Is HVO the EV killer?

timmyntc · 20-10-2023 3:52pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263479#Comment_121263479

Not a hope of running a conventional ICE on hydrogen. Hydrogen cars will all be new

techman1 · 20-10-2023 7:56pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263447#Comment_121263447

this may seem like a difficult concept to you but 2023 is a future date than 2019, it is 2019+4 years but car production has fallen even though the population has risen by 500,000. Also the total number of licensed vehicles in Ireland is 2.7 million but the percentage of new vehicles is only 4.3% of that the total new electric cars is then only 2% of the total vehicles registered here now

magicbastarder · 20-10-2023 8:19pm

the population rose by 500k in those four years? i had a quick look at the census stats; the population certainly has risen, but by a shade less than 400k in the six years between 2016 and 2022.

Casati · 20-10-2023 10:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121262822#Comment_121262822

The drop in new cars is half the story- we have seen a massive drop in the number of imports from the UK - in a good year 100,000 UK imports were registered in Ireland, now its only a tiny fraction of that.

liamog · 21-10-2023 1:49am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121262640#Comment_121262640

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121262822#Comment_121262822

You made the claim that there volume of new cars sold has significantly dropped (quoted again to remind you of your claims), and that new car sales are still lower than 2019. This is not true, as new cars registrations this year are ahead of 2019.

You can't say something has dropped significantly when the numbers are showing a 3.87% increase, key figure for you is the total column.

liamog · 21-10-2023 1:54am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265351#Comment_121265351

I think the restriction on UK imports is exactly why we're not seeing a drop in new cars. The UK has much broader range of 2nd hand EVs available and there were some businesses that specialised in bring them over to Ireland. 1000's of used Nissan Leaf's were imported here.

Padre_Pio · 21-10-2023 2:30am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263479#Comment_121263479

A hydrogen car IS an electric vehicle.

It just transports the energy in hydrogen instead of a battery. The car runs on an electric motor.

Padre_Pio · 21-10-2023 2:37am

Hydrogen for personal transport was dead on arrival.

The big promoters like Toyota have abandoned the technology.

Too difficult and energy intensive to refine, too difficult to transport and store, too difficult to mass produce, too difficult to keep safe.

There will always be niche applications for hydrogen like long distance haulage, boats and maybe trains. Its really promising to pair hydrogen with renewables as an energy storage system,but not many are looking at it.

Batteries have won. Technology is improving, EV range has increased x5 in the past decade, cost is nearly comparable with ICE, and there's plenty of room for further advancement.

Hellrazer · 21-10-2023 8:06am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265859#Comment_121265859

Not sure about that one. All the major manufacturers are working on Hydrogen vehicles.

Toyota havent abandoned it and are still building concept cars. Honda are working on it, BMW, The Vag group.

China are looking to have a million H2 cars on the road by 2035 / Japan want 800,000 so theres definitlely no one abandoning the technology.

https://www.topspeed.com/hydrogen-cars-to-look-out-for/

Calahonda52 · 21-10-2023 8:41am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121263447#Comment_121263447

...

dickdasr1234 · 21-10-2023 8:57am

"It still produces emissions - for every 1,000 litres of diesel burned, you will produce 3.6 tonnes of greenhouse gas CO2."

1000 litres of diesel apparently weighs in at 830kg.

Can someone explain the alchemy that's going on here?

magicbastarder · 21-10-2023 9:22am

Not sure of the specific chemistry of diesel, but if you burn one ton of pure carbon, you get 3.66 tons of CO2. You're adding two oxygen atoms for each carbon atom and the oxygen atoms each weigh more than a carbon atom.

liamog · 21-10-2023 12:51pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266074#Comment_121266074

Yeah, if it's 387,000 between 2016 and 2022, I'd guess a population change of closer to 250,000 between 2019 and 2023

mikeecho · 21-10-2023 1:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121265859#Comment_121265859

Big energy companies (ESBI) are now looking at hydrogen as part of the future of energy, while this will obviously be used to power EVs, this advancement in Hydrogen production and distribution will aid the future use of hydrogen cars.

The future could well be a combination of EV. Vehicles and Hydrogen vehicles.

As for Batteries have won, not yet, not in their current form of li-ion, new solid state batteries.. maybe

Time Will tell,

magicbastarder · 21-10-2023 1:21pm

Would the ESB not be more likely to be using the H2 as energy storage, a sort of battery, rather than car fuel?

I.e. produce hydrogen with excess or cheap supply when there's low use on the grid, and use it to produce electricity at peak times? They'd only need to worry about storage but not transport of it. And they wouldn't need to wait for the car industry to invest in it first.

Cushtie · 21-10-2023 1:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266835#Comment_121266835

That would make pure sense. Are we a few years away from that or are there any countries doing it already?

Padre_Pio · 21-10-2023 1:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266010#Comment_121266010

Remember that you need more than a car manufacturer.

You also need infrastructure. Our nearest hydrogen filling station is the UK, and there's only 250 in all of Europe (according to Google).

There was a story a few months back of Danish stations closing.

There is no business case for hydrogen cars, for all the reasons I outlined above.

We may see something in 20 years if petrol is banned, but for now BEVs are miles ahead.

Summitatem · 21-10-2023 1:48pm

I don't think the claims that it can be used in all diesels is true? From Audi on mainland Europe

"All V6 diesel units up to and including 210 kW (286 hp) in the A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, Q7 and Q8 series, which have been produced since mid-February 2022, can use HVO fuel."

Padre_Pio · 21-10-2023 1:56pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266771#Comment_121266771

Hydrogen is produced using electricity so it will always be more expensive than electricity.

Why would a company that produces electricity also produce hydrogen in such quantities, when they could simply sell the electricity to the end user? They would be competing with themselves.

Why would the end user pay more for hydrogen, when they're already paying for electricity? (and probably generating their own).

As I said there's no business case for hydrogen. The big selling point of EVs is they are cheaper to run than ICEs. They'll still be cheaper to run than hydrogen cars.

Fr Tod Umptious · 21-10-2023 2:13pm

I came into this thread thinking that HVO was some great new tech.

Now I realize that it's vehicles running on vegetable oil.

This has been around for decades, I remember some guy on The Late Late demoing his converted car running on chip oil in the 80s.

I'm no fan of new ICE being banned in just over 6 years, but this is not the answer.

If it was it would have been figured out long ago.

magicbastarder · 21-10-2023 3:02pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266995#Comment_121266995

Because you can't store electricity? Not in any great quantity anyway. I don't know enough about it to crunch the numbers, but you could in theory create hydrogen when you've an excess of supply and use it to generate when you've a lack.

Even a second or third site with the same intent as turlough hill - which has a net electricity generation of less than zero.

Padre_Pio · 21-10-2023 3:51pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121267326#Comment_121267326

Sorry, my comment was in relation to producing such a huge volume of hydrogen that it would be economically viable for a power company to sell it as fuel.

I'm fully on board with producing hydrogen using excess electricity as a short term backup, in tandem with interconnects and fossil fuel plants.

MrMusician18 · 21-10-2023 4:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121267108#Comment_121267108

It's not just vegetable oil and even your post acknowledges the major difference: you were able to run c̲o̲n̲v̲e̲r̲t̲e̲d̲ diesel engines on vegetable oil. Engines require no conversion to run on HVO, it's a complete drop in replacement.

Birka · 21-10-2023 9:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266938#Comment_121266938

There is a difference between a car being able to run on HVO and the manufacturer certifying that. It involves considerable expense on the part of the manufacturer and some manufacturers are more sensitive around emissions certification than others, especially if they've a chequered past in that regard. Some just don't see any advantage in retrospective approval.

I emailed Neste about non-approved VAG engines and got this response: "Unfortunately, not all car producers have time and resources to carry out testings for their earlier produced cars, but still does not mean that renewable diesel could not be used. More information can be found on our web pages: https://www.neste.be/en/renewable-diesel-hvo/product-information/product-information/oem-approvals. "

Calahonda52 · 22-10-2023 10:43am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121266995#Comment_121266995

The business case for H2 from elec is using excess wind energy, especially at night..

storing it for grid generator use is much more edgy efficient than storing compressed air in vast salt caverns like they do in Europe.

Its not clear if the yellow NG gas network can handle the H2 as its much more corrosive, certainly an issue in the UK, but they have an older network

Xpro · 24-10-2023 12:24pm

I just did 2 tanks on HVO in my 3.0D bmw, and I must say the mpg is good. Maybe little bit of my imagination, but im well used to my car and there is definitely significantly less of a consumption for sure.

The only thing im not convinced is the cetane number and how it actually compares to regular diesel. So I will probably run some 2-ehn for the time being to bump up the cetane.