Anon - not logged in Report This Comment
Date: December 07, 2024 05:47AM

Only the nouveaux rich buy a Tesla. It's heavy, does more damage to roads, wears out tyres faster, is short range and catches fire easily. Ten percent of its' battery is used up just by Sentry - that photographs any thing or one that comes near to it.

Hydrogen could be up and running by now - complete. It would use the same distribution system, the same size distribution system and just need more hydroelectric schemes, where you dam a stream or river (not pumped hydro). But the all electric fantasy is a political solution designed to fail, so in future there can be a new political solution, by a new leader, to rescue people from the crisis - it's a Gladstonian technique and creates constant failure. The excuses about cost (that I've heard) are lies by omission.

quasi Report This Comment
Date: December 09, 2024 12:00AM

I'm wondering how much energy is used to produce large quantities of hydrogen and what supplies the energy do so. But there's this for you:

[www.thedrive.com]

Anon - not logged in Report This Comment
Date: December 09, 2024 01:09AM

That think looks so ugly I'd never want to be seen in it. But good on them for the project.

I'm wondering how much energy is used to produce large quantities of hydrogen

Lots quasi. But if you have to import fuel, that's dead money, like rent money. If you can power it by hydro scheme, that's expensive to build but dirt cheap to run, and the western world can only prosper with cheap, plentiful electricity. That cheap power lowers hydrogen cost - using electrolysers.

A clever girl in an Australian university cracked how tree leaves separate hydrogen from oxygen. Now there are, last I heard, about 30 projects to do this on an industrial scale. None are larger than a postage stamp, each is dirt cheap to run but, like a tree leaf... slow.

I don't see why 900 units under the back seat can't run off a solar panel or the mains overnight, backed up by an onboard electrolyser and the current distribution system. Yes, the Saudis will simply pump more oil to lower its cost and "Maintain market share", that's where governments should come in. Instead we have the absolute farce of a solution designed to fail. The logic was announced by a former Australian politician, Joe Hockey: "The poor don't drive". That's the solution, they just need a problem it solves. This was before the virus.

That said, low weight batteries are being researched and, if they can be made to last practically forever and don't catch fire, that changes the dynamic: things that don't need replacing equals the build up of residual wealth.