(31 Oct 2021, 7:32 am)Storx wrote Hydrogen will be the future for vans, buses and trucks imo. The tech and the demand just isn't there but I'm pretty certain it'll become more mainstream when the petrol stations realise that petrol is finished. After all they need something to sell and with Shell and the likes on board they'll soon appear.
I'd say the technology is already there, but the demand isn't unless the exchequer is prepared to fund it. From what I understand about the deal for the 15x Hydrogen Wrightbus deckers in Aberdeen, it was actually funded by Aberdeen City Council, the Scottish Government and the European Union and worked out around £500,000 per bus.
There needs to be more research and development put in by the Government to reduce the cost of electric and hydrogen powered vehicles, because the current setup of operators only being interested when there's money on offer is unsustainable. The public purse shouldn't be solely responsible for driving a green agenda for business.
(31 Oct 2021, 7:45 am)54APhotography wrote Reducing/and or extending battery life would be idealy served by pantographs collecting from halos at bus stations, as is in use elsewhere. Trams need to come back, the metro can't expand west now. buses could feed from ole as trolley buses used to leaving the battery for dead sections as the metro proposed for Durham.
Similar to the setup for the Harrogate locals. It's quite impressive how that works, having seen it in action. Something like that would actually be ideal for the Durham Park and Ride, or even something City based like the 700 in Sunderland or 64 in Durham.
I agree on Trams and in my opinion would play a significant role in decarbonising public transport. There is clearly a role for both trams and buses to play, if we stop seeing them as competition for one another.
(31 Oct 2021, 11:31 am)streetdeckfan wrote The issue is that on-demand hydrogen production is fairly inefficient, and iirc, hydrogen is for the most part currently just a byproduct of fossil fuel production.
Obviously if the electricity used to generate hydrogen was green it wouldn't be too bad, but I'd imagine if they had their own on-site generation they'd end up using power from the grid which isn't so green.
The advantage of hydrogen is due to its far superior energy density compared to lithium based batteries the ranges can be a lot further, making them actually usable
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The best method would be to have a pipeline, and to be honest, I think that's the way we'll eventually go. The National Grid are apparently making plans around this already, with some repurposing of existing gas pipeline.
I'd like to think there could be a significant infrastructure contribution to bus depots, if there was a reciprocal commitment by the operators (at their own expense) to have a plan towards turning that depot fully-hydrogen.
Having used the hydrogen deckers in Aberdeen, I actually think they perform a lot better than electric buses I've been on, including GNE's Yutong fleet. Those deckers just feel effortless and you forget that it's not a fossil-fuel powered bus.