New news from Toyota

Thought this chart linked from an article in hybridcars.com was nice (Source: U.S. Department of Energy): Toyota Further Explains Fuel Cell Viability - HybridCars.com

 

So do I. I was mostly trying to forestall someone saying, 'oh, but PV panels are only 15% efficient."

p.s. Plants are generally around 2% efficient.

 

It may come as a surprise to some but PHEV-40 (series) produces more emission than a regular hybrid. Morale of the story is that more EV miles in a plugin hybrid doesn't mean it is better.

FCV (300 miles range?) is projected to be 15% cleaner than an EV with 100 miles range.

 

Having worked on fuel cells and batteries, I can attest to Toyota's strong interest in seeing them developed. I've always been interested for their use in electrical generation as a backup for residences or even primary electrical generation. The issues I have for their use in cars are:

• 0% infrastructure in everywhere but California and will be for the next 30 years....if at all.
• Using strictly fuel cells in an automobile would introduce quite a bit of lagging in responsiveness because there is some serious time lag from when flow is initiated/changed to actual electrical output, so Toyota would have to keep the HSD with a battery in them to make them practical. Oh and it would probably be a sizable battery because the motor would have to be upgraded quite bit since that will be the sole propulsion.
• There are still cold issues with fuel cells. So I don't foresee them being sold in the northern part of the country for quite a while until this is figured out. However, building fuel cell cars may provide adequate solutions as is always the case. Engineers are pretty good about that. Even I have ideas on how to mitigate this problem.
• Hydrogen embrittlement

Of course as I write this I see why they would pursue it anyways.

 

I thought that this article in the New York Times regarding fuel cell cars was informative and not biased either way. Fuel Cells at Center Stage - NYTimes.com

 

For many reasons.

It's a technology. And if your competitor is looking at it, you better be paying attention to it as well.

I have nothing against research into this area of energy production, in vehicles or otherwise. Despite the pitfalls, and challenges that do exist at this time with any current incarnation of the hydrogen reality.

From the automotive standpoint, I think right now the Auto Show "Hydrogen Vehicle" acts as a high profile attention getter, and even as a single model or prototype has taken the place of electric vehicles and hybrids as the "proof" that an automaker is committed to green technologies, even if we know the reality is much, much grayer.

I honestly don't mind investment into alternatives, even if they face what today seems like insurmountable challenges to their practicality or usage. I see it all as a process of development and discovery. Who knows what investigation and development might actually bring forth? It might not be the product thought of, or hoped for today, but the investment and process itself may lead to other discoveries and advancements.

I'm not saving up for my first hydrogen vehicle. But who knows what "hydrogen technology" based advancements I might witness in my lifetime? It may end up being something much greater and different than a Hydrogen Honda Accord or Toyota Yaris.

 

Fuel Cell Vehicle has advantages of both electric and gas car. It drives like an EV and refuels as fast as a gas vehicle. Hydrogen can be produced with domestic fuel (natural gas) at higher efficiency than we can generate electricity.

$50k is still high for a 4 seater but it has high potential for many improvements (including cost).

 

Great! I look forward to running my house on hydrogen and lowering my energy bill in the near future.

 

Me thinks I sense some sarcasm. Either way, I think one of usbseawolf2000's points is generally suggesting it is more efficient to:
1) convert CH4 to H2, using the H2 in the vehicle via a fuel cell than it is to:
a) burn the CH4 at the power plant to make electricity, using the electricity to charge and use a PEV/BEV battery
or
b) burn the CH4 directly in the vehicle

Running a house on hydrogen is a related but probable significantly different scenario. Likely someone has estimated costs and efficiencies of having small gas->electric power plants on site at home, gas->hydrogen units, home fuel cells that run on H2 or CH4, etc.

 

I was being sarcastic, but my main point is that if H2 is the most efficient way to transport energy, then nearly everything in our lives, including our homes, would be run on H2. We would simply have a monthly delivery of H2 to our homes, or there would be a gas pipeline distributing H2 with local generation of power. Since this isn't happening, I can assume H2 is not the most efficient method of energy transport.

Only 30% of the US is powered by natural gas, so comparing H2 fuel cell efficiency to electricity distribution in general, is not a relevant means of comparison. Focusing on only natural gas electricity generation is equally pointless.

Oregon nets 80% of its electrical consumption from hydro and other renewable sources. H2 powered cars would not make sense in this region. Perhaps in another region that receives a majority of power from natural gas, an H2 car would be relevant. Even if H2 cars made sense in 30% of markets, it wouldn't justify the development, marketing, and production.

 

First, home and vehicle usage are different.

Home electricity usage does not require charging in battery pack first. Just by that, you have 39% well-to-plug. For H2, it will remain about the same 40%, maybe 4% higher since you won't need to compress it into 10k psi.

Automotive FC stack are likely designed to last 10 years / 150k miles. Home usage will need much longer and replacing it would not be cost effective.

So I don't see hydrogen powered homes any time soon, unless there is a breakthrough in durability (30+ years).

The H2 efficiency quoted is only from Natural gas. If it is from other source, electricity has an edge since you need it to do electrosis to make hydrogen.

H2 has inherent advantage because you won't see coal energy in it. There is no efficient way to convert coal to hydrogen. 90+% of H2 would be from natural gas.

US has plenty of natural gas so it is a good clean plausable path to energy independent and give FU to the OPEC.

 

Thanks. Expensive fuel. Especially for an area that has pipelines already constructed. I didn't realize how expensive a refueling station might actually cost. Makes the cost of a large scale solar array pale in comparison.

 

Re: 1st bolded - Toyota has been (partial) powering the Torrance headquarters campus with a 1.1-megawatt hydrogen fuel cell generator since Oct 2012. So I'm still hoping for another home power option to get off the corporate grid.
Read more here - http://pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+powers+hydrogen+fuel+cell+generator.htm

Re: 2nd & 3rd bolded - From the nice graphic above in post #21, right below H2 Distributed Natural Gas is H2 Coal Gasification w/ Sequestration.
Is that not H2 from coal and not natural gas?
Why is better than H2 Distributed Natural Gas for CO2 emissions? Makes me think clean coal is behind the graph. I though you had to do a partial (messy) burn of the coal to gasify it.

 

Wow, didn't realize H2 production from Coal is that clean! 95 g/mi vs 230 g/mi for EV with current grid mix.

That's perfect. We have abundant of Coal and Natural Gas. Produce hydrogen from them and we'll have cleaner electric cars than BEVs. Plus, you refuel as fast as pumping gas.

FCT Hydrogen Production: Coal Gasification

 

Automotive stacks are actually designed for hours of operation - typically 5,000 = 150k miles. Some of the automotive stacks have demonstrated about 10,000 hours. But these have been in rather temperate climates. Currently if it is below -20F they need a boost (heaters and additional compression) to get started and they use a prodigious amount of fuel for startup. Unlike a battery this is detrimental to their durability.

The target for residential is 60,000 hours. They have data from stationary stacks lasting 80,000 for Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cells (PAFC) which also produce the heat they consider valuable for double duty (aka Combined Heat Power CHP). The stationary stacks lasting that long are fairly expensive.

Agreed. I can't imagine the amount of energy needed for gasification of coal to hydrogen and the resultant byproducts. However, use of electrolysis is almost as complicated as building the fuel cells and or batteries. The fuels become contaminated using electrolysis and must be cleaned using specialized PEM filters. Contaminated fuel shortens the fuel cell life span. The space station has the advantage of already having pure constituents for its fuel cells. Its much cheaper and cleaner to do hydrolysis of methane into hydrogen.

 

First, thanks for the educational link.
Now I get why this processes is rated so clean for CO2. The key word is sequestration. If your process involves actively and safely dealing with the CO2, then it does not count against your process ... *BUT* it does cost extra and it is identified as a challenge to overcome via research in the link you found. We can get all those CO2 figures down if we add "w/ sequestration" to the process.

 

The trouble I see for FCV's is that there is so much momentum behind plug-ins right now, and over the next 10 years or so as that market continues to grow, charging stations proliferate, and more people realize how convenient it is to charge at home, and how inconvenient going to the gas station actually is, there is going to be an almost insurmountable perception problem for fuel cells. Who is going to want to switch from a vehicle they can fuel up almost anywhere to a FCV where they have to actively look for a station? Even if there were big money behind FCV's how long will it take for even a measurable number of the existing gas stations to get upgraded?

I don't think it's an inherently bad idea, but no way am I going to want to give up my ability to fuel up at home.

 

Plugin FCV would be ideal but it will cost more.

 

Plugin FCV as in you recharge with natural gas or similar at home or what? A relatively small portion of houses have natural gas in the US when electricity is literally everywhere.

The other thing going for batteries is that the BEV will continue to benefit from the fact that there is a wide array of industry that has a huge motivation for better batteries where all the same properties apply - lighter, higher capacity and faster charging. It's not just automotive research dollars being poured into this problem.

 

Plugin FCV as in plugging it into home outlet to get EV range from the battery and then once depleted, run from FC stack.

Think of PiP with FC stack instead of gas engine. Like most of us can do 1,000 mile tanks, pluging into outlet could cut down the number of trips to H2 station by half.