Chemical Engineer Paul Martin Reflects On Liebreich’s Hydrogen Ladder & #Hopium — Part 1
In this edition of CleanTech Talk, Paul Martin and I discuss Michael Liebreich’s hydrogen ladder. Paul is a working chemical process engineer, and has spent his career building prototypes of biofuel, hydrogen, and chemical processing plants as part of scaling them to full, modularized production systems for clients. Paul’s piece in CleanTechnica on why hydrogen is not suitable as a replacement for natural gas in buildings is a must read.
Liebreich is an entrepreneur, founder of what has become Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), chairman on multiple boards, has engineering and business degrees, and represented the UK on their skiing team in 1992. He’s had a rich and interesting life, but for the purposes of this pair of podcasts and attendant articles, it’s his iteratively improving hydrogen ladder Paul Martin and I are focusing on.
Regular readers of CleanTechnica will know that I have been assessing hydrogen’s place in the decarbonized economy in the areas of transportation, oil refining, and industry, among others. Paul and I share a strong opinion that “blue” hydrogen, which is sourced from fossil fuels with 10-30 times the mass of CO2 which is theoretically going to be sequestered or used, is a fossil-fuel industry lobbying effort and not a viable climate solution.
Listeners are recommended to keep the hydrogen ladder in front of them as Paul and I talk through aspects of it.
We start with a discussion of one of Paul’s frequently used hashtags, #hopium, which he defines as the drug that is made out of our own hope to overcome our faculties and divert government money to things which aren’t useful. We agree that the fossil fuel industry are masters of PR when it comes to giving false hope to governments and individuals that we can just vacuum CO2 out of the air or out of smokestacks after emitting it, rather than the reality that we leave most fossil fuels unburned and unused.
Paul steps through existing hydrogen production, pointing out that of the 120 million tons used annually today, less than 0.1% could be considered green hydrogen, intentionally cracked from water using renewably generated electricity. All hydrogen today is actually black, at least 30% blacker per unit of energy than the fossil fuel it was made from. For coal, up to 30 kg of CO2 is created for every kg of hydrogen, with one data point suggesting a proposal in Australia to make hydrogen from low-grade coal with 35 kg of CO2 for each kg of hydrogen. For natural gas, it’s up to 10 kg, but there is also methane leakage with its 86x worse than CO2 on 20 years global warming potential. Creation of hydrogen from natural includes an almost equal amount of GHGs in methane leakage, which is typically not counted in the emissions.
We continue with a discussion of ground transportation, where there is no place for hydrogen, in our opinion. Paul draws out the efficiency versus effectiveness argument first. Gasoline isn’t efficient, as perhaps 15% turns into useful energy, but it is effective due to being cheap, easily poured into gas tanks, and easily transported.
Hydrogen is neither efficient or effective for ground transportation. The misleading truths that are used for #hopium are that it’s the most common element in the universe and has excellent energy density for its mass.
The first truth is not helpful, as all hydrogen available to us is tightly chemically coupled with other substances, whether that is fossil fuels or water. It takes a lot of energy to break those bonds.
The second truth is not helpful either. Hydrogen, as the lightest element and lightest gas, has very poor energy density by volume, regardless of whether you compress it to 700 atmospheres, a little over 10,000 pounds per square inch, or chill it to 24 degrees above absolute zero to liquify it. As a gas, it has less than a third the energy density by volume of methane, and as a superchilled liquid, its energy density by volume is only 75% better.
Paul points out that the Toyota Mirai vs Tesla Model 3, otherwise comparable cars, is illustrative in that the Mirai weighs as much as the Tesla, even though it only carries 5.6 kilograms of hydrogen. The tanks weigh hundreds of kilograms. A standard hydrogen cylinder weighs 65 kg and only delivers 0.6 kg of hydrogen, a problem that transportation uses have to overcome with expensive thin-walled aluminum tanks wrapped in carbon fiber. It’s also worth noting that hydrogen cars have less interior and luggage room due to the hydrogen storage and fuel cell component space requirements.
Paul points out the lost mechanical energy of compression. He calculated once that the energy used to compress 5 kg of hydrogen to 700 atmospheres was equivalent to the kinetic potential energy of suspending the car 500 meters in the air, ready to drop. That energy is lost. If superchilled hydrogen were used instead, 40% of the energy in the hydrogen would have to be used to chill it.
The final devil in the details is thermal management. Hydrogen is an interesting gas in that unlike many other gases, it gets warmer as it expands. Anyone used to compressed air cans know that the jet of air comes out cold, but an equivalent jet of hydrogen would come out hot. Even though compressed hydrogen isn’t liquified, in other words, it has to be chilled in its tanks before being pumped into cars, another loss of energy.
This all leads to the common myth that hydrogen cars are quick and convenient to refuel. The reality is shown by Toyota’s entry in the 24-hour enduro Super Taikyu Series in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture. They prepped a racing Corolla with a hydrogen combustion engine. It had four huge carbon-fiber tanks in the area where you would normally have back seats. They brought four tractor trailers full of equipment to fuel the car. The car had to spend four hours of the 24 hours of the race refueling. Ineffective, inefficient, and with startling infrastructure requirements.
As Paul says, the devil isn’t hiding in the details, he’s waving his pitchfork in plain sight of anyone willing to see him.
We move on to agreeing in general that hydrogen might have a direct play in long-haul shipping, or at least hasn’t proven itself uncompetitive in that space. I recently assessed Maersk’s methanol drivetrain dual-fuel ships announcement, and 40-day journeys with thousands of tons of fuel are a very hard problem to crack. Maersk has proposed a green methanol manufacturing facility capable of producing enough synthetic green methanol annually to cover half of one trip for one of the eight ships.
For the rest of the first half of the podcast, aviation is in our sights. Paul and I agree that short- and medium-haul aviation — basically all air trips within the boundaries of most continents — are going to be battery electric. Hydrogen has no advantages for those ranges.
And we agree that long-haul aviation is another hard problem. I went deep on long-haul aviation’s global warming contributions and challenges recently, so had the concerns at top of mind. First was the problem of direct carbon dioxide emissions of course, but aviation also has contrail and nitrous oxides emissions problems.
Contrails are water vapor, effectively clouds. Due to the altitude of especially night-flying high-altitude planes, they keep more heat in than they reflect. That’s something that can partially be managed by changing operations, reducing altitude and night-time operations, but there are economic reasons why planes fly high and at night that need to be addressed with economic incentives.
Nitrous oxides are trickier. Any fuel burned in oxygen produces nitrous oxides with a bunch of the nitrogen from the air, which is, after all, 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen combined with oxygen in the form of N20, nitrous oxide or laughing gas, has a global warming potential of 265 times that of CO2, and persists in the atmosphere a long time.
Another form of nitrous oxide, NO2 or nitrous dioxide, is the chemical precursor to smog, causing asthma and other heart lung problems. For those following along, yes, if you have a natural gas stove or furnace in your home, it’s also putting NO2 into your home’s air along with carbon monoxide, which you need a detector for if you don’t have it. All the more reason to electrify to induction stove tops and heat pumps as your appliances age out.
Paul’s perspective is that hydrogen for long-haul aviation has multiple problems. The first is that it can’t be stored as a pressurized gas in airplanes due to the increasing loss of atmospheric pressure and bulk as planes ascend to 30,000 ft. The second is that even chilled, it’s much less dense by volume than kerosene, so it would have to be stored in the fuselage. The third is that fuel cells are bulky for energy output of sufficient electricity, so would also have to be within the fuselage, and fuel cells give off a lot of heat. So that means either jets lose a fair amount of passenger and luggage storage, or get a lot bigger and heavier, even before the cooling and venting requirements for the fuel cell heat. That makes the economics of jet travel problematic, which might be just fine, as it arguably should be more expensive than it is.
However, this means that it would be hydrogen jet engines that would be used if hydrogen were to be used directly as a fuel. And burning hydrogen in a jet engine will produce a lot of water vapor, hence the same contrails, and nitrous oxides, hence the high global warming potential. Hydrogen would only deal with two-thirds of the problem.
Paul and I agree that biofuels for hard-to-service transportation modes such as long-haul shipping and aviation, along with operational changes and reduced use, are likely the best we can do until we achieve a battery as much better than lithium-ion as lithium-ion is than lead acid, and that took a century.
But we’ve had biofuels certified for aviation use since 2011, and they just aren’t being used. They are more expensive, despite being much lower CO2 emissions cradle-to-grave than kerosene. Once again, negative externalities have to be priced.
The next half of the podcast discussion gets into places where hydrogen actually has a place in the sun, but makes it clear that hydrogen is actually a decarbonization problem, not a decarbonization solution.
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The Dahon K-Feather is one of those electric bikes that makes a lot more sense the longer you ride it. On paper, it looks rather low-power and low-capacity compared to the spec sheets for most e-bikes. In practice, especially when used exactly as intended, it turns out to be a remarkably well-executed urban commuter that still feels refreshingly different years after its release.
Launched earlier this year by Dahon, a brand best known for decades of folding bike experience, the K-Feather was never meant to compete with high-power folding e-bikes loaded with throttles, suspension, and giant batteries.
Instead, it aims for something far simpler: a super lightweight folding bike that just happens to have electric assist.
A lightweight e-bike, even by light e-bike standards
At around 26 lb (11.8 kg), the K-Feather is shockingly light for an electric bike, even by today’s standards. Pick it up and it barely registers as an e-bike at all. That’s largely thanks to its extremely minimalist design, highlighted by the cleverly hidden battery integrated into the seatpost.
The 24V 5Ah battery offers roughly 120 Wh of capacity, which is undeniably small, but it also avoids the bulky look and awkward weight distribution that many early e-bikes suffered from.
The result is a bike that feels balanced, easy to carry, and genuinely pleasant to live with in an urban environment. Folding it up is quick and intuitive, and carrying it up stairs or onto public transport doesn’t feel like a chore. For apartment dwellers, train commuters, or anyone combining cycling with other forms of transportation, this matters a lot.
I’m not sure how else to say this without beating a dead horse, but it is just incredibly lightweight. When you pick it up, your brain just sort of short-circuits as it fails to compute that this is still an electric bike.
Simple, subtle electric assist
Power comes from a 250W rear hub motor that provides pedal assist only. There’s no throttle, no complex display, and no attempt to turn the K-Feather into something it isn’t. The assist tops out around 15.5 mph (25 km/h), aligning more with European-style pedelec limits than US Class 2 or Class 3 expectations.
For those accustomed to American-style electric bikes, that may sound quite slow. And if you’re trying to keep up with traffic on the shoulder of a busy road, it is slow. But this e-bike is more designed for bike lane cruising, where 15 mph means you’re easily keeping up with, or passing, most pedal bike riders.
The assist itself is quiet and unobtrusive. It doesn’t leap forward when you start pedaling, and it doesn’t overpower the ride. Instead, it feels like a gentle push that smooths out stop-and-go city riding and takes the edge off short climbs and headwinds. You still feel like you’re riding a bike, just a slightly stronger version of yourself.
The torque sensor definitely does its job, coming on quickly and effectively without being lurchy, though it’s hard for a 250W motor to feel lurchy anyway. But with an effective torque sensor instead of a laggy pedal assist sensor, the minimal assist still feels nice and natural, as if you’re simply always pedaling with a tailwind.
That riding feel is a big part of the K-Feather’s charm. It doesn’t try to impress you with acceleration or brute force. It simply makes urban cycling easier, calmer, and more approachable. It’s not a powerhouse, but rather a sensible commuter.
Where the limitations show up
There’s no getting around the fact that the K-Feather’s small battery and modest motor define its limits. Range is typically quoted at around 15 to 20 miles (25 to 40 km), and that’s realistic if you’re riding on relatively flat terrain and contributing a reasonable amount of pedal effort. Start pushing hills hard or riding aggressively, and that number will drop.
There aren’t multiple pedal assist levels, so it’s not like you can drop it into lower pedal assist power to save battery. Instead, range largely comes down to your weight, your riding, speed, and how hilly your terrain proves to be.
Similarly, steep climbs will quickly reveal the bike’s low power output. This is not a hill crusher, and it’s not pretending to be one. The single-speed drivetrain reinforces that reality, keeping things simple and low maintenance but limiting flexibility when terrain gets demanding.
The V-brakes look old-school, sure. But I wouldn’t actually ding them here because they seem to work great. I had rim brakes for a long, long time. And while I enjoy the stopping power and low maintenance of hydraulic disc brakes, I can’t ignore the fact that when I yank on these stoppers, I quickly find myself stationary. So yeah, pooh-pooh them all you want for being older tech, but they work.
And lastly, I do wish the tail light and headlight were powered by the main e-bike battery. Instead, they have their own dedicated rechargeable batteries. It works, but it’s one more thing to remember to charge every now and again.
For riders coming from American-style, high-powered e-bikes, these constraints might feel significant. But context matters here, and that’s the thing to keep in mind for anyone considering an ultra-lightweight e-bike like this. The K-Feather isn’t trying to replace a car or handle long suburban commutes. It’s designed for short urban trips, last-mile riding, and compact living situations, and in that role, its limitations feel more like trade-offs than flaws.
In its element: city commuting
The key takeaway for me is that the K-Feather works best as a runabout in a dense city environment, which is where it makes perfect sense. Short trips between neighborhoods, errands, commuting a few miles to work, or riding to a train station are exactly what it excels at. Its light weight makes it easy to carry inside rather than locking up outside, and its discreet appearance doesn’t scream “expensive e-bike.”
In fact, at around US $1,299 depending on current pricing and sales, that’s a pretty darn good price for an ultra-lightweight e-bike. We’re used to seeing e-bikes in this price range fetch higher figures in the $3,000 to $4,000 range (and sometimes even much more) from exotic frame materials and obscure drivetrains. But the K-Feather just uses clever engineering that tracks with Dahon’s decades of design legacy to create something light yet stiff, and without breaking the bank.
The small wheels and compact geometry make it nimble in traffic, and the assist smooths out frequent starts and stops at intersections. You arrive less sweaty and less fatigued, but still feel like you actually rode a bike rather than being carried by a motor.
This is also a bike that appeals to riders who want electric help without fully committing to the idea of an e-bike. It’s unintimidating, visually understated, and mechanically simple. For many people, that’s a feature, not a drawback.
Final thoughts
The Dahon K-Feather isn’t for everyone, and it certainly isn’t trying to be. If you want high speed, long range, or hill-dominating power, this is not the bike for you. I’d recommend that you look elsewhere (and be prepared to lift several more kilos).
But if you want a genuinely lightweight folding e-bike that integrates electric assist in a subtle, elegant way, it still holds up remarkably well. And folds up remarkably well, too.
Used in its intended environment as a city-focused commuter and last-mile bike, the K-Feather works exactly as promised. It’s simple, refined, and quietly effective, and that’s a combination that remains surprisingly rare in the e-bike world.
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BYD is taking a page from the Airbnb playbook by launching a home charger sharing system that lets EV owners open up their personal charging equipment to other BYD drivers — and get paid for the convenience.
Instead of waiting for utilities or charging networks to build out more public infrastructure, BYD is effectively crowdsourcing existing capacity from home chargers its customers have already installed, turning underused residential charging equipment into a shared resource while its owner is at work or away.
Also like Airbnb, the app allows the charger’s owner and user to settle the pricing and availability and other transaction details between themselves, with contact information and messaging also going through the app.
Great, if not totally unique idea
BYD’s system seems to be more polished and, thanks to the integrated card reader, a bit more accessible than similar concepts from Nio and XPeng. XPeng’s system allows charger owners to set different electricity prices at different times (ex.: off-peak electricity at 0.35 yuan/kWh, significantly lower than peak), to cover their electricity costs.
The XPeng system also only seems to support automatic payment through the app, as opposed to the BYD system that bakes a card reader right in.
Electrek’s Take
I don’t know enough about the public charging scene throughout China – a massive country half a world away – to know how much of a need this is serving, but here in the US, I seem to recall that this was more or less PlugShare’s original concept, and could easily imagine a half-dozen scenarios outside of an Airbnb where a simple, app-based system like this could play out positively for both the EV driver and the equipment owner.
Multifamily apartments or condos with deeded spaces, churches, schools, municipal buildings, or other spaces that sit empty most days could be great uses for this, and I bet you guys could think of two or three more. I look forward to hearing about them, and whether or not a brand-specific network could help move the needle for a brand like Harley or Jeep that’s struggling with its EVs, in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: BYD, via CarNewsChina.
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![Maximizing fleet efficiency and ROI with telematics integration [update]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/11/Daimler-North-America-semi-electric-trucks.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Even without clean fleet tax credits and cash-on-the-hood incentives, fleet managers are working hard to maximize their ROI on vehicle assets and reduce their total cost of ownership – and they’re increasingly turning to data‑driven telematics solutions to help.
Telematics use data gathered from sensors embedded in a vehicle to monitor its operations. When collected and interpreted correctly, that data can be used to improve fleet safety, boost operational efficiency, and enable predictive maintenance that reduces (if not eliminates) unexpected downtime. Those are real benefits, with some analysts showing up to 30% savings in repair costs even before you factor in the fuel savings from EVs that, according to MAN CEO Alexander Vlaskamp, will cover the added cost of a BEV in less than three years.
As you can imagine, that’s a big business – and the global market for vehicle telematic platforms is projected to reach an impressive $127 billion in the next decade, and the rush is on to get OEMs like Ford (through Ford Pro) and Volvo (who has a deal with Geotab) to integrate digital solutions into their vehicles.
We originally covered these topics back in February, ahead of the ACT Expo. You can read that original article, below, and let us know what you think of the OEMs’ telematics’
Last month, Geotab signed a deal with Volvo Group to integrate the manufacturer’s vehicle data API into Geotab’s telematics platform. It’s the latest in a recent onslaught of such deals between telematics providers and OEMs that begs the question: what’s in it for the OEMs?
Almost all modern cars and trucks are “connected” in some way. Ford, for example, began fitting the FordPass Connect modem on all its vehicles in the 2020 model year, and the vehicle (and driver) data gathered powers the Ford Pro fleet management platform and enables offerings like the company’s E-Switch Assist, which enables Ford fleet managers to identify which of its ICE-powered F-150 and Transit assets are ready to make the switch to EV.
“Smart tools informed by data like E-Switch Assist are opening up many new conversations with our commercial customers large and small about EV readiness; we’re already using E-Switch Assist regularly in consultations to help organizations determine if electric trucks and vans are right for them,” says Nate McDonald, EV strategy and cross vehicle brand manager at Ford Pro. “The importance of these tools and technologies goes beyond selling a customer a new vehicle—it changes mindsets about whether electric vehicles will work for their business while potentially saving them time and money.”
So, it makes sense for manufacturers to build that connectivity into their vehicles and makes even more sense to use that data connection to populate a fleet management dashboard that makes it painless for fleet managers to monitor their assets within a trusted ecosystem. Think Android vs. iPhone, and the pain that would go into switching from one to the other after a decade or so of constant interaction – because that’s how the OEMs are looking at it.
Why, then, would an OEM open up that data stream to a third party like Geotab?
The answer, presumably, is that that data sharing is a two-way street: the manufacturer’s are opening up their APIs to Geotab, and Geotab is sharing at least some of the data from other manufacturers with their industry partners.
And Geotab has a lot of partners:
- In 2019, Geotab began working with Ford to integrate Ford’s telematics data into its fleet management platform
- In 2020, Geotab began integrating with GM and its OnStar telematics in North American markets
- In 2022, Geotab began partnering with Stellantis’ Free2move car sharing brand, providing full telematics integration into the MyGeotab platform in North America
- In April of 2024, Geotab partnered with Mobilisights to integrate data from Stellantis’ European brands, including Opel, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Citroën, and Peugeot
- In September of 2024, Geotab announced a new partnership with VW Group Info Services aimed at improving the company’s data integration across its brands
- A deal with Rivian, VW’s partner in a $5 billion joint software venture, followed soon after
All of those players are convinced that the data coming from their vehicles can produce enough value to seriously impact fleet ROI.
Fleet managers seem convinced, too. In a recent McKinsey survey, nearly 57% of EV buyers said they were willing to switch brands in order to get better connectivity features. And, if you’ve ever worked in “a Ford shop” or “a Chevy shop” you already know what a huge that deal that number might be to an OEM.
McKinsey connectivity survey
In that point of view, working with a trusted, universal platform like Geotab who doesn’t have a dog in the vehicle sales fight makes sense. If the Ford Transit the fleet buyer is looking at plays well with their fleet auditing software and systems and the Nissan NV doesn’t – well, it doesn’t really matter if Nissan’s fleetail guy is giving you a better deal at that point. It’s just too painful to operate a second dashboard for one subset of assets.
The man-hours saved with a universal and brand agnostic fleet management platform may not be the easiest to trace all the way to the bottom line, but they’re there.
Additionally, the Geotab dashboard can be configured to collect and even analyze data that’s specifically relevant to EVs. Information like charging history, and regenerative braking efficiency, and overall battery health – data that, over thousands of vehicles, can give fleet managers real insight into how long the new electric vehicles they’re considering will last compared to the gas and diesel vehicles they have experience with.
Geotab research shows that EV batteries could last 20 years or more if they degrade at an average rate of 1.8% per year, as we have observed.
According to our data, the simple answer is that the vast majority of batteries will outlast the usable life of the vehicle and will never need to be replaced. If an average EV battery degrades at 1.8% per year, it will still have over 80% state of health after 12 years, generally beyond the usual life of a fleet vehicle.
Telematics integrations can also help optimize a fleet’s charging schedules, both by scheduling EV charging for lower priced, off-peak hours and by identifying the most dependable high-speed charging stations along regular routes to minimize down time for both vehicles and drivers.
Finally, these data-driven platforms can provide fleet managers tools for tracking and reporting things like carbon emissions and overall energy consumption, which can streamline ESG reporting processes and make it easier for the worker bees to get regulators, administrators, and managers the sort of charts, tables, and graphs they love.
Something like that, anyway.
You can check out my Quick Charge with Nate McDonald, EV strategy and cross vehicle brand manager at Ford Pro, who explores how Ford’s in-house telematics can help fleet managers decarbonize, and head over to Geotab to find out more about their brand agnostic fleet management dashboard, below. Enjoy!
EV or gas – which is right for you?
SOURCES: Fleet Europe, Ford Pro, Geotab, McKinsey; add’l links in article.
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