Porsche Macan Forums

Anyone else interested in an alternative discussion as opposed to the abusive electric thread.

Yes hydrogen is the gas for the future.

Bluesnose1812 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:13 pm Yes hydrogen is the gas for the future.

What is it that has kept H vehicles behind the curve? Is it cost of fuel production, storage, transport or May be lack of outlets?
Not familiar with the technology, just read the highlights but something is holding it back so curious to know peoples thoughts.

We could always discuss ICE Macans

Simply the fact that battery power is old technology. Whereas hydrogen fuel cells are "magic" and not well understood. Mr Musk has never innovated. He has just taken the existing payment/battery/rocket technology to new levels through iterative improvements. He has cut through the bureaucracy in banks/carmakers/NASA and produced stuff that just works.

I think he will eventually turn his attention to HFC as that is the only way he can produce sufficient energy on Mars.

Having carried out the electrical engineering for some Hydrogen fuelling facilities is a bit of what came first a chicken or an egg, and to be honest that was the advantage of Electric vehicles to increase in sales. So Hydrogen vehichles been about for a number of years and a number of bus fleets and lorry's moved to and are moving to Hydrogen because they have the size of depot to either install a storage vessel or install a Hydrogen generator. There were Hydrogen vehicles used in London for the Olympics with bp installing a Hydrogen fuelling facility with a lot of the competitor and VIP transport all running on Hydrogen.

For those of you down south go to south side of M25 and at Shell Cobham MWSA they have hydrogen dispensers installed for public use, for that site a hydrogen generator was installed on site to produce the Hydrogen. A lot of vehicle manufacturers with a little notice can start importing hydrogen cars/vans the issue is who would buy them? The range is far better than a "Average" Electric vehicle, the issue is, until there is a national network or growing network of hydrogen refuelling facilities then who would by a car that runs on that Gas, thats where electric had a better start as you cant fill up with Hydrogen at home!
Now given my professional work is in the filling station arena vast majority of petrol stations could easily install Hydrogen dispensers, two ways it can be done, install a storage vessel and a small piece of process equipment and your dispensers and away you go, the hydrogen delivered to site by a gas tanker and for the filling station operator most cost effective way to do it, filling times just slightly longer than liquid fuel, filling pressure is standardised at either 700Bar or 400Bar!
Other option is install a hydrogen generator on site, so no gas tanker deliveries, so basically a large vessel and with a water supply and a large electricity supply its electrolysis process, electricity splits the water into Hydrogen and oxygen, the oxygen is vented off into atmosphere, the hydrogen is kept, and then pressurised and stored ready for use at the customer dispensers, the down side is more space required to install all the process equipment, but also a very large typically 1MVA electricity supply required, so expensive depending on what the local power company can support.

So from my knowledge that is the stumbling block the filling station or even a unique ydrogen filling station/investor would need to coordinate rollout of hydrogen dispensers in enough filling stations across the main road network in tandom with car manufacturers starting to import and sell the hydrogen fuel cell cars. I suspect some central government funding may be needed here.

That said the size of the electricity supply needed for the hydrogen generator facility on site is the same in fact slightly smaller than that electrical power source needed for four fast EV chargers.

Anyway, post ended up longer than I had planned but hopefully may help some of you understand situation with Hydrogen, it will come for sure, no doubt about it, just needs some momentum and a will to do it.

Cheers GTB

Fab thanks GTB

As usual the south of England gets it all.

I did mention in a post some months ago that JCB has developed a hydrogen powered ICE. So the hydrogen fuel cell is not the only way in which hydrogen can be used. There is also Porsche (amongst others) encouraging the development of synthetic fuel that can be used in existing ICE vehicles.

GTB is right that electric vehicles have a head start but, who knows, in years to come they could turn out to be "Betamax" not VHS (ignoring the fact that Betamax was actually the better technology). Of course younger readers probably have no idea what either of these technologies were as the world moves on.

Jon A wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:29 pm

Bluesnose1812 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:13 pm Yes hydrogen is the gas for the future.

What is it that has kept H vehicles behind the curve? Is it cost of fuel production, storage, transport or May be lack of outlets?
Not familiar with the technology, just read the highlights but something is holding it back so curious to know peoples thoughts.

If I were a cynic I'd say it's too many Arts and PPE degrees holding it back ....... "IF"