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Multiple Manufacturers Push Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars, But Can They Catch Tesla?
MojoKid writes After years of working on prototype vehicles, multiple car companies have announced a major push for hydrogen fuel cell automobiles. At the LA Auto Show last week, Toyota showed off its Mirai, a four-door passenger sedan with a $57,500 base sticker price and a hydrogen-only fuel system. Honda recently delayed its hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle until 2016, while Hyundai is planning to build 1000 fuel-cell powered Tucson's by the end of the year. Currently, most proposed hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are actually combined hydrogen-electric designs. Hydrogen gas, under enormous pressure, is used to drive a generator, which then charges a lithium-ion battery. Toyota plans to sell up to 3,000 Mirai a year by 2017, which would put it well below Tesla's own sales projections for its Model S — but at a lower overall price point. The pressurized fuel tanks in the Mirai can hold a total of 122 liters of hydrogen for an estimated range of 300 miles. A standard gasoline-powered car with a 122L capacity at 30mpg would be capable of traveling 960 miles. Proponents of hydrogen point to the vastly improved fueling time (roughly equal that of gasoline) as opposed to the 20-60 minutes required to recharge a vehicle like Tesla's Model S.
and for over 50 grand? at that price point might as well just wait it out and get the tesla!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The way things are going with GM, I expect them to have a hydrogen powered car and they'll call it the Hindenburg - named after the great German statesmen Paul Von Hindenburg, obviously.
If one were to buy one of these, how would one proceed to fill up? Would it be a viable transportation option for a road trip?
Do any of these vehicles take advantage of the technology that Tesla had open sourced?
A little reality check here, for all the hype Tesla isn't the big seller. BMW holds that crown by a factor of many.
Tesla total sales to march 2014 were 5000 units in the US.
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/automobiles/7-electric-vehicles-with-surprising-sales-in-2014.html/?a=viewall
The same as the Chevy Volt in its first 4 months of this year.
I couldn't find up to date numbers, but BMW is the winner here, with the electric i3 selling 1000+ a month and rising.
http://www.autoevolution.com/news/bmw-i3-wins-green-car-of-the-year-award-2015-89225.html
It's not inconceivable that fuel cell cars will be a success but the current state of tech is much better suited to stationary storage or heavy vehicles.
From the few reviews I've found, they seem to a bit on the sluggish side unless paired with a battery, which makes them more expensive.
As for catching Tesla, they'll really have to throw money and resources into it - Tesla is NOT standing still and they've already built out their fast charging infrastructure.
Hydrogen transport and storage is nowhere near as ubiquitous and is not a trivial problem.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I believe next generation batteries will be able to charge much faster; a 5-10 minute full charge seems to be achievable.
Long term, fully electric cars make a lot more sense, so it's very wasteful to invest in all the required hydrogen infrastructure, only to abandon it when fully electric technology is mature enough.
I think the major manufacturers are afraid of the reduced parts count that pure electric cars have and the implied loss of profit margin because of it. So they keep trying to sell hybrid systems that bundle an internal combustion engine with an electric motor in order to keep the parts count high.
Is it a car powered by gas under pressure, or is it hydrogen fuel-cell, where the gas is catalysed with Oxygen to produce electricity? How is it so horribly inefficient, given how we already know how horribly inefficient combustion engines are? Is it simply a case that, no matter how compressed you get the gas, you have not compressed it to liquid levels?
Fuel cells are 100% PR. Like solar cells, they are decades away from being economical.
I'd greatly prefer to see something practical and can be made today. A natural gas powered Honda Fit with an inexpensive home refueler would be ideal.
We have propane, natural gas, automotive fuel and electricity widely available. The cost of building a 5th energy source is prevent Hydrogen from going anywhere. ...
Honda recently delayed its hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle until 2016, while Hyundai is planning to build 1000 fuel-cell powered Tucson's by the end of the year
Wow! A whole 1000 cars. Drop meet ocean. [/sarcasm] Those sorts of production volumes make even electric cars look like hot sellers.
Proponents of hydrogen point to the vastly improved fueling time (roughly equal that of gasoline) as opposed to the 20-60 minutes required to recharge a vehicle like Tesla's Model S.
With the downside that there is no refueling infrastructure in place. At all. Kinda hard to refuel your car in 5 minutes if there is nowhere to refuel it. And without a substantial number of hydrogen powered cars on the road there is no economic incentive to build hydrogen refueling stations. If you ever needed an example of a strawman argument, here you have it. Electric cars might be slow to recharge but there is no lack of places to actually charge them as long as you have a long enough extension cord and enough time.
Yes hydrogen fuel cells are beautiful in principle but until they solve the infrastructure problem such cars are useless to 99.99999% of the car buying public.
The more options we have, the better the competition for one to win out, and the faster we get off of oil. To me it doesn't matter if they get better performance than Tesla right now or even the near future.
A fuel cell + hydrogen tank have a much higher energy density (even when measured in fuel cell output) as any battery in the next couple of years will have.
Which is irrelevant because hydrogen powered vehicles lack even rudimentary refueling infrastructure and thus will not be a meaningful part of the discussion for at least another 10-20 years a minimum.
Especially, as with renewable energy sources the production of hydrogen could be triggered just then when there is an overproduction of electricity and store it.
You have to have something to do with the hydrogen. We have no infrastructure that could absorb such production even if it made economic sense to store energy that way. It's a solvable problem if the economics make sense but doing so would take considerable time. Not a bad idea in principle but I don't know enough about the technical feasibility and economics to evaluate it fully.
But, true cars (electric or otherwise) are not the best solution for all our transportation problems.
And what exactly do you think is going to replace cars within our lifetime? For better or worse they aren't going anywhere.
I think the major manufacturers are afraid of the reduced parts count that pure electric cars have and the implied loss of profit margin because of it.
I'm in the auto industry and I'm a cost accountant. The part count on cars generally has only a modest (though significant) effect on profit margin and increasing part counts usually implies negative effects on profit margin. If anything they would welcome the reduced part counts because it would likely reduce costs, particularly warranty, production and maybe engineering. It's a competitive market so unnecessarily inflating part counts translates into reduced profit margin, not increased like you are implying.
So they keep trying to sell hybrid systems that bundle an internal combustion engine with an electric motor in order to keep the parts count high.
They sell hybrids because that is the state of the technology. We don't have the battery technology or charging infrastructure to go fully electric yet outside of some niche markts. We may in due time but not today. Hybrids are expensive because the technology is new, complex and doesn't enjoy full economies of scale yet.
The description seems to say that hydrogen gas is used to 'fill' the car then the gas runs a "generator" (? not direct burning 'generator' really is wrong word) this some kind of cell fuel like catalytic chemical-to-electrical converter using oxygen from the air to combine with the hydrogen -->water )
With lithium batteries to smooth out surge usage (accel) and maybe initial warm up time (many fuel cells operate at 400 degrees F)
Of course how many gas stations have high pressure hydrogen on tap ?? Minor issues like HOW high a pressure gas (thick heavy tanks...)...
Right now, you can get a electric Lamborghini Aventador for only $29.99 so don't tell me electric cars are too expensive.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Apart from all of the problems storing, transporting, and obtaining hydrogen (both in terms of the often fossil-based source and the difficulty of finding some to put in your car), it's about as expensive as gasoline per mile. And the cars are no cheaper either.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The first non-spam comment on the article: "Clean energy!" Right... That rather depends on where the hydrogen comes from. If it's made by cracking water with energy from coal power plants, well...
Hydrogen has potential, but the manufacturers have some big problems to solve. Accident safety with those high-pressure (700 atmosphere) tanks. Leakage - hydrogen is very difficult to contain. A fueling infrastructure - at least with electric vehicles, any plug will do in a pinch. Transport - if you have fueling stations, you have to get the hydrogen to them, which implies huge tanker trucks with accordingly magnified safety issues.
Those may not be insurmountable issues, but they sure aren't easy...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
in a dragrace between fuelcell cars and a tesla model s, the tesla car driver will only see the fuelcell cars in front of him/her. (or is it the other way around? can't seem to remember).
A standard gasoline-powered car with a 122L capacity at 30mpg would be capable of traveling 960 miles.
What kind of "standard gasoline-powered car" that runs at 30mpg (forget about the odd units) has a 122L gas tank!?
My car only has 42L... I know larger cars would have bigger tanks, but likely don't get 30mpg.
So if we compare more realistic sizes with their weird mix of L and miles... A 42L tank might get 330 miles... Maybe better to compare with that. But then that wouldn't be highway driving... which I know I can do better then 30mpg.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
At least, compressed hydrogen gas is really questionable.
Besides the well-known problems associated with containing hydrogen, I'm skeptical that it makes sense to build out a whole new distribution system. We have an extensive network in place for distributing gasoline and smaller ones for distributing compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquid propane (LP), but hydrogen gas is very different from any of those three. We also have a network in place for distributing electricity. Granted that it will have to be beefed up in many ways to support a society of all electric vehicles, that still seems like a much easier task. Particularly since with the increasing deployment of home PV generation, the electric grid might not need to be beefed up as much as we think.
It all really comes down to the cost of batteries. The only saving grace of compressed hydrogen vs batteries is that big batteries are expensive. And somewhat heavy, but probably not much heavier than the tanks needed to contain hydrogen. So is it cheaper to build lots of batteries and improve the electric grid where needed, or to build out an entirely new distribution infrastructure?
My money is on electric vehicles. Battery prices are falling just due to small incremental improvements plus scaling, and there are a number of technologies on the horizon that promise to significantly increase the kWh/$ ratio. Yes, yes, many of them have been "on the horizon" for a while, but there are so many promising technologies that it seems very probable that at least one will work out. Note that I'm not talking about recharge times, because Tesla has already solved that problem... given ~300 miles range and a one-hour recharge time, you're good even for cross-country trips.
Another option that might make a lot of sense is fuel cells that run on gasoline or CNG. Those would have many of the benefits of an EV (quiet, powerful electric drive; very simple, low-maintenance drive train), but could use existing fueling infrastructure. They still emit some CO2, but less than ICEs.
(Disclaimer: I own an electric vehicle.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Unlike gas-electric hybrids, there's no hydrogen-powered "generator" in these cars. Their traction batteries are charged by direct chemical reaction of hydrogen with oxygen in the fuel cell. Also, the Mirai's battery is nickel metal-hydride, not lithium.
Natural Gas is already flowing through hundreds (thousands?) of pipelines across the US. There are already filling stations.
Yes there is infrastructure accessible (like electric) but there aren't very many fueling stations for CNG vehicles readily available to most people. I honestly could not begin to tell you where there is a CNG refueling station near where I live though I know there are a handful. I can however tell you where there are some electric and plenty of gasoline/diesel refueling stations. CNG is an easier problem to solve than pure hydrogen but it has similar problems to electric as far as infrastructure goes. It also has the chicken/egg problem of building out the refueling infrastructure much like electric, though with admittedly fewer technical issues.
Honda has offered a CNG fleet vehicle for ages.
The key word there is "fleet". CNG cars currently are only really practical as fleet vehicles presently. That could be changed but I doubt it will be.
Get the price of a home compressor down to a Level 2 charger ($1000) and let me by a CNG car.
Which gets you a nice car that you can (mostly) only refuel at home. I know such a vehicle would be less practical for me than even a pure electric vehicle.
There is of course the fact that CNG is still fundamentally a fossil fuel even if it isn't quite as dirty as oil derived fuels. Maybe you care about that or maybe not but it doesn't really get us away from fossil fuels which is kind of a big deal.
It's time to move off of coal cars! H-Cars are the way to go. I'm excited to see them catch on.
.. a lithium battery and a hydrogen battery, I'll take the one that doesn't have a 50% loss just from charging it.
Is United Nuclear still around? I think their hydrogen project went under but I'm not sure.
Their concept bypassed using a generator completely instead opting for a unique, safe storage method and the engine burned hydrogen directly. If their extraction/storage system were to run off of solar, it could be a game changer for sure. Current hybrids, plug-in hybrids and EV's would have been left in the dust.
Sure, instead of fully electric, where cars can charge off of the current grid (with the right outlet installed), let's invest is a fully proprietary fuel source.
Is that a 122 L tank or is it the volume of Hydrogen at STP?
Why not compare the distance you could travel with 122 L of liquid Hydrogen against 122 L gasoline vapors? (of course, that wouldn't fit with the narrative they are trying to put forward)
I think the real question is: Can Tesla keep up?
niche?, you can go coast to coast in a tesla using superchargers this year
Yes niche. There is precisely 1 supercharger station in my state and it is on the other side of the state from where I live. Having a route by which you can go coast to coast means very little by itself unless that happens to be the specific route you need to follow. Believe it or not, not everyone lives in NYC or LA or even particularly close to the interstates that directly connect them. Good luck getting across North Dakota in your Tesla.
most of the US will be covered by 2015, get some research fingers going on google
That's not even remotely true. They have 132 stations in the US. Yes they are building out quite a few of them but that isn't remotely the same thing as having them "cover the US". When they get the number of stations into the tens of thousands then I'll concede the point. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see them building this sort of infrastructure but I'm also not going to pretend it is a bigger deal than it actually is.
Where do you get the hydrogen? The cheapest source is cracking hydrocarbons. (Yes, you can crack water - hydrolysis - but that's more expensive and we get most of our electricity from hydrocarbons...) Burning hydrogen is not non-polluting - it just moves the pollution to site of hydrogen generation. CNG vehicles have to be both cheaper and much more efficient. Like many other "green" technologies, this strikes me as more feel-good than effective.
Actually in practice it seems to be the contrary. A Testa and the Hydrogen Toyota get aound 250 miles on a full charge/tank. But if you compare the drivetrain of a tesla and the Toyota you'll see the Tesla is much more compact. The front space 'frunk' is empty in the Tesla and full in the Toyota. In addition the Toyota need sapce under all seats and part of the truck is used too. The entire drivetrain and energy storage of a Tesla is in the floor and does not get in the way.
Infrastructure has to be built one sale at a time. Tesla is demonstrating one way to do it with their supercharger network, with trickle chargers in the home, and supercharging stations scattered around the country, trying to bridge gaps in coverage.
A hydrogen infrastructure will look different, because pressurized hydrogen isn't as ubiquitous as electricity. They might have better luck with a regional approach, selling commuter cars in one city, and building up an infrastructure there just to prove it can be done. This could go hand-in-glove with a partnership with a rental car company, where your car price comes with discounted rentals for cross country trips. They might even be able to start with some fleet approaches: delivery vans, local taxi services, city government inspectors, etc. Get a few vehicles out there first, then expand into the consumer market. Once the hydrogen delivery trucks start making rounds to carry fuel to the fleet terminals, it's not a stretch to get them delivering to consumer facing refueling stations.
Or maybe hydrogen delivery service stations could be provided in a novel format, like a standard shipping container. Build a tank and pump system into a steel box, and make arrangements with a company like BP to drop one in the parking lot of an existing refueling station whenever you sell a car that's not within 10 miles of an existing station. BP may like drilling for oil, but their primary business is selling vehicle fuel. This is an opportunity that doesn't bypass them, like home charging stations do.
The one thing that would be likely to fail would be to take billions of dollars of investment, and build a national network of thousands hydrogen refueling stations before the arrival of millions of hydrogen consumers.
John
It is mostly produced from hydrocarbon fractionation, mostly natural gas fractionation. It can also be produced from coal. It there does nothing to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and the process release large amounts of CO2. So, in my opinion, it is a useless road to go down and a scam.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Are there any reasons (safety or otherwise) why it wouldn't be easy to install a natural gas compressor in my house?
Any time you have a compressed flammable substance near your house there is some risk involved. I don't think it is substantially more than the risk from a propane tank but it's non-zero. Nothing to get paranoid about but there are safety considerations.
Would having a high pressure tank of natural gas sitting in or near my house sit well with my insurance company?
It could affect the underwriting premiums potentially.
Isn't there something completely wrong about this sentence? Aside from the bad grammar, I mean...
"Hydrogen gas, under enormous pressure, is used to drive a generator, which then charged a lithium-ion battery."
Or are they using the word "generator" where they actually mean "fuel cell"? And should we be surprised that "most proposed hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are actually combined hydrogen-electric designs"? I'm not seeing many internal combustion hydrogen designs hitting the market.
Surely there was a better article to link to than this? Even the guardian article on the Mirai is more informative for a Slashdot crowd.
Unfortunately, Hydrogen won't take off (at least in the US). The reason is fairly simple, gas stations don't want it to. The current gasoline infrastructure won't work as is for Hydrogen, and the gas companies and providers don;t want to retrofit to be able to handle it. Tesla has the advantage of being able to create it's own infrastructure outside of gas stations, since all they need is a power line. But with having to have holding tanks and dispensers, Hydrogen is going to be locked into using existing gas stations rather than being able to easily set up their own. Gas stations and providers aren't going to pay the money to retrofit for Hydrogen until there is a tipping point of people with Hydrogen cars, but that's won't come until there are stations selling Hydrogen to make their cars useful.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
A lot more places have electricity than natural gas pipelines. It's cheap to install an electric socket to charge an electric car. Everyone could easily do this at their house or business. I have friends who have Nissan Leaf cars and they just plug them into the garage outlet.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Electric cars get ~100 mpge (miles per gallon equivalent).
Now try your silly calculation again.
All this hydrogen crap is done for only one reason that I can see- to keep oil and related companies in business. You still need some company to manufacture hydrogen, you still need complex transportation, you still need complex filing stations, and none of that you can do yourself. It's exactly the same business model, very similar infrastructure and process as dealing with gasoline. I.E. business as usual.
Purely battery electrical vehicles give customers control of charging their cars. You only need a charging station if you are on a long range journey. This will make lots of existing businesss obsolete, and it will be fought tooth and nail by the established companies. They will "invent" useless crap like corn alcohol or hydrogent to confuse the market and to slow down proliferation of purely battery electrical vehicles.
Theoretical research behind this- fuel cells and direct chemicals to electricity transformation with water as a byproduct is a cute idea, but it's very inpractical. Total energy efficiency of the whole system is low, transportation of hydrogen is tricky, and fuel cells are expensive. And it doesn't give you home-charging flexibility...
--Coder
A few things to consider:
1) The vehicle cannot be fugly. Why is it the majority of electric and / or hybrids fall into this category ? Is it intentional ?
2) The price has to be reasonable before folks will ever take them seriously. ( Consider the median income. $80k cars are laughable to most )
3) Refueling infrastructure needs to be in place to support it.
If you can't make a car aesthetically pleasing, the specs on it will be irrelevant as no one will want one. Granted,
some folks drive around in some of the worst looking vehicles in existence, but if you want to sell a lot of them, you
need to understand performance is only part of the equation.
While a small minority have the ability to outright purchase a high end model or two, I'm not spending $60k+ on a vehicle.
They tend to devalue far too quickly, in my opinion, to pour that kind of money into something that will be worth about half
its purchase price a few years down the road. I have better things I can spend money on I think.
Most of us will be long dead and buried before the infrastructure is in place to support hydrogen based systems.
The biggest problem I see is that we already have a pretty good infrastructure for delivering electricity with almost none of the complexity or drawbacks of dragging cylinders of gas around. Electric is already here and viable as Tesla is proving. As soon as I can get a Tesla for less than $50k I am all over it.
Here are all 13 h2 fueling in America. .
Here are more than 8700 electric stations in America which does not include RVs
That is why Tesla is going to win out on this.
Hell, Tesla offers 130 stations in the US, that allows tesla owners to charge for free.
And within several years, you can swap out the battery pack in less time and cheaper than H2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
One technology for batteries that could be developed is for a charging station to replace your electric car batteries with freshly charged ones. You could potentially be in and out faster than refueling by gas. That would be one solution to overcome the lengthy recharging.
I imagine there are still a lot of hurdles to jump over to get such a system working:
- How to design batteries so they can be replaced easily and quickly. Perhaps each car might have several sets of batteries, some of which can be easily removed, but not others. This means replacement technology can only refuel your car partially.
- Who owns the batteries? It would certainly not be the car owner under such a system - probably some sort of lease with whoever runs the charging stations.
I know hydrogen has a high "pain-in-the-ass" factor, but are electric cars that much better?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
We're not talking about evolutionary change but revolutionary. Drop in parts number is so drastic that it allows for more competitors to sprung up (hence Tesla)
I'm a cost accountant and I do this sort of stuff for a living. You have the cost accounting completely wrong. The different in part numbers provides Tesla no cost advantage at this time because the parts they have to buy are significantly more expensive. Electric vehicles have such low sales volumes currently that any cost advantage they might have from reduced part counts is hugely swamped by the high R&D costs and fixed costs of production. They simply don't have enough volume to reach minimum efficient scale.
The risk for established players is in going from oligopoly and into a commoditized market.
There is minimal risk of automobiles becoming meaningfully more commoditized than they already are. Switching to an electric platform will not change that. A commodity product is one that one unit is indistinguishable from another. That does not describe the car industry unless you abstract more than is appropriate. The established players you are talking about already have the capability to develop and sell an electric vehicle. Several of them have already done so. Nothing Tesla is doing is outside of the big automaker's capabilities. They are staying out of the market because the market simply isn't big enough given the state of the art in electric vehicle technology right now to make it worth their while. There is enough room for a few niche products but that's it for the time being. It's not worth their time right now because they cannot make a profit doing it yet. Even Tesla hasn't made any sort of meaningful operating profit on car sales yet.
First, Tesla is already building out a fueling infrastructure. That's the head start.
Second, electricity is already being distributed widely. That's the inside lane.
Go look in the old school phone book, and there are plenty of electricians. For these guys, it's no great leap to wire up a charging station. Sure there are gas guys too; but H2 isn't propane.
Third: H2 requires energy to produce. It's not a primary fuel. You have to feed primary fuels into some kind of system to produce H2. Huge disadvantage in terms of the overall system. They might be able to mask that with subsidies in the short run; but not forever.
The only thing I really like about H2 is that in theory you could produce it in the back woods and fuel your own vehicle in a very low-tech fashion. OTOH, you can do that with ethanol too and the tech for doing that is more familiar and... well... fun if you can handle it.
Fourth: we might conceivably allow personal vehicles to access grid power with a "3rd rail" on the highway some day. You can't do that with H2. That's one way to eliminate the charging problem. In any event, the wait to charge a Tesla on long trips isn't that bad since you're probably having a snack anyway. They could always solve it with battery swaps if it were really that important.
IMHO, H2 might have a place in some niche applications like large fleet vehicles. It's nice to have a bus that only emits water, or maybe some trucking companies might actually use it to earn green brownie points; but that's it.
I'm expecting my next vehicle to be some kind of electric with advanced battery tech, and maybe a small ICE for range extension. I'm not expecting to ever own a H2 vehicle.
The Volt and C-Max (and similar plug-in hybrids) are the answer to the transition problem.
You can drive them for your daily 40 mile commute on battery, then switch over to gas for your 1500 mile vacation.
It's not a long term solution, since having a gas generator and electric motor means extra maintenance in the long term. The long term solution will be fast charging for electric. These cars are the bridge between the existing gas infrastructure and the new electric infrastructure.
CNG, LNG, and propane are OK stop-gaps, but they don't really solve the problem. The real issue is trying to stop the CO2 being burned, and the only real way to do that in vehicles is to have either a battery setup, hydrogen, or perhaps a method of pulling CO2 from the air and converting that into propane or CNG (which can be very energy-expensive for returns... but with decent nuclear reactor technology [1], it can be doable and even cost-effective.)
[1]: I still don't get the anti-nuke sentiment. A modern thorium or gen IV plant would go a long way to solving a lot of problems... i.e. wars in camel country.
With very few changes I doubt most urban and suburban dwellers would have issues keeping an electric vehicle sufficiently charged for their day to day. It's a mindset problem. People tend to look at an electric as if it were a petrol car. Few put more than 40 or so miles on their car per day. The reason for the long range of petrol cars is because the refueling process is "attended" and only at specific locations, you have to go to a fueling station and twiddle your thumbs for five or so minutes. If you had to do that every day, or if took more than say 10 minutes each time it'd be considered a real pain in the arse because you have to go to a certain location and stand around waiting for the refueling to complete. With an electric you just run a power cord to the car and walk off. Even if you only have access to a 110V 15A outlet where you live and/or work you'll end up with enough range to keep you going.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
yeah, but by the time you have decend hydrogen stations where you can actually refill your car, the electric cars already have new batteries that have the same mileage with a fuelingtime of a few minutes.. And let's not forget, hydrogen isn't the safest fuel there is, but I would assume those tanks are safer than regular gasolinetanks...
you do realise it's the end of November don't you?
Even after decades of following this issue of H2 vs electric, I STILL haven't seen anything addressing the well-known (in petro-chemical and industrial engineering circles) problem known as 'hydrogen embrittlement'. Years-long exposure to H2, epsecially when under high pressure, effects even the best metals and alloys with seriously degraded resiliance to fracture-stresses eg think of glass being smacked with a hammer. OK - so batteries have a limited useful work-life, but at least they don't shatter when pile-driven in a collision - - - who's gonna' take out the garbage ===> ALL THE OLD H2 STORAGE CELLS ? ? ?
redneck geek
Why H2? Who's pushing it? Oil companies, because it keeps them in the game.
Why not H2? Because there's currently no significant distribution system. At least with CH4 we could fill up at home. H2 will have to be trained and trucked around the country. Which also uses petroleum. Eventually it might go by pipeline. That suits oil companies as well.
What's good about H2? Not much. It is NOT an energy source. If you're going to convert some source of energy into a motor fuel, it makes more sense to convert it to a liquid or solid form for ease of distribution and storage. If we could punch holes in the ground and get H2, it would be great.
If you like decentralization and democratization of energy, I can't see how you'd be in favor of H2.
Burning hydrogen *is*, as a matter of fact, non-polluting. Generating said hydrogen may or may not be, depending on the particular method chosen, but the point is that with hydrogen (or electricity), you can use *ANY* power source to generate it. As we develop cleaner and more efficient methods of creating hydrogen (or generating electricity), the entire pool of vehicles (and other devices) powered using said hydrogen or electricity automatically become cleaner and more efficient as a result. The same thing doesn't happen with hydrocarbon-powered vehicles.
If you're directly burning hydrocarbons to move your car, you have to have the *right* hydrocarbon (of the correct grade) to do the job. Larger power plants operate more efficiently than smaller ones, and can more effectively (and economically) capture the pollution generated. You'll end up with less pollution per vehicle mile running the vehicle off a battery or (even with the efficiency losses inherent in cracking water) a hydrogen fuel cell than you do burning your hydrocarbon at the vehicle.
...to use a natural gas home filling station to power a fuel cell car. It might make more sense to just use the gas to power a more conventional combustion engine. CNG engines are simpler and have been around forever.
Using natural gas to power a fuel cell in a vehicle would require an onboard reformer. The process is rather complex to implement at such a small size, involves some temperature extremes and produces carbon dioxide in the end anyways. Though i suppose if done right it would be quite a bit more efficient than a regular combustion engine.
Regardless of the body style or internal components, that sticker price is going to drive away mass popularity. I make decent money, and the most I would be willing to pay is in the range of 25-35k By decent money, I'm saying I work in SoCal, and I make in excess of 100k/year. Any car that's going for half of my year salary is getting passed up. Adoption is going to be abysmal. At the price this thing is at, I may as well buy a Tesla, which is way more compelling. My last car was from 2006, it's paid off, and you're going to have a hard time convincing me to give that up. I've got rent to make and a lot of other expenses... the new car is the last thing on my list, and at that price, it ain't happening.
This is an opportunity that doesn't bypass them, like home charging stations do.
Fastned is building chargers at ordinary highway side fuel stations in the Netherlands. They don't want to bypass them.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Can you explain to us how the accounting is done?
Yes though you are asking a bigger question than you may realize.
If I buy a part 20 years on for a vehicle for which I'm not even the first owner, and it's a part which can fit 20 different vehicles, how do you account for the profit?
Whose profit are you trying to account for? The manufacturer of the part? The OEM who built the car? The dealer? For OEM parts the OEM (think Ford or GM) will purchase the parts from a supply chain during the production run and they will usually contract for several years worth of replacement parts in addition to the production run - usually something like 3-7 years worth. Once the original production run ends it usually moves into aftermarket manufacturers, sometimes custom replacements or sometimes the original manufacturer will continue to produce the part for some time if there is a market for it. It's not unheard of for the OEM to keep the supply chain for replacement parts running for 15-20 years though that isn't the norm.
You don't have accurate statistics on failures on vehicles that old, because people don't bring them back to the dealer for service.
Actually dealers do see a lot of older vehicles for service so they have pretty decent information. Aftermarket parts dealers also have a pretty good idea what parts fail commonly on which vehicles. Furthermore the parts that are failing in year 5 are mostly going to be the same as the parts failing in year 20 with a few additions.
From my various forays into automotive parts replacement and part ordering, I know that without exception the manufacturers charge absolutely abusive prices for replacement parts.
Actually it isn't usually the manufacturer charging the outrageous markup, it is the dealer who is independent. (And you are right, it is outrageous) The OEM usually charges the dealer a 10-40% markup. Anything you buy from a dealer typically has a minimum of an 8X or more markup over the actual manufacturing cost. To give you an example, my company makes a jumper harness for a GM vehicle. Costs us about $3.00 to make it and we sell it for roughly $4.00. We are a Tier 3 so by the time it gets to GM it probably costs somewhere around $6-8 once you factor in the markups along the way and they probably double the price they sell to a dealer. If you were to march into a dealer and try to buy our part by itself from a dealer it would cost you somewhere between $30-50 if they would even sell it to you as a standalone product which they probably would not. I've seen assemblies that cost $3 to actually make selling for $200+ and the majority of that markup comes from the dealer.
You're telling me that having more expensive parts doesn't lead to more profit?
No, I said a larger part count for the OEM generally leads to less profit. Increasing part counts has no benefit to the OEM. Ford has competition and they cannot simply pass on any markups to the car buyer. In essence they have a cap on how much the can sell the car for. If they make a more complicated part that will cost more to make, it will break more often and sooner and Ford will make less profit. There is a limit to what they can charge for aftermarket parts too though the price elasticity is less sensitive. If a car constantly breaks people tend to get rid of the car in the long run. Furthermore the reputation benefits foregone in lost sales alone far outweigh any minor additional profit from more expensive replacement parts.
Automakers derive significant profit from parts sales, and EVs both have less parts and are less prone to failure than vehicles with ICEs.
They do get some profit from part sales but only after the warranty runs out and not nearly as much as you probably think. The expense of recalls from failures can easily swamp any profit from a vehicle line. Eve
There is no chance of a hydrogen economy. The production of hydrogen by electrolysis is then followed by a compression stage to 5000 psi (now there is a bomb for you!!!). This energy of compression is mostly lost, about 30% could be recovered by letting the hydrogen for the fuel cells de-compress (expand) via a small turbine. This electricity can be stored in a battery to assist the fuel cell electricity storage. The production of hydrogen by electrolysis or from coal/coke is very inefficiecnt
Hydrogen has the widest known explosive range of any gaseous fuel, so any leaks will constitute a great risk of explosion - far worse than the Tesla. A car full of compressed hydrogen, refilled and used again and again, is sure to leak. Sure they will put some sticky tracer in the hydrogen so you can smell it, but it can still detonate with the tiniest spark.
Lithium or other future batteries will block any chance hydrogen has of success. They might get fully swappable lithium batteries in quick swap battery cases, so a battery change takes a minute or so - much like a fill up of gas.
Capacitors will never work, the energy density is too low, Capacitors are the functional equivalent of a spring - fast, but not large enough.