Evanex's Charles Morris just did an article on Insideevs attempting to spread some pro hydrogen FUD. The article says that putting solar panels on vehicles is a dead end zombie. This simply isn't true, Sono Motors and Lightyear are releasing products that should cover a majority of a daily commute on the light hitting the car at most latitudes. BYD did a full sized electric bus in 2015 where they only covered the top surface of the bus with solar panels and that meant even running all day they pretty much never had to charge the bus- and they ran that system if memory serves for more than a year- this was done in Tibet. Semi Trucks in convoy (where Musk has said the economics of the Tesla truck are better than rail) could get a huge chunk of their energy and likely a substantial boost to range much of the time by covering all available surfaces horizontal and vertical of the vehicle with solar cells- which would primarily be on the trailer boxes. I tried to calculate it once with admittedly very crude methods and found that just for a truck a lone outside of a convoy it could add 1/3 range and with an autonomous chained convoy if the economics are better than rail it goes way up. You could do a thin replaceable film to deal with vandalism- plus the trucks will have cameras. Electric trains are super obvious as well. You replace the diesel generators with drop in batteries for the top 2/3s of the locomotive (turns out to be a sizable chunk of the needed batteries and scales to cover more of the need if you chain locomotives as is the case with long trains) and you can have battery cars as well- adding those is probably faster than refueling as they just stack in or have their pre-charged modules dropped in like freight- the trains are already electric drive and probably run reasonably efficient electric motors so you do this drop in replacement (cuts train emission to zero and cuts noise radically and saves the companies huge money)- most importantly you cover every train car with solar and maybe for a majority of latitudes during day light that covers the energy (formerly fuel) costs of running the train. Trains have to be the easiest adaption case. I believe you can get 750,000 sqft of solar cells with 210,000sqft horizontal of solar cells. If you presume 15 watts a square foot and maybe 5watts per square foot for the side surfaces you get 6 megawatts output and trains only need a tiny fraction of that to keep going, power is used for for the starts and stops- enough batteries that stay with the locomotives could power long trains into the night- especially and train services already optimize for minimum stops. The same can be done with ocean freight and with aviation. Power comes to you reliable (especially with batteries) and its free. Panels like Tesla's solar roof shingles are already in the commercial space for commercial buildings and sky scrapers, there is a University in the Netherlands where all the vertical and horizontal surfaces are covered in beautiful multi colored glass with PV underneath and that covers the campus's electricity. Seems so obvious that what we have going on here are lies just like the ones that claim green can't replace 100% of the grid or that roof top doesn't have the actual capacity to replace 100% of the global energy/fuel need that instead rent seeking models are still necessary (there may be a speed gain by trying to use some rent seeking infrastructure and the associated capital but really the strings are not at all acceptable even if it slows the response to climate change (which it won't!!!)) You can pretty much replace all human energy/fuel in all sectors with battery backed roof top solar and do it with something like 1/10 of the roofs, you don't need to eat farm land etc. But if you need a back up then use legacy nuclear (even if it needs to be brought up to safe standards) or use thorium, and use the in-place hydro or wind or develop some for of fusion. But do make fossil companies pay to tear up and scarp the fossil fuel infrastructure- we need that to bankrupt them and remove their power and their pushing of the money is speech method of using bribery to continue to rip us off and undermine us. The article tried to say that long distance demand is a support for Nicolo Motors and they cite an old Anheuser Busch's order of 800 trucks- but where is that order? Apparently to generate short FUD that company tried to Tesla because it also like others used and Aero design. Look at the costs of those vehicles and who are the tests going-seems like vabor ware to push a long tail pipe scam. Its like the sell out centrists of green energy. The idea that we would use hydrogen seems incredibly stupid at this point as stupid as natural gas because it entails (as some sort of out in the open secret) that the fossil fuel industry would be able to recover sunk costs on its liquid transport network- that is totally unacceptable they need to eat those costs, nothing requires society to save stupid malevolent investors from stupid malevolent hostage taking investments, we need to have those costs come back on them. We can't economically reward bad actors for bad actions, its backwards policy and economics, its not too big to fail its more like required to fail as a function of demonstrating faith is the justice system and the integrity of the society. If the Trump admin was just buying time for Deutsche do we see these people abandoning their investments like Saudi Arabia is doing? As soon as he is out the methan restrictions are going back in and will back in the Paris accord and making up time very likely with future and current bans like on all fracking (including inplace fracking) like the UK and extending that to coal- even under Trump Cheapeak gas and Murray coal are bankrupt. When we do hydrogen its is way less efficient than just burning gasoline and if it uses fossil fuels it will actually use more of them under a long tail pipe scam and delusions about sequestration (which are dangerous and foolishly expensive.) It actually increases pollution- which is beyond idiotic an criminal. So its just more green sabotage. At this point hydrogen getting any kind of government support should end, it should have ended a long time ago- it should really just be banned like fossil fuels are being banned because its just fossil fuels behind a mask. Outside of that there are some limited possible scenarios where hydrogen could make a small amount of sense. That is local generation by clean means for long term storage- e.g., storing as a component for rocket fuel, but even as a storage means it still tanks of this volatile stuff (an explosion risk) and overall its not going to be great cost wise outside of a necessity situation like rock fuel. Its still going to be more efficient to put excess green energy into lithium batteries. You'll need more solar cells or what ever energy input because literally the theoretical efficiency limit of the hydrogen fuels cells is lower than current on the shelf lithium battery technology. And lithium batteries can improve something like 45x on energy density, hydrogen which is less energy dense than gasoline isn't going to improve anymore. Energy density is an advantage batteries are already overcoming vs hydrogen in practical applications- look at the Mirai range and accommodations and performance vs the long range Model S. But why do hydrogen when just compressed air might be better as a long term storage? Compressed air seems less likely to cause fire damage in the event of an explosion. But even if you could say the rate of energy degradation of a tank of liquid hydrogen was small what about cell upkeep and degradation- that isn't small and so advantages over battery even for long term storage are degrade? And there are other large scale battery solutions that are not lithium based that are simple, and cheap and apparently more stable for long term storage. But again you don't do hydrogen powered semis when electric semis already have much better economics even if you stop as you would for a charge- already much better on long hauls and then you just run electrics in convoys to get better economics than rail (way, way better than present or future hydrogen) and you cover the trailers with PV cells to get still much better economics for day runs at almost all latitudes- and maybe into the night. And for rail itself you convert to electric rail covering the cars with solar cells and replacing the diesel engines just by dropping in with batteries and you also do from the ground up electric trains- which is being done- even as electric trains have been with us for 100 years or more. Alternatively you could do superconducting under-grounded- super conducting line has been around for decades (American Superconductors products)- to electrify the rails (some pros but many cons.) but its like having the train run on a power line without having to carry around the batteries or recharge them- mag levs do this it seems- old trolleys did this. continued
continue But again hydrogen implies more fossil fuels use and more co2 and more delusions about sequestration and more tearing up roads with unnecessary heavy fuel tankers and just more pollution from the long tail pipe scams and more trucks on the roads. Its more useless co2 to haul around super heavy unnecessary atomic nuclei when you just need the electrons which weigh comparatively nothing and want to move at the speed of electricity on their own. There is one green use for hydrogen which is in rocketry so you use solar and process water and CO2 to get methane and oxygen (as Tesla does) but the process doesn't add any CO2 and will be driven by solar- its totally clean and carbon neutral- that is really the only legitimate use for hydrogen- or maybe it is used in hot or cold fusion, short of these there is nothing (but battery backed solar is already better than the fusions- as they can add heat and short of cold fusion in a portable safe bottle will never beat the economics) but with the rockets the hydrogen is going to be produced locally. Battery power density is becoming good enough where there is no need for hydrogen even in aviation- even if you could justify its cost and efficiency disadvantages. Goodenough's recent work takes us 3x above the aviation viability threshold for electric battery for aviation. If its good enough for aviation its good enough for marine- lead acid was probably good enough for marine. But trains retrofit and new trains would surely recover costs faster than even Tesla's semis- apply some aero to those trains too- just put the facades that Tesla Semis use on them and optimize the motors for battery vice diesel generators. The environment is the new bottom line. Soon firms will be having to show at tax time their progress toward becoming carbon negative and beyond on pain of penalty and charter suspension and revocation. Stuff like this hydrogen scam won't work under such a system anymore than Exxon claiming it is going green but trying to exempt its product sales in the reduction, it will have to show that it is lowering its sales year after year or forfeit its profits (which are pure hostage taking subsidies anyway) and eventually its charter while it fights off an Andrews interpretation of its endless liabilities. More ill-gotten gain for non contributing parasite shareholders is no longer the bottom line, the era of rent seekers is over.
