Hydrogen Vs BEV cars.

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I still think for a long time it's a limited audience.
I agree Clint at the moment they are still too expensive and if you have nowere to charge they are no better than an ICE , it's obvious from the figures I posted earlier something is putting the majority of the 70% of drivers who can charge at home off buying an EV I would love to know what the reason is as I have said I would change if I could charge at home.
 
I agree Clint at the moment they are still too expensive and if you have nowere to charge they are no better than an ICE , it's obvious from the figures I posted earlier something is putting the majority of the 70% of drivers who can charge at home off buying an EV I would love to know what the reason is as I have said I would change if I could charge at home.
I think one of the reasons is that people are mistrustful of buying a used EV. There are some brilliant bargains out there as a result, but until the talk of fires, failing batteries and other scuttlebutt is replaced with knowledge, the resistance to change will continue.
 
I think one of the reasons is that people are mistrustful of buying a used EV. There are some brilliant bargains out there as a result, but until the talk of fires, failing batteries and other scuttlebutt is replaced with knowledge, the resistance to change will continue.

I think cost is the biggest thing. How many second hand EVs are there out there that you can buy for under £10k and will do 250 miles on a full charge?

If you do that search on Autotrader, there's only one car in the entire UK for sale that meets that criteria: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-se...ry-range=OVER_250&sort=price-asc&year-to=2024

If you can live with a shorter range then as you say there's a lot of other distrust of the technology.
 
I think cost is the biggest thing. How many second hand EVs are there out there that you can buy for under £10k and will do 250 miles on a full charge?

If you do that search on Autotrader, there's only one car in the entire UK for sale that meets that criteria: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-se...ry-range=OVER_250&sort=price-asc&year-to=2024

If you can live with a shorter range then as you say there's a lot of other distrust of the technology.
To be fair, both of your criteria are somewhat arbitrary. Under £10k is a reasonable enough requirement, but 250 mile range isn't. The average mileage by motorists in the UK is 7,600 which is 20 miles a day. Granted, the average will likely include a few long trips, but that's what public charging is for.

The myths and disinfo definitely account for a lot of it. Not long after I got my EV, a neighbour called to my house. I got all the greatest hits: "It'll go on fire", "what will you do if you run out of power asad.", "battery will die", "what do you do if something goes wrong"

Answered by "20 times less likely than yours", "I won't, but if I do there's a little button on the ceiling that will get me a free lift to the nearest charging station", "battery is guaranteed for 8 years" and "same as yours, get it fixed, but there's a lot less to go wrong".
 
Oh I'm going to be the kill joy here .... Hydrogen powered vehicles will remain niche always always. It is super difficult to hold hydrogen in one place, is not very energy dense, needs cryogenics and super high pressure to store, it can diffuse through high strength steel, and makes the material brittle as it reacts with metals. Applies to pipes and everything involved with handling it. Oh and it's super dangerous with a leak. It can though be used if it's made on site and used in smaller amounts in vehicles that can then carry only small amounts.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S036031992300530X
 
Oh I'm going to be the kill joy here .... Hydrogen powered vehicles will remain niche always always. It is super difficult to hold hydrogen in one place, is not very energy dense, needs cryogenics and super high pressure to store, it can diffuse through high strength steel, and makes the material brittle as it reacts with metals. Applies to pipes and everything involved with handling it. Oh and it's super dangerous with a leak. It can though be used if it's made on site and used in smaller amounts in vehicles that can then carry only small amounts.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S036031992300530X

It's not even a great idea for home heating - this video features someone that has spent many years trying to make it work.

 
It's not even a great idea for home heating - this video features someone that has spent many years trying to make it work.


Very interesting. Especially the bit about it being a diversion. Lots of people talking about waiting for the hydrogen unicorn to appear over the horizon rather than adopt current available alternatives.
 
The myths and disinfo definitely account for a lot of it. Not long after I got my EV, a neighbour called to my house. I got all the greatest hits: "It'll go on fire", "what will you do if you run out of power asad.", "battery will die", "what do you do if something goes wrong"

Answered by "20 times less likely than yours", "I won't, but if I do there's a little button on the ceiling that will get me a free lift to the nearest charging station", "battery is guaranteed for 8 years" and "same as yours, get it fixed, but there's a lot less to go wrong".
I'm very well versed in all of those arguments. A member of my family is anti EV - on top of the items above he mentions that they are "too heavy", "require 'special' tyres", and my favourite "are unsafe because you can't hear them".

Of course he drives a plug in hybrid BMW X3, so it weighs nearly 2 tonnes, has ungodly expensive tyres and can run silent* when in EV mode. I've tried point out he's driving an EV strapped to an ICE car and it's waaay more complicated than a straight EV.

When you look under the bonnet of an EV you wonder where all the 'stuff' is, and then you realise how complex an ICE car really is.


* At anything above 20mph you'll hear the tyre roar from an ICE car before you'll hear the engine anyway.
 
I'm very well versed in all of those arguments. A member of my family is anti EV - on top of the items above he mentions that they are "too heavy", "require 'special' tyres", and my favourite "are unsafe because you can't hear them".
That reminds me of when I met friends of mine for lunch recently and they were telling me that they'd had to get new front tyres for their car (Corolla hybrid) after only 20k kms. When they asked, the fitter said it was probably due to the weight of the batteries.

I almost fell off my chair laughing. The Corolla hybrid has (I think) a 1.2kWh battery. Certainly less than 2kWh. 🤣
 

One for the EV haters -

Electric car fire statistics UK

EV fires aren't a common occurrence. According to Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions, 239 fires recorded in the UK from July 2022 to June 2023 were linked to EVs.

While this is an 83% increase year on year, it’s important to note the number has increased along with the increasing presence of EVs on our roads.

Meanwhile, according to Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, some 1898 fires in 2019 were from petrol and diesel vehicles and 54 were from EVs.

Another study by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency found that EVs are 20 times less likely to catch fire than ICE cars.

An additional study by that agency and an American insurer found that just 25 out of 100,000 EVs suffer fire damage.

By comparison, 1530 per 100,000 ICE cars experience fire, and hybrid vehicles suffer a much higher risk of 3475 per 100,000.



How much of a fire risk are electric vehicles? | Autocar
 
I really think the elephant in the room is battery life ,it's all well and good having an eight year warranty ,what happens after ? Would you buy one ? Based on ,my mobile phones ,battery power tools ,and laptops , eight years is about it . My last MacBook was supposed to be good for over 1200 charges ,just over 700 and the battery was done ,so what happens to your £40,000 Tesla ,etc if after a full charge it does about eighty miles ,not so cheap to run then is it ,and of course its worth just scrap value .
In our household at the moment ,we have a 11 plate BMW with 70,000 on the clock and i have a 13 plate Nissan Primastar with 76,000 on the clock , both should have years left in them if looked after , so really if you can afford a new electric car and change every three years ,great ,if not i think you are better off with ice.
 
I really think the elephant in the room is battery life ,it's all well and good having an eight year warranty ,what happens after ? Would you buy one ? Based on ,my mobile phones ,battery power tools ,and laptops , eight years is about it . My last MacBook was supposed to be good for over 1200 charges ,just over 700 and the battery was done ,so what happens to your £40,000 Tesla ,etc if after a full charge it does about eighty miles ,not so cheap to run then is it ,and of course its worth just scrap value .
In our household at the moment ,we have a 11 plate BMW with 70,000 on the clock and i have a 13 plate Nissan Primastar with 76,000 on the clock , both should have years left in them if looked after , so really if you can afford a new electric car and change every three years ,great ,if not i think you are better off with ice.
Your phone, laptop and power tools don't have sophisticated battery management systems. You also charge them to 100% every time you charge them. BEVs are mostly charged to 80 or 90% to preserve battery life and only to 100% when necessary for a long trip.

And BEV batteries consist of dozens if not hundreds of modules which can all be individually replaced without replacing the entire battery pack. There are specialist garages doing this all over the UK for a fraction of the cost of a complete pack. There are plenty of YT videos showing the procedure.

And batteries seldom fail, they degrade. There are thousands of 10 year plus Nissan Leafs out there as testament to this. And the early Leaf had probably the worst battery chemistry of all EVs. People have replaced the battery packs on some of those early Leafs and repurposed the originals for solar energy storage.
 
Are all these batteries lithium? Isn't that a rare mineral or something which is only found in a few places?
Nope. It's a rare earth metal. Not a rare metal. The only issue is extracting it is difficult and expensive. The largest deposits in Europe are in Germany and Portugal. But it's found all over the world.
 
Are all these batteries lithium? Isn't that a rare mineral or something which is only found in a few places?
There’s plenty of lithium, it’s more the other rare earths used in the battery like cobalt that tend to be the problem.

There is a cobalt free battery starting to be used in cars that gets around this problem though.
 
My last MacBook was supposed to be good for over 1200 charges ,just over 700 and the battery was done
As said above they are not the same.
As I have said one charge would probably last me two weeks so 24 x 80% charges a year my modern EV battery is going to last many many years.
 
There’s plenty of lithium, it’s more the other rare earths used in the battery like cobalt that tend to be the problem.

There is a cobalt free battery starting to be used in cars that gets around this problem though.
Yeah, Tesla are now using LiFePo4 (Lithium Ferrous Phosphate) batteries in their cars as are many Chinese manufacturers. I have one in my golf trolley. Cobalt and nickel free. The same technology is working its way in to laptops and mobile phones.
 

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