Even ChatGPT Is aware of Hydrogen Is A Sq. Wheel In Transportation

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Getting ChatGPT and its image-generating sibling DALL-E to place sq. wheels on autos is as robust as getting hydrogen to make any fiscal sense for floor transportation. Except you ask it to place sq. wheels on a hydrogen automobile, it appears.

Michael Sura’ is a Slovakian transportation knowledgeable, with years as an vitality and renewables specialist with the nation’s largest vitality provider and now years advising on transportation particular points with the Ministry of Transport and chairing the postal service’s supervisory board. And he’s an everyday on LinkedIn discussions associated to transportation, publishing his analyses and infographics about various vitality pathways for floor transportation.

One among his favourite phrases is that hydrogen is a “sq. wheel” for transportation, just like Paul Martin’s feedback that it’s each ineffective and inefficient. Martin, after all is a chemical engineer, a hydrogen knowledgeable professionally and co-founder of the Hydrogen Science Coalition.

However Sura’ has needed to make do with adorning his materials with previous cartoons about square-wheeled mule carts. Till now. A thread on LinkedIn about failing to get ChatGPT to place sq. wheels on mule carts to replace the previous picture by yet one more individual strongly engaged within the vitality transition, Michael Hamilton of worldwide agency Bekaert, VP of commodity sourcing, led to me attempting a few hacks.

And certain sufficient, with minimal iteration, placing sq. wheels on a Toyota Mirai was fairly straightforward to do. But extra fiddling resulted in zero capacity to persuade both of the 2 AI picture producing instruments I take advantage of to place sq. wheels on any kind of cart, even after feeding it one of many previous cartoons of precisely that and having it describe it as having sq. wheels. The very best I may do was to get a wood tub up on sq. wood blocks.

For one thing like 14 months I’ve been exploring the iterating limits of a few AI picture producing instruments and it was fascinating to run up towards this restrict. Coaching knowledge is coaching knowledge and in nearly all coaching knowledge wheels are spherical. Fascinating that Toyota Mirai’s had been by some means distinctive.

And so I bequeath to the world of transportation decarbonization communication a picture of a square-wheeled Mirai.

However is that truthful? Is hydrogen actually like a sq. wheel? It certain is, and even many die hards are realizing it.

Toyota is eradicating the Mirai from the market after a decade, whereas nonetheless remaining dedicated to gas cells for bigger autos. That’s within the context of hydrogen gas cell mild automobile gross sales falling off their tiny curb previously 12 months. There are nonetheless a few gas cell automobiles obtainable, however they simply aren’t promoting.

And hydrogen refueling stations are getting into reverse, as I not too long ago famous, with increasingly more closing completely globally along with those that are out of service for prolonged durations of time as a consequence of an absence of hydrogen or upkeep points, principally with compressors. There are plans to construct 5 extra within the UK, however provided that eight have shut down previously 12 months and a half, it’s not solely unlikely the 5 will proceed, but when they do get constructed that can nonetheless be destructive inertia.

The federal government of Quebec had a trial of fifty Mirais working for the previous few years, refueling them on the single hydrogen station within the nation that isn’t in British Columbia, one on the outskirts of Quebec Metropolis on the premises of an Esso station. It’s going to be a reasonably dusty station now, as these 50 automobiles had been quietly returned to Toyota and never changed with new ones, leaving maybe a dozen or two working hydrogen automobiles in all the province.

To not be outdone, Shell really refused $48 million of California’s cash to construct a bunch extra hydrogen refueling stations final 12 months and now has shut down all of its mild automobile stations within the state. I’m fairly certain that nobody is updating dashboards of refueling stations there out of despondency.

The Hydrogen Gasoline Cell Partnership, shaped by a bunch of hydrogen faint-hopers within the state, went nationwide in 2022 and no person observed. Their dashboard exhibits 55 stations in complete within the state, precisely what it was within the first half of 2021, three years in the past. All that work, no motion. And that’s theoretically working stations, as their dashboard exhibits that many are closed on the time of writing, have restricted hydrogen availability or have one or each pressures offline. In actual fact, 29 of the 55 stations are incapable of pumping hydrogen in any respect the pressures and portions that they’re designed to at this second in time.

That’s common. US DOE’s studies from the interval, which I pulled aside to take a look at the fact not too long ago, after they nonetheless reported on this system earlier than stopping in what one presumes was disgrace in the course of 2021, present that throughout the fleet of stations they had been offline 2,000 extra hours than they had been actively pumping hydrogen over six months. Their upkeep prices per 12 months had been 30% of the capital price of constructing them, a full order of magnitude above complete price of possession examine assumptions. That equated to $9.23 per kilogram of hydrogen delivered. No marvel hydrogen prices $36 per kilogram retail in California.

Hydrogen gas cell bus fleets within the state had been equally challenged, seeing 50% extra upkeep prices per 12 months than diesel buses and double that of battery electrical buses. As soon as once more, US DOE reporting which I pulled aside to see what they mentioned.

However again to stations. True Zero operates the vast majority of the remaining stations in California. The Hydrogen Gasoline Cell Partnership’s dashboard claims they’re working 38. True Zero solely claims that they’re working 34. True Zero claims that they’re opening extra and with a giant pot of extra cash from the IRA being wasted on hydrogen for transportation in California’s $1.2 billion hydrogen hub, they in all probability will as a result of regardless of no utilization to talk of, they are going to undoubtedly be made entire off taxpayer cash.

Into this morass of pricey failures, after all, California introduced not too long ago that it was shopping for six extra hydrogen trains from Stadler for passenger rail segments so as to add to the 4 that it already had on order. Naturally, $407 million of governmental funding was behind that. The trains aren’t anticipated to enter service till 2027 and it’s actually uncertain that they’ll keep in service lengthy given the excessive price of hydrogen and upkeep.

In spite of everything, a European Stadler gross sales govt mentioned the quiet half out loud not too long ago.

“If the tenders are open to all applied sciences and the one situation is a probably CO₂-free drive, we’ve got noticed that the battery nearly all the time prevails over hydrogen,”

Why? Hydrogen trains — and buses, vehicles, automobiles, and each different mode of transportation — are dearer to keep up and dearer to gas than each various. Their complete price of possession is a number of occasions extra, thrice within the case of trains. The one time hydrogen trains are literally bought is when the tenders explicitly referred to as for hydrogen trains, and that’s nearly solely as a result of governmental cash is earmarked for hydrogen fleets.

Clearly ChatGPT thinks hydrogen is a sq. wheel for trains too, because it offered the picture above with little prompting.

It’s outstanding that hydrogen for vitality proponents can take a look at 25 years of failures, challenges, retrenching, and falling gross sales and nonetheless maintain a pale blue torch for the molecule. It’s not a expertise going by means of teething pains, it’s a expertise that merely doesn’t work effectively or economically as an vitality provider.