Food for thought ........

[1200ts]

Large scale generation of hydrogen is half way to large scale creation of synthetic fuel. Just combine the hydrogen with the excess CO2 in the atmosphere and you have hydrocarbon fuel. There have been recent breakthroughs that have moved the efficiency of the process far beyond what the Germans used in the 1940’s making this a viable alternative.

Perhaps there will be no need for a wholesale switch to EVs?

Unless you have free electricity, hydrogen is a very poor choice for a fuel. Only Iceland can do it efficiently. For the rest of the world, more energy is used making the hydrogen than you ever get back.

To split the water to make hydrogen - electricity is used.
To make the hydrogen in to a liquid or compress it in to a gas - electricity is used.
The lowest cost method to make hydrogen if you don't have free electricity is to make it from natural gas. Electricity is used and you make CO2 in the process.
Hydrogen fuel cells are at best 60% efficient in turning the hydrogen in to energy to run the car. - electricity wasted.

You would have better off just using all the electricity used to make hydrogen to charge a battery.

Yes I know new technology is just around the corner to make hydrogen cars actually pay you to drive them! If I had a dollar for every article in the news over the last few years telling me of a new invention that will make EV cars be able to go 1000,0000 miles before the battery needs to be charged, I would be a millionaire.

I have lost count of the number of new battery technologies reported in the news that never, never, never actually make it in to a car.

 

[Vince]

That is why huge Solar Farms are needed. I don't think mass urban cars are in their sights, my bet is autonomous big rigs on specific routes. Anyway, it's Twiggy Forest's brain wave.

 

[78jotadave]

Why is there no electricity being generated from the burning, searing temperatures deep in the earths crust? and sometimes not so deep

There are Geothermal power stations not far from where I live, about 70 miles away. Just down the road, another power plant uses heat from compost and cow dung to create steam to drive generators.
If you are traveling east from San Bernadino, you will pass through an area of Wind Turbines, the San Gorgonio Pass, where there are now 666 giant turbines. The numbers are down from a high of over 4200 operational turbines in 1987. Improvements in wind turbine technology have allowed for the building of bigger, more efficient turbines.
From 1984 through 1990, I worked building and erecting 290 Danish-built (Vestas) turbines. In 2024, after 40 years of service, the Vestas turbines were replaced with 9 mega turbines making more power than the 290 they replaced.
There you go Clem there is green energy .
Solar farms that continue to generate power at night, what a concept
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

 

[Alzero]

Unless you have free electricity, hydrogen is a very poor choice for a fuel. Only Iceland can do it efficiently. For the rest of the world, more energy is used making the hydrogen than you ever get back.

To split the water to make hydrogen - electricity is used.
To make the hydrogen in to a liquid or compress it in to a gas - electricity is used.
The lowest cost method to make hydrogen if you don't have free electricity is to make it from natural gas. Electricity is used and you make CO2 in the process.
Hydrogen fuel cells are at best 60% efficient in turning the hydrogen in to energy to run the car. - electricity wasted.

You would have better off just using all the electricity used to make hydrogen to charge a battery.

Yes I know new technology is just around the corner to make hydrogen cars actually pay you to drive them! If I had a dollar for every article in the news over the last few years telling me of a new invention that will make EV cars be able to go 1000,0000 miles before the battery needs to be charged, I would be a millionaire.

I have lost count of the number of new battery technologies reported in the news that never, never, never actually make it in to a car.

How is CO2 created by electrolysis? H2O is split by solar electricity, hydrogen is collected and O2 is released. Where does the C come from?

 

[Steve G.]

I work at a Tesla repair centre. Ummm, the Canadian Govt. Purchase grants are running out of money, and will end Jan 31st 2025. $5000 gone. Plus price increase of $9000 for 2025. Yeah, sales are down, way down. Local provincial grants running out of money as well. Hey, all the baby whales have been saved so it’s all good now. No need to build wind farms, and take out 20% of all birds, until They wear out and catch fire.
On another note, local big city Vancouver’s brand new full electric fire engine $1.8 million Rozenbauer pumper, first in Canada, was pullout of service after 3 weeks for a leak of some kind. Had to be sent back to Minnesota for repairs. Of course it couldn’t be ,,,,,,,,,,, driven there, cause, well, it would take weeks with all the charging time.
Returned now, it’s very popular in seasonal parades, and getting groceries for the fire halls!

 

[1200ts]

How is CO2 created by electrolysis? H2O is split by solar electricity, hydrogen is collected and O2 is released. Where does the C come from?

Most hydrogen production in the world is made from natural gas as it is much cheaper than electrolysis. Making it from natural gas creates CO2.

Although electrolysis is much cleaner, both processes consume much more energy then you ever get back.

Here in the USA, we burn natural gas to make electricity. The electricity is then used to extract the hydrogen from more natural gas or water via electrolysis. The hydrogen then goes to a fuel cell in your car to make electricity. So we go through multiple steps to make electricity which we already had at the beginning of the process. How is using electricity to make electricity an efficient way to do things?

And finally, hydrogen fuel in the USA currently costs three times as much as gasoline to drive the same distance.

 

[CLEMTOG]

its all very complicated, but I must confess that I did not know about the geo thermal generation of NZ and california, so thanks for that, "ground source" heat pumps have been used in the UK with varying degrees of success, as have air to air, and air to water heat pumps, as an installer of anything with pipes, I have learned that the claims of 4.5 or even 5 KWunits of heat out of every single KWunit of input to be false. IMHO the heat pump is the most oversold product on the planet, they just are simply not as good as claimed, costly to install and no more reliable than a cuckoo clock without springs. but if that is your need and you have very little choice, then so be it.

I have just returned froma trip to SW France (between Bordeaux and LaRochelle), to collect a bike for Coxy, I went there in my sons 20+ year old 150,000 mile Transit van, a total trip mileage of around 1150 and the old bus was averaging 37MPG. that is what I call green, no need to replace the vehicle (just carefull and regular maintenance plus sympthetic driving) and great fuel economy, it is also fun to drive with its high riding position and brilliantly thought out cab by Ford.

CLEM

 

[Exmoor beast]

Funnily enough I have never ever seen sparks from a two stroke but I have seen sparks and indeed foot long flames coming out of four stroke exhaust. Bigger problem might be the two gallons of petrol

The spark arrester is a leftover from the days of two strokes with expansion chambers. They’d get sooted up and then when you ran the bike hard bits of burning carbon would theoretically shoot out and start fires.

Unless you have free electricity, hydrogen is a very poor choice for a fuel. Only Iceland can do it efficiently. For the rest of the world, more energy is used making the hydrogen than you ever get back.

To split the water to make hydrogen - electricity is used.
To make the hydrogen in to a liquid or compress it in to a gas - electricity is used.
The lowest cost method to make hydrogen if you don't have free electricity is to make it from natural gas. Electricity is used and you make CO2 in the process.
Hydrogen fuel cells are at best 60% efficient in turning the hydrogen in to energy to run the car. - electricity wasted.

You would have better off just using all the electricity used to make hydrogen to charge a battery.

Yes I know new technology is just around the corner to make hydrogen cars actually pay you to drive them! If I had a dollar for every article in the news over the last few years telling me of a new invention that will make EV cars be able to go 1000,0000 miles before the battery needs to be charged, I would be a millionaire.

I have lost count of the number of new battery technologies reported in the news that never, never, never actually make it in to a car.

I was keen to find out what the Saudis were going to do with regards to their cash cow petrol not being as popular.
Turns out they are going into Hydrogen production big time, they’ve got plenty of solar. Plan is to make Hydrogen, turn it into liquid Peroxide, ship it around world ( like oil) and turn it back to Hydrogen. From what I read they are on it. I think it’s going to be a similar situation to VHS or Betamax, just depends on who’s backing what really. US, Russia, Saudi have oil, China have the batteries, manafcturing capability, take your pick . I think Bosch and the German car groups are investing in E petrol , so there’s another one in the mix.
Lorries,tractors, Ships, chainsaws and generators are still going to be Fossil fuelled for quite a while yet and as a planet we burnt more coal in 2023 than ever before!

 

[Laverdalothar]

electric cars bikes and trucks are fine by me, as long as the electricity is generated by wind, wave or solar, if the electricity is generated by burning gas (bad) or coal (realy bad) or even worse NUCLEAR, (OMG) then it is not green and I dont want it. If I cannot determine how the elctricity was generated, then I would assume the last three.

Why is there no electricity being generated from the burning, searing temperatures deep in the earths crust? and sometimes not so deep as in the volcanic pits on Lanzarote (Canary Islands)
CLEM

Hi Clem, I generally agree with you that the power used in EV's need to be "green". However, even the power of gasplants is producing less polution than burning fuel. Combustion engines have an efficiency of roughly 20 - 25%.

Assume you have guests and they bring a very expensive and very, very rare bottle of red wine with them as a gift. There are not many bottles left on this planet of this particular wine and so you can not make new bottles. They ask you to open the bottle and consume it that evening. What would their faces turn into if you would open the bottle and drain 80% of it into your sink? Sounds stupid this way, right? It is exactly what we do when we fill our tanks and ride a combustion engine powered vehicle. We use something that is getting more rare and waste 80% of it. Worse to that, if you go from drilling into the ground, pumping it out, putting it into a ship that runs with the dirtiest fuel ever (heavy oil) to transport it from offshore to shore, pump it with diesel-fueld pumps into big tanks, refine it to gas, drive with trucks to gas stations, pump it into the tanks and later on from the tanks into your car with electric fuel pumps (that potentially are run with electricity produced by coal?!?) - how much is that saving the environment...?

95% of the energy that goes into an BEV is used for the transportation. If you consider all the above, a BEV is less impacting the environment with just over 30.000km (if run on "green energy"; with the current mix of energies, it is around 50.000km/35.000 Miles...).

However, I am not a friend of pushing people to one side by law. I think convincing people makes more sense. For that, cars and bikes need to be "user-friendly" and affordable. Affordable is currently the biggest issue...