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Future of Cars: Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Or Electric?
cartechboy writes: "Back in 2010, Toyota and Tesla teamed up to develop electric cars. That partnership gave us the RAV4 EV electric crossover, but it seems as though that will be the only vehicle we see from that deal. The partnership will soon expire and Toyota has no plans to renew it. Why? Because Toyota believes the future is in hydrogen fuel cell cars, not battery electric vehicles. We knew trouble was brewing when the RAV4 EV failed to set the world on fire when it came to the sales floor. Then Toyota and Honda announced plans to debut hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as early as next year. Add it all together and the writing was on the wall. Is Toyota right? Are hydrogen fuel cell cars the future, or is it missing the mark?"
It's much simpler.
"We knew trouble was brewing when the RAV4 EV failed to set the world on fire"
I heard that some of the Tesla cars have set the world on fire...
When you travel across the country and you don't know what kind of service station you'lll find along the way, diesel always wins. No alternative fuel even comes close to the reliability and availability of diesel engines, and that's not changing anytime soon.
Why not Zoidberg? I mean both. I can't imagine hydrogen fuel being cheaper than charging at home within the next 20 years. But with hydrogen fuel cell you can have a relatively quick refueling for extended driving. Something like a hydrogen/electric plugin vehicle would be the most appealing to me.
let them in and see which one is preferred. A decade with both hydrogen and pure electric competing ought to make for a hell of a lot of innovation in both sectors.
My bets on Elan Musk. At this point I really just want to throw my money at him and shout "just do something awesome with it."
So many advantages to hydrogen. It automatically increases the fuel tax by leaking, and further by requiring active cooling to keep hydrogen contained. It's expensive to produce and transport, so it doesn't threaten oil companies with lower fuel costs. It's plentiful, so you can use tons of other fuels to separate water into hydrogen.
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The reason the electric vehicles aren't taking of has a lot to do with price (although there is also a legitimate concern about range between charges). But the price is a major factor, especially in an economy where the middle class (the lion's share of all car purchases) continues to get squeezed every time we look the wrong way. Seriously, let's look at price -- even the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt (plug-in hybrid) are $40,000 vehicles. And electric vehicles go up from there -- up to the Tesla Roadster in the six figure range. The average American doesn't even spent $30,000 on a car, so the price range of these new vehicles is still in the realm of the rich for toys and games. And to be honest, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are going to be priced in that same $40,000 and up range as well, so we won't be seeing those in the mainstream anytime soon. Henry Ford had it right back in the early 20th century. If you want your product to be adopted in the mainstream, you need to pay your workers enough to afford the product to be worth owning. They haven't done that yet, and until they do, we won't be seeing electric of hydrogen fuel cells in mainstream life anytime soon.
Tesla has a big head start since most homes and businesses have electricity already.
Electric in the short run is more economic than hydrogen because the technology is here and developed. One of Hydrogen's problems is the embrittlement of classic construction materials. So exotic materials need to be researched and made. The production of these materials at first will be expensive, but as time goes by, the materials will get cheap. An example of a piece the hydrogen car needs is the gas tank. The gas tank needs to be able to hold pressurized hydrogen in an exotic material, but other than that, it is just a gas tank. Compare this with a battery array. In the long run a gas tank is going to become cheaper than a battery array, but in the short run, electric cars are there already.
Hydrogen is refillable. Hydrogen stations only needs electric and water. People will have them at their own houses. People who want to make a hydrogen refilling station will have a low barrier to entry. There might even be people who get solar arrays to help produce more hydrogen for their gas stations. So hydrogen is poised to be the more economical car in the long run (like 10-20 years if research keeps going).
Electric will always have the advantage of regenerative braking though. So it is possible the future hybrid cars might be Hydrogen + Electric anyway. Unless maybe its possible to make your own hydrogen on the fly with the electricity made from regenerative braking.
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The best way to get hydrogen is through a process called "Hydrocarbon Fractionation" or steam reforming. Both of which produce large amounts of CO2 which is a green house gas. Natural gas is often used in the process but you can also use coal (Hello Koch brothers!). And when hydrogen is burned it produces a large amount of H2O vapour which is a greenhouse gas. That is why I call it a scam, it does nothing to improve the global environment or remove the dependence on fossil fuels while adding yet another layer of inefficiency to the energy to transportation process.
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Did you see the movie? The oil companies and other incumbents want it dead. They bought all the patents they could get their hands on for the components of electric cars but the much of the proverbial cat was already out of the bag. However, they already own just about everything related to hydrogen fuel and it's pipeline. So they're pulling out all the stops to kill the electric car.
Yes, they're[plug ins] cleaner than hybrids, but they still depend on electricity ...produced by dirty fossil fuels... hydrogen fuel cells are, for now, the greenest of many options,
Hydrogen has to be cracked from complex molecules using...wait for it...electricity, so no, fuel cells aren't any greener than plug-ins. I suppose one could argue about whether the manufacture of fuel cells causes less pollution than that of batteries, but I expect it's pretty much a wash. I think the economy and convenience of recharging at home trumps hydrogen's greater range and shorter refueling time, and eventually battery technology will narrow those gaps.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
In the long run a gas tank is going to become cheaper than a battery array, but in the short run, electric cars are there already.
So a hypothetical gas tank is hypothetically cheaper than an existing and very real battery? Curious argument you have there. How about we just plug in a hypothetical Mr. Fusion while we are at it? I frankly disagree with how you are framing the issue given the lack of cited evidence.
Hydrogen is refillable. Hydrogen stations only needs electric and water.
If you already are delivering the electricity, why not just put it into a battery and use it directly? (presuming the battery has sufficient energy density)
Electric will always have the advantage of regenerative braking though.
Electricity has a number of advantages. It is independent of the fuel source. Electricity can come from coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind etc. Electricity also is compatible with other types of motors. You can have a gas-electric hybrid, a diesel-electric hybrid, a fuel-cell-electric hybrid, etc. No other energy source can do that. We do not have the technology to use hydrogen directly (requires pressure and/or cooling tech beyond current economic practicality) and there is no near term likely prospect for a practical hydrogen based fuel.
Toyota made a decision that works within their existing car infrastructure. Think about it. The car will still have a fuel tank, and will still run an internal combustion engine.
There will be no "range anxiety" and you won't have to worry about replacing the entire battery pack after 3000 charge cycles.
They are going to have to start forcing gas stations to carry hydrogen as well, the way some places carry diesel and kerosene, but that's not *their* problem, is it?
The advantage to hydrogen is that they can still continue to make cars "as is" -- hell, they can even make hybrids too, a Hydrogen Electric Prius is sure to be in the future, without changing much about their existing factories.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
No, a $40K vehicle is NOT out of the reach for most of the population, but what you get for $40K buying EV vs. buying gas, is massively different.
You can get a lot more car for your money buying gas than buying EV, that's the problem.
$40K buys you a top of the line minivan or SUV, it buys you an entry level luxury car... A Chevy Volt? Give me a break, that is a cheap $20K compact car with a fancy battery in it.
Hyrdogen Fuel cells do not eliminate the majority of gas stations and the distribution network that support them.
EV's eliminate > 90% of gas stations and all of the supporting infrastructure.
The Fuel Cell lobby group is strong and well backed.
The book "Reinventing Fire" looks at both technologies. It gives electric the headstart but sees fuel cells as catching up in about 15 years or so. http://www.rmi.org/reinventing...
With respect to Hydrogen, the U.S. lies between the 2 largest reserves on the planet. It's renewable, and the cost is less than recycling lithium batteries. Maybe Tesla can drive from San Yesidro,CA Vancover,BC? I can get Hydrogen where ever there is water; lets try that for a lithium battery.
Cars will be fueled next on Compressed Natural Gas. Why? Because there is a cheaper option that doesn't weigh a lot or take up lots of space.
Hydrogen is decidedly NOT efficient to produce. The cheapest way to make it right now is to reform natural gas (releasing CO2 in the process). Don't even think about electrolysis to get hydrogen, not even remotely cost effective or efficient Not to mention that the infrastructure needed to distribute H2 doesn't exist. It also is difficult to pack enough H2 into a tank to get enough energy inside to go very far unless you liquify it, but that requires cryogenic temperatures which are both dangerous and expensive. As nice as hydrogen sounds, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
Electric power (battery powered) is closer than hydrogen. The distribution infrastructure exists for the most part. Electricity is not hard to produce, even though we generate the bulk of it from fossil fuels. The problem with battery powered cars is that batteries are heavy, expensive, discharge quickly and take a lot of time to charge. You might get 100 miles out of a charge, maybe even 200, but eventually you are going to stop for a charge or replacement battery pack. If the temperature is high or low, your battery won't last nearly as long. The infrastructure for remote charging or battery swapping doesn't exist so distance anxiety is a real issue for electric car owners. Batteries are usually really large, compared to the equivalent tank size for gasoline. Batteries are not as inefficient as Hydrogen, but they still have serious issues.
Compressed Natural Gas suffers from fewer problems. The distribution infrastructure exists with natural gas pipelines nearly everywhere. In some areas CNG stations already exist. If you have NG in your home already, you can compress your own fuel for about half of the price at the station. Existing engines are easily converted to CNG with little loss in power and run cleaner and longer on CNG. If you convert correctly you can burn either CNG or gasoline/diesel. Tank size needs to be bigger than gasoline but most cars usually have the space available, trucks almost certainly do. Many fleet operators (taxis and such) already use CNG. But the biggest advantage of CNG is that it's cheap when compared to the other options (and gasoline/diesel for that matter). Not to mention that it is nearly 100% domestically sourced (at least in the USA).
So, the next adopted motor fuel will be CNG, not hydrogen or electric.
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Have they managed to come up with a liquid hydrogen storage medium then? Because otherwise "fluid" is mostly a technicality, and hydrogen must be stored at as a gas at insanely high pressure (aka "a bomb") to get anywhere close to the volumetric energy density of even a lead-acid battery. And that means a huge heavy tank to contain the pressure (reasonably) safely in an accident, and dealing with the fact that the hydrogen will rapidly leak out right through the walls of the tank.
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Okay, first off hydrogen fuel cell cars are electric. They just don't use a conventional battery.
Second, hydrogen fuel cell cars are not remotely competitive. Batteries are better and they're terrible.
Electric is just marginally competitive with gas and even then only in certain circumstances.
Someone is boundless going to tell me something great about hydrogen... but the problem is that its logistically difficult to move around, it escapes from any vessel you put it in especially under pressure. And ultimately you have to get the gas by pouring electrical grid power into some sort of electrolysis machine. And where is the grid power coming from? About half of it is still coal. So... by all means... get your green car and accomplish nothing.
We need fewer of these flash in the pan solutions and more ACTUAL solutions.
We need municipal power storage. Something more reasonable then deep cycle batteries. There are some places that pump water from a reservoir to a higher one to store power and then run that water through a hydroelectric dam to recover it. So far the most scalable power storage system we know. But we don't have enough of those. We need to look at flow batteries.
Once we're storing renewable energy electric cars will ACTUALLY have an impact on carbon emissions. Until then... irrelevant.
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There's still a lot of improvements that can be made to the good old internal combustion engine. Both batteries and fuel cells are much more expensive - they may come down (slowly), but the efficiency of combustion engines will keep going up, thus maintaining the gap.
Rrrright... And you have an ingenious system that takes in water, then uses road signs "Oxygen molecules to the left, Hydrogen molecules to the right" and Bob's your Uncle.
Any idea how much energy it takes to split water? Care to explain where that energy will come from?
Hydrogen is a potential energy carrier, not an energy supplier.
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All hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are essentially H2-electric hybrids. Not only because a fuel cell produces electricity, but because HFCVs also incorporate sizable batteries.
A fuel cell can't be readily throttled, and making one that's powerful enough for acceleration demands is expensive and space consuming. A battery is used for peak power demands and to buffer the fuel cell so it can operate at a more consistent, more optimal output. As a bonus, the battery also allows for regenerative braking.
=Smidge=
Diesel baby, all the way.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
and further, pretend you have the option to purchase a volt at 40k or something like a used focus (or for the pedantic twits, any decently new, used economy car) at 10k. that 30k price difference equates to more gasoline than you'd ever conceivably use.
Buying a Volt/Tesla/Leaf -- to break even with a used car you'd have to drive the EV/hybrid for quite a bit longer than the car is likely to last.
It equates to spending $40k to save $10k in gas. OR it's greenwashed feel good smugness, hard to tell.
which is $24,000 according to some blog postings with no supporting links. I couldn't find any better number with Google.
I bet the average new car price includes some $100,000+ outliers, so it's hoisted significantly above what the middle-class car buyer pays.
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> Have they managed to come up with a liquid hydrogen storage medium then?
Yes, and its volumetric energy density is significantly better than a lead-acid battery. It has more hydrogen per volume than H2 liquid hydrogen, too. My car uses such a liquid. For every two or three hydrogen atoms, just add one atom of carbon, ending up with C7H16, C5H10 or similar.
I also have some other mostly-hydrogen liquid fuel on my desk here, C12H22O11. It works very well when boosted with just a tiny amount of C8H10N4O2.
Seriously, though, there are many liquids that can work in fuel cells, including C7H16, kerosene, and gasoline. Selecting one that makes the greenies and everyone else happy is a chore, but I don't see any to think that won't happen.
Hydrogen has a huge infrastructure problem. Ie., what do you do when you need some electricty to charge something? Reach over and plug it in. Vs. what do you do when you need some hydrogen. Uh, yeah, right.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.