Gettin hot in Seattle

[Crankyolman]

I've always said electric is a stop gap and still believe it. I believe if anything hydrogen is the way of the future.

I did think of a good use of a tesla.

If you are stuck trying to make a left turn and traffic won't let you just wait until you see one of those ugly Tesla front ends coming towards you and turn left in front of it. It will auto brake and let you make your turn

[SJTD]

Maybe.

[sierrablue]

I've always said electric is a stop gap and still believe it. I believe if anything hydrogen is the way of the future.

I did think of a good use of a tesla.

If you are stuck trying to make a left turn and traffic won't let you just wait until you see one of those ugly Tesla front ends coming towards you and turn left in front of it. It will auto brake and let you make your turn

Idk on that purpose...they have some WEIRD programming on that. For instance they target cop cars and red cars. Especially when they're on the side of the road, the Teslas get obnoxiously close. And there's no saying that the driver has all of that turned on. I wouldn't risk the Jeep on that.

For the record, the only thing that I like about the Teslas is that they're not combustion cars. That and they're fairly practical, being sedans and small "SUVs". I hate pretty much everything else about them. Entertainment systems on wheels, just like any new car.

I will say this about EVs. Yes it takes a lot to get the chemicals to build them, BUT like any other battery, they can be recycled almost entirely, so once they're in circulation, they can become sustainable. And the batteries have been reportedly lasting a solid 20 years and still retaining 90% capability, if you take care of them. Now, Tesla specifically is kind of stupid about their battery replacement stuff, but that's a them problem not an EV problem. Hydrogen cars are electric cars, with fewer batteries and on board hydrogen that combines with the oxygen in the air, which releases energy and produces water. My issue with that is I personally don't want to put a MORE explosive substance in my vehicle to power it, AND hydrogen has to be pressurized, which makes any explosions worse. I will also say this; recharging an EV doesn't hurt the planet any more than keeping the lights on in say Walmart. And it's not the consumer's job to fix where the electricity comes from either. At least it's TRYING and not going to run out of resources when we run out of oil. While they don't help with causing blackouts, the Mach E and F-150 Lightning for instance can be plugged into a house and act like a generator. Not for too long, but they can give you any last little bit of power that you need. Last thing; yes electrical fires are bad, but it's more about the modern electronics and wires going EVERYWHERE. And with combustion you are literally relying on ideally controlled explosions to propel you forward, and there have been SO many deaths and fires related to it that it's not even funny. And with either one, as long as you maintain it, and make sure everything's right, it shouldn't be an issue. I'm sure this is gonna tick some people off and some people are gonna jump on me for it, but I'm not trying to offend anyone, simply providing a different perspective and some of the logic behind that perspective. Again, not saying it's perfect, but I personally think that it's a lot better (as far as a power source goes) than relying on something that wastes 40-60% of its released energy.

[Crankyolman]

There are problems with just about anything and while in theory the modern lithium batteries are recyclable the fact is it's difficult and expensive to recycle them due to the way they are made so only 5% of lithium batteries actually get recycled which voids the argument and potential benefits. As a side note 99% of lead acid batteries are recycled but they are heavy.

When it comes down to it companies need to make a profit to stay in business which is the biggest issue. Solar panels are recyclable but cost a lot to recycle so its significantly cheaper to dispose of them rather than recycle so they go to the dump. Lithium batteries are the same way, it's just more difficult and costly to recycle them than to dispose of them so they get dumped, not to mention the pollution generated in that complicated and costly recycling process when they are recycled.

Hydrogen has many different incarnations. Yes hydrogen fuel cells produce electricity and there are batteries on those vehicles for regenerative braking but it isn't a significant battery and could operate without it, just slightly less efficiently.

One benefit of hydrogen is you can run almost any internal combustion engine on it. Of course there are some draw backs like rust and producing a small amount nitrogen oxide. This is easily negated but complicates things or reduces power but is certainly feasible.

Some years back I read about a man who was starting a company to run cars on water. He was using an inert chemical I can't think of the name of right now and aluminum powder to produce the hydrogen, rather than electrolysis and run internal combustion engines. I do not recall if he was separating the hydrogen from the oxygen or feeding it into the engines as what is often called HHO. I don't know what ever became of him and when I talk about it I get accused of needing a tin foil hat "...I'm telling you man it runs on water!...but the government doesn't want us to have it!..."

Teslas are nothing but toys, most modern cars are, and just dumb down the population. People don't know how to find their way home without GPS these days. They are even too dumb to know how to turn their cars off

Case in point. The driver of the Tesla I mentioned in the original post had his motorcycle stolen last year. Now honestly I believe he committed insurance fraud because he wanted a new motorcycle but if we take him at his word rather than the overwhelming evidence it was because the Tesla dumbed him down so much that he didn't think to remove the key from his motorcycle when he rode it to work. He claims he is so used to just getting out of the Tesla and walking away that he didn't think to remove the key on the bike. A few hours later a seemingly random homeless person walked into our parking area and began looking at the motorcycles. Lo and behold he found one with a key in the ignition, jumped on it, started it up and was gone. As luck also had it it was well insured and the insurance company paid it off and the guy was now able to buy the new motorcycle he wanted simply because the Tesla had dumbed him down so much he didn't remove the key from the ignition.

He also admits that he has left his wife's car unlocked and idling in store parking lots because he didn't think to turn it off, remove the key or lock the doors, all because of Tesla.

[SJTD]

The Tesla made him dumb or he bought it because...

I think the majority of them don't think about where the juice comes from. They think you just plug them in.

Where does the hydrogen come from? I've never paid any attention to them. What's their range, tank pressure?

I'm coming from a rocket launch background and remember the hoops we jumped through using it, purging with helium, sampling for ox, etc. But we were using liquid.

[sierrablue]

I believe that the Hydrogen is from electrolysis from cleaning facitlites, not 100% on that though.

The other problem with H cars is that of the 50 or so refill stations in the US, 48 of them are in California, and the other two are very close to California.

I do have a theory that if you could figure out a way to filter the H out of the air (still working on that)(I suspect that since H is light you'd need a snorkel at the very least, to get air from UP as high as possible), and had a small on-board battery for stops when there is low airflow (and regen braking), you could have a car that will theoretically run until you need new tires. So there's my $2 billion idea that I'll wish I invested in instead of sharing it with the world and doing nothing with it

[sierrablue]

These are REALLY cool trucks that are mostly H powered.

https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-badger-preorders-open-june-29-at-11-am-et-83

600-mile range, which is 150% better than a Rivian's range.

This H stuff has me wondering--does the curb weight get significantly lower on a hydrogen powered car when it's full vs. empty? Obviously it's going to have SOME weight gained when you use more hydrogen, but do you measure the lift before or after you fill it? Also if you keep it full, does that mean you can put significantly more weight in a typical half ton truck because the hydrogen will unload the suspension? Seems like kind of a cool/funny trick is all...

[SJTD]

So electrolysis huh. Where's all that lectricity come from? Same place Teslas get theirs from? Just plug it in?

As far as the weight's concerned, you must pick up some weight from the tank. They must be pretty thick for safety's sake?

If you're serious about the weight of the compressed gas it's pretty light.

A fun fact: At about 800 psi liquid hydrogen is less dense (lighter) than helium. The liquid floats on the gas.

[sierrablue]

Like I said I'm not 100% on where the H comes from, but yes that does negate the argument that H would be any better than an EV as far as that goes.

I forgot--they killed off the Nikola Badger

Also on the recycling batteries--the Pb H2SO4 (lead acid)(who says I didn't learn anything in chem? ) batteries are recycled 'cause the impact of dumping them would be AWFUL. They were basically forced to. The LiIons are so expensive to recycle 'cause nobody does it. Once people start recycling them, they'll be cheaper to recycle. And the Pb batteries are being phased out even in combustion cars--they're not powerful and as it was pointed out, they're HEAVY. Again not saying that it's a perfect setup, but nothing had good infrastructure when it started out--we can't expect it to become perfect over night. And I still think it's better than the consumer continually releasing pollusion. New combustion cars are just as bad as EVs as far as pollution from being built.

[Crankyolman]

I thought I posted this yesterday but apparently not, so I'll post it today, although it is incomplete.


Yes there are currently some issues with hydrogen but people and companies have been quietly working on those things because they know electric is nothing more than a stop gap.

One of the big problems with electric is it's not feasible to operate long haul trucks on batteries so the hydrogen infrastructure is slowly coming out because of that.

As far as producing hydrogen it is produced several different ways. Currently the most common method is natural gas reformation or gasification where the hydrogen is separated from the natural gas by reacting with steam. This does produce carbon monoxide which is further refined into more hydrogen. It also produces a small amount of carbon dioxide which of course isn't ideal. This method can also be used on coal or biomas which means potentially all the human and animal waste that is produced could be converted to clean fuel.

Other methods are

Electrolysis- Which as already mentioned requires electricity and that electricity has to come from somewhere. It's been a long time since I did any research on this but back when I did do some research one of the Nordic countries was working on solar or wind powered hydrogen electrolysis stations all along it's major highway system. Of course as already mentioned solar panels are becoming a current disaster but I feel wind has real potential in this case.

Renewable liquid reforming- This is basically the same as natural gas reforming but with something renewable like ethanol which brings us to the next method

Fermentation- Where biomass is converted into sugar rich feed stock and fermented and converted. Personally I don't believe food should be used for fuel but food isn't the only thing that can be fermented into fuel... On a side note, with the fuel injection system my truck currently has I could run on alcohol and some day I would like to just once run it on apple juice but it would take approximately 5,000 lbs of apples to make enough juice to make enough alcohol to fill the tank so that will probably never happen.


Other methods that are being developed are

High temperature water splitting- Using solar concentrators or nuclear reactors to drive a chemical reaction.


Photobiological water splitting- using microbes. I like this method because basically it is depriving the microbes of oxygen so they resort to stealing their oxygen from the water and produce hydrogen as their waste.


Photoelectrochemical- which uses semiconductors and the sun to spit the water.

Many years ago when I did the research on hydrogen I came across a scientist talking about using a harmless inert liquid, that I can't recall the name of, water and powdered aluminum to operate a car. This of course is not pure hydrogen, this is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, sometimes called HHO. When the car ran out of water you just filled the tank back up with water, that didn't have to be clean so any water would work. When the aluminum ran out you opened a hatch in the fuel tank and removed a lump of recyclable aluminum and refilled a hopper with more aluminum powder.

In the past I have played around with a home made water splitter that actually worked pretty well. I had it on my '99 taurus and was able to increase my mileage by 3MPG highway with it. Now that I have a 150 amp alternator I would break it back out and see what it could do for my truck if I was still running a carb but it doesn't play well with the O2 sensor in fuel injection.

Of course the big scary thing always mentioned by people against hydrogen is the high pressure storage vessel. This is a legitimate concern because to reach full range the tanks are filled to 5,000 - 10,000psi when full. Of course this drops as the fuel is used. I don't have an answer for people who are scared of high pressure but not afraid of the lethal amperage of electric cars or the fire dangers. Everything is a trade off for convenience.

Another big issue with hydrogen is in the event of a fire you can't see a hydrogen flame and probably won't feel it until you are in it. Fortunately hydrogen burns very quickly, unlike a Tesla, so that isn't all that big of a problem but it is a legitimate concern.


I will give Elon credit where credit is due. The man may not have had an original idea in his life but he is very good at taking other people's ideas and improving them and claiming them as his own. He is making sure there is infrastructure to charge the cars he sells so people don't get left on the side of the road for longer than the 4hrs it takes to recharge their car, but truck drivers don't have that kind of time to wait around.



He does lie about the battery life though. If batteries are actually expected to last 21-35 years as he likes to say they will. That estimate is actually not based on real world driving, or anything real for that matter, it's just a number pulled out of thin air. The warranty is based on real world driving conditions which is why it is 8 years and something like 130,000 miles which is roughly 50 miles per day with no accessories used and not recharging except when absolutely necessary.in order to keep the recharging cycles as low as possible. In the real world people use the heater and air conditioning and a lot of other accessories that drain the batteries sooner. and plug it in whenever they aren't driving. Elon also likes to make the claim that replacement batteries only cost $5,000 - $7,000 when in reality it's $20,000 - $60,000 depending on the model.

[SJTD]

Thanks for the background. I don't think wind or solar is the way. If people would get over their fear of nukes we could get somewhere.

I guess the high pressure bottles these days are not just a metal tank that can burst but are fiber wrapped that won't rupture all at once?

True about the invisible flame but usually there would be plenty of other stuff burning too that would show unless it's a storage tank or a tanker leaking.

Another danger with H2 is its flammability range. Something like 10% to 95%
in air so it's easy to light. I remember hearing about a few times where the guy offloading an LH2 tanker forgets to light the pilot on the vent stack and and an open air explosion ensues. Fortunately it's less dense than air so it dissipates quickly.

You're right. Most Tesla drivers have know idea how much energy they're sitting on and neither do most drivers about their gas tanks.

True about Elon. The engine he's using in the Falcon 9 was designed by Nasa. We tested it at SSFL around the end of the last century. But he put it to good use.

[elskeptico]

Many years ago I saw this written on the bathroom wall of a crusty pizza place, and it's even more relevant today with Tesla owners:

"Proud is a technical term for a nail that needs to be pounded down. Aren't we proud in our Prius?"

[devildog80]

With you on that one

Thanks for remembering more than Maggie's good time number!

[Kaiserjeeps]

Hey I edited my totally and completely offensive post back on page one. I was given the option to leave it or edit it. I decided to go ahead and delete it. I essentially canceled myself out. I would not want anyone to have hurt feelings. Ha, I was wondering how long it would take. Hey have a stupendous and non offensive day. And I really mean that.

[devildog80]

A diamond is formed under extreme pressure

A tree grows stronger when the wind blows

Humans grow stronger surviving adverse situations and change

This culture of some getting their feelings hurt, so the rest of us should back off and bow down to help them feel better.......BS!

Stand tall and take someone else's opinion as it is intended, that it was not a direct attack towards any individual, or God help us some other identified something or other group, but know that we same thinkers have a right to our opinions as much as the next guy or organization.

You don't want us to infringe on what you call rights, so don't infringe on ours, because what someone says makes you feel sad.....really?

The pendelum does swing both ways....I can say what I want, and you can say what you want.

We may not agree, but we will never learn about each other if we do not share communication, good bad or otherwise!

I stand with Kaiserjeeps.

Where do you stand?

Hey I edited my totally and completely offensive post back on page one. I was given the option to leave it or edit it. I decided to go ahead and delete it. I essentially canceled myself out. I would not want anyone to have hurt feelings. Ha, I was wondering how long it would take. Hey have a stupendous and non offensive day. And I really mean that.