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Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#'
Frosty P sends this quote from AutoblogGreen:
"Elon Musk is unafraid to speak his mind. Whether he's talking about other players in the electric vehicle space or sub-par reporting from The New York Times, this is a man with few filters. Musk says that fuel cells are not part of the solution that electric vehicles offer for giving up the hydrocarbon addiction. After commenting that the only reason some automakers are pursuing hydrogen technology is for marketing purposes, that lithium batteries are superior mass- and volume-wise for a given range, and that fuel cells are too expensive, Musk capped it all off with the safety issue. 'Oh god, a fuel cell is so bull@%!#,' Musk said. 'Hydrogen is quite a dangerous gas. You know, it's suitable for the upper stage of rockets, but not for cars,' he said."
In many regards, but especially to Mr. Musk's business model.
But the danger of fuel cells is not so much from the hydrogen storage part, you can engineer around that - ffs lithium batteries can burn too, and they carry their own oxidizers to do it, it's more from the fact that the cheapest source of hydrogen will be from gasification of fossil fuels, and from the fact that hydrogen via electrolysis is horribly inefficient, and then you actually have to build an infrastructure for the hydrogen distribution...
They all have their drawbacks, Elon.
Musk's criticisms depends on the particular type of "fuel cell" under discussion, I would think. There are many architectures & designs, some which only create small amounts of hydrogen & oxygen from electrolyzing H2O which is burned almost immediately internally which have a very low likelihood of causing/starting an explosion or fire.
There are any number of devices that could be called a "fuel cell". He may be quite correct in his criticisms of what is being currently proposed as automotive "fuel cells". That does not mean a different type/design of "fuel cell" would not be safe & practical.
It's also somewhat like asking MS's marketing their opinion on the suitability of linux as a replacement for Windows. Musk sunk his money into battery-powered-vehicle tech. You expect a favorable statement about that which could possibly threaten his investments?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
'Hydrogen is quite a dangerous gas. You know, it's suitable for the upper stage of rockets, but not for cars,' he said."
You mean like that other common rocket fuel, gasoline, which is used in the Russian R-12 also known as the Scud missile? Yeap, we would never use that in a car.
Hydrogen has a wider range of flammability mixtures than any of those other gasses mentioned.
Unlike propane, hyrdogen liquifies at temperatures too cold for normal use so this storage mechanism is not feasible.
H2 also has a nasty habit of permeating the metal structure of high pressure tanks leading to embrittlement and reduced strength.
These, and other factors, combine to push Hydrogen higher on the list of "dangerous gasses".
No other gas even comes close...the guy who provides my welding gasses, for example, even acetylyene which has to be dissolved in acetone to be "safe" at any pressure over 15-20 psi - it self-explodes otherwise (those unsatisfied carbon bonds) - can't even get the license to sell hydrogen, it's far too much a hazmat.
Now you want to let joe sixpack work with the stuff in quanity, all over the world? Yeah, it'll solve the population problem anyway. Along with the other stuff mentioned, like embrittlement, no way to liquify it at normal temperatures, a continuous explosive range with any air mixture...inefficient production, energy-wise...long list.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
He's got a massive ego, there's no denying it, but your rebuttal is quite terrible. The whole fiasco surrounding Top Gear was bad, but the Top Gear guys have their fair share of the blame: they did do this so that the car would end up behaving as they wanted it to behave (ie. badly), not as it actually did. It may be comedy, but it's still misrepresentation, and we are all fully aware that electric cars (or basically anything but a fuel car) is going to have to fight an uphill battle for adoption, so why make it harder for no good reason beyond your own obstinate vision of a car being noisy, gas guzzling machines?
Likewise, I don't recall him making excuses for the car's performance, either the Roadster or the S. There's been a lot of talk about both models and sometimes expectations went a bit overboard. They have a lot to prove, so they're going to defend their product tooth and nail, which honestly is to be expected (and if it were somebody you liked, you'd be the first taking their defence for being gutsy).
Lastly but most importantly, his wrestling with car sales rules in many states is undeniably good. These rules have been bent and twisted to hell and back by the incumbent auto makers and their dealers to make it nigh impossible to compete with any other business model. For a place like Slashdot, with so many promoters of the "FREE MARKET", this thing should cause almost unanimous uproar. Tesla wants to cut costs on incumbent, useless, overpriced dealerships and modernize how cars are delivered, supported and maintained. It may work, it may not work, who knows? Regardless, however, laws shouldn't be designed to stack everything against that model in such a fashion, and saying that it's just whining and not a serious concern is childish at best, utterly irresponsible at worst.
storing it involves usually involves compressing it to hundreds of atmospheres of pressure
I'm not sure where to put this post, but here seems to be a reasonable choice. What many people who are complaining about fuel cells or hydrogen fuel cells in particular are missing is that there are many schemes to use hydrogen fuel cells that avoid many of the problems mentioned. For instance, there has been a lot of work done to develop H fuel cells which contain a solid material with a very high surface area, swiss cheese, zeolite-like structure which reversibly absorbs hydrogen gas. Some of the potential benefits of this are
1) The H is stored at a condensed phase density at relatively low pressures and at normal temperatures.
2) The cell could provide a controlled release of H at a rate that is suitable to run an engine, but not so great as to cause a great risk of explosion.
3) Because the hydrogen is absorbed in a solid material, even if the fuel cell is violently ruptured, it would not rapidly release a large quantity of hydrogen making the cell potentially much safer than many other competing techs in the event of a vehicle collision.
4) Storage of the hydrogen at low pressure in a zeolite-like material would dramatically reduce the problem of hydrogen diffusion causing brittleness in the fuel cell outer casing.
5) A vehicle which runs on fuel cells could be designed to be refilled by simply swapping out fuel cells, making refilling very quick, safe and convenient.
6) The use of fuel cells to store H means that there need not be hydrogen pipelines built everywhere. Cells could be refilled at a remote power generation station, at a nuclear plant in Baja CA which hydrolyzes sea water for example and then distributed using existing road and track infrastructure. Empty cells could be collected and shipped back the same way. Existing filling stations could be updated with simple dispensing and collecting racks for the full and empty cells.
Obviously, such a H fuel cell does not yet exist, but I thought I would mention the idea just so people don't get too side-tracked by the idea that there would necessarily have to be massive new infrastructure built to accommodate fuel cells.
captcha: prophesy