Hydrogen trucks are coming
Hydrogen trucks are coming
Two 'firsts' this week for budding green hydrogen energy road industry.
Hiringa, with partners fuel supplier Waitomo Group and Australasia’s largest heavy vehicle fleet owner TR Group, on Tuesday opened three green hydrogen stations, with a fourth under way, within the North Island’s economic “golden triangle” of freight movement.
For anyone who thinks hydrogen is a good idea, please read this. There's another article I'm trying to find that goes into the many technical issues with hydrogen fuel, such as pumps icing up.
There are problems with these articles, and it almost always comes down to scale. There currently isn't the scale and infrastructure to bring the cost of hydrogen to make it cost effective compared to pure electric. With time that could change if there is a will to do so.
But regardless, as I mentioned in my other comment, hydrogen has a much better use case in large scale transport. Trains and ships, for example, where volume isn't a problem and where the weight of batteries becomes untenable. This is, I think, where hydrogen will be viable.
I couldn't read the article because of the paywall but hydrogen seems the best option for trucks. There are already companies using hydrogen hybrid trucks, with hydrogen generators at the home base.
From what I've read, the hybrid trucks need deisel for the hills as the hydrogen isn't powerful enough. I wonder if this is a barrier for full hydrogen use or if the limitations can be built around.
There seems to be a general push against hydrogen electric transport recently. I agree that it isn't suitable for small-scale transport, such as cars or even busses, but I do think there is a use-case for large transport.
Ultimately the problem comes how do we get the electricity from the generator to the vehicle where it needs to be. Obviously batteries are more efficient, but they come with their own problems. They weigh a lot, which damages infrastructure, they require rare metals, they have a maximum capacity per unit weight.
Of course they have advantages, but I think as the vehicle gets larger, and the charging time requirements drastically increase, I think there comes a point where hydrogen electric systems are worth looking at. Trains and shipping being the main ones, and potentially trucks.
Of course, if the hydrogen is not generated cleanly then it's moot, but the same is true for pure electric systems as well.
Ultimately, I would like to see renewable generation that turns excess power into hydrogen for a train and coastal shipping fleet.
Yeah it comes down to energy density and time to replace expended energy. That's why the most successful electric trucks i've seen basically go to a depot where the entire battery pack is swapped out for a pre-charged one.
Of course there's a whole other piece of calculus that is ignored in New Zealand - and that is energy efficiency. Reducing the size of, and need for, long distance trucking by utilising far more fuel efficient rail & coastal shipping would also reduce emissions; and would allow us to decrease maintenance and new build costs for roads.
"I want my fuel bill to dramatically increase." - no fleet operator ever.
Battery trucks might not be able to do all routes yet, but they're dramatically cheaper to operate on the routes they can do. Hydrogen vehicles cost so much per mile that they wind up just parked in a field and forgotten as soon as trials finish and funding dries up.
Clean coal, green hydrogen, natural gas. An adjective doesn’t make something good for the environment.
Green hydrogen is not brown hydrogen, so there's that.
Sadly
This is a great video about hydrogen powered vehicles: https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE?si=oqnXgBoVs4F_XK8r
Okay, so let's talk about a whole four stations here and what energy source the hydrogen being generated is coming from.
Still going to be interesting to see how this pans out vs all of the other hydrogen attempts there have been so far.
The humanity!