Re:Water Out of the Tailpipe: A New Class of Electric Car Ga...
by jerkstate on Monday July 25, 2016 @01:22AM
(#12156629)
I'm not an expert at any of this stuff and this math could very easily be wrong, but I just spent some time with Wolfram Alpha validating that claim. a 40,000 liter hydrogen truck can carry 425 gigajoules of liquid hydrogen; if it drives 500 miles, a diesel tractor trailer getting 5mpg would burn 100 gallons of diesel, that's 14 gigajoules of energy (now keep in mind that much hydrogen only weighs 3000kg - a typical load for a tractor trailer is 10000-20000kg) - if it was a fuel cell truck, it could be twice as efficient as an ICE so would only need 7 gigajoules. 7 gigajoules is 1.6% of the transported 425 gigajoules of energy. A state of the art HVDC transmission line loses 3.5% per 1000 km, so it seems like a hydrogen truck might actually be more efficient than wires.
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Re:Water Out of the Tailpipe: A New Class of Electric Car Ga...
by sdkjfwiluf on Monday July 25, 2016 @02:47PM
(#12160676)
what about locally-produced electricity ? If an electric car recharges on locally-produced electricity along its journey then we can eliminate transmission losses
Re:Water Out of the Tailpipe: A New Class of Electric Car Ga...
by jerkstate on Monday July 25, 2016 @04:31PM
(#12161406)
There are hundreds of what-ifs that influence which will be a better choice, IMO it's not clear cut that one technology is better enough for all situations that it'll crowd the other one out of the marketplace entirely.
Re:Water Out of the Tailpipe: A New Class of Electric Car Ga...
by sdkjfwiluf on Monday July 25, 2016 @02:43PM
(#12160644)
firstly, upvote for doing the calculations!
I wonder what happens when you factor-in maintenance, safety and production costs