Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can’t make its operations work here.::The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can’t make its operations work here. All seven of its California stations will close immediately.
Looking forward to the upcoming Toyota announcement that they believe in the future of hydrogen more than ever
They also recently announced an anhydrous ammonia engine.
They really really don’t want to do an electric car. Anhydrous ammonia is insanely toxic. You ever spill a like a few drops of gas at the pump and get it on your pants or shoe? Annoying but not a big deal. Do that with anhydrous ammonia and you’ll be in the hospital.
As two major manufacturers double down on developing hydrogen cell cars.
The complaints about electric infrastructure not being ready for widespread adoption but people championing hydrogen cell just boggles my mind.
I was excited for hydrogen back in the day but it seems like we’ve known for years that it isn’t the way to go. Why is anyone still fucking with it? Do these cars get 2,000 mile range or something?
The problem we have is energy density. Gasoline is pretty damn dense energy-wise. Storing 20-30 gallons of gas in a tank That’s easy and safe to refill is hard to replace.
Lithium ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries are slow to refill.
Hydrogen is kind of neat. You can make it from splitting water with solar or nuclear. It’s also a byproduct of the oil industry. And you can fill a tanker up or even an entire train and move fuck ton of hydrogen from one place to another. You can pipe it, people can generated for themselves and get a byproduct of pure oxygen.
But alas, it’s still hydrogen. Give it access to the air in a little bit of fire and it makes a big boom. The infrastructure is very expensive to build out, and we’re not swimming so much and renewables then it makes sense to bottle it up and sell it to people.
It can make sense for limited uses like cross country trucking (or maybe airlines) where battery will probably never have the range and you live and die by the schedule and refuel stops need to be relatively quick. Refilling semis at a limited number of truck stops with hydrogen stations can be useful if you can also get non petro-derived hydrogen. But for soccer moms and commuters it makes zero sense. Just charge smaller batteries at home and work and have a good interstate charging network for longer trips. We just need to normalize taking breaks on a road trip. It’ll help make more relaxing drives anyway and people already drive angry.
I really wanted to see solar to hydrogen storage and then a hybrid fuel cell plus battery powerwall. Use all the solar that you get in the morning and not have to burn a battery pack out every 5 to 10 years.
You could do the same with the car, throw a small fuel cell plant in there a couple liters of hydrogen and a decent but not too big battery pack. When you park your car at work or at home it just sits there and slowly charges when you’re not paying any attention. If it gets into a true low state or you know you’re going to need it the next day to go further you can plug it into your home electric. It’s just absolutely reasonable to put enough solar on a lot of houses that you could be completely sufficient from the grid.
Yea it’s such a weird direction to go right night. Manufacturing and delivery of hydrogen for fuel cells is complex, expensive, and poses some unique dangers with the temps and pressure of the hydrogen. It’s cleaner, assuming manufacturing of the hydrogen uses green energy, but right now most energy production isn’t green.
It has its advantages but some pretty big disadvantages too. I don’t think it’s the way to go just yet. Maybe eventually but not today I don’t think.
I got the infrastructure argument when EV battery range sucked and charge times took hours. But now that EV range is getting close to gasoline cars, and charging can be done in minutes with a super charger, hydrogen doesn’t make much sense.
It could’ve been dope if only a company like Toyota made some desirable cars and built out a great station network.
What part of that confuses you? Hydrogen is better for cars VS batteries in every meaningful way in 2024. Long range, quick fill ups, zero harmful emissions, don’t need to live in SFH or rely on landlord/HOA to grant you the privilege of charging your car.
Hydrogen cell cars are electric cars that don’t rely on severely underdeveloped technology of batteries we have today.
And where are you gonna get the hydrogen from? You have any idea how power inefficient electrolysis is!?
https://www.airproducts.com/equipment/hydrogen-onsite-generators
Uhh there are tons of companies making these now. You can literally drop one of these in the middle of nowhere running off solar, pulling hydrogen from the atmosphere.
Yes. Do you have any idea how much energy we’re wasting because nuclear power plants produce way more than we need because they can’t scale easily or that most green energy generation is at the time people don’t actually need it? Hydrogen is a prefect storage solution for that power.
You’re mostly right. But I don’t agree on the last part. Hydrogen production can’t be done in your backyard. But electricity can (and I forgive you if have no backyard, these next few points may be less relevant if that is the case).
Unlike hydrogen, electricity production is affordable, scalable, and ubiquitous. And that small detail changes the benefits dramatically.
- The idea of being your own gas station, from the grid, or from your own solar, is really compelling. No one likes being at the mercy of fluctuating energy prices, or, as in this case, unreliable and scarce availability of fuel.
- Many people don’t like going to gas stations (e.g. women and personal safety). Totally doable outside of road trips.
- If you are generating your own electricity you will need batteries anyway. Might as well put wheels on them: two birds one stone.
- Even if you don’t generate your own power, you still want power security during outage. Since the battery is on wheels, you can drive it to a place that does have power to top up.
Again, I can see that these are less compelling points if you live in a super dense area and utilities and supply chain there are really dependable. But this is hardly the case everywhere.
And then there’s the build of the car itself. Honestly, I know nothing about it, but something tells me the simplicity of battery and electric motors makes those cars more practical to build, especially if the battery itself is commoditized as part of a complete electric grid solution.
Most people in the world cannot put solar panels on their roof today. Even if you exclude all the places people don’t own cars I still think my statement will be true.
Many people don’t like going to gas stations
Honestly, and I don’t want to sound selfish here, but never having to get out at a gas station in the middle of winter again is the biggest draw of an EV for me. Especially since I rarely drive more than about 60 miles.
You… actually can.
https://www.airproducts.com/equipment/hydrogen-onsite-generators
Lots of companies make stations like these. Granted they’re not cheap.
Sure. All that’s great.
But I’m talking about infrastructure, not technology.
Infra is result of people jumping on wrong tech. Batteries don’t belong in cars in their current state of development.
Wait what? How in the fuck could an HOA prevent you from charging your car or installing a charger inside your space? The charger lives inside your garage, so it doesn’t effect curbside appearance and isn’t within what they can control.
At absolute worst, if you have no garage and street parking, wouldn’t you just be running the cord over to your vehicle? Non-commercial charging stations aren’t normally weather proof, so that wouldn’t be outside, and again, none of their business. If they have an issue with an extension cord running across your lawn, or a cable slightly larger than a hose, then they’d have to make sane rules about how long it can be left out, like not just leaving it plugged in for a whole weekend straight. Otherwise they’re making it against the rules for people to use corded yard equipment or use a hose.
I might be missing something here, but I don’t see any way an HOA could do anything against it.
No offense, but your response means you’re either the luckiest person in the world and live in a utopian HOA or much more realistically have zero experience with the stupid fucking cancer that is currently infesting more and more properties.
It took me years of paying lawyers and dealing with some of the stupidest and most stubborn people on the planet to try to install a charger near my spot in a shared garage. At my expense and with all requirements met, it was still easier to move than convince those fucking assholes that we’re in 2020 and cars use electricity.
No HOA on this planet will let you just run a cord even if you don’t consider that this would likely restrict you to level one charging and expose you to power theft.
Not to mention all the ecological damage mining for battery components does. I’m with you, hydrogen is the way to go
Unfortunately they’re both death sentences. It’s either public transport or climate apocalypse.
I am well aware we are doomed.
Yes, they can. They just don’t want to.
It’s not hard to see what’s happening here: a company that is almost solely based upon selling petroleum-based fuel put down a few hydrogen stations, then gave up, stating “it’s just not feasible! Look, we tried! Looks like fossil fuels are the future! Oh well, tee hee!”
Very weak tea indeed.
Did they stop subsidizing Shells greenwashing?
No they’ve just been subsidizing an inferior technology (batteries might be better if we had room temperature superconductors, plus the hurdles for hydrogen are so much smaller and it doesn’t rely on digging hundreds of millions of tons of rare earth metals out of the ground just to replace all the vehicles on the road today)
No, hydrogen just requires processing methane. How superior!
Only cheaper in small volumes, not in every car everywhere volumes.
You can use the same electricity you’d use to charge an electric car to separate water, but basically you’re saving the problem of having to deliver that power to every supercharger station at the time of your convenience, which is the biggest hurdle.
I live in the area with the most electric cars of anywhere and our power costs have passed the point where $6/gallon gas in a regular car is actually cheaper per mile than charging a Tesla.
ALL the power infrastructure needs to be replaced to handle multiples higher demand just to keep up.
You can use the same electricity you’d use to charge an electric car to separate water,
With a huge power loss, even if you just look at the hydrogen production and not the transport, storage and maintenance of the specialised facilities necessary to distribute it.
Hydrogen is super inefficient compared to electric vehicles.
The same can be said about transporting and storing hydrogen. You can’t just use existing infrastructure. Hydrogen has to be kept under high pressure and it leaks out of most containers since it’s the smallest element on the periodic table. Not to mention the energy density per volume (compressed) is much lower than gas.
Making hydrogen through electrolysis is possible and we’ve all seen it in school but it is pretty inefficient if you compare storing energy in a lithium battery to making hydrogen from fresh water sources. Not to mention liquid hydrogen, after being generated and compressed, must be transported which uses huge amounts of energy. And even given that, it’s pointless to talk about green hydrogen when it’s less than 1% of global hydrogen production and even optimistic projections don’t show it growing that much in the following decade. It’s also old technology meaning there isn’t much room for improvement to the process, transportation and storage problems.
Hydrogen production is dominated by the fossil fuel industry because it is much more cost effective to extract it from coal and natural gas. Something like 6% of use of these fossil fuels currently go to hydrogen production.
I’m sorry where you live the power costs are so high. Hopefully things will improve with newer power infrastructure.
Didn’t they just do this to cloud the conversation on alternative fuels and the tech was never really viable? And to like, divert investment that could have otherwise gone to other more promising green technologies?
So what I’m hearing is, if I build my own electrolysis station driven by a solar panel array, there’s quickly going to be a glut of extremely cheap hydrogen cars coming out of So.Cal…
You have to build something they can handle 600 bar / 10.000 PSI. You don’t want to be standing close for your first test.
Wonder if Toyota will take back all those Mirais that will be stranded on the side of the road otherwise?
EVs, Hydrogen Cells, Vegetable Oil, all these alternatives are here to save one thing; The Car Industry. Sounds like the problem might be mode of transport rather than fuel.
Oh, come on, I live in Copenhagen and cycle daily, but even there, cars are not going anywhere. Smelly-smokey cars, yes, but not cars in general.
I dunno, man. I think it’s about time Copenhagen takes a good look at how The Netherlands has been doing things the past decade. Cycling infrastructure can do with a serious upgrade around here, and The Netherlands has proven that, yes, you totally can reduce the number of cars on the street.
It’s not the time to brag that The Netherlands have a better cycling infrastructure (that is actually debatable), the comment was about cars “going away completely”.
Yes, I don’t have a personal car, but recently I needed to haul a dining table and 6 chairs into my apartment. It took a Berlingo and two hours, and it would be a complete circus number even with a cargobike.
What is the argument here? Cars are here to stay forever and ever? Most daily commuters could get used to a train. It is possible for most people to live without a car, your city was just designed in a way that requires you to.
Most daily commuters could get used to a train
It’s definitely not “most”. You have to live and work near a train station for that to be viable option. It’s not about “getting used to” trains, it’s just for most commutes a train simply takes too long - because they don’t go directly to your destination.
In Denmark, which has one of the best transit networks in the world, only 13% of commuting is by public transport. 20% is by bicycle. Cars are 60%.
That’s the point, we can’t exactly just resign a city from the ground up to work with public transit especially when it’s not being pushed for by the majority
Yes but what is the alternative? Can civilians all have their own car when 10 million live in a city? What about 30 million? 100? It stops making sense the more people you have. And on top of that suppliers and transportation services use the same road, too. It is already like flying through the death star out here with half the road being eaten by transportation companies.
Well with the way the birthrates are going, I think population is going to stabilize.
Then you’re not looking.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/birth-rate
It is still going up just much more slowly. To say we shouldn’t worry about efficiency cause there will never be that many people disregards the benefits of unloading all of these personal costs to individuals. Vehicles are expensive on top of everything.
You know that link proves my point? It shows a steady decline in population so we’re actually going to have LESS people.
The higher the density of the city, the better public transit works. You can live in Tokyo or London and get by without a car, but everyone in the world can’t (or won’t) live in Tokyo-dense cities. It doesn’t make any financial sense building a subway in a city of only 100,000.
So what’s more practical, slowly replacing all ICE cars or completely redesigning entire cities, bulldozing large metro blocks to reconfigure and rebuild?
As I just commented. How many individuals can drive cars before congestion makes it impossible? 10 million people? 20? 30? The I-10 and 101 stack interchange is already a fucken mess that can’t be expanded. How do you handle exponentially more drivers on the road each year?
Edit: you don’t even have to answer cause we already know from California, you don’t. The rich people just pay pilots to fly them and the plebs get stuck in 2+ hour traffic to go 20 miles.
How many individuals can drive cars before congestion makes it impossible
It’s impossible to answer that - there are just too many other variables, such as how far are people travelling each day on average, how many of them are going to the same destination, how many roads are there (not how many lanes, how many roads), etc etc.
A lot of the problem can be mitigated with zoning rules to encourage people not to travel to the inner city. Whatever reason they might have to go to the CBD should also be available elsewhere in the city if at all possible.
The fact is trains also have traffic issues and that tends to get a lot worse as you increase the number of train lines in your city. The efficiency of train travel is in part because not many people use that mode of transport. Cities that have 10% of travel by train now probably can’t expand that to 80%.
Diversity is the only option. Give people access to every mode of transit, and let them pick the best one. I’m not from California so I don’t know the local issues, but looking at a map I-10 has six train lines that run basically parallel to it. Trains are clearly available so why are people choosing to drive? I’m sure they have a reason. Rather than trying to add more train lines, how about figure out why people are driving that route and tackle it from that perspective? What are they heading into LA for? Can it be done somewhere else?
I was talking more about where I live. In Arizona your options are car or a slow bus. The light rail only goes to the east side and inner city. You pretty much are forced to own a car and feed into that entire complex. Its bullshit and the congestion is getting exponentially worse each year. I’ve been voting in local elections for my lifetime and nobody cares. Guessing by this comment section everyone is content being forced to participate in the car market. So go ahead, be forced to buy insurance, tires, gas, and vehicle maintenance. Be forced to drive on crowded roads during early morning hours with thousands of others. Everyone loves it I guess. Instead of, maybe voting for public transit that is so reliable you can count on a tram or train every 30 minutes so we don’t have to spend multiple thousands of dollars on a vehicle to get to work and back.
As much as I’d like to use public transport, even with LA traffic on a Thursday (for those who don’t know, Thursdays are always the worst in LA), even when the 405 is a parking lot, taking the metro / bus is still at least 2x slower than driving. Yes I tried, it’s that ridiculous. There are a lot of ongoing projects to build and extend metro lines, new bike lanes, etc. but progress is very slow. As others have said, the whole metropolitan area was designed with cars, and only cars in mind.
I do keep hoping one of these will succeed though: we have many different things that move and need multiple solutions to kick our fossil fuel habit.
Walkable cities with train systems are ideal but will take decades to build out, plus at least in the US, we have predictions of people moving away from cities
Battery seems to have won best technology for personal transportation, whether scooters, bikes cars. However will take a couple decades, or more in the face of conservative resistance to change
But what about all those trucks, aircraft, construction and farming equipment, shipping, military vehicles? That’s a lot of fossil fuel usage and a lot of experiments but no solution in sight
clearly never lived in a rural setting
I’m clearly talking about cities. Where most people live.
I’ve been on the hydrogen bandwagon for years, but the fact of the matter is, E-Fuels and HVO Diesel is an actual, viable option now, especially with efficiency reaching ever higher numbers year after year. 5 Years ago, one liter of E-Fuel was around 3-4 Euros (projected), now it’s around 80 cents.
There is nothing cheaper than just changing out fossile fuels for sustainable and carbon neutral (maybe even carbon negative, because some company’s are already thinking about putting a part of the saved carbon in the ground for long term storage, because it’s going to be cheaper with co2 taxes to just put a part of that away for good) stuff and just using existing infrastructure.
The 25-30% of people that are going to be getting EVs are easily buffered with the existing grids.
As a petrol head, I’m keen to see e fuel that cheap but haven’t seen anything like less than than 1 euro. How much is porche doing it for now?
No idea, but HVO100 is around 1,82 Euros per liter where I fuel up and it’s considered an “E-Fuel”.
Porsche projects around 2 Euros per liter in 2025. By 2025 the fossile fuel prices are expected to be above that due to the co2 taxes. However, that’s not the “final” state of the plant, which is expected to be done by 2028 for 500 Million Liters a year. 2025 is 55 Million liters a year…
Isn’t the fuel carbon neutral? Or close to it?
HydrogenNatural Gasftfy.
