Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

On further thought, hydrogen isn't. Back in the day, the early adopters that wanted to turn the horse into glue all had access to a hardware or general store for gasoline.

Where would you go, today, for compressed hydrogen?

Off the top of my head, a welding supply company might carry it. 80% of Americans wouldn't think of that without the internet. These aren't conveniently located shops in every town. If they do have hydrogen, it's only at 2000 to 3000 psi. At that pressure, a FCV will have a shorter range than the currently available BEVs.

 

lol, if you are a small user you typically have air products deliver liquid hydrogen to you. They don't sell it in many stores geared to individual that I know of, but you may be able to pick it up at a chemical supplier. Now you just have the problem of the cost and getting it into your car. This is not an easy or cost effective task for an individual, which is why you need to build a filling station for a group of cars. It will be cheaper to build co-ops that take deliveries of liquid hydrogen tanks, and can refill cars. Note the reason not to do this is the cost is much more than gasoline for the fuel. That why the governments want to build much more expensive higher volume stations.

Only those truely clueless would think it was easy to have home fueling stations, but honda is trying to build one for the clarity. The honda refueling station is very slow, IIRC correctly it can add about 30 miles if it is working all night. That's why, if these animals are going to ever be built and fueled at home, they will add bigger batteries to be charged from the wall. A 30 mile battery plus electrical installation for charging, is less expensive than a small hydrogen fueling station, and uses much less electricity per mile charged.

 

Hydrogen has a current huge industrial production and distribution system including tankers to the end user stations second only to gasoline right now.

Certainly it is starting from a more extensive industrial base than gasoline when it became the transportation fuel of choice.

Ramping up an existing substantial industrial production and distribution base makes the switch to hydrogen an easy move.

 

There aint no tanker system. We have some pipelines mainly in/to/from oil refineries. We have mainly liquid hydrogen distribution. Outside of refinery areas. This liquid hydrogen distribution is expensive both for the fuel and energy. If you need to liquify and truck the hydrogen there goes the efficiency advantage versus say methanol or cng in a phev. There is very little infrastructure to go from the liquid to car fuel tanks. Gasoline, ethanol, methanol, cng, lng are all much further along in infrastructure. If you talk about methanol, a gge including taxes would be around $3, liquid hydrogen structure would be over $8 per gge. In the future methanol fuel cells may be what goes into a fcv, and is promising future tech. Say we spend all the money for hydrogen, and the fuel cell or phevs turn out to run on methanol. A huge waste.

When gasoline displaced ethanol, it was mainly a side product of other refining with easy transportation and refueling built from the ethanol structure. Being a gas that likes to escape, hydrogen is expensive to transport.

There just isn't much existing distribution in the US outside of the gulf refinery area. It all needs to be built, and estimates are in the hundreds of billions of dollars if it is to replace gasoline. Adding big batteries to FCV and allowing home refueling with electricity may lessen the extreme cost of fueling infrastructure.

 

Industrial hydrogen distribution is extensive all over the US. You might be confused with production which is very similar to gasoline as hydrogen is used extensively in oil refining so you see most hydrogen production in the US in the SAME places as gasoline production.

In turn, in industrial and population centers throughout the US. Future hydrogen production will be tied to solar conditions and water supply which will also match the US population and industry locations.

 

You seem quite confused, which is not usual for you. Industrial hydrogen production is mainly distributed as a liquid, not by pipelines. Pipeline distribution is only around refineries, and this is mainly around the gulf coast. Hydrogen takes a lot of energy to liquify, then more energy to be trucked to location. This makes costs high. I guess you could say we can just build many more hydrogen tanks and trucks, but that won't make the system efficient. In order to get prices and energy intensity down new infrastructure must be built. If it turns out that fuel cells work, but run on methanol or cng with reforming on vehicle, then all that infrastructure is wasted. FC cars are a long shot, and even if they end up being viable hydrogen fueling infrastructure may not be needed. The best selling fuel cell, the bloom box, uses natural gas. It is too big and hot for a vehicle. Lap tops are running with methanol fuel cells.

Well this seems very unlikely right now. It is part of that stuff debunked in the hydrogen hoax. It takes about 4 times more renewable energy to power a hydrogen vehicle than a phev the same distance. That is why both ford and gm have already decided that fcv centers around phevs, where renewable electricity can be used most efficiently. In a plug in fcv, electricity can be used most of the time, and expensive hydrogen only used for range extending. The least expensive hydrogen is from methane, and it is doubtful that renewable based hydrogen can be cost competitive. Since electricity also uses a great deal of natural gas, it makes much more sense to put renewables on the grid, than inefficiently put the energy into expensive hydrogen in expensive fuel cell cars.

 

Much of that hydrogen is made from the petroleum. Mostly as a by product of the refinery process. If the production isn't on site, it is near by because there isn't the infrastructure to transport it great distances.

FCT Education: Hydrogen Distribution and Delivery Infrastructure Basics

Sum up the last paragraph: hydrogen pipelines cost more than natural gas lines. It also means, like ethanol, existing distribution pipelines can't be repurposed for it.

 

Just like gasoline which arrives at final distribution points by tankers.

But I think you are incorrect because most hydrogen is currently used by oil refineries who do make it and transport for use via pipeline.

Hydrogen has an substantial industrial base and distribution system so it's use as transportation fuel at the retail level could be built out easily.

 

No, its not just like liquid gasoline. It leaks and takes a great deal of energy to transport. Gasoline can just be poured into inexpensive tanks on trucks. There are only about 1000 miles of short length pipeline for hydrogen, mainly for the refineries. This is very expensive per mile, which is why more is not built. Hydrogen leaks easily, and has very low energy per volume, making pipelines of long lengths extremely expensive.

When you say substantial distribution system, if we are talking about production away from refineries, it is trucked. It is an energy intensive operation to liquefy and truck the hydrogen. The trucks need special tanks to hold the cold liquid, or it is put in tanks and loaded onto a truck. This is gets expensive quickly, and many more trucks and liquifying would be needed to use hydrogen for fuel. For some short haul very low volume operations it is compressed, but this is even more expensive. So, if you are talking about refueling distribution, there is virtually none in the US. It all needs to be built. Since transportation is such a big expense in hydrogen, it is likely many more production facilities would need to be built as well. That's the only way to get the cost down is to produce the hydrogen near the end users. There needs to be some technological innovation to make smaller efficient steam reformers to drop the price of the distributed production.

 

Correct. It's just like liquid hydrogen. Glad you got that figured out.

However the comment that was wrong to which I responded was there was no existing hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure. That is incorrect. There is a very large industrial gas industry base to build from most significantly a truck tanker delivery system at the retail level similar to gasoline.

 

I remember why I have you on ignore.

I or the link covered these points in the post before yours.

My link and Austingreen covered the problems with tankers for hydrogen. Hint: it's too costly.

"The refined products {gasoline} pipeline system consists of approximately 72,000 miles of line and carries well over half the gasoline to market."
Gasoline Distribution Infrastructure
Half the gasoline the US uses is brought to market by pipeline. It takes 72,000 miles of pipe to do this. The current hydrogen pipeline system in the US is only 1200 miles, a 60th of the size of this gasoline network. The various tankers to needed to reach the rest aren't cost effective.

If piped as a gas, the hydrogen will be under pressure. making it more expensive than a gasoline line. The hydrogen will permeate the steel and make it brittle. Countering this makes it more expensive than natural gas line.

If piped as a liquid, the line will need lots of insulation. Again increasing cost. Then there is the energy needed to liquidfy it.

Simply not true. It would not be easy or cheap.

There is a distribution system for the industries that need it. That is for the ones that don't just make it on site. This distribution system is tiny compared to what would be needed for the transportation sector.

Mostly the hydrogen plants are built nearby to minimize the cost and problems of piping or trucking it. Liquid is the only feasible way of shipping it long distance. Liquidfying is energy intensive and thus increases the cost.

 

100% of gasoline is delivered to the distribution points by truck.

As you found out, 50% of hydrogen is shipped by pipeline though I'm not sure why the oil jihadists are fixated on pipelines.

Chuckle. As opposed to those who don't need it?

 

it was interesting to read that Bush has invested into hydrogen only 50% of what Obama has invested into EVs.

So what big bad hydrogen industry?

p.s. DOE has reduced hydrogen funds in 2010 due to goal of $2-$3/kg hydrogen production being accomplished.

 

Kind of dubious distinction as current hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. The goal should be $2 kg hydrogen produced by solar power from sea water. That's a future fuel worth investing in especially with Honda and Toyota building out hydrogen powered cars.

 

yes... but at the same time, refining natural gas at stations for 3$ per gge is viable solution for present problem on how to transport hydrogen long distances to where there is no current infrastructure, as discussed above

 

Absolutely. Producing and getting hydrogen to retail filling stations with current industrial gas infrastructure is totally doable. Much easier than trying to build out charging stations for EV's.

 

Whoop dee do. I don't expect a gas station to get its product by bike. Trucks are the most practical way of getting nearly every product to its final destination. Trucking hydrogen short distances isn't a big problem. It will just more to the cost of the fuel than with gasoline.

The 50% of the country not serviced by the gasoline pipeline get their gasoline by barge or train. Using them will decrease some of the hydrogen transport costs, but they don't address the problems of tanking hydrogen. That you can carry only a little as a gas, or the energy required to liquidfy it.

No I didn't. 50% of gasoline is piped. And it is piped because it is the most efficient and cost effective way to transport a liquid or gas.

If the goal of hydrogen supporters is to replace gasoline with it, 70,800 miles of hydrogen pipeline is needed to be built just to reach half the country.

Every garage in America has an outlet. How much easier do you think hydrogen will be?

It's a possible solution. No one has come up with an affordable, small scale, reforming plant yet. It has to capture the resulting co2 like the big ones, or hydrogen loses an advantage versus just burning the gas in an ICE.

 

There are now production plug-ins from 8 manufacturers, and production plug-ins designed from 3 others to be released within the next 6 months. BMW, Mercedes, VW, and chysler/fiat are the only major manufacturers that don't have production plug-ins on my list and they all have demonstration programs. This compares to 0 production FCV. Since most of the plug-in money goes to help manufacturing production cars, and there are no fuel cell cars in production, of course manufacturing subsidies are lower. Duh. All the battery, electric motor drive technology is also required for fcv vehicles, so you would count most of the plug-in subsidies that focus on this as also aiding fcv.

We do have the scandal of collusion on the California hydrogen highway to funel the government funds to select companies in the hydrogen lobby. We do have the fact that 7 auto manufacturers promised production cars selling in 2012, and all have failed. There are handfulls of demonstration vehicles. Which metric for failure do you want. Costs of vehicles and hydrogen has not come down as they promised.

The DOE tried to cut funding because it was not being productively used. Congress put most of it back in, so the failures are not because of lack of money. In their 2012 analysis they found hydrogen costs between $8-$13/kg to manufacture in current stations. Their goal is under $3, and they hope to reach it, but we are a far way from that. If your point is hydrogen fueling structure is easy, hey that is fine, lets cut off funding for it in the US.

Let's look at toyota. They have the prius phv today, and the rav4 ev, coming soon or out. They promise to have a fuel cell vehicle in production in 3 years, by which time we expect at a minimum a redesigned prius phv, and likely at least 2 other plug-ins. There will be plenty of hydrogen stations to test their new toy, but toyota will have much greater manufacturing resources devoted to plug-ins. Do you think that is unfair, and toyota should set up as many manufacturing lines for their fcv-r, today in 2012. Or is it proper that they spend money manufacturing the cars actually ready to be sold.

 

Glad to see you gave up on the disproven idea that there was no large existing industrial production and distribution infrastructure for hydrogen. There is.

Consider the current price of gasoline does not include its $400B oil import trade deficit tax on US economy nor the $500B military costs to secure those oil imports. That makes the real retail price of a gallon of gas $7.

 

Excuse me. I never claimed there was never an industrial network for distributing hydrogen. 1200 miles is quite a bit of pipe. That seems to meet industrial needs, but consumer and transportation needs are a couple of orders of magnitude greater and also spread through out the entire country. Not isolated to major industrial districts either.

We don't pay the true price of gasoline here. That is true. Until we do, the public is going to use the price at the pump as comparison to any alternate fuel. For hydrogen that is $8 per gge. The $3 per kg production price does not include transport fees. If, as it appears to be, your plan is to just truck the hydrogen beyond the 1200 miles of hydrogen pipeline (remember: it takes 72,000 miles of pipe for gasoline to reach half the country), then the gallon of gasoline equivalent is going to be way north of $8.

The only market segment willing to pay for trucking hydrogen any distance is research. A segment that will spend $4000+ on a kitchen blender. This is not a large enough group to support FCVs.