> Hydrogen fuel is one of the ultimate tarpit ideas.
The problem is, there are some applications that reasonably cannot be made to run on electric anywhere near soon (i.e. at least 20 years from now): oceangoing ships, planes larger than a Cessna and heavy machinery that runs for longer than a few hours every day.
For both environmental reasons and the foreseeable peak oil, these applications need to shift off from fossil fuel - and for that in turn, it's either biofuel (which is ethically questionable because it takes so much space) or hydrogen.
There are plenty of battery electric excavators on the market. Including from Hyundai. Volvo has a 23 ton one on the market, for example (bigger than this thing). They works just fine and Hyundai know this very well.
The reason Hyundai is doing this is for the same reason they've been doing loads of stuff with hydrogen for many years: subsidies. They get loads of government money. In Korea. In the US. And elsewhere. There's lots of money to be had. Hyundai gets paid to perpetuate the myth that hydrogen has a future in transport.
And the beauty of it is that it isn't wasted effort. Most hydrogen vehicles are battery electric vehicles where a tiny battery is powered by a fuel cell. Most of the tech aside from the fuel cell and hydrogen stuff is kind of 100% the same. When it flops, you just ditch those bits and shove in a bigger battery and boom nice battery electric excavator.
The market is pretty much rejecting hydrogen on roads (too many battery electrical trucks being sold debunking the myth that they'll never work at this point). So, they switch to construction. Of course the exact same stuff is going to happen there. Cheaper batteries are driving down cost. There are loads of products targeting this market already from a wide range of vendors. Hydrogen is going to be a complete and utter dud there too.
> Of course the exact same stuff is going to happen there. Cheaper batteries are driving down cost.
The thing with batteries is that currently they require stuff sourced from one autocracy or another in pretty large quantities if you want decent power density. Hydrogen in contrast, that is pretty easy to make, any reasonably smart highschooler can whip up an electrolysis apparatus.
Hydrogen is definitely orders of magnitude worse in efficiency (especially if it, or the synthfuel it is used to produce, is burned of all things), no question. But we as the Western countries definitely need expertise and capabilities for geopolitical reasons.
And how are these synthfuels made? They all (except of biofuel, which as I said is ethically questionable) require hydrogen as precursor, and that's my point. It's all carbohydrates, which means you need hydrogen and oxygen (these you can get from water electrolysis) and carbon (these you can get from e.g. CO2 sequestration).
Even if hydrogen is required as a precursor for methanol production, transportation and storage (especially long-term) of methanol is vastly cheaper than hydrogen.
I wouldn't bet against ocean going ships going (partway) electric. At least if you run through either Suez or Panama you need to spend time in the locks anyways and since those places are reasonably sunny, recharging batteries there is possible. So in principle you should be put a couple of container batteries on top and swap those in locks. Since the propellors are driven by electric motors anyways, the integration in the ship should be reasonably straightforward.
Problems right now are: Battery availability, capacity and charging space. But smaller (feeder) vessels seem to already use these kind of booster batteries (not sure where I read that story though..) for short haul routes. So I'd expect to hear about some longer routes starting to use these too
> Since the propellors are driven by electric motors anyways, the integration in the ship should be reasonably straightforward.
Oh hell no. In large container freighters, they usually have the engine crankshaft directly attached to the prop shaft. Something like the RTA96 - that thing has a rated continuous power output of 80 megawatts. No gears, no nothing. That's also part of the reason why you need tugboats in ports or rivers like Hamburg's Elbe.
The only thing that is electric are the maneuvering thrusters. A ship of that size has a few of them but they are only used when precision navigation is needed.
> So in principle you should be put a couple of container batteries on top and swap those in locks.
At cruise speed large container ships burn thousands of liters of fuel. Even assuming you could get a quarter of the energy density of petroleum from batteries, one 40 ton container worth of batteries would be only one hour worth of runtime.
The power and energy involved in maritime traffic is absurd on an absolute scale, but the sheer size and transport capacity makes more than up for it (IIRC even the dirtiest container ship run on the dirtiest possible fuel has less emissions per kilometer and ton than the cleanest euro6 truck).
I agree there will still be a market for fuel for the foreseeable future but I believe there are better alternatives given the logistical challenges and other tradeoffs of hydrogen.
The problem is that they are unlikely to run on hydrogen either. Hydrogen requires heavy storage containers that make it inappropriate for flight (among other uses.) We're much better off going to ammonia or some other e-fuel.
The problem is, there are some applications that reasonably cannot be made to run on electric anywhere near soon (i.e. at least 20 years from now): oceangoing ships, planes larger than a Cessna and heavy machinery that runs for longer than a few hours every day.
For both environmental reasons and the foreseeable peak oil, these applications need to shift off from fossil fuel - and for that in turn, it's either biofuel (which is ethically questionable because it takes so much space) or hydrogen.