Featured Toyota Believes Fuel Cell Prices Will Match Hybrids

since Tesla's battery backup system has helped with load leveling around the world (island of Kauai, regions of Australia) - capturing their Surplus (or shortfall) wind and solar - wouldn't that be a great way to handle any issues?
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A typical nuclear plant is way too big for that. Capacities are typically 250MW to above 1GW, and no one has yet built a battery system that's even close to that size.

Further, on-grid battery systems aren't cost-competitive on most large grids. They only work in very niche areas. The big storage systems are gas plants fed by line-packed gas lines and/or storage facilities (underground salt caverns or aquifers). The cost to store energy that way can actually be negative at times, making batteries look crazy expensive by comparison.

 

Such as?

 

If you used the same electricity to charge a BEV you would travel 2.6x as many miles.

EDIT: In addition, if you are using your own solar cells on your roof, this is the difference, for example of installing 12 panels or needing 32 to charge a car. Lots more costly to start with. But it isn't just 2.6x as costly...you also have to install a H2 generator, compressor a cold storage for the H2. Probably 50x the initial cost. If done commercially, instead, you need huge amounts more real estate for the panels.

Mike

 

It maybe simplistic, but it is apt.

There are engines in cars now with peak efficiency of over 40%. The peak efficiency is at higher engine outputs because pumping losses are lower when the throttle is open wider. A hybrid allows the engine to operate at the peak efficiency for longer periods of time, by allowing a smaller engine than a traditional car would use, and buffering energy in the battery.

A plug in FCEV, as you support, would have a larger battery than current models. The battery is the main power supply, and the car works more like a BEV than a hybrid as current FCEVs do. A smaller, lower output fuel cell can be used to save costs, since it isn't needed to supply power directly for high loads like acceleration. It simply has the charge the battery, and will nearly be at a constant output during a drive. Since the fuel cell is more efficient during lower output, if you want one operating at peak efficiency for most of the drive, that smaller fuel cell now needs to be bigger.

the only cites I'm finding for 80% fuel cell efficiency are for when using pure oxygen instead of air, or in cogen operation. I've sources showing how the cells peak at lower output, but are old studies, with the peak in the 50% to 60% range.

There are more questions that need to be asked, like what is the cost?
Putting chargers at apartments, and increasing fast public ones will be cheaper than hydrogen infrastructure for personal cars.
The costs and drawbacks of a dual fuel car are only worth it during the interim of shifting the fleet from one fuel to another.

 

Only if you always drive at a constant, high speed.[/quote]

Only if the drive is constant. Traffic? Less output. Down-hill? Less output. Allowing charge recovery while parked? Less output.

If you have a fuel cell that can provide flat-ground sustaining power at 75MPH, you'll be operating it at less than full-power (and thus more than full-power efficiency) quite a lot.

 

I'm a pragmatist, and I understand that in ten or twenty years this problem will be irrelevant. But I possibly haven't explained myself well enough. It might be cheaper on a national level, but the chances of the government being politically able to force apartment complexes and other landlords to install electrical infrastructure to charge EV's is near-zero. The chances that Republicans will allow enough money in government incentives and/or tax breaks to get landlords to do it is also near-zero. I have very strong doubts that any landlord will make this expensive change without regulations or incentives.

We are very specifically in a period of transition. Bloomberg believes that there will be price parity between EV's and ICE vehicles in three years, which should theoretically lead to a big increase in EV sales. But this is going to cause a big divide between homeowners and renters. Homeowners will be able to take advantage of the price difference between electricity and gasoline, renters will not.

So, the question for me becomes - What technology or set of technologies can we use to bridge this gap? My thinking is that if you can't plug your car into the grid to charge the battery, you need to be able to generate the electricity to do so internally. We've already got the technology and ability to do this with conventional hybrids, but then we're back to the high cost of gasoline versus grid electricity. And we have the added issues of increased pollution/CO2. I'm not going to even suggest any solution at this point - I'd just like to know if anyone thinks that there is a cost-effective, less polluting possibility out there.

 

If the fuel cell has enough power to sustain highway speeds.

We do not have a plug in FCEV to look at. The closest we have for gauging how a manufacturer will approach using a larger battery to allow a smaller fuel cell stack is Nissan's test mule van. That is basically their electric NV200 with the charger replaced by a fuel cell. The stack in it is just 5kW, or about the rate of a Level 2 EVSE. That's less than 7hp, and about 20hp is needed for maintaining 65mph.

The battery provides all the power for acceleration, and even for alot of steady cruising. The fuel cell probably spends most of the time near max rate in order to replenish the battery.

Since the fuel cell is expensive, reducing the size is way to reduce cost. A plug in FCEV will likely follow Nissan's approach for that reason.
Nissan unveils world's first FCEV with SOFC running on bioethanol - ScienceDirect

Japan is one of the top EV markets.
The electric supply to about half their residents is lower power than what a US home has. A Prius Prime takes 10 hours or more to charge, and Level 2 isn't an option.
They do have a robust network of fast public chargers.

So the solution to your question is already here. The network of public chargers is growing now, and PHEVs can be quite clean and efficient when using the engine.

As the technology improves, the fuel cell might replace the engine in the PHEV. It won't use hydrogen. The infrastructure required to cover the US will take more government money than public chargers. A dual fuel system to cover missing hydrogen coverage will just add to the cost of the car, while taking away some utility. That will hurt sales.

 

We don't need to "force" apartment owners to install chargers. The good ones or best ones will do it to start with to be competitive. The apartment complex across the street from me installed 2 chargers a couple of years ago. A big complex (500+ apartments) is going up across the street from my office and they have multiple chargers in each parking garage...plus ~50 in each of 3 office parking lots. In the brochures, these are all listed as "features" along with pools, etc.

Mike

 

In places where there are enough apartments that each complex competes for tenants, this will be true. In places where there aren't enough apartments to go around...not so much. So the higher-end apartments will have them, and the average/lower-end apartments won't. We don't have to force the installations, we could subsidize them instead, but I don't see that ever happening in today's political environment.

In five or ten years, this probably won't be an issue as chargers slowly get cheaper and trickle down to lower-end places, but during the transition, this is going to hurt both the lower-income people who can't afford to live in an apartment with a charger, and the car companies who can't sell EV's into that market.

This is why I'm skeptical of the predictions that talk about a massive upsurge in sales of BEV's once they get cheap enough. Way too many people rent for that to be likely.

 

The apartments I’ve been in already have outlets by the stalls for block heaters and 12v battery chargers,

Seems that should be a design requirement?

 

Finally, a Robust Fuel Cell that Runs on Methane at Practical Temperatures

A cheap small multifuel fuel cell on a standard EV is likely the path of least resistance

 

I think you have overestimated the numbers of plug ins being purchased now.

An estimate from when BEVs had less than 100 miles range was that 40% of US households could support a BEV. We are just starting to touch that segment, so any upcoming surge sales don't need those without access to home charging to support it. Then the sales surge will push demand for chargers at rentals and public ones, and hopefully there will be enough of those built that when those surge cars are replaced, there will be a larger pool of buyers for them used.

It probably isn't the best executed platform, but it is a real world example.

The Clarity is available as FCEV and PHEV. We can ignore the BEV for this since it has less range than a Leaf.
It is the FCEV that loses trunk space between the two. This is because hydrogen tanks are bulky things, and the FCEV gas tank is only 7 gallons. The fuel cell should take up less space than the engine and transaxle, and CNG tanks are less bulky than hydrogen ones, but that is a lot of equipment to get into a car frame. The bi-fuel Impala lost 9 cubic feet of trunk space to the CNG tank.

Now if by multifuel, you mean one tank, but any fuel, that could work with an autoreformer. The emission system will be the limiting factor. The efficiency means a fuel cell emits less than an engine, but using something other than hydrogen means some emissions to address. Using both gasoline and diesel is likely out.

 

wait - maybe it was someone else, but I thought someone here on PC was often talking about their constant 600-mile trips, from Colorado to God only knows we're on these remote areas, and places far away to watch solar eclipses and whatnot. Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Make things for everyone? The one percenter? Or 10%er? Whatever that ratio is? isn't that the very definition of constant speed? Occasional Uber long trips?
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Virginia can handle excess nukes, years ago we built I think the worlds biggest "battery" ...largest pumped water storage system to handle it. Interesting site to see, but located in the middle of nowhere in the back woods up in the mountains somewhere. I must get there someday.

It works so well, that a popular topic is where can we build a new one? Coal mine conversion to pumped water storage is the latest hot proposal. Not that we actually need another one, but when it comes to utility projects, there is always intense political support for whatever mega project somebody can think up.

 

(Oops - sorry actually tried to merge/edit this as one post, but sometimes PC isn't so friendly.)

it's a safe bet you're not from California, because legislation was already enacted in several jurisdictions - where new complexes are required to provide such things. Moreover, all of our surrounding cities that have room to chew up existing open spaces - they're putting up single family dwellings to do all such things .... anr many have solar panels to boot ..... & some have EVSE's - which we previously posted when we were looking at new homes.
& btw - this is where the Lion's Share of plugins are being purchased.
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I'm sure there will be issues...and there may be people who want an EV but just can't charge it.
But it isn't going to limit sales. 60% of households are homes owned by owners...and these people most likely own more cars per household than apartment dwellers.

As far as having chargers only in places that have more units than renters. Hah! We have the opposite case here in Silicon Valley. An extreme shortage of housing...and the new units seem to all have chargers (but I haven't checked them since I'm not looking). However, most big workplaces do have charging.

Mike

 

But are they more likely to own EV's or PHEV's?

 

An algorithm recently identified over half a million potential sites over the globe.

Huge Global Study Just Smashed One of The Last Major Arguments Against Renewables

Plenty of reason for why individual sites may not work, but we can afford to be choosy with those numbers.

Some geological formations and old mines could also work for compressed air batteries.

Own home and have multiple cars, probably have the income for a plug ins. they are more likely than someone renting.