Shell quietly pulls the plug on hydrogen in the UK

[Suff]

Shell has closed down all its hydrogen filling stations in the UK, saying “prototype tech had reached its end of life”.

It does go on to say that they are moving their focus to heavy vehicles which required different types of fuelling stations. However the first Tesla Semi trucks shipped in the US on Thursday. They have a 500 mile range fully loaded (36 tonnes), charge to 70% in 30 minutes and have a 0-60mph speed of 20 seconds fully loaded. They showed the fully loaded rig pulling up a 6% gradient and accelerating whilst overtaking a standard rig.

That 0-60 speed is only 4 seconds slower than my Peugeot 205 1.6 diesel from the 90's. This means more power to pull and less time lost on the roads for the trucking firms.

From later in the article.

According to Hydrogen Insight, only eleven public H2 refuelling stations now remain open in the UK compared to more than 57,000 public charging points for electric vehicles.

FYI, at the start of last year it was around 30,000 public charging points.

[cromwell]

A shame. I think we can't put all our eggs in one basket quite yet.

[Suff]

If you know the concept of compliance cars as virtue signalling, you would see that both hybrid and Hydrogen have been that.

Witness the fact that once the automotive industry realised the EU was serious and could not be deflected, they switched their efforts from majority hybrid to majority BEV. Because hybrid is short term tactical which cannot take away funds from full BEV.

Hydrogen was never anything more than compliance virtue signalling. The whole "its difficult but we are doing it" has sufficed for 2 decades now. But it is crunch time, put up or shut up.

This is where the catalyst of Tesla has worked. It has proven that profitable EV at multi million scale is feasible. Giving regulators the ability to block FF and hybrid.

As soon as that reality sank in, Hydrogen began being ditched fast.

The fuel being researched for truly large shipping now is Ammonia.

[Suff]

A better link with more deatil.

Only two hydrogen-powered car models have been sold in the UK — the Toyota Mirai and the Hyundai Nexo — resulting in total sales of 209 and 275 units, respectively

The Mirai went to production in 2014 and the Nexo in December 2018.

It is hardly surprising that Hydrogen garages can't continue in the UK. 484 cars over nearly 8 years is not quite the volume required. Whether trucks will be produced to create this demand is TBD. Right now only 3 companies have committed to FCEV trucks and one of those, Nikola, has been mired in scandal as the owner was convicted of fraud. So far the Tre which Nikola produce is only available in battery form and their first US Hydrogen hub will go live in 2024.

[cromwell]

The fuel being researched for truly large shipping now is Ammonia.

Crikey. You can't keep up.
It should sort out the problem of rats on board anyway, they hate the stuff.

Just read that you can burn it in ICE engines without any C02 emissions. Interesting.

[Suff]

Just read that you can burn it in ICE engines without any C02 emissions. Interesting.

You can but since it is NH3, the NOx problem is higher. Which is why it's being looked at for shipping rather than land vehicles.

The Paris Accord seems to have been a breakthrough in some ways. Countries have finally realised that they're going to have to shut down CO2 emissions and are now looking really hard for solutions. By binding Hydrogen with Nitrogen to make Ammonia they solve a lot of the Hydrogen storage and cryo problems.

These are just ideas for now. But there is serious work being done on it.

[cromwell]

This is a good article on things that the Australians are doing.

https://www.science.org/content/article ... out-carbon

[Suff]

Pretty much what is happening everywhere. All these processes have been virtually static since the turn of the century before last. ICE engines, chemical production, gas production.

What is happening is that all of these fields are being researched at the same time. Causing a lot of noise and confusion.

Meanwhile cars, vans and trucks will rapidly evolve to EV. Ships, planes, trains with no power lines, they will all need higher portable energy solutions. Power grids will need some form of storage for the energy and it will need to be higher than 40% efficiency. But they are working on it.

[Workingman]

Pretty much what is happening everywhere. All these processes have been virtually static since the turn of the century before last. ICE engines, chemical production, gas production.

And don't forget BEVs.

They were developed in the mid 1800s and by 1900 roughly one third of all cars in the US were BEV. Then came along the FF indudsfry and ICE began to take over, so PHEVs were devloped so that people could use them in town and in the open country. They all eventually died out in the 30s because they were more expensive to buy. It took nearly 100 years to resurrect them.

There is nothing new under the Sun (see their cost) and they are not a recent "invention" in any way, shape or form.

[Suff]

Actually the real difference with BEV today is the power density and the charge network.

Back at the beginning of the "mechanical horse" revolution, BEV was nothing more than a short haul town car. Outside of towns and cities nobody had power anyway.

The batteries were lead acid and their power density is extremely poor.

Modern EV utilise permanent magnets (new) and battery chemistry which is dramatically more power dense than lead acid.

True it is not totally "new" but it is modern enough to finally take over from the otto cycle engine.