New news from Toyota

Not sure why companies are still wasting money on hydrogen.

 

Agreed.

Where am I supposed to fill up a hydrogen vehicle, anyhow?

Hydrogen comes from cracking fossil fuels, so this solves no problems. It would be cleaner and cheaper to just burn the fossil fuels in an engine that was designed for it rather than take the extra step of converting it to pure hydrogen.

 

electric (via wind and sun) ftw

 

That would be my preference, but it isn't how it's done at the moment. Those options have to be cheaper than just burning fossil fuels, which they simply aren't, yet.

Assuming hydrogen can be cheaply created through renewable means, and assuming the filling infrastructure were in place, perhaps hydrogen would be a reasonable "fuel" (battery). What is the energy/weight of hydrogen vs the latest lithium technology, anyhow?

 

These may clear everything up.

Toyota Defends Its Plans For Fuel Cells - HybridCars.com

Toyota Further Explains Fuel Cell Viability - HybridCars.com

 

It doesn't clear up much. From the linked article:

Why crack H2 off from natural gas at 50% efficiency when you can just burn the natural gas? Natural gas cars already exist, and nobody buys them except for the government. When we eventually shift to renewable electricity, why would we use it in a process that is 50% efficient to create hydrogen when we could directly charge a battery at 80% efficiency?

Missing from any of this news is:

1. Cost of the vehicle
2. Cost of the fuel
3. Range

I'm not against H2, and I hope the energy medium can be developed to new levels of efficiency. I just don't see this happening, and would place a hefty wager that the typical car 25 years from now isn't going to be H2 powered. Toyota is likely pushing forward on this because they have so much invested in it already, and expect subsidies to make it profitable.

EVs already have the needed infrastructure in place to "refuel". Everyone has electricity, and the distribution system is already in place.

 

I'm also perplexed by this direction

 

I read clear through both of your links including the comments and I am not convinced that fuel cells make sense, yet. Toyota s not stupid so I will try to keep an open mind. Perhaps it is not an either or situation as Toyota says. In the long run, natural gas is not a solution as it is just as depleteable as petroleum. Will these cars be affordable? will they be practical? will they be durable? will fuel be where we want to go? what will be involved in their repair and maintenance? how much will that cost?, what will we do when platinum runs out?

There are so many questions. It just doesn't seem like a good bet, yet. I would not support public investment in the infrastructure until there are better answers to more questions.

Also suggesting that the transport of electricity over long distances as is done from the Northwest to California is the normal delivery of electricity when many generate electricity onsite with solar panels seems unfair. The loss of power by transmission is not necessarily "normal" and looks like rationalization to support what is always an inefficient fuel cell operation. Unless there is some kind of mandate, the fuel cell cars need to develop their own market. It will not be easy.

We will see how that works out.

 

This is my fear, that public money will be squandered hand over fist on something that wasn't fully thought out, and eventually found to be a bad idea. The real question is not "can we do this", but "should we do this".

 

Because generating electricity is about 33% efficient. It takes about 100 kWh of energy to generate a gallon of gas equivalent.

Make sure you understand well-to-wheel concept. It is both vehicle operation and fuel production. This is Toyota calculation.

 

Never mind.

 

If one considers the PV panel the 'well'* then Solar -> Electricity -> Battery -> EV gets about 54% efficiency.


* - The fact that a PV panel only converts 15% of the sunlight that hits it is analogous to a oil pumping rig only extracting 15% of the oil from the ground, and no one counts that in an efficiency calculation. After all, what would happen to that sunlight if it didn't hit the panel.

 

Yup, EVs only make sense with renewable power. It still represents a very tiny percentage but it is growing. Even with the current grid mix, EVs are just as clean as 50 MPG Prius and you get the benefit of fuel diversity and energy security.

The issue araise with the claim of zero-emission and extreme EV bias. Slow refueling speed and heavy battery are still a big issue. It is something gasoline and H2 have natural advantage over battery.

Toyota designed PiP with those in mind, balancing out emission, efficiency and functionality. Electricity is mainly used for short trips at low speed while gas was used for high demand/speed with a quick refueling capability. Driving condition (not range) dictates choice of fuel.

 

I have to confess not much thrill in switching from a BEV/PHEV-vector to a FC-vector...
...but also I have to watch this compared results, and realize that battery technology cannot cope with range demands and time-of charge profiles of everybody...
I'll stay tuned, because this is a very interesting matter

 

Not according to the graph by Toyota. Parity with a hybrid is close with pure natural gas electricity generation. Adding a small bit of renewable electricity (and Local produced electricity even more so), and it beats hybrids. A substantial amount, and it beats Toyota's optimistic predictions for H2.

Heavy batteries are a trade-off against large tanks. Any seven-seater FCHV cars out there?

 

That's not really any different for hydrogen-powered cars. No tailpipe emissions, or the emissions are water...
Both ignore how the energy came to be.

 

Yup, I like "Zero Tailpipe Emission" better. Upstream emission is as important as the tailpipe emission. A lot of people don't know or care to learn about the upstream. Well-to-wheel covers both.

Not yet in production. The FCHV-Adv (prototype) was a highlander conversion. Hyundai Tucson FCV is CUV so I doubt it will be a 7 seater.

Green Car Congress: Hyundai to offer Tucson Fuel Cell vehicle to LA-area retail customers in spring 2014; Honda, Toyota show latest FCV concepts targeting 2015 launch

 

Would love to see a natural gas PiP! Then you could do all your filling up at home...both NG and electric!

 

I must respectfully disagree with this analogy and also not sure of the relevance to the efficiency comparisons being made. But to your point:

Crude oil ultimately comes from sunlight, so the analogy would be:
a) Solar Panels convert: sunlight -> electricity
b) Vegetation converts: sunlight -> crude oil

With solar panels the process is instantaneous and the efficiency is about 15%. With vegetation the process in on the order of tens-of-millions of years. Certainly someone has tried to calculate the efficiency of this, but it is probably much less than 1% for the same surface area of the solar panel. It would not matter if one extracted only 15% of the oil from the well. That potential energy is still there, just not accessed, but not an issue of energy conversion loss.

Of course the total surface area of ancient vegetation utilized and duration it was exposed to sunlight was enormous and thus the vast reserves of sequestered carbon (crude oil) we have available and have been using today. Nature did the work for us, but from a technical aspect, the process took a very long time and was quite inefficient compared to solar panels.

One of the major reasons “well-to-tank” and “tank-to-wheel” calculations are important is because of the CO2 released during the conversion processes and costs involved.