Slashdot Mirror
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.
Every single car executive knows that is what happens and there is no way they are going to make the same mistake that American car companies made in the 70's and 80's all over again.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Tesla battery pack is 85kWh, will charge in 10.5 minutes with 500 kW, and has 270 mile range. You forgot to take into account the poor efficiency of ICE compared to electric motors. Even so, make it 1000 kW by using 70A and 14kV. Not a big deal.
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.
Don't worry, they've heard your complaints and have decided to rename it the "Titanic," because of its generously spacious interior.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
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.
Well, first you'd need to find a place with a nitrogen-cooled tank made out of a special alloy open-cell metal foam encased in a high-pressure-rated carbon fiber hull. Hydrogen is incredibly difficult to store, and requires specialized equipment and constant active cooling, which means running pumps and high-power apparatuses to continuously refine and condense liquid nitrogen and dry ice coolant.
Your car would store the hydrogen less efficiently: parking for a long time would drain your tank, so infrequent drivers will consume more fuel than frequent drivers. Electric cars do this, too, regardless of electronics; but even a NiMH battery can hold 70% of its charge after 1 year of disuse. Tesla drains too much power keeping standby electronics on standby. Gasoline sours, but you can add treatment to store it for years. Between electric and hydrogen, it's potentially a wash, unless hydrogen leaks much faster.
Beyond that, the fill-up method is roughly the same as gasoline, aside from needing to use a sealed, pressurized connector. Misaligning the connector will vent hydrogen, if it's misaligned in such a way as to satisfy the safety mechanism yet not gain positive seal. Fortunately, the car will likely contain a one-way valve (a ball on a spring, or a ball not on a spring but with a grate behind it such that internal pressure forces it up to seal), so your tank won't vent: it'll only open the valve when the pressure outside is greater than the tank pressure.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Hydrogen makes some sense for long haul trucks and Greyhound and alike. The high capital investment of filling stations and the rest of the infrastructure etc can be more easily absorbed by fleets. It makes almost no sense for passenger cars.
However, Kenworths, Macks and Volvos of the world are in no rush to do that capital investment from their side, lacking any serious incentives.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
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.
I spend 5 seconds plugging in my car when I get home and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning. I spend far less time than I spent filling my gas car up where I'd have to go out of my way to a gas station, wait in line and fill up. Yes, there's a bit of a wait on long trips, but for most of my driving I spend far less time. When battery swapping is available it will take me roughly 90 seconds without me ever having to step out of my car (and for those who don't know, battery swapping includes getting your original battery back on the return trip).
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Keep in mind, being able to fuel up at home in an electric car means you'll save significant time not driving out of your way to get to fueling stations.
I've driven a Nissan Leaf for about a year and a half now. Never having to stop at a gas station is amazing.
I don't understand how in the world these big companies are betting huge on Hydrogen. It just makes no sense.