Thread: An interesting read on electric vehicles and the experience in regional areas

My reaction to the article was that it was more even handed than most such paens of praise.
However My first thoughts were.
What happens when EVs get more popular and there may be 1-2 or 3 cars waiting to be charged? Arm wrestle? guns at 10 paces?
This has already happened on along weekend at a Tesla supercharge station half way between LA and SF with some cars waiting as reported up to 16 hours. And there were numerous chargers there.

What also happens when lots of people living in one street want to charge their cars at night. I have also read there is one street in Melbourne where they have had to work out a roster for charging.

The chickens are starting to come home to roost with even solar charging where my daughter has an unresolved problem where the voltage in her transformer area is going over the cut off limit for her inverter and it switches off, so no feed in. This is apparently occurring on both phases.
She now is buying ducted air con to run during the day to at least use some of the wasted power.

Regards PhilipA
Photos showed Tesla Supercharger stations faced long lines during holiday travel, revealing a big hurdle for EV makers | Business Insider

The infrastructure issues are some of the hardest to overcome and in a place as big and spread out as Australia, even harder. It's not like sticking a normal service station in either, as the power requirements for a bank of chargers that would be needed in places is huge. EV's are very workable for a daily commute in the city particularly if you invest in solar and batteries so then you can charge your vehicle each night with no reliance on the mains - big extra expense though and currently would probably never get a pay back against the cost of fuel over the life of the system/ev either so only those that could afford to do this would, leaving them out of the equation for most families etc as a second car if this was needed.

I think Hydrogen will be the go - the ev platforms that OEM's are building now will still be usable, just a fuel cell in place of the battery bank. Then all that is needed is for service stations to put in hydrogen pumps same as LPG when it came out - still a long way to go but I think it will get there. In the mean time, battery ev's sort of fill the gap in places.

Its clearly not ideal to have a range maxed out for our CO2 emitters or an a FCEV or EV. Trying a 1000km non stop in my disco with out the long range tank I had in the 2005 would be overoptimistic. With a nice tail wind, light load and smooth road I might possibly just make it

The range and recharge time of current generation of batteries is fine for 95% of commuting.

Frequent Holidays, touring, towing Boats, trailers and caravans and the 5% who travel 500km plus in a day might be better holding back a little.

Toyota e-TNGA platform rumor has a 700% range increase using a solid state battery which as usual is five years or interestingly possibly in production 2023.
Besides the hype of Tesla, Nikola similar Americans. Hino/Toyota, Hyundai and others are already in the mix for Hydrogen trucks. Trucks, Buses and similar overcome the issue with needed a wide distribution network or recharging or Hydrogen refueling as set routes make a point to point or central refueling easy.

BMW i Hydrogen NEXT Fuel Cell EV and soon suspect even our landrovers will be in the mix

Samsung set to smash EV battery range wide open or Toyota may already have for 2023 it at its new plant being build with Mazda in a nifty new J.V. in America.

so I guess that petrol stations will install Cryogenic tanks to store liquid hydrogen. They will need enormous tanks to store a significant amount of liquid Hydrogen .

I wonder how much that will cost?[QUOTE]Hydrogen is found naturally in the molecular H₂ form. To exist as a liquid, H₂ must be cooled below its critical point of 33 K. However, for it to be in a fully liquid state at atmospheric pressure, H₂ needs to be cooled to 20.28 K (−252.87 °C; −423.17 °F).[QUOTE]
Won't it need very strong refrigeration to be stored as a liquid for long periods.

What are the safety aspects of cryogenic tanks around the place?

Liquid hydrogen can be used as the fuel for an internal combustion engine or fuel cell. Various submarines (Type 212 submarine, Type 214 submarine) and concept hydrogen vehicles have been built using this form of hydrogen (see DeepC, BMW H2R). Due to its similarity, builders can sometimes modify and share equipment with systems designed for liquefied natural gas (LNG). However, because of the lower volumetric energy, the hydrogen volumes needed for combustion are large. Unless direct injection is used, a severe gas-displacement effect also hampers maximum breathing and increases pumping losses.

Regards PhilipA

Like LPG - being pressurised in a tank will keep Hydrogen as a liquid in a tank - no refridgeration needed - nothing new about that technology.

[QUOTE=PhilipA;3035598]so I guess that petrol stations will install Cryogenic tanks to store liquid hydrogen. They will need enormous tanks to store a significant amount of liquid Hydrogen .

I wonder how much that will cost?[QUOTE]Hydrogen is found naturally in the molecular H₂ form. To exist as a liquid, H₂ must be cooled below its critical point of 33 K. However, for it to be in a fully liquid state at atmospheric pressure, H₂ needs to be cooled to 20.28 K (−252.87 °C; −423.17 °F).

Won't it need very strong refrigeration to be stored as a liquid for long periods.

What are the safety aspects of cryogenic tanks around the place?


Regards PhilipA

Fully agree hydrogen storage and transport is a cost consideration. Storing and transporting as ammonia is a very nifty CSIRO development. Of interest perhaps is fuel cells can be ammonia or hydrogen.

"ZeroAvia flying a six-seater Piper Malibu plane from Cranfield University’s airport." ZeroAvia enables zero emission air travel at scale, starting with 500 mile short-haul trips, at half of today’s cost. ZeroAvia’s hydrogen-electric powertrain is projected to have lower operating costs than its jet-fueled competition due to lower fuel and maintenance costs.

We know how much service costs out 4wds engines. Not Cheap. love the idea of long term savings on maintenance EV or FCEV will give us.

"Think about the hydrogen tanks plus fuel cell system as a really good battery. You charge it with hydrogen, so you put gas or liquid hydrogen into your tank, but the output of that in the aircraft is electricity. That electricity then is used by the electric motors to drive the propellers. . … We’re already five times better on energy density than the best battery out there, and we can further improve it by a factor of three or four by moving from compressed gas storage hydrogen to liquid hydrogen"
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"compressed gas has been used in now maybe over 50,000 ground transportation vehicles worldwide. Most of those vehicles are actually in warehouses — material handling equipment, trucks that move around in Amazon warehouses or forklifts — and a lot of them are powered by hydrogen fuel cells, because it’s a high-density fuel, so you don’t have to recharge so often. The fueling takes just minutes, instead of hours recharging a battery"

This might be a battery to get you moving Bill Gates backed no less this one is 200% current top line Lithium

http://QuantumScape, a developer of ...uisition Corp.

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Originally Posted by 101RRS

Like LPG - being pressurised in a tank will keep Hydrogen as a liquid in a tank - no refrigeration needed - nothing new about that technology.

No gas can be liquefied, no matter how much pressure is applied, unless it is first cooled below it's 'critical temperature'. For hydrogen that temperature 33K. So refrigeration (and some pressure - 'critical pressure') is needed to get hydrogen to a liquid state.

Once liquefied, Hydrogen will remain as a liquid without further refrigeration only if it's holding tank is perfectly insulated and at least 'critical pressure' is maintained. Once the temperature rises above 33K no amount of pressure will keep it liquid.