Father; husband; mechanical engineer. Posting from my self-hosted Lemmy instance here in beautiful New Jersey. I also post from my Pixelfed instance.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • Okay, but this application only requires 1.9MWh on board. That would be about 57kg of hydrogen. The required capacity would actually be less since the hydrogen refuel time should be significantly less than recharging a battery. Anyway, I just doubt very much that 11,900kg storage vessels and fuel cell would be required. There’s simply less dead weight in a hydrogen vehicle as well as better performance and less externalities associated with battery production and disposal/recycling.

    As for the efficiency of hydrogen production and delivery, it shouldn’t matter. We need to produce it anyway for emissions free steel and fertilizer production. The real problem is that we don’t have enough emissions free energy production, which isn’t one that battery vehicles or storage facilities solve. The current paradigm is one of deficit in order to create a market and I think battery storage unfortunately facilitates that. Instead, we need to build out capacity so that there’s almost always a surplus of electricity with the extra getting diverted to hydrogen production. It should be rare that the process is reversed to turn hydrogen back into electricity for the grid. That hydrogen is currently too expensive is the result of bad policy, which BEVs just reinforce.












  • I’m not saying that talent, preference, or experience aren’t real or that people won’t naturally focus their efforts on certain activities. I’m saying that people shouldn’t have to effectively blackmailed into certain activities, whether they align with their preferences or not. I like being a mechanical engineer. I do not like that I have to do it for forty plus hours a week, 49 weeks out of the year. Getting rid of occupations means that I would not be penalized if I decided to cut back on engineering and devote some real time to things that actually matter to me, my family, and my neighbors.



  • For most people, having an occupation means giving up roughly half of your waking hours, as well as a toll on your body and mind, to the minority class that happens to own the things needed to do this occupation in exchange for wages. These wages are required to buy the necessities for the rest of your life from this same minority class. Getting rid of occupations means ending this relationship so that we no longer have to support the exorbitant lifestyles and cruel whims of this minority class. It means putting us in control of the value we create with our labor and not wasting it on the likes of telemarketing, car dealing, or denying health insurance claims.