Featured The Dirty Truth About Combustion Engine Vehicles

Unfortunately there are no long range BEVs. And building the infrastructure is harder than you think. And long ranges BEVs will be inefficient and expensive for the foreseeable future.

I'd estimate Elon's hatred for hydrogen has delayed our transition to sustainability by 10-20 years.

 

Hydrogen tanks are nothing like batteries or tanks for liquid fuels. Building them to conform to a space within a car frame isn't practical. The car frame has to be made to accommodate them.

The physical forces of containing 10k psi is what is dictating the shape of the tank. For lowest cost and weight, that means a cylinder. The spaces within car frames, dedicated platform or not, are generally square. So a cylinder ends up using more space than its actual volume.


This is the current Mirai with two of its hydrogen tanks visible. There is a third, I think smallest, tank behind the rear bumper. The hardware in the engine bay is the fuel cell and all its support equipment. Behind the rear seats is the hybrid sized battery, motor and their supporting electronics, which takes up about half the trunk.

For a P-FCEV, start with a BEV platform so the weight of the batteries can be low and centered. The smaller fuel cell might fit underneath with it as the battery range doesn't need to be over 150 miles. Which leaves the hydrogen tanks. In the engine bay won't take away cargo space, but the suspension, steering, and 'safety factor' needs to be accounted for as you need to convince emotional people to buy a car with the fuel tank in the front. The car may end up with less than 5kg of hydrogen storage, which is already less range than a comparable ICE car's range.

So ground up, it might be possible to have a the car without compromise. The car companies selling FCEVs now don't have a BEV platform out yet to start with out yet though. With available hydrogen stations, designing a purpose platform for a FCEV, let alone a plug in one, is a big expense to add to an already expensive type of car.

With a quick look,the narrowest diameter hydrogen tank I found was 7.2 inches. At 21 inches long, it held just 0.2kg. I suspect there are practical reasons for not making narrower tanks in terms of cost and weight ratio to capacity, but lets say a company did use such narrow tanks to minimize the space loss. They will need more tanks. Right FCEVs have one to three hydrogen tanks in them.

Each tank added beyond the first means adding a valve and monitoring equipment for each extra tank, plus the extra fuel plumbing. That is added cost and fail points even if multiple tanks themselves cost as much as one. using these narrow 'space saving' tanks would mean up to ten to get 5kg of capacity.

Please, the only thing that gave hydrogen another chance was fracking and cheap natural gas. Without that, funding would have been cut before Musk made his remarks. Yet the promised 50k FCEVs and supporting infrastructure never came. The technical and cost hurdles were just higher than what the hydrogen optimists predicted. Elon's comments didn't slow down that lobby's and the state of California's efforts in building hydrogen cars and stations.

Most people can see and touch and even drive a BEV at their local dealer these days. You have to live in one state to do so with a hydrogen car. Even if the hydrogen lobby had been more successful in building their dream, that would still be the case today.

there also isn't any long range FCEVs.

 

Actually it is, but you have to be kind of clever.

 

you don't think my 310 mile car is long range, the 400 mile model S (cheaper to manufacture than the 2021 mirai), the upcoming model S plaid + (520 miles) what in the world is long range. Would you spend $50,000 more over 150,000 miles for a hydrogen phev over a gasoline phev? How in the hell could elon's legitimate problems with hydrogen delay it with the California government, the US government, The Japanese, Korean, and EU governments all pouring much more money per vehicle into it than for plug-ins. Remember GM, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, and Mercedes poured more money into hydrogen until bevs put those designs to shame. Get a clue. Ask your friends at NREL why with all the money poured into hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles there is nothing that comes close to plug-ins. Better yet found a car company and prove me, dymler, vw, gm, ford, bmw, tesla, nio, etc wrong. Can you tell me where to refuel a hydrogen car in a cross country trip? You can buy a model 3 long range and travel across the country or you can pay more for a mirai and not make it to all of California.

 

Elon's opinion on hydrogen played no part in my engineering analysis. Too many thermal dynamic issues.

Bob Wilson

 

With current charging infrastructure, current battery taper charging and current lithium battery degradation at full charge, I'd consider 650 miles to be medium range and 800 miles to be long range.

No, but it wouldn't cost that. It would cost less than a low range BEV.

They aren't legitimate.

Has nothing to do with government policy.

Because none were any good.

A Mirai is just as dumb as a Tesla.

 

Other shapes are possible, but they add weight and cost to an already expensive and heavy tank. Structural tanks won't work under current end of life and inspection regulations.

 

At 65 mph that would be 10 hours of driving. Not very many people drive 10 hours without stopping. Do you have any statistics that show how many people need this? Oh yeah, professional long haul truckers can drive for something like 14 hrs/day. But, generally your "requirements" are out of touch with anyone who
a) has kids
b) has a spouse or friend
c) likes to eat
d) has normal bodily functions

Mike

 

Most people don't charge EVs to 100% and drive at 65 until they stop.

First of all, open road driving is often fast - 70-80mph and in wind. That'll cost you 10-15% of your EPA range which is combined highway/city driving. That drops the actual range to perhaps 550 miles.

Second, most people won't charge to 100%. This is because it's bad for the battery and because taper charge tends to be very slow. Many people stop around 80%. 80% of 550 is 440 miles.

Finally, anyone with any sense won't drive to zero but preserve a buffer. Since EVs have lousy range a lot of EV owners will preserve only a few percent. I wouldn't. I preserve 150 miles in my gas cars and would do the same in an EV. 440 minus 150 is 290 miles. So that's the real-world one-way range of a 650 mile EV on the open road.

Chargers are often far farther apart than 290 miles when you aren't on the main interstates. Over half of my trips are off the main interstates. I've personally driven over 600 miles between chargers of any type, even L2. L1 isn't very useful on a long road trip. So even 290 miles of real-world range would greatly restrict where I could go with current charging infrastructure. It would support perhaps 80% of my out of town driving legs.

 

That definition seems to be an outlier and it seems like you are not even trying to be consistent with your own statistics. You claimed a phev would only use 15% of its miles on trips above its all electric range, I guess in your worst case that would be one trip of 2250 miles and I guess you can assume you can't recharge where you stop to sleep so about 5 hours charging time in my 2018 car with today's charging infrastructure, for that outlier trip once a year (of course it would take 35 hours @65 mph and no stops or bathroom breaks). Think 10 years out. I doubt a large percentage of the market will even want to pay a little more for the 520 mile range bev that should be in production in the next year versus a 250 or 350 mile version. There are of course some and the 620 mile range roadster will probably make it out in 2023 or 2024. In a decade charging infrastructure in the US, Europe, and China should be much better, and its likely 300 mile cars will be able to add 200 miles to their range in less than 15 minutes.

According to BTS in the US the median long distance trip in a personal vehicle is 194 miles round trip. If you are planning on multiple of these 2000 mile long trips a year and aren't going to stop to recharge, I would think a hybrid or phev would be preferable, which makes it even more of an outlier for bev purchase. No trip close to that length could be done with the hydrogen infrastructure proposed to be built within the next decade. That kind of makes it case closed.

Please show your work. Not even toyota thinks that.

 

Where did I say that, and what does that have to do with the range needed on road trips?

How do they define "long distance"? I don't consider it "long distance" until around 300 miles each way. Is that per trip-leg? Some of my trips are over 2 weeks long and I can't imagine 194 miles being considered a "road trip" (i.e. road-based vacation). That's about the shortest distance I'd go each-way for an out-of-town road trip. I've gone over 1,500 miles before, each way.

I can't figure out what the heck you're talking about.

I'm saying a PHEV would do 65-80% of it's total lifetime miles on electricity only. That's 99% when you don't leave town and more like 5% when you do. But, for most people, most of their miles are in-town, hence this averages out to 65-80%. I'm personally at 78% right now on my PHEV, including 5 out-of-state (Colorado) trips.

What I'm saying is that EPA EV range is not remotely a good indicator of how far you can go on a road-trip leg, due to the reasons I stated in post 109, so you need much larger EPA-rated range to do road trips, especially if you venture off the interstates (which is where most of the fun is).

 

There is no thermodynamic issue. Anywhere there is energy conversion, there is loss of energy. Even for EVs, energy is lost during charging and discharging. But with R&D and good engineering, we can reduce that loss to a point that it's worth worrying about. The most efficient and least expensive solution will win out. And with carbon tax, the most green solution will win as well. For example, the new electrolysis method that is 30% more efficient than the old will now become the baseline. We will never go back to the old ways for new projects. Little by little, we'll find a way to reduce the loss so that the energy loss is not an important consideration.

We should think about what is humanly possible in the near future with the technology that we have or nearly have.

 

The current discussion isn't about BEVs. It is about PHEVs, and whether using a hydrogen fuel cell for the range extender is more practical than an engine.

Right now, the fuel cell is far from practical simply because there is no national network of hydrogen stations, and no one willing to build them. The fine print of a Mirai lease doesn't even let you take the car out of state if you could.

Then a P-FCEV may have a 50 mile grid range, and a 400 mile hydrogen range. Any hydrogen infrastructure to support it is going to be sparse, so it won't be going to the places that a BEV can't reach now.

More efficient electrolysis is good, because we need hydrogen for things besides fueling cars.

The issue with using for cars is that it is a far more wasteful of green electricity than charging a plug in car. More efficient hydrogen production helps, but there is still a lot lost in pressurizing or liqudifying the gas for use in a small vehicle. Hydrogen cars are just an expensive way of getting fast fill times, and PHEVs are already good at that. We can make green fuels with hydrogen for those PHEVs. It'll cost more than fossil fuels for them, but likely cheaper than hydrogen.

 

No, I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that it's more practical than a half-ton of batteries.

I still say it's not. The total lifecycle energy use of a PHEV H2 range-extender car with 400 mile range is about the same as a BEV with 300 mile range. I've repeatedly explained why that is.

 

I'm pretty sure that a better characterization of the current discussion was not whether a Hydrogen fuel cell is a better PHEV range extender. When Lee brought it up it was more about whether that would be a better way to use the hydrogen IF you had to make a car that used hydrogen.

The point was made that Hydrogen is only practical because fracking is creating a large volume of natural gas that can be transformed to other fuels. That's valid. Hydrogen depends on polluting the water tables and causing earthquakes.

But to bring the subject back to the original concept that some cars are less clean than they appear.... that same dirty natural gas makes up 35% of the fuel used to create electricity in California in 2019. 68% of California's electricity comes from non renewable sources. ( 2019 Total System Electric Generation ). If you look at the map for 2018 (Electric Vehicle Sales By State - Engaging Data) you see that almost 1/2 of all EV sales that year were in California. So most of the EVs are being powered by non green sources too.

Interestingly virtually all of the EV sales in California are in two areas. Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Heatmap of Electric Vehicle (EV) Sales in California (Animation) - Engaging Data

It gets worse in the near future: The last of California's nukes are going offline in the next year or two. We have another drought year in progress so our Hydro will be impacted.

 

• electrolysis - heat loss is built-in and lost energy compared to BEV storage
• steam-reformation - energy content of output product is less than the feed stock

Call it what you wish but the energy analysis shows it doesn't make thermodynamic sense.

Bob Wilson

 

Just because it has losses doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. Everything has losses. Wind turbines are around 46% aerodynamically efficient, and decreasing (on purpose). Does that mean they don't make sense? Solar is around 20% efficient. Does that mean it doesn't make sense?

 

No one is claiming the grid is 100% renewable or carbon free. What people bringing up a dirty grid as a argument against Plug ins are over looking how much electricity goes into making gasoline and other fuels. ICE cars have the problems of a dirty grid added to the fossil fuel it uses. Which leaves the plug in out ahead in terms emissions.

That's only true if hydrogen refueling was available. No one wants to pay for it. The car companies making FCEVs cry they aren't energy companies, and then put as little money as they can into stations. Hydrogen companies only build them when they get paid. The people getting the cars don't even want to pay for the fuel; they move on to the next car when the fuel card expires.

That leaves tax payers paying for them in a few locations. So you'll see chargers where you want to go before hydrogen stations.

 

Obviously.

And that's largely because of the push for BEVs. They pushed out a technology we needed. Well, let's hope we have a battery breakthrough that rescues the disaster that is BEVs. Either that or vastly improved manufacturing technology, mineral extraction technology and battery recycling technology.

 

All are improving.
However, your characterization of BEVs being a disaster seems way off.
Sales are expanding rapidly, CO2 emissions are going down and will continue to do so.
A small upstart company 15 years ago is making profit margins on their EVs that other car companies can only dream of.
Other car companies are scrambling to catch up and plan to build in very large numbers.
Many countries have announced an end to the sale of ICE cars.

If that is a disaster, I’d hate to see how you react to a stubbed toe!