• Ilovethebomb
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    8 months ago

    Yeah, but it’s attached to other molecules, and it’s really hard to separate the stuff.

    Hydrogen is a really shitty and inefficient battery, it would be cheaper, easier, and more efficient to just put batteries on the train.

      • Ilovethebomb
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        8 months ago

        Overhead lines are almost as expensive as laying the track in the first place though.

        • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Not if you do it simultaneously… cost is higher than just rail, but rains wouldn’t have range limits at all, and would weigh less, meaning less energy used to accelerate (and better emergency brake response).

          I’m very pro EV, but even more a fan of distributed power systems that aren’t chemical based.

            • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              We can consider it a relatively straightforward upgrade to the system though. Definitely more expensive than upgrading individual trainsets to h2 or lithium, and nowhere near as quick… But it could be staged, or just the mainlines.

              Imagine mainlines get electrified so EV or h2 trains use none of their onboard energy, until they start getting onto the unelectrified branches.

              • Ilovethebomb
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                8 months ago

                That’s exactly what New Zealand is doing with battery electric trains, the plan is for them to run on batteries once they get beyond the overhead line network, to service areas where it’s not worthwhile to have overhead lines.

                Not with hydrogen trains though, that’s a dead end technology.

                • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I’m inclined to agree re: h2, though at least with trains it kinda could work, maybe. They tend to come back to similar yards all over the place.

                  Hydrogen cars is just… Don’t.

                  • Ilovethebomb
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                    8 months ago

                    A hydrogen car is basically an electric car that is more expensive to run than an ICE vehicle, they’re an utterly moronic idea.

                    And there are actually EVs with more range than a hydrogen car, with far more options to charge.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          8 months ago

          It trades off expensive up front costs for having cheaper train engines. Which is better if you want high volume with many runs per day. Which is what trains are best at in the first place.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yea totally why large companies are still pursuing it, apparently you and all the EV fanboys know something they don’t.

      Also you saying it’s really hard to do something is like the same people who said we shouldn’t be flying, it’s to hard. That’s not how innovation works. To you eating raw meat and living in caves is where humanity should have stopped apparently, because everything else is hard to do.