Comments by "Engineering the weird guy" (@engineeringtheweirdguy2103) on "DW Planet A" channel.

Batteries are around 92-96% recyclable. Many car companies like Tesla are already recycling their batteries.
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actually modern batteries are phasing out the use of un ethically mined materials. Hydrogen on the other hand, requires alot of fossil fuels to produce currently and even green hydrogen requires a huge amount more energy from the same power plants that charge BEV's per mile. And all ontop of the fact that hydrogen cars are extremely short lived, especially in comparison to BEV's.
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Electric is a whole lot cheaper. And if lab results mean anything. A lot longer too.
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@MarkLavoine-zj3hz where did heating come from. But probably worth mentioning that heat pumps are very cheap and efficient. And yes, energy prices vary depending on where you live. So do fuel prices. But fuel would have to be extraordinarily cheap for it to break even with even the most expensive electricity rates. What state do you live in. Let’s do a maths exercise.
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@MarkLavoine-zj3hz offshore wind turbines are tricky to get decent lifespan. But inland wind farms and solar farms aren’t so troubled.
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@MarkLavoine-zj3hz actually, renewables is the first ever energy transformation that is being driven by private investment other than government investments. Government Investment only makes up a portion of of solar and windfarm construction. Unlike nuclear, coal or gas which is pretty much entirely government funded construction and then handed over to private companies to run.
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@MarkLavoine-zj3hz what happens to them at extreme cold temperatures? Do the non insulated gas pipelines going to fuel Taxan gas powerplants freeze over and stop gas from reaching the powerplant? Does the coal stock pile freeze too much to be introduced into the coal powerplant? Or to grid breakers fail to trip due to frost damage and fail to regulate the grid forcing rolling blackouts? Do tell. What DOES happen to wind turbines in extreme cold.
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@MarkLavoine-zj3hz a battery isn’t a tank of gas. A battery isn’t fuel. Let’s not use false equivalence here. And yes a heat pump is much better at heating a building in terms of operational cost, than a boiler hydronic system.
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Also Australian, I don't think mass hydrogen producing is feasible in Australia YET, or practical at the moment either. We are blessed with an overwhelming amount of renewable energy potential but lack the political motivation to enact it, mostly due to gas, coal and oil company "donations". However here is the problem, our coal and gas power plants are retiring in the next few years. It is too late to build more fossil fuel power stations to pick up the slack as they take too long to build which means we NEED to be building renewables as they are faster to produce and install. However, either way we are going to run through a patch of very limited power production. Whilst I think we wont get to rolling black outs we certainly wont have any extra power lying around for a while. And I say a while because I am accounting for the progressive take up of BEV's despite the governments taxing and bad-mouthing of EV's. This is a key detail as green hydrogen requires ALOT of electricity. after production and compression, for vehicles it requires as much as 3-4 times more electricity per kilometres worth of hydrogen compared what a similar sized BEV would use per kilometre. The government is well aware of this however, and know that we wont have the spare electricity generation to produce that much green hydrogen. As such their current proposals are to produce blue hydrogen from natural gas, which is arguably worse for the environment than if you just used that gas in LPG gars or power generators as you're burning gas, to separate more gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. For that reason, whilst Australia might become a huge exporter of Hydrogen, it wont be GREEN hydrogen. Which is also going to be partly why mostly hydrogen cars wont be popular in Australia, or at least, not green in Australia. Unfortunately for Automotive purposes, Hydrogen cars are abhorrently outmatched by BEV counterparts, so demand isn't going to fuel supply in this car and supply isn't going to fuel demand either in our automotive market. The only way Hydrogen cars will take off in Australia is if Technology improves beyond a point which is physically possible, or the government forks out huge amounts of money to subsidise both the cars for purchase as well as the fuel to make them even close to competitive with BEV's which would be a HUGE sink for taxpayer money. I am happy to talk about the finer details if you'd like, such as the new hydrogen plant in Altona, Melbourne which is.. to say the least, just a very expensive marketing ploy, or why Hydrogen cars are so outmatched on the market by BEV's.
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A few reasons. Firstly, because it takes 4 times more electricity to generate 1 miles worth of energy than an EV would use per mile. Second, Toyota built a green hydrogen plant in Melbourne Australia inside one of its old car production factories. Got a facility that size, it can make a whopping 14 refills worth of hydrogen for the mirai in one 24 hour stint. Much much less when talking about something that takes as much fuel as a truck instead of a sedan. So if you had on-site generation , you’d be lucky to produce enough for one truck per day. Third, while hydrogen is light weight, it takes up a huge volume, and the trucks need a lot of people meaning massive and multiple fuel cells. And large batteries. Hyundais hydrogen truck has a 75kWh battery and 3 fuel cells. The battery alone is what’s used in long range EV cars. And each fuel cell is larger than a standard combustion engine. All being said and done. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for fuel. So you may find that hydrogen trucks aren’t all that much lighter at the end of the day and have less range and power.
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Except you need 4 times more electricity per miles worth of green hydrogen, than an equivalent battery powered vehicle needs. So the grid problem becomes 4 times worth with hydrogen.
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@erik7726 yes. Power is the flow rate of energy. And again. You need 4 times as much electricity to generate 1 miles worth of hydrogen than an EV uses. Hydrogen does have use in steel manufacturing, but home heating is a stretch when you could get the same affect for 6-7 times less energy from a heat pump. Which is basically a reversed cycle air conditioner. And for storage? No. The rate at which you could produce hydrogen would make it nearly useless. The there is the fact that it takes up an absurd amount of volume to get equivalent kWh. Doubly so when you realise the implications of the inefficiency. A battery can charge and discharge rapidly, and with around 96-98% efficiency. You get almost all the energy that you put in, back out again. As for hydrogen, even take up a huge amount of space and not being able to respond fast enough to storage demands, the production of green hydrogen is roughly 70% efficient. And the conversion back to electricity through a fuel cell is roughly 60% efficient. So of every 100kWh you try to store as hydrogen, you’d get back 42kWh…. Less than half. You are throwing away more than half of the energy you’re trying to store. Aside from the set ups also being more expensive with lower operation lifespans than battery storage….
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@erik7726 2 billion cars won’t be fast charging. They will be charging at home pulling about the same amount of power as a toaster. The vast majority of EV owners charge from home over night. They don’t rely on fast charging. Faster chargers are typically used for those doing long road trips. Which most people do about once or twice a year. So not. Not 2 billion. Synthetic fuel was found by the EPA to be one of the most carcinogenic substances on the planet with some exhaust having a 100% success rate at causing cancer to anyone exposed to the exhaust. So that’s probably off the table. And no. It’s 4 times efficiency. And car for car hydrogen cars are less impactful to produce. But not by much. But considering fuel cells don’t last longer than 150k miles and the next big breakthrough they’re working on is a 200k mile fuel cell, when EV batteries last 500k miles or more. I’d say having to fabricate, replace, and dispose of 3 whole cars per every EV made would be much dirtier in the long run. For trucking however, hydrogen is worse than battery. The power required by the motors is typically more than what multiple fuel cells can provide. The fuel they require is typically much more than than they have room for. Let’s consider the Tesla semi with the hydrogen Xcient by Hyundai. The semi can take a full load from zero to freeway speeds faster than some cars. It has a 500 mile range which is remarkably cheap per mile for the cost of electricity and has a rated lifespan of 1 million miles. It can take a standard trailer and has one of the tightest turning circles of any truck of its size. The Xcient carrys 31kg of hydrogen taking up over 1,500L of storage volume. It has two fuel cells both the size of a regular engine and a 75kWh battery which is the same size as what’s in the Tesla model Y long range SUV. For that it has a 400 mile range, it doesn’t have the power to reach freeway speeds even when empty, requires a special trailer to make space for all the hydrogen tanks it Carry’s which reduces the overall volume of cargo it can carry and has one of the worst turning circles of any truck of its class due to spreading out the axels to make room for more hydrogen tanks. And despite being slower, carrying less with a lower range all while being some 20x time more expensive to run per mile, it has a lifespan of only 150k miles. Although the next variant promises 200k miles until it’s scrapped. So no. Hydrogen doesn’t have a place in trucking any more than it has in passenger cars.
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@erik7726 I’m not arguing that sythetic fuels have a lower environmental impact. It’s the health impact im worried about and a report by the EPA strongly disagrees with you. When something has a 100% cancer rate, it’s worth thinking twice. And the EPA report detailed every known synthetic fuel. Not just one. So far, they’re all really really bad. Yes diesels are more efficient than they used to be. But sadly they still emit. And it’s apparently a trend for car companies to design them to spoof emission testing results. Like volkwagon and Toyota have done. And no. That’s also not how that works. Your battery doesn’t go flat every day. It only discharges what you need. And if you have a full battery with 400 miles of range every morning because you charge at home. The power demand to recharge it is really not that high. Most people will arrive to see family and will charge there on slower charger than super chargers. In any respect that “spike” won’t be very high. Hydrogen in the other hand, is 4 times more energy intensive, which has much large grid implications than BEV. If we have a grid capable of supporting the generation of a whole country’s hydrogen needs if everyone had a hydrogen car. Then it could very very easily handle any “spike” produced from BEV charging. And yes, hydrogen cars require batteries. Why is that new information to you? That is the least of a hydrogen cars problems.
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Check again
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I’d probably take out everything with wheels from that list.
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All hydrogen cars are electric. They’re still terrible.
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unfortunately it doesnt work like that. a home scale hydrogen generation plant would take up ALOT of space, costs tens of thousands of dollars to install, only last between 5-10 years before needing to be replaced, would be housing a dangerously explosive gas in a dangerously high pressure tank (small scuba size tanks at those pressures have taken out corners of entire buildings) all whilst talking several days to produce enough hydrogen to fill a single hydrogen car once. The only way to produce enough hydrogen is to go big... VERY BIG..
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Actually there is a very strong economic case for electric final mile trucking
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@piotrszostakowski416 I would say that battery electrics is the better option for trips up to around 500 miles. Hydrogen is not suitable for trucking or cars.
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@piotrszostakowski416 well. No. The economics for short and midrange EV trucking is pretty solid as an alternative to diesel. Long range remains with diesel however.
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@piotrszostakowski416 charging isn’t as much as a problem as you might think either. It is a paradigm shift. It can’t refuel like diesel or hydrogen can. But it also doesn’t have to. Because it operates on a fundamentally different principle
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@piotrszostakowski416 you don’t charge an EV like you refuel a car. Most EV owners will charge at home and never need super chargers. Trucks needing to stop will be able to charge at the stop. Tesla semi has specific super chargers called mega chargers that a normal car can’t use. A lot of rest stops have mass of space for parking trucks. It isn’t hard to add a charger to each space either. They not very large. And when the truck is doing it’s delivery, being loaded or unloaded at a facility or destination, as long as the factory or warehouse it’s at has power, it can charge whilst being loaded and unloaded. As I said. Paradigm shift.
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@piotrszostakowski416 also trucks not exceeding the maximum range (for the Tesla semi, 500 miles) (80% of all trucking is within 300 miles per day in the US according to statistics). Can charge overnight while they’re not being used. Saving time of getting fuel later on.
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Because a fuel cell is 60% Efficient. A combustion engine is 20% efficient.
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You won’t. You will struggle to produce hydrogen for less than the price of electricity or for free in the case of home solar.
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Funny. In Melbourne, Toyota converted a whole car factory they owned to produce and dispense hydrogen. It has a MASSSIVE 200kW electrolizer to do this. The whole car factory sized plant produces at max output…. 80kg of hydrogen per day. Which means it can refuel only 14 hydrogen cars a day. 14 … for a footprint the size of a car factory…..
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Infact the Gladstone plant is proposed to take up 1.71 million square meters of space.
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Bahahaha. Good one. No such thing
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Also you think making a hydrogen car is all pixy dust? So few have been made it’s nearly impossible to accurately assess the manufacturing footprint of hydrogen cars. Meaning you’d have nothing to compare it to. Which is why it isn’t included.
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@blackstars3720 which one?
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@blackstars3720 actually you can reclaim almost 100% of the lithium. Being an element it doesn’t degrade each time you recycle it. There are proposals for closed loop recycling. And cobalt is being phased out of batteries now. But that too is an element and can be recycled closed loop.
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