I live near a hospital helicopter pad, and when I am outside I can smell the aviation fuel exhaust, its a weird notably different smell from anything else that is ICE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_Helicopters_(VH-YXJ),_operated_for_Ambulance_Victoria,_AgustaWestland_AW139_taxiing_at_Wagga_Wagga_Airport_(1).jpg
^Every time I see ^this quite huge hospital helicopter take off I wonder what is going to replace it, and the only answer that comes to mind is hydrogen. I still can't help but assume it will be fuel-cell based, because everyone loves electric only technology.
Even though various models of lithium-ion aircraft exist they aren't practical, just like like quad-copters the C-rate draw destroys the batteries after about 100cycles IMO to a level where it isn't safe to fly without a full permanent battery pack replacement.
Unless they really do come up with better lithium-ion battery technology I think it's literally wasteful to burn out lithium-ion battery packs for such a small amount of flying hours.
We can see the first pose of this thread "Nov 07 2007 2:32pm", that was https://howlongagogo.com/date/2007/november/7
13 years, 9 months, 23 days ago, we have seen so many exciting/promising looking posts on lithium-ion and nothing really came out of it, it's kind of remarkable, lithium-ion still hasn't got to the level where flying is practical.
We have all seen this many times, but for some reason a lot of people just don't understand that heavy discharge (like trying to fly) destroys battery cycles.
But I really think a lot of people expect something new to happen and now almost 14 years later it's "you'll see!".
Ianhill said:
Long video on hydrogen but very informativ, I like lord banfords take on hydrogen like he says copper prices fluctuate alot theres so much to consider
Yes, while I hope electric lithium-ion EVs take over the world I do agree or am a bit dubious of the entire world running via lithium-ion batteries, as this guy points out below, because of the price of metals.
https://youtu.be/wDKLoLUQgH0?t=731
And I don't even know which metal will go through the roof in costs, it could be any of them, either "copper/nickel/lithium/cobalt" that could be the only metal that doubles/triples and suddenly ruins the expected cost of the EV.
The only reason I have deduced such dubious view is because of living in Australia and seeing metal mining operations start up and die etc, this is because the mine runs out of easy/cheap to mine ore.
Sometimes the mine/refinery gets re-activated as prices go to new highs but it doesn't seem like an ideal model.
Because lithium-ion batteries require a lot of metals it seems likely that it will always be more expensive than combustion vehicles, as long as people are OK with the cost of a vehicle doubling etc then sure lithium-ion will no doubt take over for a while I would say.
I am dubious also of recycling keeping the price of lithium-ion batteries down, most scrap yard EVs get their batteries stripped and sold to 3rd party rebuyers/sellers. So the cells get sprinkled all over the price thus far more likely not to be recycled than some kind of super-master battery recycling system that gets back 98% of the cells that built in to EVs, I am thinking it will be more like 50% actually get properly recycled, because the cells are so useful they can be stripped down to a single cell and used as a torch light battery and thus likely to just be thrown away with regular garbage landfill.
Why I post a fair bit of Hydrogen stuff because the news seems far more promising in terms of seeing new things, sure Telsa/Elon Musk has done a truly fantastic job on EVs, but for me I am wondering whats next, where our the electric trucks/air-craft?
When I go to Fuel Cell Works site there is always new news and actually stuff being built. The claims are far more real, for instance today was this news.
Toyota North America to Assemble FuelCell Modules at Kentucky Plant in 2023-Initial plans are for use in heavy duty fuelcell electric hydrogen trucks
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/toyota-to-assemble-fuel-cell-modules-at-kentucky-plant-in-2023/
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/hydrogenpro-as-announces-purchase-order-from-mitsubishi-power-for-the-worlds-largest-single-stack-high-pressure-alkaline-electrolyser-system/
Seems like a lot of scientists are investigating storing hydrogen bonded to a nitrogen atom to make a ammonia compound which can be stored at far lower pressure as a compact liquid, and then using some kind of new membrane technology to detach the nitrogen atom to have pure hydrogen go into the fuel-cell engine. I guess because our air is about 80% nitrogen it wouldn't matter if it's released during the process (compared with co2 at 0.04%) or kept contained inside the vehicle.
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/novel-technique-seamlessly-converts-ammonia-to-green-hydrogen/
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-technique-seamlessly-ammonia-green-hydrogen.html
Toyota and Hyundai are big companies and they are spending a lot on hydrogen.
Hyundai are having a Tesla style "Hydrogen Wave Day" where on the 7th of September (1 week) they are having special reveals of their new hydrogen technology. Almost 1 million views, they have been promoting this hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eizqsmLjgtE
[youtube]eizqsmLjgtE[/youtube]
I think the logic of large car companies getting behind hydrogen is pretty simple, if EVs are going to cost double in general to ICE cars then they can make hydrogen fuel-cell just as affordable. The thing to always note is nothing will ever be as cheap as traditional ICE, but that's perfectly OK if all our governments are going to ban ICE.