this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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I think the only logical conclusion would be EV actually work better in the cold than what you have been told. Maybe that's the same for charging stations or maybe Norway builds to a standard that fits their climate and doesn't cut corners.
A charger that doesn’t work when EV’s need them the most is a terrible bussiness idea when people pay per kW/h !
It’s not just what I’ve been told. I’ve personally experienced the issues, as have thousands of others dealing with EV extreme cold problems the past couple of weeks in the eastern US.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-vehicles-arent-ready-for-extreme-heat-and-cold-heres-how-to-fix-them/
If anyone has any further info, I’d love to find out what Norway could possibly be doing to address a fundamental issue with the technology. All I’ve been able to find is some workarounds to keep the cars still running, and just accepting worse performance in extreme weather.
I don’t understand why anti-hydrogen prejudice is so prevalent that we’ll put up with EV limitations before considering alternatives. Smells like EV investor propaganda & sunk cost fallacy to me.
It could be as simple as the equivalent of a “block heater” that you would use on a ICE in a cold climate. These are not new technologies, many use these simple devices for cars in places where it gets cold, and I can’t imagine installing a correctly engineered device into the battery coolant system would pose much of a problem. Automatically turn on at a predetermined departure time or below a certain temperature while charging.
That doesn’t help much with the reduced range thanks to the cold, but it will get you going in the morning. We have a PHEV that won’t let you use the battery below 20°F, but the ICE warms the battery and it comes online about 5 minutes after start.
Yeah, most of what I’ve seen is just heating the battery. Which is also dramatically reducing the efficiency.
There’s no way around sacrificing range to heat the battery at this time. Only mitigating some of the loss with a preheat.
That’s what I thought. Not an issue with hydrogen.
If we’re going to be discussing battery vs hydrogen efficiency, we need to be honest about how it performs in real-life scenarios like this. Only discussing EV performance in ideal conditions is providing nowhere near the full picture.
I’m not trying to start any argument about either of them, I’m for getting off of fossil fuels, and more choices to better fit different needs is great. Hydrogen cars have their own issues, such as lower energy density and very high pressures for storing the hydrogen, along with high pressure vessels for transporting it. Energy dense storage is always going to have problems, but the electricity distribution system is already well established.
My own prejudice against hydrogen is around manufacturing.
Most of the world current hydrogen made isn't green at all, and the message is "we'll figure it out once demand is up"
And the companies pushing the most for hydrogen are petrol companies.
I'm not a chemist, but it doesn't seem to add up to me.
I say that as an EV owner living in Canada. I need to use a fast charge station about 4 times a year due to cold related battery issues, and all of those time are because of extended road trips.
It’s not impossible to produce hydrogen in an environmentally friendly way. We just need to further increase efficiency, and move the energy source to renewables and nuclear to power the electrolysis. The EV charging stations have the same issue, often being powered fossil fuel plants.
But it is impossible to manufacture EV batteries in an environmentally friendly way. We’re just expected to accept it.
Plus the performance of EV’s vs hydrogen always uses data gathered in ideal conditions, but hydrogen is leaps and bounds more efficient in extreme weather. We need to be highlighting that, as climate change begins to make extreme conditions the norm and ideal conditions disappear.
It is literally physically impossible to increase the efficiency of electricity-> hydrogen -> electricity above 30%, and that's if everything is perfect.
EVs are above 70% efficient in the real world btw.
Hydrogen will be useful to decarbonise some parts of heavy industry where electricity cannot be directly used, but that's about it.
There is a reason why fossil fuel industries are pushing hydrogen, because it means that the car makers can keep selling combustion cars until hydrogen is ready, which it never will be.
And even if hydrogen cars were somewhat ready in 10 years, EVs and the charging stations would also be much better than they are now.
And hydrogen has such a low density that a tanker truck could only carry hydrogen for around 100 car refills, compared to 600-900 that a normal tanker truck does. So every gas station would have to be connected to a hydrogen pipeline, which will realistically never happen.
Meaning ‘in ideal conditions.’ As climate collapse progresses, the areas of the planet experiencing ideal conditions will narrow further and further. I guess fuck everyone living in those parts of the planet, huh?
What you’re not grasping is how clean and abundant hydrogen is. Illustrated by your emphasis on transportation. In most scenarios, it won’t be traveling far at all, if it’s not farmed on site. No transportation needed. Pair its abundance with lack of harmful emissions, and it’s absolutely worth any loss in efficiency.
And those inefficiencies are already being addressed. We have a number of projects already producing working proof of concepts that are ready to be scaled up for further testing and refinement. Advancements aren’t assumed in hydrogen- they’re already happening.
What about battery advancements? I keep hearing that we just need a leap forward in battery tech, and everything will be great, but no one’s been able to actually produce this promised technological leap. Seeing a lot of the same promises and red flags that come out of the ‘fusion is almost here’ crowd.
No, the 70% for EVs is in real world conditions. The 30% for hydrogen is in ideal conditions, it's usually around 10% in real life conditions right now.
And the efficiency of EVs doesn't decrease that much at temperature increases or decreases, especially not down to the efficiency that hydrogen has right now.
This video is sadly only in German, but the guy who made it is a researcher for hydrogen and batteries (he knows what he is talking about), he explains it very well, why hydrogen will never work for cars: https://youtu.be/ZXC33UjdtBU
Hydrogen might be clean if it is produced from renewable energies, but we don't even have enough renewables to cover our current consumption, much less 3 times as much to cover everyone using hydrogen, and I don't know what you mean by abundant, of course it is around everywhere bound in water, but we can't use it before splitting it, which needs those insane amounts of energy.
There are also no projects that are able to go above those 30% because it's just not possible, we can't break the laws of physics.
We get new battery advancements every year, the current Trend is replacing everything with LiFePo4 batteries that are almost as good as LiNMnC batteries, because they need much less rare materials. Those batteries weren't good enough a few years ago to be used in cars.
In the End electric cars are already good enough for almost all use cases and cost competitive, factoring in the running costs, while almost all car manufacturers have given up on hydrogen because they made losses even with their very expensive hydrogen cars.
I am seeing you being part of the "fusion is almost here" crowd, EVs don't need to improve anymore to be competitive, but they most likely will, considering that the market for EVs is pretty big nowadays.
As far as I'm aware, the most impact around EV batteries is obtaining lithium and other componenets.
Components that can and are already being recycled from older EV batteries.
I'm curious to learn if there is other things I'm not aware of though!
I dont think making a parallel between ev charging and hydrogen manifacturing is valid though: my understanding is that electrolysis is an option, but that most of the current creation is a byproduct of fossil fuel refinement, like plastics (which explains why petrol campanies push it).
We can probably improve on electrolysis efficiency, but my hunch is that it simply won't happen if petrol company can meet demand. Which I'm sure they will for just a bit cheaper than electrolysis costs to keep controlling the market.
If we can produce green electricity, as long as electrolysis efficiency is not as good as the average battery efficiency whatever efficiency of the hydrogen engine itself doesn't matter: it's still less efficient than a battery because of the extra manufacturing step. And then there's transport and all on top of it.
I'm sure "some" ICE cars have also ran out of fuel while queueing, seems like a bit of a nothing statement. More stations are needed and range does get lower in colder conditions that is known. Waiting until you have 30 miles left when you know electric cars lose 15% of range isn't smart.
Norway does winter testing on their vehicles and I'm sure people ask other people about car performance.
https://www.naf.no/elbil/elbil-nytt/ev-range-and-charge-test
Hydrogen is largely useless. It's an electric car with extra steps and low density fuel and difficult storage conditions.
Sure if you driving across the outback and need lightweight and fast charging there might be uses for it. But when you got 300 miles of range and live in a city why would hydrogen be better? You actually have to go to a station if nothing else rather than just charging where you park.
Hydrogen is ultimately more inefficient in time and energy and cost so it's going to lose.