Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

FCV's get a friend.
Energy Secretary Chu Changes His Mind On Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars

 

Well that may be the way they want to spin it, but it doesn't seem that way to me. Chu, has tried each year to cut fuel cell budget, and every year the congress puts the money back over $100M/year. This year the compromise committee between the house and senate put in a number bigger than congress wanted.

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» On FCVs, Secretary Chu Changes His Mind Pike Research

Chu had talked about miracles being need, well that was political too. It will take a lot of technology and time for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to make it commercially.

Of the four challenges, not miracles outlined, one reforming natural gas and sequestering the carbon dioxide while producing hydrogen, seems more economically feasible than it did in 2008. Progress has been made, mainly in the price of natural gas dropping because of fraking. This is the one miracle that chu says is now likely to happen. Its not like turning water into wine.

The next challenge is storing hydrogen in tanks. This is mainly an issue of cost and volume. That doesn't seem to need a miracle, but you need room in the vehicle for bulky tanks and need to pay for them. The 10,000 psi tanks require 11% energy loss just to compress the hydrogen. Metal hydrides for storage may be a better option.

The third challenge is current fuel cells is cost. Its got to compete with other vehicles. Here hydrogen is losing ground to plug-ins, it seems further away than in 2008.

The fourth challenge is distributing the hydrogen. That is the big one, building a fueling infrastructure.

When you find people like me that are anti-this pre-competitive hydrogen hype, it centers on the last two issues. I say we need to wait until the third challenge, fuel cell costs come in line before we ask taxpayers to pay the bill for that fourth miracle, the fueling infrastructure. Those CARB politicians want you and me to pay for the experiment that is premature. The american taxpayer has already payed billions, and the bill for a hydrogen infrastruture that can replace gasoline is in the hundreds of billions.

 

Just wondering if it would be technological possible to develop a hybrid where distilled water is used as the source for generating hydrogen and oxygen whereby the exhaust is a closed system. This would allow the exhaust to condense back to water? Theoretical you could run for a long time before having to add additional water. This would eliminate the need for large pressurized hydrogen tank. (much smaller hydrogen and oxygen tank?) Just food for thought.

 

Since, generating hydrogen and oxygen from water requires more energy to generate, than you get back from it, you have just moved the problem one level back. Now you need to carry around a supply of energy to use, to create the H2 and O2 you are going to use. At which point, you might as well just use that energy directly (say in an electric motor).

Water has no energy content that is usable by a fuel cell, the energy lies in having the hydrogen and oxygen already split.

 

Toyota's calculation shows well-to-wheel for hydrogen from natural gas provides the most efficient pathway. Our secretary of energy is supportive after seeing the latest development in fuel cell technology. US has plenty of natural gas so I am optimist about FCHV. The FCV-R concept looks promising. I can't wait to see the production version in 2015!

 

Look at that EV versus FCHV-adv thing and do a little gut check. Somehow we are to believe that natural gas, converted to hydrogen, pumped up to 10,000 psi, but in a car and converted to electricity is going to be more than 20% more efficient than producing electricity at an efficient plant then putting it in a battery. This makes us seem stupid, why not close all the power plants and put fuel cells in their place

All the numbers look off. The 67% looks like about the DOE goal for 2015 that it made in 2005, the japanese government might have made the same goal. In the US the current stations are 60%, so we are talking future, with an expensive infrastructure. Why not use 50%, the current amount of a combined cycle plant after transmission line losses. I assume if we are talking new infrastructure and future technology for hydrogen fueling stations, wouldn't it be more fair to compare it to current technology for power generation, and talk about the upgrade cost.

Then we get to fuel cell versus ev efficiency, and both are way too high. I have no idea what they are measuring, perhaps it is simply fuel cell to electricity conversion. Why don't we take a half step forward? Let's look at the epa ratings. The clarity gets 60mpge the f-cell 47mpge - For plug-ins the charge depletion the worst of the prius phv, energi, leaf, volt, imev, tesla S is 89 mpge. Yes I'm throwing out the karma, but it is truely an outlier, I don't count the equinox fuel cell either. BEV to FC should be about 1.5 times more efficient. The Toyota fcv-r or what ever they produce may be better than the clarity, but plug-ins will advance also.

Which brings us to the conclusion that using natural gas, if we build new infrastructure plug-ins in charge deplete mode will be a little more efficient than similar fuel cell vehicles. That is not what the chart says, and the chart is misleading.

If we instead use electricity, and the idea is renewable electricity, we might get a 70% conversion to hydrogen if future tech improves, which given the plug-ins better efficiency, makes that plug-in 2 times more efficient. Most electrical to hydrogen conversions today are much less efficient than this, which makes the plug in 3x to 4x more effiecient on electricity.

 

The difference is probably transmission losses. Which is one reason for decentralizing electric generation, preferably with renewables.

 

Transmission losses in the US amount to about 7%, a new combined cycle fast cycling natural gas power plant is 60% efficient. Toyota's numbers must be using some steam or peaking plants, or giving more of a loss. That gives us 56% efficiency, but I would include some older but efficient plants. The majority of plug-ins charge off peak. I used mpge, which includes charging losses.

DOE says that current hydrogen stations are 69% efficient in natural gas to hydrogen, then it takes 11% energy in electricity compress the gas to 10,000 psi, which works out to 61%. In the future we may get to 82% then be able to use renewable energy to compress the gas, or use hydrides that do not need this compression energy. It also takes a great deal of energy to liquify hydrogen to truck it to remote locations, or to pump it in a pipeline. These numbers should be used if we are talking full infrastructure, and costs need to be considered.

For solar distributed makes perfect sense, peak use is often at the peak generation time, and distribution losses are less. For methane fuel cells like bloom boxes distributed is also preferred, as these are small and there is no advantage to centralize, but.... Construction cost is lower and efficiency higher if you build combined cycle natural gas. All of these things can be consumed more efficiently in a plug in than a fuel cell vehicle.

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maybe when the politics of this presidential season dies down, fcv will fade away again.

 

+1

What you are thinking of is storing regen and electricity. This is likely best by using a battery instead of a water split to hydrogen and oxygen. Fly wheels have also been talked about.

One thought is that for hydrogen vehicles to become viable they may need to also be hybrid electrics. The plug-in fuel cell bus that we have running in austin has a big battery pack that lets it get away with only a 20kw fuel cell. The lower powered fuel will make the busses much less expensive to produce, and since it sits at stops the fuel cell has time to charge the battery.

DOE talked about a 20 mile range battery. If we think about a 4000lb vehicle, a 8 kwh battery should do it. Plugging in reduces the number of fueling stations needed. That big battery could contribute about 70kw, meaning the fuel cell might only need 70 kw which would reduce its cost likely more than the cost of the bigger battery. Recharging from renewables would be much more efficient through the battery.

 

No. What I was explaining is the the idea of carrying a water tank and a fuel cell is a perpetual motion machine. It doesn't help. You need some source of energy.

If the energy source is a battery, you could split water using electricity from the battery, recombine it to produce electricity in the fuel cell, to run the motor; Or you could just run the motor with the battery (at higher efficiency).

 

Hey I was agreeing with you.

Battery or regen to hydrogen to motor is less efficient than battery to motor.

So I was saying to RD_CDN_newbie that the correct idea is to add a plug and a battery to the fuel cell vehicle making it a fc phev. Then the fuel cell and hydrogen are just competeing with an ice and gasoline or biofuels. Both can put renewables in there batteries to increase reweable miles.We have a demo plug in hybrid fuel cell bus here to demonstrate the concept. That doesn't change the fact that production quantities of these fcv appears at least a decade away. We will have more demo cars like the equinox, clarity, and f-cell. The will improve each time, but I can't see much volume until much more progress. A $50K fuel cell with poor refueling infrastructure doesn't compete well with todays bev and phevs.

 

Sorry, I didn't understand your point.

 

Oh yes - I've been looking at these 'charts of proof' for decades. If only after 2012 passes we could quit wasting research dollars on the hydrogen hoax. But we won't. I'm sure toyota may very well build a couple 100 Honda Clarity type hydrogen cars. After being heavily subsidize/incentivized - they may even sell (at a HUGE LOSS) 'em for "only" $50k+. And just like honda they'll be able to say "see? we did it". And that way - the hydrogen auto research industry can continue to string us a long until the Fed budget is completely bankrupt. Baaah - With military spending - we're almost there anyways. On a brighter note, maybe after 2012 - there'll be a few more PC'rs that finally shake off the hydrogen pixie dust. Don't worry we can revisit this in 2013, after all the 2012 research money runs out - (shaking head). I think I need a drink.

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

They are going to be pushing this thing until at least 2016, hyundai and toyota don't come out with their "production" cars until 2015. We may get thousands instead of hundreds, but the results won't be significantly different. We should get tens of thousands of bevs next year, and there should be hundreds of thousands of plug ins before we get to ten thousand fcv in the US.

Do you know where the numbers on that chart came from? I know on the old ones they used to use the energy from the grid. This year California's grid, the one they are pushing these cars for is over 20% renewable and only 45% natural gas, 2% coal, with large hydro and nuclear making up the rest. No wonder the chart wants to compare natural gas. I think the 2015 date and that chart are from 2009. I wouldn't rule out changing economics 10 years from now, but that is a long shot.

 

You have energy on both sides of this reaction. Is it endothermic or exothermic? By how much?

 

There are actually 2 steps to the process, the first
CH4 +H2O + energy-> CO + 3H2 which is endothermic, then
CO + H2O -> CO2 + H2 + energy which is exothermic.

The combination of the two reactions is endothermic. You can calculate it from the reactants or look it up, I can't remember. The energy in the second reaction is typically wasted. Some energy is also wasted boiling water to create steam that is not recovered. We typically get around 70% efficiency in the conversion, although DOEs talks about getting over 80%. Doctor Chu has talked about generating electricity during the process and capturing the CO2 and selling it. These things would make the equipment (infrastructure) more expensive but the hydrogen generation very efficient.

There is also energy needed to distribute the hydrogen to fueling stations, and compress it to 10,000 psi if used in the current high pressure fuel tanks.

 

$50k wouldn't be possible without the breakthrough Toyota made few years ago. Toyota said they figured a way to reduce the cost to 1/10 of the prototype. The last time I checked, the amount of platinum catalyst required in FC stack is approaching the amount in the catalytic converter of a gas vehicle.

 

All of those were included in the well-to-tank efficiency. It is more efficient to convert natural gas into hydrogen and pump it into H2 tank rather than generating electricity and recharging the battery.

Hydrogen also has superior refueling speed. This translates to more vehicles served per fueling station. BEVs lack the infrastructure to refuel/recharge in minutes so I don't think the lack of robust hydrogen highway is an disadvantage.

Fuel cell hybrid vehicles should be lighter and likely have more range than BEVs. This does not mean BEVs are bad. It'll dominate in short range commuter usage.

 

Do you see the trick in the chart? Hint . . . cars costing $60k $70k $80k and above, do NOT get purchased by the masses - and thus - the chart's presumption of 'mass production' is impossible - even if you COULD discount the fact that the middle class (ie the masses) is going away. And - if the $100k fuel stack actually CAN built for 1/10 the cost - well that's great. But again, the shrinking middle class can't afford to buy them, much less afford to continually replace them - as they continually wear out - even if their durability increased 200% as the industry hopes may happen. I'm still holding out for a portable jet pack. Those are supposed to be affordable some day too. All we need is a few hundred million more research dollars. If you pony up for my pet project - maybe I'll support yours.

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

There are more BEV refueling-in-minutes stations in the world, than there are hydrogen stations.