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I'm still waiting for the flood - so far I haven't seen it - and based on past history we're not going to - the big guys still don't get it IMHO but they are slowly coming around. Once there are compelling choices on the market and most importantly "choice" I see no real barrier to EV purchasing for most 2 car households…and if we can get an EV pickup then then we may have a flood
nearly everyone I encounter in my EV travels (local and road trip) are very very open to an EV purchase once you briefly explain/answer some common questions and if they give it more than 20 seconds thought they are like "yeah you're right" this could work for me!
we lack choice at the moment - and I welcome the day when too much choice & inventory is the major problem with EV's.
HPFP failures on the N54, the N63 and others.
Turbo Failures on the N63 and the N55
Injector failures on the N63 and N54
Coil pack failures on the N55 and N54
Rod Bearing Failures on the S63
Crank Pin failures on the S55
Valvetronic actuator failures on the older cars.
AGM Batteries needing replacement after 12-18 months due to wonky charging from the "on-demand" alternator.
Not to mention the crappy "dies at 100k on the dot" plastic coolant impeller and radiator end tanks.
These are COMMON issues, not one-offs. Ask anyone with an N54 or an N63 out of warranty how their cars are doing. And I haven't even frequented the BMW forums for a few years. Lord knows what's blowing up now.
BMW engines have spectacularly bad reliability.
Yes, my E60 M5 tranny blew up one half a block after I traded it in. Seriously.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since a BEV is a Zero Emissions (tailpipe) vehicle, then there is no federal certification for drivetrain, and therefore the manufacturer can scale, mix, match as their customers / market dictates. And if you design an car with a big pack, you can easily make a small pack work if you want to sell a cheaper car with less range.
Won't the EPA still want to test BEVs for safety, in terms of their battery packs? As in, safety charging, and safety in accidents?
But I am in Ontario Canada and my electricity is already 97% carbon free. So what use is a hydrogen car when there are not charging stations and there are power plugs everywhere. Worse, I am building a retreat at South River Ontario. I already have solar panels and a pure sine wave invertor, which means I can charge the car even in the middle of the woods while a hydrogen car would be just a lump of metal.
PS. Use Google Map to compute the needed range, hydrogen cars can not do it.
Hyundai Nexo fuel cell has a range of 380 miles. (60% efficiency) May make it there and back from Toronto.
Also there is a new company projecting the range up to 625 miles. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/m...farina-concept
Originally Posted by earl pottinger
first Oxygen require energy in the splitting too, that means not 82% of the energy is in Hydrogen, the efficiency is how much is "lost" energy vs used to split apart the molecules. Read the equations part at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water it is clear that the Oxygen uses twice the power as the Hydrogen to break apart water. Result: 82%*33.3%=27% of the energy used to create the Hydrogen gas.
The water is H2O. There is no such thing as how much energy H2 needs to get separated from the O versus how much energy O needs to get separated from H2. It's the same thing.
Originally Posted by daveo4porsche
and toyota is all in on batteries as of yesterday - they are finally seeing how fool-cells will never pan out - still basically a fossil fuel play which has downsides fir the actual goal of zero emission transportation.
Toyota is in the battery development business for almost 30 years. They are the most active starting with the Prius in late 90s.
Originally Posted by daveo4porsche
the only problem with BEVs is battery weight and capacity - it is equally likely that we can make batteries less heavy and hold more power in the future as it is likely in 2030 H2 production will magically be efficient...
picture a future 200 lbs - 1 cu/ft 225 kwh battery (800 miles driving range) - and volia all the complaints about BEVs disappear vs H2
if you want to bet on the future, battery breakthroughs are at least as likely as H2 production break throughs - i’ll take either - but as of today both are highly speculative and uncertain
Current EVs are functional with the battery weight. For passenger cars this is not the main issue. It's a problem for larger vehicles.
- One issue with current batteries is the price. Not affordable to many. Note: this is why car companies stayed away from BEVs in the last 20 years, many of them had demos.
- Second issue is the energy density. Which limits the range.
- Third issue is slow recharging times. Which makes people plan their trips and forces them to have longer breaks.
One company claimed that they reached 1000Wh/kg density and will release the product in 5 years. This level of improvement makes a big change and may kill fuel cell passenger cars. Still doesn't solve the recharging time but puts greater demand on the chargers.
Originally Posted by daveo4porsche
make electricity ample and nearly free (state sponsored) and make it from water - then it starts to get interesting as a high density zero emission “fuel” that we can transition to using lightly remodeled existing proven ICE paradigms
otherwise it’s pure and simple a loss overall...
I agree that there is an efficiency issue. However 60% efficiency is still better than ICE cars and people were ok with it. As long as Hydrogen can be made of renewables, this isn't a problem. Have you ever complained that the current solar panels are only 20% efficient? Sure it would be great if they were higher, but they are at least functional.
One note to it. BEVs easily lose 30% efficiency in the winter. Fuel cells lose maybe 10% since they have waste heat that can be utilized for cabin heating and there is no need to heat up a big battery.
Note: I'm not saying fuel cells will kill BEVs. All I commented is that your assumption that they are dead is a bit of a stretch.
/// You often shift my comments to the extreme, just like with this BMW reliability. All I said is that other car makers with lot more complex products have better reliability than Tesla.
NOTE: since most H2 is obtain from natural gas and will be for the foreseeable future - and refining H2 from natural gas generates emissions and also has the overhead of H2 distribution post production - it’s probably just better to use existing natural gas residential distribution methods to just burn the NG in a modified ICE vehicle - it leverages existing infrastructure and omitted a large number of steps in the H2 acquisition/production/distribution process thereby increasing efficiency- similar efficiency could be gained for propane based vehicles using existing propane distribution infrastructure..
I will have to calculate this. I'm not convinced that burning the gas has the same CO2 emissions per generated kWh than steam forming Hydrogen generation x fuel cell efficiency. Gas turbines in general have low efficiency. What makes them better is that they are combined with steam engines to utilize the waste heat. Only these combination turbines have reasonable efficiency.
H2 vehicles are no where near 60% efficient and never will be…relative efficiency is about 19% once you move the wheels - actually worse than ICE vehicles vs. 69% efficient for grid charged EV's.
Hyundai Nexo fuel cell has a range of 380 miles. (60% efficiency) May make it there and back from Toronto.
Also there is a new company projecting the range up to 625 miles. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/m...farina-concept
So you are telling me not to buy a BEV that exists TODAY, works TODAY and instead pin my hopes of a car that may come out sometime in the future.
Your Hyundai Nexo is a piece of junk to me since there is no local Hydrogen charging station, or am I to hope that will also come in the future?
The nearest station is in Mississauga and I live in Courtice - Google them, then tell me why I would waste money and time on a Hydrogen design.
Earl Colby Pottinger (Tesla, Bollinger, Rivian, I-Pace, Taycan lover, but not airy fairy hydrogen cars)
The water is H2O. There is no such thing as how much energy H2 needs to get separated from the O versus how much energy O needs to get separated from H2. It's the same thing.
You are right, but that is not how the marketing spins it.
Earl Colby Pottinger (Tesla, Bollinger, Rivian, I-Pace, Taycan lover, but not airy fairy hydrogen cars)
I agree that there is an efficiency issue. However 60% efficiency is still better than ICE cars and people were ok with it. As long as Hydrogen can be made of renewables, this isn't a problem. Have you ever complained that the current solar panels are only 20% efficient? Sure it would be great if they were higher, but they are at least functional.
One note to it. BEVs easily lose 30% efficiency in the winter. Fuel cells lose maybe 10% since they have waste heat that can be utilized for cabin heating and there is no need to heat up a big battery.
Note: I'm not saying fuel cells will kill BEVs. All I commented is that your assumption that they are dead is a bit of a stretch.
/// You often shift my comments to the extreme, just like with this BMW reliability. All I said is that other car makers with lot more complex products have better reliability than Tesla.
No one said it would not work for large items like ships and trains, and drones are special items where people try anything to extend their flight time even if it cost 10x more because flight time is money.
You are the one pushing extremes when you try to shoehorn Hydrogen Fuel Cells into a passenger car. It just does not make sense. Plus, unlike the BEVs we depend on big energy companies to build and supply Hydrogen refueling stations instead of just charging at home.
Earl Colby Pottinger (Tesla, Bollinger, Rivian, I-Pace, Taycan lover, but not airy fairy hydrogen cars)
... Toyota is in the battery development business for almost 30 years. They are the most active starting with the Prius in late 90s...
Toyota placed their bets and invested heavily in NiMH batteries. Almost every one of their hybrids uses NiMH. It wasn't a bad choice in the late 1990s. In fact, GM actually built some EV-1s with NiMH packs - though it was too late to save the EV-1. (Cue "who killed the electric car", when GM sold their NiMH capability to Chevron...)
Hydrogen Fuel Cells exist for one reason....range anxiety. And I get it. If you're not used to owning a BEV, range anxiety is a real thing. And if you live in an area where rapid charging stations are few and far between, you feel it as well.
But once you own one, and live with one, you get over that quickly.
I recently took a trip from Houston to Dallas for work. Completed with zero issues. There are two superchargers on the way up, one near my destination, and a destination charger at my hotel. I had plenty of options to choose from. As it happens, the superchargers conincided with lunch / bio breaks and resulted in me not stopping much longer than I would have really needed to. The destination charger at my hotel (not a super high end one) was available (so was another, as well as a J1772 charger) and I charged overnight in peace, and had plenty of juice to do what I needed to do without a second thought.
The other night, I was planning on washing my car after work. So I didn't plug it in. And guess what, I forgot to plug it in. Woke up with 56% battery. You know what? I took the car anyway, and arrived back home with plenty of battery to spare. There is a supercharger near-ish to one of my projects, and two more I could stop at on the way home that aren't directly on the way, but wouldn't have been awful to detour to.
Bottom line...you get used to it quickly, and I don't want to say you plan around it, but you learn to adapt and it doesn't have any real impact. 200 plus miles is enough for 95% of the people not to have range anxiety.
Now, Matt Farrah was correct....public charging in many places is a joke. And if you live in a place where you can't add 240v power, it's tough. But do you know what? It's EASY to add! Pull an electrical permit, buy some gear, negotiate with the property owner and plop down a station. Boom. I'm in construction, I've buried plenty of stuff in the ground in my life, I know what it takes. Hydrogen? It's a flammable gas, runs pressurized, requires pressure pipes, etc. You need easements, pumping stations, etc. Adding the infrastructure is EXPENSIVE. Plus, as Ed Begley Jr. says, you can't make hydrogen (he says gas but same same) on your roof. You can make electricity. If I had the money to do it, I'd start looking at how I could build my own charging station network in California, in areas of high multifamily living. It just makes sense.
I watch Tesla Bjorn's videos and the amount of public charging stations compared to here is staggering. But they are about the easiest thing to add, compared to anything else. And the efficiency is the highest of all the alt-fuel vehicles.
If they are so worried about overall emissions, just ban manufacturing of new vehicles. Problem solved!
Actually, if we really want to get down to it, this whole thing with regulating the pollution of cars is nothing but a Wizard of Oz scam. Try going after the real polluters...marine ships. Container ships, supertankers and cruise ships all produce orders of magnitude more CO2, particulates and NOX than passenger vehicles. Where is the outcry there?
04-15-2019, 02:20 PM
