Electric vs Hydrogen

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

What are the Pros & Cons of these propulsion systems?

From what I can see online Hydrogen buses certainly have a larger range but electric buses take longer to charge than to refill a hydrogen bus as well as the electric range not that great.

However, Wrights Electroliner EV apparently can reach 300miles on a charge, that seems fairly respectable for the largest battery pack they offer.

Also, with the Volvo BZL bodied by MCV and Scania also in the works for EV power, are many operators currently jumping a little too early as the competition heats up in the market? All Glasgow has is ADL products with an apparent range of up to 160 miles.

Reliability of Electric vs Hydrogen Buses, is there a comparison there?

 

[carlberry]

What are the Pros & Cons of these propulsion systems?

From what I can see online Hydrogen buses certainly have a larger range but electric buses take longer to charge than to refill a hydrogen bus as well as the electric range not that great.

However, Wrights Electroliner EV apparently can reach 300miles on a charge, that seems fairly respectable for the largest battery pack they offer.

Also, with the Volvo BZL bodied by MCV and Scania also in the works for EV power, are many operators currently jumping a little too early as the competition heats up in the market? All Glasgow has is ADL products with an apparent range of up to 160 miles.

Reliability of Electric vs Hydrogen Buses, is there a comparison there?

Hydrogen will win with range at present, however as it requires electricity to produce it for most curent applications the end result is something that needs more electricity per mile than a vehicle that just uses electricity directly.

 

[CN04NRJ]

Also, with the Volvo BZL bodied by MCV and Scania also in the works for EV power, are many operators currently jumping a little too early as the competition heats up in the market? All Glasgow has is ADL products with an apparent range of up to 160 miles.

'Apparent', they're not achieving that with most (all?) operators in real life operating conditions.

 

[cnjb8]

I still fail to see how any of these buses will work routes like Lincolnshire Interconnect and Excel. Range needs to be improved significantly

 

[MotCO]

Range is even an issue in London. The tender for route 358 (Orpington to Crysal Palace) was let over two years ago on the basis of electric buses, but none on the market had sufficient range for an intensive service operating about 20 hours a day. The solution was to buy Irizar le Tram buses with overhead charging at the terminii, although these buses have yet to materialise.

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

Range is even an issue in London. The tender for route 358 (Orpington to Crysal Palace) was let over two years ago on the basis of electric buses, but none on the market had sufficient range for an intensive service operating about 20 hours a day. The solution was to buy Irizar le Tram buses with overhead charging at the terminii, although these buses have yet to materialise.

Opportunity Charging you mean?

 

[Jordan Adam]

I still fail to see how any of these buses will work routes like Lincolnshire Interconnect and Excel. Range needs to be improved significantly

Range isn't really a problem for Hydrogen to the same extent that it is for batteries, especially when you consider a Hydrogen bus can be refuelled in about 10 minutes. With that being said Wright's new Kite Hydroliner has a claimed range of up to 640 miles, which i'd imagine is significantly better than most standard diesel buses and certainly impressive if it proves to be true.

The solution was to buy Irizar le Tram buses with overhead charging at the terminii, although these buses have yet to materialise.

That'll be opportunity charging. The Volvo 7900E's at Stagecoach West Scotland and Transdev Harrogate use this method as such they have less battery capacity with a range of only around 100 miles. The downside of this approach is that recharging the batteries more frequently causes them to downgrade faster.

Reliability of Electric vs Hydrogen Buses, is there a comparison there?

The parts on Hydrogen buses that tend to fail are parts that are shared on electric/diesel buses so a fair comparison can't really be made. For example the 10 Hydrogen Vanhool A330s that operated in Aberdeen from 2015 to 2020 were notorious for constantly breaking down and spending lots of time off the road, you'd be lucky if more than half were in service at once. However the unreliability of them was completely unrelated to the Hydrogen aspect which was actually reliable.

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

Range isn't really a problem for Hydrogen to the same extent that it is for batteries, especially when you consider a Hydrogen bus can be refuelled in about 10 minutes. With that being said Wright's new Kite Hydroliner has a claimed range of up to 640 miles, which i'd imagine is significantly better than most standard diesel buses and certainly impressive if it proves to be true.

That'll be opportunity charging. The Volvo 7900E's at Stagecoach West Scotland and Transdev Harrogate use this method as such they have less battery capacity with a range of only around 100 miles. The downside of this approach is that recharging the batteries more frequently causes them to downgrade faster.

The parts on Hydrogen buses that tend to fail are parts that are shared on electric/diesel buses so a fair comparison can't really be made. For example the 10 Hydrogen Vanhool A330s that operated in Aberdeen from 2015 to 2020 were notorious for constantly breaking down and spending lots of time off the road, you'd be lucky if more than half were in service at once. However the unreliability of them was completely unrelated to the Hydrogen aspect which was actually reliable.

I have heard that it is quite a bit cheaper though to power an electric bus than to use hydrogen?

 

[edwin_m]

I have heard that it is quite a bit cheaper though to power an electric bus than to use hydrogen?

As someone posted above, it's considerably more efficient to put electricity into a battery and out again than to use it to create hydrogen and then use that hydrogen in a fuel cell. So the hydrogen option will use more electricity. Equipment is also needed to produce "green" hydrogen by electrolysing water.

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

As someone posted above, it's considerably more efficient to put electricity into a battery and out again than to use it to create hydrogen and then use that hydrogen in a fuel cell. So the hydrogen option will use more electricity. Equipment is also needed to produce "green" hydrogen by electrolysing water.

Team Lecky all the way for me then.

 

[scosutsut]

I think your choices are:

Hydrogen
Pros - range, expected longevity of drivetrain, quicker refueling
Cons - initial cost, less efficient in energy use, environmental impact / cost of blue/green hydrogen generation, Less choice on market

Battery
Pros - lower outset cost, more choice on market, more efficient energy use
Cons - lower range, battery life and cost / range implications, battery construction not exactly environmentally friendly, charging time versus service time

I'm personally not convinced on battery at all for buses, but it is the most mature technology available right now and the cheapest way to not buy diesel so I'm not surprised it's selling.

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

Are there less or more mechanicals parts to either one?

I’d imagine a hydrogen vehicle would be more mechanically complex in the event of some sort of failure.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

If a route is going to be pretty much permanent and high frequency, the best option is probably trolleybuses- not only do the vehicles not have to waste energy dragging their power source with them, but the investment in infrastructure means your user-base will know that the service won't be withdrawn at the whim of a new mayor or council. A regular bus (however it's powered) is not something that can be depended on when buying a house in a given area.

 

[Jordan Adam]

Are there less or more mechanicals parts to either one?

I’d imagine a hydrogen vehicle would be more mechanically complex in the event of some sort of failure.

Not really, the only difference is one has batteries and the other has a fuel cell. In terms of propulsion they're the exact same. I'd say batteries are more prone to failure since they degrade over time and need replaced around the midlife stage whereas a Fuel Cell doesn't and will last the full lifetime of the vehicle. As mentioned already the least reliable parts on Hydrogen buses tend to be the non-Hydrogen bits. Battery electrics do cost less to run day to day however much of that saving is lost when you factor in the cost of battery replacement and of course you have the environmental impact of the production and disposal of the batteries themselves.

I think your choices are:

Hydrogen
Pros - range, expected longevity of drivetrain, quicker refueling
Cons - initial cost, less efficient in energy use, environmental impact / cost of blue/green hydrogen generation, Less choice on market

Battery
Pros - lower outset cost, more choice on market, more efficient energy use
Cons - lower range, battery life and cost / range implications, battery construction not exactly environmentally friendly, charging time versus service time

I'm personally not convinced on battery at all for buses, but it is the most mature technology available right now and the cheapest way to not buy diesel so I'm not surprised it's selling.

Hydrogen vehicles are not really that new of a technology, it's just that it's only in the past few years that governments have really started to wake up to the potential Hydrogen has. When government subsidies are included the overall cost of Green Hydrogen currently is comparable to that of diesel, as with anything as it becomes more common / widespread the costs will come down and efficiency will improve. Lets not forget it took well over 50 years before the car become affordable to the middle class, i think people often do forget that, new technology does thankfully move much faster now.

Battery-Electrics are more popular currently but i don't really see them as the long term solution, they're more of a stop gap in the same way Diesel-Electric Hybrids were 10-15 years ago. The only potential game changer is if solid state batteries become feasible, but that seems a long way off if it does happen and it still think they'd be unable to match the convenience of a Hydrogen powered vehicle.

If a route is going to be pretty much permanent and high frequency, the best option is probably trolleybuses- not only do the vehicles not have to waste energy dragging their power source with them, but the investment in infrastructure means your user-base will know that the service won't be withdrawn at the whim of a new mayor or council. A regular bus (however it's powered) is not something that can be depended on when buying a house in a given area.

Trolleybuses were maybe an answer in the past but they really don't make any sense now unless the infrastructure is already there. Battery and Hydrogen technology combined have made Trolleybuses obsolete as they offer far greater operational flexibility. I don't really buy the argument about user-base and infrastructure and it highlights the main issue with trolleybuses/trams - they struggle to adjust to changing travel patterns. If an operator has to withdraw a service then it clearly isn't carrying enough passengers, surely in such a case it would be better to operate it with battery electric or hydrogen buses which don't require such extensive infrastructure along the route and be easily reallocated to another corridor? There's no point running a bus service purely for the sake of running it.

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

Even though battery propulsion has matured more quickly.

If Solid State battery tech was to improve on to a significant scale surely this gives it a significant advantage in term of the power needed minus the weight caused by large lithium packs.

What is a Solid-State Battery for an Electric Car?

A solid-state battery is a rechargeable energy storage system similar in overall structure and operation to the more familiar lithium-ion battery. The two differ in that a lithium-ion battery contains a liquid electrolyte while a solid-state battery features a solid one.

www.jdpower.com

 

[edwin_m]

Not really, the only difference is one has batteries and the other has a fuel cell. In terms of propulsion they're the exact same. I'd say batteries are more prone to failure since they degrade over time and need replaced around the midlife stage whereas a Fuel Cell doesn't and will last the full lifetime of the vehicle. As mentioned already the least reliable parts on Hydrogen buses tend to be the non-Hydrogen bits. Battery electrics do cost less to run day to day however much of that saving is lost when you factor in the cost of battery replacement and of course you have the environmental impact of the production and disposal of the batteries themselves.

However, a fuel cell vehicle normally needs to be hybridised with a battery, because it doesn't cope well with the peaks of power needed when accelerating. This would be a much smaller battery than in a battery vehicle though.

 

[The Ham]

The problem with Hydrogen is almost none of it is green hydrogen and to get to the point where we've replaced existing hydrogen production by green hydrogen (worldwide) we'd need the same electricity production as the whole of the EU.

As such increasing our use of hydrogen isn't actually likely to be very green for quite some time, not unless we start to see significant increases in green hydrogen.

Whilst blue hydrogen is better than grey, it's still not great and there's only so much carbon capture that we'll be able to deliver in the short term and given that there's a need for it for other reasons as well (i.e. all the other things which we still need to do but can't decarbonise easily, shipping, flying, steel production, etc.).

Hydrogen isn't all that good of you've got to move it about. If you want to use it as a energy storage it's much more efficient to convert it back to electricity than it is to use it as a fuel.

That's not to say that we'll not see it being used, it's just that if it's possible not to use it then chances are (even with the issues regarding battery production and recycling, or lack there of) EV is likely to be better.

Of course direct power users less energy than battery power, so it maybe that is the way to go. Maybe with smaller batteries to get between the gaps.