Love how Jeremiah's analogy is basically a breakup that ends up in a threesome

9.1 seconds is a pretty quick when you're used to driving a 21 year old Ford Fiesta that wasn't even that quick when it was brand new lol.

Not a single word about energy efficiency, which is really poor for hydrogen compared to EV. More than 60% of the energy is lost in producing, transporting and using of hydrogen vs. about 20% for battery vehicles.

In 15 years of reading scientific papers this is the best fuel cell explanation I have ever seen 😂. Nice work!!

Do a b2b on pre-war straight 8 engines.

That fuel cell analogy is suspiciously specific

I have been saying this for years. Thanks so much for popularizing it. Near the end, you pointed out a key benefit; the output at the end of the chain is the cleanest, pure H2O possible (though spitting it out wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement). That has environmental implications on a global scale if Hydrogen is adopted. It can also supplement and displace fossil fuel-based power grid generation, using a portion of the renewables mix - along with methane (NG) during the transition - to derive Hydrogen. I have deep concerns about the environmental impact of adopting purely electric cars with LI batteries on a global scale, and that is what's taking place. At least they last an increasing number of cycles/years, and are largely recyclable, but it is an expensive process in every respect. I'll put it this way: develop energy technologies utilizing the most fundamental and plentiful element in the universe, or mine rare earth minerals and create vastly more environmental degradation utilizing a finite resource.

i found donut media not too long ago, and i'm just constantly blown away with the variety and quality of the work. you guys are really doing a great job.

9.1 seconds is slow huh? Me in a 2003 galant "I am speed"

I think the Hyperion is vapor-ware, pun intended.

It's kind of interesting looking at this. Here in NZ we are a pretty linear country - our main highways are basically in a line. Couple that with our high availability of renewable energy (mostly hydro) and we're situated pretty well for hydrogen - which has better fueling times and currently seems to have better range. There's companies looking at setting up fueling stations for trucks (as in shipping/cargo trucks). A lot of these will be able to produce hydrogen on site. The interesting thing? Current hydrogen trucks would get the same range as their petrol counterparts (around 600km or so here) but would also have the advantage of instant torque from electric propulsion *without* sacrificing the quick fueling times of petrol!

Hydrogen might be the future not only for cars but also for houses. I mean for example, if you use solar panels you could use excess energy in the summer to convert water to hydrogen and store it in tanks and then in the winter you could use that excess energy with electrolysis to heat up your house...

You explained redox reactions better than some college chemistry teachers lol

JCB in England have developed engines that use Hydrogen without a fuel cell, works just like a gas engine except it uses Hydrogen. See Harry’s Garage interview with JCB 👍🏻

Very informative and you made it easy to understand. Keep up with the good work. Love and Greatitude

I just love that you all are tackling more complex topics than just "car go fast!", this is the kind of unique content that I personally subscribe for. I love the automotive world, and the tech world, and this is a great look into both.

I can't believe Donut makes learning fun, screw school I'm signing up for the Donut Education Program

I mean the infrastructure to create and transport it ain’t cheap. Then, you have the storage/efficiency problem; more compression = more explosive.

I really appreciate the video. However, as a scientist in this field, hydrogen coming from water splitting is the DUMMEST idea. 1- People look at the ocean and think that this is the water that will be used in producing this hydrogen - wrong. You need as pure water as possible to obtain hydrogen "efficiently" using electrolysis. The more impurities, the WAY more energy you need to split. 2- Please remember there are countries that doesn't have access to fresh water to drink, nevertheless, to use it as a source of energy. 3- Do you understand the magnitude of energy needed to maintain those hydrogen station? From compressing the hydrogen to storing it at absolute zero temp to liquify it? What a waste!! Conclusion, enhance the desalination process first, then we can talk using it for energy purposes. I am not an Elon fan, but I have to agree with him.

It’s all about supercooled liquid oxygen and methane. To the moon!

When Jeremiah said “Let’s-a-go” before the ad started it reminded me of that SNL skit with Elon Musk. Maybe that was intentional…

I love it. Jeremiah we needed someone like you and your videos, please keep spreading the smart and useful information!

Love your vids! If you want to build your own electrolysis cell, Nighthawk In Light has a pretty good few videos about it. Actually very easy, even without much prior electrical knowledge.

Missed joked: "You guys get back together" and get Wet.

I worked at in a warehouse that used Hydrogen Fuel Cells to power forklifts. The refueling was quick and easy but boy did those things break down an awful lot. I mean there was almost always a queue of around 10-15 broken down at a time and the technicians could only fix about 2-5 a day by my estimates.

Man, awsome! Hey thanks for educating in a very fun way!! Please keep up the great work!!! Cheers from Costa Rica here!!!!👍🏽👍🏼👍🏾

Love your guys’ content, I might disagree on this one though, with something like 3 billion internal combustion engines on the planet, replacing them all is a massive undertaking. The use of hydrogen as a fuel for combustion in the retrofit role for carbon based fuels as opposed to fuel cells in electric motors has opens some doors with H storage in nanotechnology that has been implemented already. It’d be awesome if y’all covered nano fuel storage of H and it’s use in retrofitted internal combustion engines with spark injector tech. Dude in Phoenix/ Tempe has had it working for years but hooked up with a guy to finance and got their HQ raided by Gov’t for financing but tech is sound, and displacing entrenched hydrocarbon monies may have had something to do with it.

When doing elektrolysis PANIC works, but with batteries it's the other way around

That "I'm here to help" shirt is fire.

11:20 "The thing holding back fuel cells is lack of infrastructure, but people made this same argument when the current wave of electric vehicles were in their infancy" The problem with this argument is that creating an electric charging infrastructure is much easier than creating a hydrogen infrastructure. Electricity has been already available virtually everywhere, so the only thing you need to do to create a charging station is to just connect the chargers to the local power grid. It's infinitely easier than the logistics needed to create an entire infrastructure around transporting and storing a quite volatile gas/liquid under pressure.

I like how Jeremiah's argument for hydrogen over batteries, is assuming Hydrogen won't have infrastructure problems. The problem with hydrogen, is that literally everyone underestimates the time and money it would take to establish enough hydrogen infrastructure to support a significant adoption rate. You literally can't even take a trip across the US in a hydrogen car right now.

Do a video about tank engines and how they have evolved. Edit, maybe an up to speed video

I am 83 years old. When I was in seventh grade I had a popular science magazine telling us about fuel cells being the next big thing. A hydrogen powered farm tractor was on the cover of this magazine. LOL

I love listening to this type of content!

Great video. The new Mirai is RWD too, so weld that diff and get skidding!

I remember the days when my chemistry teacher explained chemical reaction through human relationships :)

The math teacher in me cringed when he said “less than one volt” and showed “>1V.” But cool video nonetheless.

Hydrogen ICE is gaining a lot of traction lately and range anxiety is real. Towing anything decreases range anywhere from 25-50% on EVs. I think it's gonna come down to electrolysis cost versus nickel availability. But with the Yamaha V8 and recent Ford 4-cylinder patent, things look a bit brighter.

Best in video ads! I look forward to seeing the new skit every time I watch.

I just know I'd be getting a chemistry lesson video if they're going to talk about Hydrogen cars

2:41 percentage in chemistry test of all donut viewers goes up by 1000%

I used to work in a warehouse using machinery that ran on hydrogen fuel cells, we had to refuel them literally 5-6x more often than the battery ones but they worked just fine

at the end of the day the core problem with hydrogen cars is that they're just EVs with extra steps. Ultimately you're just replacing the battery in an EV with Hydrogen tanks. But the issue is that in order to store energy as hydrogen, you have to spend energy. Think about the most ideal situation for both a Hydrogen Vehicle (HV) and an EV. You have a refueling station where everything is made via Green Energy. One Station uses that energy to power an electrolysis machine to make Hydrogen, then the cars take that hydrogen and turns it back into electricity to run them. Whereas the EV station just puts electricity right into the car to use. However, every time you convert energy to another form, you end up wasting some of it along the way. And when you end up doing the math, you end up spending about twice as much energy per mile travelled in an HV compared to an EV. So say you were to try and build a fully self sufficient station for both kinds of cars. For the EV station you would simply need X amount of Solar panels to Power a set number of charging stations, which don't really require any more infrastructure than a few pieces of tech installed next to a parking lot. For the HV station, in order to service the same number of cars, you would have to install twice as many solar panels, and you would need places to put electrolysis machines, and for those to work you need to hook up a water line connection so you'll still be paying water bills at least, and then you would also need somewhere to store all the hydrogen, and then finally you would need to have the actual stations to put the hydrogen in the cars. Since you can't just make water out of thin air, you can't really make a truly self sufficient Hydrogen station, and you'll need to buy a lot more expensive machinery to make it work. And sure while at first blush using twice as much power as an EV might not sound so bad if we make sure it's all green power, that still means that at the very least if an Electric Station was put there instead, about half of the green energy that was going to powering that Hydrogen Station, could have gone to powering other things like people's homes and such instead. Then On top of all of that, Electricity is just more versatile. A Hydrogen Station has to store most of its energy as Hydrogen, which means that you can't really use it for much of anything without putting it back through a fuel cell. Whereas an Electric Station just has a load of batteries that can be charged or discharged as needed. Which means that having an electric station is like having a giant energy backup system that can serve other potential purposes. What this all amounts to is that it's so much easier for more companies to build Electric stations either commercially or at home. Having the ability to charge at home means you likely have a large battery as well which means you could potentially keep your lights on a little longer during a power outage. Or a Restaurant could set up a station in their parking lot due to how little infrastructure it needs, and then the people charging their batteries for 20 minutes could come in for a meal and if the restaurant loses power they could use their station as a backup. You can't really do much of that with Hydrogen since a home station would be way more expensive and require dumping a ton of energy into the hydrogen production, which means a much higher power bill cost compared to owning an EV, and you can't just set up Hydrogen stations in random parking lots due to how much other infrastructure you would need. Electricity just has such a massive leg up in infrastructure thanks to the fact that even if there were 0 Charging stations in the world, at the very least anyone with a house could run a cable out to charge their car overnight. Whereas with Hydrogen you have to go out of your way to get a large scale electrolysis machine. I don't see Hydrogen catching on for the simple fact that no matter what, it will always take so much more infrastructure to set up compared to electricity, all to just power an electric car at twice the cost

Whenever an auto exec says "That tech bad" it usually means "That tech bad for me"

The Hyperion looks like a Citroen concept car.

Literally the main thing that you missed which is the entire reason Elon said Hydrogen fuel is useless, is the range. Its lack of density means you would either need to have it at cryogenic temperatures to get anywhere, which would take up space to have something to make it cryogenic, or you refuel every 15 minutes because you literally can't get enough space to put it in. If you do make enough space, you're weighing the car down immensely with the amount of storage required, thus negating the benefits and lowering over DeltaV.

The performance in hydrogen vehicles comes from the size/capacity of the on board battery. Fuel cells in hydrogen vehicles provide charge to the battery, but the motor is power from the battery. There are a few reasons there a batteries in hydrogen vehicle: 1. Fuel cells have a very slow response in terms of change in power output, so batteries are used to compensate for that. 2. Using a battery reduces the size of the required fuel cell stack thus reducing price (fuel cells are very expensive) 3. Using an electric drive-train gives you a benefit of regenerative braking, and storing the energy from regenerative braking is impractical using fuel cells, so that task is given to the battery.

A hydrogen fueled car, is just an electric car with more steps! Think about it

I wanna see rhe new high low seriesssss

Just remember that cathode is positive by thinking "t" is a plus sign

You missed Hydrogen's 2 weak spots (energy density, and cost).

Why is it a 9 second car is considered a snail where I'm sure most general cars sold in the UK are slower that even 9sec

Y’all should do a b2b on the Honda Insight

yooo that PANIC acronym blew my mind!!! Been about 7 years since I took high school engineering class and I finally get it!! Love you dude!

Love the comedy angle keep up the good work

"Positive is anode, negative is cathode." B2B, June 2021

When are you doing a tour of the Donut studio / Area ? I need to see all your cars and bikes !!

I work for a company that uses Fuel-cells for their powered industrial trucks. We use on-site electrolysis.

You kinda brushed right over the storage problem.

“Oxidation = Ano “ Me, an Spaniard: Well that’s interesting

I'm really excited for Hydrogen Power Paste. It's supposed to be more stable to transport than compressed hydrogen and the first test production plant is currently being built in Germany. Imagine being able to pump some paste into your tank, fill up another with water, and drive half way across the country.

So hydrogen cars cost $60k and costs the equivalent of $6 per gallon of gas to run them. Sounds like a winner!

Hey guys. I was wondering wondering is gasification was a viable solution to the fuel solution

Clicked on this faster than my dad said he's gonna go fetch some milk

I work in a warehouse that has about 200 various hydrogen fuel cell fork lifts. Can you imagine having to plug in 200 electric fork lifts daily? I hope to see hydrogen infrastructure in my life time for the every day driver.

You should do a vid on the cleanest fuel ,since it powered the World's Fastest Cars and its probably potentially cheapest too . We could sure use more education about fuels .

A HFCEV still needs a battery as the fuel cell takes a while to get going. The Hyperion uses the battery when doing fast accelerations.

I just don't get how you use electricity to covert to hydrogen and back into electricity. But you could of used electricity form the beginning....

Major Problem is that with an battery you have an efficiency of almos 100% and by hydrogen you have maximum of about 40%. Sou you need more than twice the amount of energy to produce hydrogen to drive the same distance.

That was literally the worst analogy I've ever heard in my life. I love it.

In which part of the video, did you address whats mentioned on the title? it's a matter of physics that Electric battery powered cars are more efficient than Hydrogon fuel cells.

Not super complicated stuff, but wow I’m actually quite impressed by the way you explain that

What's crazy is I did a project on this in elementary school (in the 90s) and was told it was a neat idea but not realistic. My elementary school mind didn't have the scientific knowledge to support my idea but I'm glad to see it's becoming a thing.

Damn, i… I’m… that analogy was perfect man

My favourite way of simplifying, the electrons get filtered off causing the electric flow.

Great video, BUT you complete forgot to talk about the OTHER usage of hydrogen in cars: Hydrogen internal combustion. Yeah, that's a thing, and they can even be combined with electric motors. Also, the excess heat that nuclear power plants produce is a great way to create green hydrogen.

I studied more chemistry from this video than from my school

Great video, except you left out the inefficiency of creating hydrogen from electricity, vs just charging the battery in your car.

I have heard it said that fuel cells do not respond well to changes in the gas pedal for acceleration not hill climbing. Besides capturing regenerative braking, the batteries on fuel cell vehicles are there to handle the quick response demands of the driver. But how did "are they successful?" get a yes. Still haven't proven to be a success in cars and just getting started for trucks and trains.

You dont doble the power when palcing bateries in series, they just get added together...

One law in chemistry is that a reaction will go to the most stable form (acids react to be more stable, like HCl + NaOH will turn into water and salt) so for electrolysis to be made you need to put more energy into the system to dissociate the bond that H and O have. So why would you use more energy to make a system work? It is better to use the energy to charge your batteries in the first time. If you want to know how many cows you have, count heads, don't count legs and divide by 4.

My view on hydrogen fuel: You need energy to manufacture it. It has to be stored under pressure, that needs energy and it has to be kept cool in the tanks, which also needs energy. Then it has to be brought to the gas stations, which not only requires energy and special tank trucks, but also brings a lot of truck traffic and pollution. It then has to be stored cool and under pressure again at the fuel pumps. All in all a very negative result. It's not just about lower CO-2 emissions when driving, but about the overall balance of the hydrogen concept. And that is much worse, 200% to 300%, than with battery cars. For these reasons, after decades of developing and testing hydrogen for cars, German car manufacturers have said goodbye to hydrogen for mass market cars.

I'm addicted to these videos. Donut Media is well named.

"Very roughly, a new electrolysis plant today delivers energy efficiency of around 80%. That is, the energy value of the hydrogen produced is about 80% of the electricity used to split the water molecule. Steam reforming is around 65% efficient." - carboncommentary, 2017. Deduct from that the cost of compression and transportation, and the battery of the FCV, and a BEV is much more efficient.

“Every time you wire a cell in series, you double the voltage”. NO! Series wiring increases the voltage by the extra cell. Wire 2 in series and you double the voltage. Wire another one in series and you get 50% more voltage. Who is doing your calcs?

This didn't really address the largest issue with hydrogen, that it is much less efficient than a bev.

HFC cars are actually evs with their small battery charged by the fuel cell. The fuel cell cannot provide the instantaneous current needed for acceleration. These are complex cars with the tiny drive battery being constantly thrashed, with deep discharge. The drive battery will probably only last 100k kms. Then the fuel cell membrane will likely also need replacing in 100k kms and the other additional maintence required that pure evs do not have. A HFC car will be expensive to maintain, and likely be a throw away after 100k kms. In addtion, 3-5x more renewable electricity needs to be generated to provide the same power at the wheels for a HCF car than is needed to provide the same power at the wheels for a pure ev. And packaging is also an issue for HFC cars - all those systems need to go somewhere in the car. Then there is the infrastructure issue.

You did an amazing job at explaining hydrogen fuel cells to your audience. We actually have a fleet of hydrogen fuel cell rental vehicles we rent on-demand in Southern California. We would like for you to come check it out. How do we connect with you?

No mention of energy losses or cost? That's literally the main reason. It's a net negative return to make

As far as electrolysis is concerned, you’re going to lose energy from hydrogen production to finally using it the fuel cell to make electricity. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just use it directly in a battery?

Jcb are investing heavily in hydrogen combustion engines as we speak, they’re importing huge amounts of hydrogen from Australia, and if a company like jcb is getting into hydrogen I have to say there’s gotta be something to it, and apparently a petrol (spark ignition) or diesel (compression ignition) style engine will run on it, with adjustments of course

Wow! You explain very easily about the science principle so that kids can understand.

The compression of hydrogen is taking also a lot of energy. The global energetic balance is not ideal.

I was actually researching this as a school project back in 2006 when i attended automotoring school. Already then it was the promise of future power both in cars, trucks and our electric grid to replace our relyability on fossil fuels. I got these papers still somewhere but it was really facinating stuff, so if anyone is interested I suggest you use the poer at your fingertips and find out what it is all about. OH and before I go.. Hydrogen is AT THIS VERY SECOND researched as the long therm solution to solve solar power. Yes, exactly, hydrogen batteries (fuel cells) are being used in research right now to find a way to store solar power for the night-time use. This is a MASSIVE leap forward when it hits the market. How I know this? I worked as a solar cell engineer for 2 years and attended two seperate sceminars with all the speccs for this technology (the details of which I still cannot share).

Setting up a hydrogen refuel station costs about 10 times a couple of 250V chargers and takes way longer to build and pass regulations. Kinda important.

personally i think it's all about efficiency nowadays and you just can't beat BEV's with FCEV's in that aspect, creating hydrogen uses energy, compressing that hydrogen to 700 bars uses energy, transporting the hydrogen to a refueling station costs energy, pumping it into the car uses energy and then finally there are some losses in the chemical reaction as well. i believe i read somewhere that ICE cars are somewhere between 30 and 42% fuel efficient, fcev's are up to 70% and bev's are over 90%. the only thing holding back bev's is battery technology, and a lot of that is in the works to be used globally within 10 years.

Isn't the problem with hydrogen fuel that it takes more energy to separate it than you get by reacting it?

The way my professor in college taught us was that a catheter is a very negative thing to need. Haha

The only thing that may be a problem for Hydrogen is that the best electrolyser at the moment uses around 50kwh of electricity to produce 1 Litre of hydrogen. Even if someone creates an electrolyser that is 100% efficient it will still require about 37 or 39kwh of electricity to produce 1 Litre of hydrogen. The maximum potential energy output per Litre of Hydrogen is about 33kwh. This is prior to transportation and compressing the hydrogen. The amount of energy wasted in the process will see most utility scale renewable suppliers just feed their electricity into the grid rather than produce hydrogen, as it is more profitable. It could become a supply issue in the future, especially with the development of solid state batteries. Not to mention the support of most governments around the world for investment in renewable energy. Hydrogen is great for the auto industry, and their car designs, but not good for renewable utility suppliers, who will eventually control the market as they control the sale of the renewable electricity. As demand in the gird for renewable electricity increases, the less likely it is for a renewable energy suppliers to use the electricity to create hydrogen.

Can you do a video on the Topps supermarket security guard who made his (I believe, tahoe) truck run on hydrogen!!