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Transportation

Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Fueling Stations (insideevs.com) 172

Shell once announced it would build 48 new Hydrogen fueling stations for light-duty vehicles in California, according to the blog Hydrogen Insights. But then in September, Shell told the site they'd "discontinued" that plan.

And last month the Inside EVs blog noted that in all of 2023, just 2,968 hydrogen cars were sold "in the United States — and by that, we mean in California, where the series-produced models are available." That's according to data from the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership — admittedly a 10% increase from 2022's sales figure of 2,707 — but with both numbers lower than 2021's sales of 3,341. "The overall cumulative sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles exceeded 17,940 as of the end of the quarter (not counting vehicles removed from use), which is 20% more than a year ago."

Then this week Shell said it will "no longer be operating" any light-duty hydrogen fuelling stations in the U.S., and will close all seven of its California pumping stations immediately. (Three in San Francisco, one in Berkeley, one in San Jose, and two in the Sacramento area.) Inside EVs says Shell's move "represents another blow to the struggling hydrogen car market in the only state where the fuel is widely available at all." Shell had, until recently, operated seven of the 55 total retail hydrogen stations in California, per the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership (H2FCP). That makes this a blow, but not apocalyptic news for the (small) hydrogen community....

In the letter announcing the closure, Shell Hydrogen Vice President Andrew Beard said they were shutting them down "due to hydrogen supply complications and other external market factors." It's not hard to see what Beard is referencing here... Hydrogen Insight reports that this shortage has been disrupting stations since August 13...

Some are also down for repairs, as many hydrogen stations suffer from serious reliability issues. Iwatani, a Japanese gas company that is one of the two largest names in American hydrogen filling stations, is currently suing the company that provided the core technology for its stations. In a court filing viewed by Hydrogen Insight, Iwatini alleges that its provider did not test its equipment in a real-world commercial scenario, hid defects, and misled the company. It is, in short, a big mess.

All of this makes the future of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the United States even more uncertain. The technology has struggled to catch on, as the stations and their fuel remain expensive. Though hydrogen car manufacturers usually include a large amount of free fuel in the purchase of a vehicle, once that runs out consumers are left with eye-watering prices from stations that are often broken, out of fuel, or swarmed with long lines. It's why used hydrogen cars are so cheap, and why they still aren't a good deal.

Few companies can make a better case for it than Shell, though, as the cheapest way to produce hydrogen involves a lot of natural gas. Its proximity to the fossil-fuel industry was supposed to make it cheaper, and provide incentive for robust fueling infrastructure. That hasn't played out, though, and one of the largest oil giants is throwing in the towel. If even a fossil giant like Shell can't justify investing in the future of light-duty hydrogen infrastructure, we're not sure who can.

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Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Fueling Stations

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  • by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @10:45AM (#64231926)

    All of this makes the future of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the United States even more uncertain.

    No, I think it's been pretty certain that hydrogen powered vehicles don't have a future for some time now. More conventional batteries have quite definitively beat fuel cells and hydrogen.

    Too bad. I had hopes for a while that fuel cells powered by more easily handled fuels (methane, ethane, butane, methanol, ethanol) as fuel might work but apparently not. No one has even mentioned them in 20 years.

    • Conventional batteries have found niches, where they can't compete with fossil fuel they mostly are non solutions entirely. Take away fossil fuel and you are left with no solutions.

      Hydrogen is for net zero.

      • Hydrogen isn't net zero, not today. We mostly make it from methane and I assume thar leads to venting CO2. I can imagine that nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and (fracked) geothermal might eventually replace fossil fuels. Maybe. And it doesn't sound cheap.
      • by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Hydrogen is a failure every where it has been tried, even spacecraft are moving away from it. Fueling station problems that aren't going away, fuel cell problems, often contamination that leaves hydrogen powered buses in the yard half the time and bus companies getting rid of them as soon as the government funds stop. As well as the well known storage, metal britlement etc problems.
        Much better to make other types of fuel for the situations such as flying where a liquid fuel is ideal. Even methane created w

    • Really? The only problem most people care about with batteries ia time to charge, pretty sure hydrogen is better at that. I can buy two wireless headphones increase i need them longer than the charge and I do, but can't do that with a car. I didn't use smartphones much until they could last well over a day of heavy use.
      • > Really? The only problem most people who have no personal experience with EV ownership care about with batteries ia time to charge

        Fixed that for you...

          > I can buy two wireless headphones increase i need them longer than the charge and I do, but can't do that with a car

        How many hours a day do you drive?
        =Smidge=

        • So you buy expensive things and then determine that they don't work for you? You expect me to take that seriously?

          That's the wrong question. The correct question is how many hours a day might i need to drive in the future and the answer is i don't know. I have had situations occur where i have had to drive 12 hour days so i would be wise to have a car that can do it.
          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            That's the wrong question. The correct question is how many hours a day might i need to drive in the future and the answer is i don't know. I have had situations occur where i have had to drive 12 hour days so i would be wise to have a car that can do it.

            I have had situations where I need to transport a piano across the country. By your logic, it would be wise for me to own a moving truck.

            Or I could, you know, rent a car when I'm doing something two or three standard deviations from my normal behavior like most people do.

    • by jonwil ( 467024 )

      If fuel cells made sense as a power source for road vehicles, someone would have figured it out by now (the technology has been around since the 60s if not earlier).

      They make great electrical power sources for spacecraft (NASA has used them since the 60s) but they can't beat either internal combustion or batteries as a power source for road vehicles.

  • This is one of the most clear cases I can think of, other than most dot-com startups from the '90s, where even a back-of-the-napkin due diligence review of the business plan would show that the operation would never be competitive.

    And that includes the fact that, as far as I can recall, I never saw anyone write about the reliability of the equipment itself.

    • This is one of the most clear cases I can think of, other than most dot-com startups from the '90s, where even a back-of-the-napkin due diligence review of the business plan would show that the operation would never be competitive.

      And that includes the fact that, as far as I can recall, I never saw anyone write about the reliability of the equipment itself.

      Your first statement is spot-on. In addition to the business plan, there is the fact that hydrogen by itself is not a good fuel, and fuel cells for transportation have problems all of their own.

      It's the age of 3-D animation, an authoritative narrator, allowing people who have no technical acument to suddenly become geniuses, and to belittle and attack anyone who dares to question the white paper. We end up dealing with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      Trigger alert - it's a Thunderfoot video, whi

  • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

    Hydrogen as a fuel is a stupid proposition to me still. I don't need effort and money wasted on it at this point.

    And let's be honest. from THAT part it wasn't ever going to be more than lip service anyway. "Look, everyone, we're doing SOMETHING! We're not the bad guys, see?"

    Something interesting was brought to my attention in a youtube comment. Yeah, I was shocked, too. That person's argument was that if we turned our life around this isntant and stopped burning dead dinosaurs in lieu of hydrogen... what im

    • Water vapor is really not a big comparative problem with hydrogen because it's not like gasoline cars don't produce water vapor. On cold mornings you will literally see the condensed water dripping (and/or pouring) out of tailpipes. It's all the other things, like producing it and storing it.

      Agreed that hydrogen is suited towards stationary applications. Also, it might make sense for some military use.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Hydrogen as a fuel is a stupid proposition to me still.

      It wasn't if you were to believe that solar/wind power could be used for the electrolysis and cryogenic storage of hydrogen. But that never came to be.

      • It wasn't if you were to believe that solar/wind power could be used for the electrolysis and cryogenic storage of hydrogen. But that never came to be.

        No it still is. Hydrogen presents an insane risk for storage and transportation. The idea of hydrogen was to replace gasoline, that means replacing fuel stations, that means storage bullets of one of our most volatile gasses in built up areas.

        I'm working on a hydrogen project now, a fuel station. We imposed a siting requirement that it is 300m away from any commercial or residential building. That's how to safely build hydrogen refuelling stations. Do you think people would be happy with their hydrogen vehi

    • p>Something interesting was brought to my attention in a youtube comment. Yeah, I was shocked, too. That person's argument was that if we turned our life around this isntant and stopped burning dead dinosaurs in lieu of hydrogen... what impact would all that water vapor have on our climate?

      Quick answer is: no effect.

      Water vapor condenses and leaves the atmosphere in the form of rain.

      The main determinant of water vapor content of the atmosphere is temperature (Keep in mind, we have 150 million square miles of ocean directly exposed to the atmosphere that evaporates more quickly if the temperature rises, and more slowly when the atmosphere is cooler.)

      But, directly injecting water vapor in the atmopshere? No, not a problem; it condenses out. So you can rest easy about that one particular thing,

  • Anyone know *how* the fossil fuel industry can produce hydrogen so cheaply?

    CH3 + H2O -> 2H2 + CO2

    That's how.

    Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.

    • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @11:01AM (#64231974) Homepage

      The argument is that hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis, and this is a well known technology, so if we had the infrastructure to use it, it would be easy to evolve this into a solar-powered transportation infrastructure.

      The good thing is that it's a great fit for solar power; you produce hydrogen when you have excess energy, and don't when you don't. The bad news is that hydrogen is really a terrible fuel for vehicles, because the storage density is so lousy.

      It was a dumb idea from the start.

    • Anyone know *how* the fossil fuel industry can produce hydrogen so cheaply?

      CH3 + H2O -> 2H2 + CO2

      That's how.

      Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.

      What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford? WW2 era German synthetic fuel? Coal? Wood gas? Prayer? Folding the tents and reverting to horse drawn technology?

      Not one of the methods of propulsion are some sort of everlasting and perfect solution, not even the god of fuels, petrochemicals.

      Hydrogen as a fuel sucks, Fuels like diesel and gasoline have incredible energy density - doesn't get much better than those fuels. But just shitting on everything else as a fai

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford?

        Fermentation/distillation of various agricultural inputs to produce ethanol. Diversion of various vegetable oils to produce bio-diesel.

        We'll just have to keep people from eating our motor vehicle fuels.

        • What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford?

          Fermentation/distillation of various agricultural inputs to produce ethanol. Diversion of various vegetable oils to produce bio-diesel.

          We'll just have to keep people from eating our motor vehicle fuels.

          I suspect that was tongue in cheek. But if not. Assuming that there will be more war - killing other humans is a core competency - is the plan to have people stave to death to feed the war machines?

          Even so, we are depleting a lot of land resources just to feed all 8 billion of us. Attempting to e service an economy where it is a mark of patriotism to drive 10 mpg Pickup trucks is almost certainly not goiing to allow the patriots to roll coal - or will it be rolling french fries?

          And funny, the so called

      • I'm at Red Lobster, eating the free cheddar biscuits. You keep bringing plates of shit to the table and each time I tell you those plates are shitty and I'll stick with the cheddar biscuits.

        It doesn't mean I think the cheddar biscuits will continue forever or are a complete balanced diet. It just means everything else you've offered is shit.

        • I'm at Red Lobster, eating the free cheddar biscuits. You keep bringing plates of shit to the table and each time I tell you those plates are shitty and I'll stick with the cheddar biscuits.

          It doesn't mean I think the cheddar biscuits will continue forever or are a complete balanced diet. It just means everything else you've offered is shit.

          You took a lot of words to say that you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself.

          But that does happen a lot - A friend who was a die hard Trumper, had this to say about energy. "Fuck people in the future, I don't give a fuck about people - they can fuck off and die. Not my problem. I want my fuel, I want it now, I want it cheap, and I don't give a fuck about anyone else."

          In keeping with his outlook, when he died of alcohol induced liver problems - we didn't attend or honor him.

          • I suggest you give all your life savings to cancer research immediately. Donate your house too. No? Don't you care about people dying of cancer? The whole point is that there are limits people can be expected to go to save other people.
      • What is your plan after petrochemicals become more expensive than people can afford

        Assuming that this happens naturally as opposed to by political diktat, my answer is that people will steer themselves toward alternatives that suit their needs. Some of that will be all electric, some will involve synthetic hydrocarbons, and some of that may be something I can't imagine right now, like a new technology or a voluntary cultural shift.

        Point being it's going to happen more efficiently and more durably as a result of the wisdom of gradual distributed decision-making and innovation rather than b

    • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @11:31AM (#64232016)

      Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.

      Sure, as soon as gasoline cars also start accounting for all the emissions the surveying, extraction, refining and transport of the gasoline make up and put that into the price and emissions ratings at the pump.

      No carbon tax means all energy sources are "a scam" not just the ones you don't like because of politics.

    • Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.

      A battery EV charged by a coal power plant has an overall efficiency of a post-2019 ICE car working in perfect condition.
      A battery EV charged by the power grid has an overall efficiency greatly exceeding the theoretical maximum efficiency or an ICE engine.

      At least you picked a suitable name for yourself.

    • Shell is building a huge electrolysis plant in Rotterdam, to produce 60,000kg of hydrogen per day. Mostly for use at their refineries there, but they plan to eventually supply hydrogen for vehicles as well. The problem remains that hydrogen, even the cheap stuff produced with natural gas, is still significantly more expensive than gasoline, even here in the Netherlands where gas is around €2/l (€7,50/gallon)
      • by ukoda ( 537183 )
        How far along is it? Will the Rotterdam team look at the California team's experience and rethink things? Will it ever get finished? If it does go online how long until it is mothballed as being uneconomic? It will be worth watching what actually happens with the project.
    • Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.

      No. Both heatpumps and EVs are far more efficient and have lower lifetime emissions even if you power them from coal and oil. You're just ignorant.

      Anyone know *how* the fossil fuel industry can produce hydrogen so cheaply? CH3 + H2O -> 2H2 + CO2

      Is this the same fossil fuels industry that is investing an insane amounts of of money in hydrogen electrolysis, including at refineries where they want to turn SMRs into load followers rather than primary hydrogen generators? You're just ignorant.

    • by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      > Same scam as electric cars' or heat pumps' mileage and emissions and efficiency figures being quoted at the plug, not at the generating station.

      Nearly all heating in my province is pure electric. A heat pump takes less electricity to produce the same amount of heat as an electric heater. Nearly everybody is going to have an air conditioner anyway, and heat pumps have only a small additional cost (if any) over an air conditioner. How is that anything other than a pure win?

    • H2 vehicles are a scam, many of us have been saying so frequently all along, myself among them.

      Electric vehicles are greener than ICEVs even in the really real world now, especially if you use LFP batteries (oh noes 5% less range)

      There is a real need for more fast charging stations in general, but otherwise EVs are pretty good. Battery DRM is also offensive, we need to fix that.

  • Trucking can deal with less fuel station density (see cryogenic methane) so it suffers far less from chicken and egg problems. Once the infrastructure for that exists, hydrogen range extenders for light duty vehicles can piggy back on it. For when you want to tow your boat cross country.

    For all the accusations of overoptimism on the part of hydrogen trucking, the EV side are hopelessly optimistic about future charging infrastructure too. For EV trucks to charge during mandatory breaks, you need multi-MW of

    • Trucking can deal with less fuel station density (see cryogenic methane)

      cryogenic methane is 111.7 Kelvin. Hydrogen liquidus point is 20 Kelvin.

      They are not even vaguely the same problem.

      • Material wise, not the same problem. Insulation wise, pretty close really.

        • Material wise, not the same problem. Insulation wise, pretty close really.

          Insulation wise, not even close. A factor of five in temperature (absolute) makes a big difference in heat leak.

          and the factor of 6 difference is density is significant.

          • You are dividing from the wrong side. For thermal conductance the difference between room temperature and storage temperature is what matters.

            So 280/190 ~= 1.5 more heat leaking in for the same insulation. As I said, pretty close.

    • Trucking can deal with less fuel station density (see cryogenic methane) so it suffers far less from chicken and egg problems. Once the infrastructure for that exists, hydrogen range extenders for light duty vehicles can piggy back on it. For when you want to tow your boat cross country.

      For all the accusations of overoptimism on the part of hydrogen trucking, the EV side are hopelessly optimistic about future charging infrastructure too. For EV trucks to charge during mandatory breaks, you need multi-MW of charging and that will mean truck stops will need either massive grid connections or massive battery banks. The capital expenditure to build out EV trucking outside of short haul, frequent stop niches are equally as eye watering as hydrogen cost.

      I agree short haul is best near term, but long haul right now assumes you use the same tractor on a trip. A trucking company could very well have spare tractors so driver pulls I, starts recharge and pulls of in different tractor. That then becomes a scheduling issue to minimize wait times and number of backup tractors. Trailers could also evolve to have batteries to extend range. If the costs of alternate solutions is less than that of current solution the industry will evolve. The challenge for hydrog

    • Trucks can reasonably accommodate battery swaps, because the frame is easily accessible. Leasing access to charged batteries is especially reasonable for fleets. Heavy trucks and even some buses (though full frame transit buses are all but extinct) could easily use swapped batteries. This could make EV trucking a lot more feasible.

    • hydrogen range extenders

      Those aren't going to happen because it requires energy just to keep the hydrogen compressed.

      The other thing is that you miss out on the big advantage requiring minimal amounts of maintenance that you get from battery EVs.

      For all the accusations of overoptimism on the part of hydrogen trucking, the EV side are hopelessly optimistic about future charging infrastructure too.

      This presumes that long-haul trucking will remain unabated. The truth is automation could replace truckers or trains could supplant them. Never say never.

      • Yes, it requires energy to keep hydrogen liquid at ambient pressure (you don't let it pressurise, because then it becomes a supercritical fluid, for which all those scary "heats up while evaporating" scare stories are true, but which aren't actually relevant because you don't let it pressurise). So you fuel up what you think you will need for your trip and if a bit evaporates, so be it. It's just a range extender, the EV pickup truck hauling your boat will still have a battery.

        Or maybe the truck fueling sta

    • by ukoda ( 537183 )
      For short and medium haul BE trucks are an easy win. For long haul I used to think hydrogen was an option but now I think the infrastructure it would take is never going to see the investment it would need to even be considered. It will be interesting to see how the Tesla Semi plays out in the real world now it on the road.

      Of course the real answer to long haul trucking is none, electric trains are a fair better option, and the average motorist would be happy to see large trucks gone from highways.
  • ...but a LOT more work needs to be done
    Compressed hydrogen is inefficient and liquid is nearly impossible to handle
    Ammonia may be a good approach, but much work needs to be done
    Solar production and solid state storage are excellent long term goals
    The push to rush compressed hydrogen into production is driven by oil and gas companies, trying to appear "green" while maintaining much of their old infrastructure

    • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @11:30AM (#64232014)

      Liquid hydrogen is already the preferred method for distribution and storage, even when end use is gaseous. The hydrogen forklift industry has done the impossible in that regard it seems, or maybe impossible is a bit too strongly worded.

      Ammonia accidents are pretty fucking horrible, I don't think it's viable to increase ammonia road transport by many orders of magnitude. Formic acid maybe. The problem is that on top of pure hydrogen, you need pure CO2 and the hydrogen is already expensive.

      • Liquid hydrogen is already the preferred method for distribution and storage

        Liquid hydrogen is the best of what limited research in an very tiny industry has come up with to date. It becomes wildly difficult to do at scale, which is precisely why the fossil fuels industry is looking into ammonia cracking as an alternative, despite the insane risks that ammonia present.

        In reality there is no good way of doing this. One of the great things about hydrogen is we can make it anywhere we can get clean water. Hydrogen fuel stations are a fantasy that won't ever take off, the risk is too g

        • In reality hydrogen forklifts are operating commercially.

          • You seem to have missed a critical part of my post: Scale. There's a big difference to filling up a tank on a couple of forklifts and having hundreds of petrol station filling 10s of thousands of cars in every city.

            Hydrogen in small scale is simple and relatively safe. Forklifts do not necessitate large trucks driving liquid hydrogen around loading and unloading large storage tanks in built up areas serving customers loading tanks cryogenically (to speed up the process because fuck knows waiting 15min to fi

            • Truck stops aren't generally close to houses, nor are airplane ramps, nor are the docks for large ships. They are all as easily and safely reached and refueled by liquid hydrogen tanker trucks as the warehouses using hydrogen forklifts are now.

              If it's safe, it's safe ... if not the warehouses should be blowing up.

      • by dfm3 ( 830843 )
        I don't know much about it and am genuinely curious, why is CO2 needed in the process? My understanding of it is that some of the methods for generating elemental hydrogen can produce CO2 and the hydrogen combusts on exposure to atmospheric oxygen to produce water vapor. Years ago I worked in a facility that had a hydrogen tank on which we had a leak detector that (if I remember right) used an IR sensor to spot the heat from spontaneous combustion of hydrogen as it mixed with air, since the flame is hard to
        • Making formic acid or ammonia, without using natural gas, requires CO2. So you trade easier handleability with even more expensive manufacture relative to hydrogen.

  • Hydrogen is still the smallest atom out there. I'm no genius but doesn't that mean material can't contain it for long especially under pressure? This is like a bunch of village idiots trying to figure out why 2 + 2 doesn't equal 5.
  • But apparently it is not me because "Na na na, told you so!"

    Can we now please stop all those stupid social media posts about hydrogen being a BEV killer?
  • The shoe drops (Score:5, Insightful)

    by paul_engr ( 6280294 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @06:02PM (#64232684)
    Hydrogen was always a red herring to delay real alternative fuels when it came to passenger cars, full stop. Too expensive and complicated, no real benefit in terms of 10x range or any compelling advantage. Fuck the auto companies and fuel companies for trying to pull one on the rest of us with this hopeless distraction.
  • This, like the magna EV charging , have been heavily subsidized. We need to quit wasting $ and put the $ into smart subsidies.paying companies for this is stupid. Convert rest areas/ buy land along interstates/state highways, bring in electricity, and create KNOwN islands for charging / refueling / etc
  • This is an illustration (as if another one was needed) of the well-known Law of Unintended Consequences [upenn.edu]. Policies ALWAYS have consequences, and given that the brightest people in society tend to go into business/industry rather than government, government policies are usually made by a mix of corrupt influencers and stupid politicians who together are either incapable or too lazy to see all the spin-off issues that their brightest new ideas will have.

    How many Slashdotters remember the story posted here only

  • Is it the year of the linux desktop? No, because there are Windows computers on every neighborhood street. Still the entropy of monopoly.
    Is it the year of hydrogen? No, because there are power lines on every neighborhood street. Still the entropy of monopoly.
    Charge against that windmill, Don...
    I could _almost_ be tempted to believe hydrogen could become something for aircraft where it could be produced at the same airports where it is fueled without the need for a national infrastructure network.

    You know, i

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