Nikola Motor's Woes

[Bombastinator]

19 minutes ago, Kroon said:

 

I have a hydrogen car and so do most of my coworkers. Infrastructure (Refuling) are becoming better and better and with new solar cells where that directly make hydrogen do so you can make your own fuel.  I'm on the list to buy a set of those to put on my roof.

 

I don't know why there is no much false/miss information about hydrogen and it's risks.  Here in Sweden we have whole houses completely off grid with solar cells generating hydrogen out of water an store it under the house. Just the cells on the roof of the house generates enough hydrogen during the summer so you will have enough to last the winter.  Right now are whole communities, more then 100 households, planned to run on hydrogen only with enough over so everyone can run their cars to.

 

I can provide Swedish sources if you want to, only found one in English and it's not complete and somewhat outdated:

https://www.zerosun.se/

What are the loss levels of this under the house storage?  My understanding is that it is fairly high.  So high that storage for more than a few days is pointless.  If it’s more like 6 months the metric changes totally.

[RejZoR]

Creating hydrogen using solar cells means you're doing electrolysis  which is stupid slow and only worthy doing for experiments. The amount of hydrogen created this way is insignificant for vehicle usage.

[Kroon]

28 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

What are the loss levels of this under the house storage?  My understanding is that it is fairly high.  So high that storage for more than a few days is pointless.  If it’s more like 6 months the metric changes totally.

 

What? No!  Whole idea is to generate hydrogen under the summer and in the winter when Skellefteå hardly have any sun they use more or less hydrogen only.  House in the article I linked had over 30% storage left in the spring.  The loss of stored hydrogen are 0%.  However there is poor efficiency when converting from electricity to hydrogen so you get a loss there but you are only converting excess energy so there si no real loss.  

 

Next gen organic-hydro-solar-cells that will enter the market soon will sidestep the electric conversion by using some kind of organic reaction with water and sun and be much more effective in collecting hydrogen.

 

15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Creating hydrogen using solar cells means you're doing electrolysis  which is stupid slow and only worthy doing for experiments. The amount of hydrogen created this way is insignificant for vehicle usage.

 

Did you look at the link?  As I said there are whole communities using that kind of conversion right now and with access energy during the summer creates more then enough hydrogen to last whole winter.  So no it's more then experiments.

[wanderingfool2]

  

On 9/24/2020 at 3:56 PM, ThePointblank said:

It seems like Tesla is pushing to invalid Nikola's patents by trying to demonstrate that Nikola's patents lack novelty over prior art, and misattribution of inventorship. That would be the death knell of Nikola's ongoing lawsuit against Tesla, and just adds to the legal troubles Nikola is facing.

 

 

On top of that, it looks to also invalidate the Nikola tradedress trademark.  This really does seem like a kickstarter company, all flash and no product.  (This also brings to light the larger issue on how patents and trademarks are utterly broken as of current)

 

54 minutes ago, Kroon said:

Did you look at the link?  As I said there are whole communities using that kind of conversion right now and with access energy during the summer creates more then enough hydrogen to last whole winter.  So no it's more then experiments.

Not to nit-pic, it is a good concept...but on your linked websites About Zero Sun

Quote

Zero Sun is a real-time experiment aiming to make solar technology more accessible, thereby becoming an integral piece in the puzzle for switching society over to 100 per cent renewable energy.

It also has the issue that it takes up the room of an entire garage, and doesn't address the safety concerns of when a fire breaks out inside a home.  While it might be okay for most fires, there will be people who store flammables alongside the tank (or if the house collapses while on fire rupturing a tank).  Storing enough hydrogen to power a house through Winter is just a disaster waiting to happen.

 

I'm not saying that Hydrogen won't be a thing, but the process of conversion/storage has to come a long way in order to disrupt batteries.  It might be more practical for higher volume though (given the volume ratio is a lot better on larger tanks)

[Bombastinator]

The idea is irrelevant.  Only the actuality matters in this case.  My understanding is 0% loss is flat out impossible.  It’s not even 0% for gasoline.  Close to zero but not zero. If 30% is left and 0% was used that would be 70% over x time.  If it was used but 30% remains and 0% was generated during the time It means nothing.  If the solar panels remained active through the winter it also still means nothing though it bodes Ill for gas retention.  LH transport trucks tow specialized tanks that amongst other tricks are double layered.  The layers are separated by a layer of nylon mesh to keep them apart and a high grade vacuum is pulled between the layers.  The outer interior surface is mirrored with Mylar in an attempt to actually reflect the hydrogen molecules back inside through the first layer of metal.  Losses in shipment are non trivial.  I don’t know what they are though.  So several days in what amounts to a gigantic vacuum thermos bottle is still enough to be non trivial. 

Edited September 28, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Kroon]

30 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The idea is irrelevant.  Only the actuality matters in this case.  My understanding is 0% loss is flat out impossible.  It’s not even 0% for gasoline.  Close to zero but not zero. If 30% is left and 0% was used that would be 70% over x time.

 

When storing something you don't need to get a loss as long as you store it properly and when it comes to hydrogen you definitely  DONT want a loss, would be pretty dangerous to be in the house. And you miss understood me about the 30%.  They got 30% left at spring because they used 70%.  You can get 0% storage loss with gasoline if you use airtight container, that is however not advisable for long time storage due to pressurisation with temperature differences.  Hydrogen are stored in high pressure containers do no leakage there. 

 

If you are storing liquid hydrogen you will get losses but we are not talking about liquid hydrogen here.  Both the cars and the houses are using compressed hydrogen in gas form.

[Shreyas1]

When even Wallstreetbets can call this out as an obvious scam, I don't know how people got on it.

[PocketNerd]

And here I was hoping that Nikola would do well enough to buy Tesla, so we could call the merged company "Nikola Tesla"!

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, PocketNerd said:

And here I was hoping that Nikola would do well enough to buy Tesla, so we could call the merged company "Nikola Tesla"!

A fine sentiment.  Perhaps tesla will buy nikola.

 

2 hours ago, Kroon said:

 

When storing something you don't need to get a loss as long as you store it properly and when it comes to hydrogen you definitely  DONT want a loss, would be pretty dangerous to be in the house. And you miss understood me about the 30%.  They got 30% left at spring because they used 70%.  You can get 0% storage loss with gasoline if you use airtight container, that is however not advisable for long time storage due to pressurisation with temperature differences.  Hydrogen are stored in high pressure containers do no leakage there. 

 

If you are storing liquid hydrogen you will get losses but we are not talking about liquid hydrogen here.  Both the cars and the houses are using compressed hydrogen in gas form.

Re: gasoline

No you can’t.  Airtight metal reduces loss to under .01% a year which is close to zero but not zero. There is some equalization though because gasoline also vaporizes which pushes outward.  Old plastic gas tanks are higher, and often bowed out because of gas expansion.  Metal tanks much less so.  The movement is not zero though.  It is possible to find 50 year old airtight gas tanks that have crumpled inward slightly from the the gasoline migration.  Gasoline both aerosolizes and gasifies.  Diesel is even more inert.

Gaseous hydrogen is supposed to be much much worse, but I don’t know how much.  This claim of zero though strikes me as wildly unlikely. 
 

re: “compressed” hydrogen.  

How do you think liquid hydrogen is made?  They compress it.  Why would you think that gaseous hydrogen is easier to keep contained than liquid hydrogen?

 

[Bombastinator]

10 hours ago, Kroon said:

 

What? No!  Whole idea is to generate hydrogen under the summer and in the winter when Skellefteå hardly have any sun they use more or less hydrogen only.  House in the article I linked had over 30% storage left in the spring.  The loss of stored hydrogen are 0%.  However there is poor efficiency when converting from electricity to hydrogen so you get a loss there but you are only converting excess energy so there si no real loss.  

 

Next gen organic-hydro-solar-cells that will enter the market soon will sidestep the electric conversion by using some kind of organic reaction with water and sun and be much more effective in collecting hydrogen.

 

 

Did you look at the link?  As I said there are whole communities using that kind of conversion right now and with access energy during the summer creates more then enough hydrogen to last whole winter.  So no it's more then experiments.

There is some sort of massive discordance of knowledge here.  The most common way to make hydrogen has been not electolosys from water but from natural gas. Water is two hydrogens and an oxygen, methane is 4 hydrogens and a carbon. This means either

 

A: there is a natural gas source in this equation which is not being mentioned

 

B: there have been massive stupendous world changing changes in process efficiency. 
 

Either your understanding of the way these houses are fueling themselves is garbage or the posters understanding of the current state of technology is garbage.  It’s got to be one or the other.

 

UPDATE:

thought about this one some more.  What they might be doing is using solar panels to make a synthetic fuel other than hydrogen which is easier to store, then using some process to convert it.  Synthetic methane is doable, but my memory is the preferred chemical for this is not synthetic methane but synthetic butanol, butanol is almost as easy to make as methane and has major conveniences, such as greater stability and the fact that it can be run in an ICE engine with almost no modification.  so there’s a weird disconnect there.  
 

If groundbreaking advances in hydrogen storage such as what must be done to make the system as described actually work one would think they would have made major news.  I have seen none such. Methane and butanol are easy to store though.  They’re much larger molecules. Butanol much much larger.  It’s actually a liquid at room temperature.  Methane is not.  My understanding of the physics says low pressure hydrogen has many of the same containment problems as high pressure hydrogen.  Helium is a much larger molecule than hydrogen and even it has serious containment problems. Hydrogen gas loss would not be an immediate fire hazard as it’s lighter than air, and the difficulty of containment would mean it would simply escape through the  roof of the house and go into the upper atmosphere.  So a problem, but an invisible one. Embrittlement,weight, and size would not be a problem for a subterranean holding tank, but gas loss would be, and lacking some special technology tank wall thickness really wouldn’t do much.  There is something up here.  Not sure what it is, but there is something.

Edited September 29, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Shreyas1]

8 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

A fine sentiment.  Perhaps tesla will buy nikola.

 

Honestly I can see Elon Musk doing that

[ThePointblank]

The deal between Nikola and GM was supposed to have closed today, but it appears talks have been extended. In addition to fraud allegations being faced by Trevor Milton, he's also been accused of sexual assault by at least two women:

 

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikolas-deal-with-gm-was-supposd-to-close-today-it-didnt/

 

Quote

 

When Nikola and GM announced a partnership on September 8, GM said it expected the deal to close by September 30. Now September 30 has arrived, and the deal hasn't closed. Media reports indicate that the deal is unlikely to close today.

 

A GM spokesman confirmed the delay in an email to Ars. "Our transaction with Nikola has not closed. We are continuing our discussions with Nikola and will provide further updates when appropriate."

Per available public filings, the deal between Nikola and GM now has a deadline of December 3rd to be finalized before either party can walk away. In addition, Nikola's business strategy overview was recently changed, and all mentions of the Badger truck have been dropped from the documents. Signs of GM having second thoughts after the explosive allegations of fraud were leveled at Nikola?

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, ThePointblank said:

The deal between Nikola and GM was supposed to have closed today, but it appears talks have been extended. In addition to fraud allegations being faced by Trevor Milton, he's also been accused of sexual assault by at least two women:

 

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikolas-deal-with-gm-was-supposd-to-close-today-it-didnt/

 

Per available public filings, the deal between Nikola and GM now has a deadline of December 3rd to be finalized before either party can walk away. In addition, Nikola's business strategy overview was recently changed, and all mentions of the Badger truck have been dropped from the documents. Signs of GM having second thoughts after the explosive allegations of fraud were leveled at Nikola?

If the company has a real tech breakthrough in hydrogen conversion tech it may actually be worth what they arranged to pay.  The break even line between hydrogen and electric is pretty narrow.  One big tech breakthrough could move it. There seems to be a whole lot of really serious shenanigans from Nikola though.  Myself if I was GM and they wouldn’t show me the tech until I anted up (the mistake xerox made with Apple) I’d want some special master cut out techie to be able to tell me if the thing I was buying was a load of BS or not. 

[Spotty]

Moved to Off-Topic

 

Tech News means news regarding technology or gaming. Please don't post topics in this forum that don't have a strong relation to technology/games.

 

You're welcome to discuss cars on the forum but please do so in the correct forum (Off-Topic).

[CarlBar]

On 9/28/2020 at 8:38 PM, Bombastinator said:

re: “compressed” hydrogen.  

How do you think liquid hydrogen is made?  They compress it.  Why would you think that gaseous hydrogen is easier to keep contained than liquid hydrogen?

 

You also have to chill it to -200 and somthing Celsius. 

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

You also have to chill it to -200 and somthing Celsius. 

Sort of.  that happens with the compression.  Spare Heat needs to be removed. 

[CarlBar]

19 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Sort of.  that happens with the compression.  Spare Heat needs to be removed. 

 

From Wikipedia, (it has a source in the sources list for this statement but it's a big PDF so pardon me for not digging it out): 

 

 

To exist as a liquid, H2 must be cooled below its critical point of 33 K. However, for it to be in a fully liquid state at atmospheric pressure, H2 needs to be cooled to 20.28 K (−252.87 °C; −423.17 °F).

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

From Wikipedia, (it has a source in the sources list for this statement but it's a big PDF so pardon me for not digging it out): 

 

 

To exist as a liquid, H2 must be cooled below its critical point of 33 K. However, for it to be in a fully liquid state at atmospheric pressure, H2 needs to be cooled to 20.28 K (−252.87 °C; −423.17 °F).

With phase changes cooling and compression are often more or less the same thing.  Water is unusual because when water turns to ice it actually gets bigger.  Most other things don’t.  The most common thing to use is a compressor.  That’s why air conditioners have compressors. They release pressure on the working fluid so it turns into a gas sucking out heat, then they move the gas to the”hot side” and compress it causing it to release the heat. It’s why they’re called heat pumps.  An air conditioner or a refrigerator just move heat around.  Most refrigerators have big radiators on the back.

[CarlBar]

On 10/2/2020 at 8:17 AM, Bombastinator said:

With phase changes cooling and compression are often more or less the same thing.  Water is unusual because when water turns to ice it actually gets bigger.  Most other things don’t.  The most common thing to use is a compressor.  That’s why air conditioners have compressors. They release pressure on the working fluid so it turns into a gas sucking out heat, then they move the gas to the”hot side” and compress it causing it to release the heat. It’s why they’re called heat pumps.  An air conditioner or a refrigerator just move heat around.  Most refrigerators have big radiators on the back.

 

And that relevant to what i posted how? 

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

And that relevant to what i posted how? 

There was a statement that creating liquid hydrogen is done by cooling not compression.  You seemed to support that.  My statement is that cooling and compression do the same thing and pointed out how compression was used to create liquid because it was also a way to move heat.  It’s possible that wasn’t the point you were trying to make though.

[CarlBar]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

There was a statement that creating liquid hydrogen is done by cooling not compression.  You seemed to support that.  My statement is that cooling and compression do the same thing and pointed out how compression was used to create liquid because it was also a way to move heat.  It’s possible that wasn’t the point you were trying to make though.

 

Okay, first i wasn't supporting the statement that liquid hydrogen is created by compression, (it may be involved, i'm not sure, but it's not the main method|).

 

Second, sounds like i need o give you a basic science lesson on what a critical point is. A substance, has 2 critical points. the first, in it's gaseous phase is the minimum temperature below which it will not turn into a liquid, you can hyper compress it, it will still be a gas if it's above that temperature, (get upto pressures around that in the core of a gas giant and it gets funky as it starts messing with atomic structures, but thats somthing no one's confirmed achieving in a lab AFAIK, though it's an ongoing research goal). The second is the temperature below which it will turn into a solid. 

 

The point about what i posted is that you can compress hydrogen gas to the limits of whats practical to do and if it's above -252 Celsius it will remain a gas, pressure alone will not turn t into a liquid. Not unless you get to the point of generating metallic hydrogen, but thats still a laboratory only research goal using anvils made of diamond and amounts of hydrogen gas smaller than a pinhead.

 

 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

 

Okay, first i wasn't supporting the statement that liquid hydrogen is created by compression, (it may be involved, i'm not sure, but it's not the main method|).

 

Second, sounds like i need o give you a basic science lesson on what a critical point is. A substance, has 2 critical points. the first, in it's gaseous phase is the minimum temperature below which it will not turn into a liquid, you can hyper compress it, it will still be a gas if it's above that temperature, (get upto pressures around that in the core of a gas giant and it gets funky as it starts messing with atomic structures, but thats somthing no one's confirmed achieving in a lab AFAIK, though it's an ongoing research goal). The second is the temperature below which it will turn into a solid. 

 

The point about what i posted is that you can compress hydrogen gas to the limits of whats practical to do and if it's above -252 Celsius it will remain a gas, pressure alone will not turn t into a liquid. Not unless you get to the point of generating metallic hydrogen, but thats still a laboratory only research goal using anvils made of diamond and amounts of hydrogen gas smaller than a pinhead.

 

 

1. So you WERE saying that the main method for making liquified gasses is cooling not compression and the example of air conditioners was actually right exactly on the money.

 

2.  How could I possibly not know what a critical point is after I actually just described a machine whose entire purpose was to use one?