If you can do that at a meaningful rate you might as well install ev charging and just not electrolyse when cars are charging

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b112 3 hours ago | parent [-]

He didn't say it doesn't have local tanks. Only that it makes h2 local. You can still make h2 to replenish, and have storage.

This is akin to how almost all power used to charge cars, is not-green. For example, there are still Ng, coal, and other types of power plants. If cars switched to gas, instead of electric charging, then some of those could be shut down.

But the true point, is as we convert to more and more solar, we'll eventually shut down the last of the fossil fuel burner plants, and eventually the cars will all be green power sourced.

Same with h2. Getting non-polling cars out the door and into people's hands, is key. Eventually, where the power comes from will be clean. And really, we're already having issues with power infra, even before AI, so re-purposing Ng pipelines for H2 would be a great thing.

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estimator7292 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We won't get rid of natural gas any time soon. Ng pipelines are not in any way similar to H2 pipelines except the word 'pipe'. You can't just put hydrogen in them. You can't even retrofit them. You're looking at laying an entirely new pipeline either way.

Furthermore, most H2 is produced by fossil fuel extraction. We aren't cracking water to get H2, we're pulling it out of the ground. Cracking water is hideously expensive.

All in all, combustion engines are more efficient than green hydrogen. That's the core problem. We simply don't have the absurd amounts of unused energy required for green H2 production. If we did, we'd be pumping fully half of that energy into the atmosphere as waste heat.

Hydrogen cars aren't going to happen. We won't have grid-scale hydrogen. It's just a terrible idea. Hydrogen is too difficult to handle and incredibly dangerous to store. The efficiency is so ludicrously bad that you would genuinely do better to create syngas from captured atmospheric carbon and burn it in regular combustion vehicles.

Avoiding carbon emissions is not the only concern in regards to the climate. Focusing on carbon and nothing else leads you to really dumb and bad ideas like piping hydrogen gas across the continent.

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fsh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is not quite true. The original gas pipes in most cities were built for "town gas" which was produced from coal and is 50% hydrogen by volume. The infrastructure could handle hydrogen just fine, but the low conversion efficiencies make it impractical.

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b112 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

h2 can be co-mingled with Ng and extracted with a molar filter at the other end.

Ng pipelines are everywhere, so it makes perfect sense.

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adastra22 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

None of the pipes or valves are designed for hydrogen. It will steal leak. And leaking a very flammable gas isn’t great.

	▲	mike50 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Let alone the compressors or the flow measurement equipment. Also significant portions of the pipesline (especially in neighborhoods / last mile) aren't metal anymore.

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reamaer 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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