of the stuff so I can still achieve the standard petrol TVR Chimaera range of 300 miles. However, hydrogen in it's gaseous state caries 30% less calorific value than petrol so not only would you need special composite tanks that can sustain a whopping 5,000psi they need to be big too, to achieve my target 300 mile range I'd need to carry close to 50 gallons of the stuff which from a packaging point of view becomes completely impractical.

LPG may indeed be a low carbon stop gap but as long as we're still refining crude oil to produce petrol and diesel we will be producing LPG because its an inevitable fraction produced from the process and these fossil fuels aren't going away tomorrow, they'll be around for at least another 30 years. For a classic car where you want to retain the internal combustion engine but you may also want to lower the vehicle's emissions LPG is the best solution by far, its a half price lower carbon fuel that can be burnt in any internal combustion engine and is available across a huge network of filling stations that's here right now.

For modern cars using an internal combustion engine LPG is an equally practical option which is why many car makers offer LPG cars from new, Autocar spent six months with a new from the factory LPG Dacia Sandero and they really liked it.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/dacia/sandero...

[Toaster]

Just to add to the Hydrogen bit

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/hydrogen-fue...


Oh and the German ones https://youtu.be/TWjBy-BKmJ4

Wont be long before its in Trucks and Cars

[Evanivitch]

Toaster said:

Just to add to the Hydrogen bit

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/hydrogen-fue...


Oh and the German ones https://youtu.be/TWjBy-BKmJ4

Wont be long before its in Trucks and Cars

Definitely a possible solution for South Wales Valley lines, but still begs the question, where's the hydrogen coming from?

[Martyn76]

Interesting video from the guys at Fully Charged on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmKAAh-vkE

[Dave Hedgehog]

Martyn76 said:

Interesting video from the guys at Fully Charged on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmKAAh-vkE

in that case the hydrogen used was the very rare green type and the energy used to make it was all renewable

i.e. the holy grail for fuel cells

[coetzeeh]

Martyn76 said:

Interesting video from the guys at Fully Charged on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmKAAh-vkE

Very interesting indeed. Definately the future "go to" technology for HGV and other heavy applications in medium term.

I think in a decade Hydrogen will at the very least be positioned alongside BEV as a day to day option.

[Lt. Coulomb]

Hydrogen is a dead end or a niche until it wastes 75% of electricity to the weels or generated from fossils.

[otolith]

I don’t understand the hard-on for hydrogen. They’re just slow electric cars you can’t charge at home.

[thecremeegg]

otolith said:

I don’t understand the hard-on for hydrogen. They’re just slow electric cars you can’t charge at home.

But you can fill them up in 5 minutes

[otolith]

thecremeegg said:

otolith said:

I don’t understand the hard-on for hydrogen. They’re just slow electric cars you can’t charge at home.

But you can fill them up in 5 minutes

But you need to fill them up.

Why not get a battery engined vehicle, charge it at home as usual and then simply drive to an industrial estate, stand in the cold for 5 minutes and empty your wallet down the grid?

[Evanivitch]

thecremeegg said:

But you can fill them up in 5 minutes

Everyone has an electric socket at home, most people don't have a hydrogen station anywhere near them. If we're going to talk about the difficulties of off-driveway EV ownership, then we should really talk about having to massively expand the UK hydrogen network too.

[poing]

Evanivitch said:

Everyone has an electric socket at home

Yes but running a cable out the window to the car is a bit inconvenient for pedestrians on a lot of UK streets.

[Evanivitch]

poing said:

Yes but running a cable out the window to the car is a bit inconvenient for pedestrians on a lot of UK streets.

It's a good thing then that the average UK driver does 146 miles a week, the latest entry level electric cars do 200 miles (50kWh Corsa, Zoe etc), and that rapid charging stations can be found at gyms, supermarkets, petrol stations, restaurants and charging hubs.

Or I dunno, the growing number of streetlight and kerbside charging solutions.

[Dave Hedgehog]

poing said:

Yes but running a cable out the window to the car is a bit inconvenient for pedestrians on a lot of UK streets.

Pop up chargers

https://youtu.be/Frkw6aurVUY

[RobDickinson]

poing said:

Yes but running a cable out the window to the car is a bit inconvenient for pedestrians on a lot of UK streets.

Already several solutions, try to do a little googling before making stupid assumptions.

[poing]

I agree and am an EV fan but it's a long way from being inclusive. I have a driveway and home charger but I'm lucky.

In an ideal world we would have pop up chargers/lamppost chargers but that requires serious amounts of cabling and planning permission. Maybe we could force workplaces to install chargers but in Scotland they have passed a rule to start charging people to park at work so it instantly becomes less appealing.

As usual the government being small minded is holding everything back. As such if we still need to meet green targets hydrogen fuelling might become necessary because it's a much easier infrastructure to put in place.