Featured Energy Use For FCVs Higher Than EVs

Wow !! Fuel Cells not as practical as PHEV's ?? Sure didn't see that comin' ....

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Remember CARB is part of the CFCP, aka the fuel cell lobby. They don't want to adjust mistakes in NREL or GREET to reflect today's reality, because members have .... conflicts of interest. Go figure, big conflicts of interest in california's government making them make bad decissions.

What were the bad assumptions?

Battery costs and weight would not come down as fast as they have.
Unhealthy emissions from hybrid cars including phevs could not come down as far as they have.
The california grid would not decarbonize as fast as it has.
The california grid would have much more unused excess power (reducing this is part of the decarbonization)
fuel cell cars would come down faster than they have, and phev and bev would be more expensive than they are with shorter range.

Correct these assumptions and? I would still finish building the testing ground of 100 subsidized stations. Interesting that far less of the hydrogen highway is using renewables than mandated, it is much more expensive than predicted and it is taking longer to build than predicted partially because technological hurdles that CARB assumed were easy have not been breached, while for plug-ins hurdles that carb said could not be done, are now living in real cars.

At this point the 100 station boondogle is probably less expensive to complete, than all the wasted funds when CFCP and its members make wild claims and it is backed by more money. I don't understand why california is still giving so many zev credits to fcv, while not rewarding the cleaner phevs? That is something that should be stopped in the next couple of years, and would stop subsidizing the lobby to such a large extent.

 

I concur, run the experiment but cut it off at some fixed time and geographical area. In effect, it becomes the hydrogen version of the San Francisco cable trolly system. Let the existing cars become cabs and service vehicles.

Bob Wilson

 

The lobby is WAY more corrupt then one can imagine. For example, the lobby made sure that folks making more than a couple hundred $K a year are precluded from most 'clean-car' financial incentives - but they carved out an exception ... for the hydrogen car. Try as the lobby does, Tesla sales continued. One truly has to desire to get a pricy plugin - when the lobby works so hard to stack the deck against plugin sales. It's tragic that their lobby went to such lengths - in hopes of making the more-practical 'efficiency' transpirtation tech, pay the price for their success ... pitting the 2 against each other but on unequal footing for incentives. Equally tragic, there's no process in place to hold the lobby accountable for their wrongdoing. It's the same kind of corruption that allowed Goldman Sachs' financial activities to be branded as legal, you simply lobby to make the immoral activities legal. Thus - its all good.
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I love Hydrogen power. I think it fits our driving lifestyle way better than anything Tesla or other Plug in cars can offer. Refilling takes minutes and gives you 300-400 miles.

Any lobby, as far as I am concerned, is sketchy and wants their thing to succeed.

I like new tech and how that can change the world

 

But when you're better off running gasoline in an ICE than hydrogen in a fuel cell, efficiency-wise? Yeah, no.

 

actually Toyota Mirai barely gets over 300 miles. And Road & Track reports the clarity about 50 miles more because of its huge hydrogen tanks that take up most of the trunk space.

2017 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell First Drive | Review | Car and Driver
I love hydrogen too. I also love the notion of jetpacks & flying cars. Reality brings us home though - & reminds us that after a ½ century of "maybe in 10 years it'll be practical" .... well ... maybe when you get older and hear that chant more frequently than younger folk have heard it ... you'll see it for what it is. Fork lifts? It may work ok, shuttling cargo around local areas. That's way different than taxpayers footing a trillion dollar infrastructure build-out. A great read on hydrogen's practicality/reality Is called "The Hydrogen Hoax". Read up, & the reality of hydrogen's practicality hurdles will smack you in the face. It's written by one of the engineers that worked on our Space Program where hydrogen is the only fuel that makes space travel a reality. NASA had a bigger budget at one time - and it gets cut. Maybe if NASA could find a cheaper fuel it could afford more space travel. SpaceX has to use hydrogen too. Yet here on Earth their auto transportation preference tells you hydrogen doesn't stand a chance for Interstate practical travel. It's the Rube Goldberg / dog & pony show that never goes away. Rember the K.I.S.S. philosophy.
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Actually...

SpaceX uses three types of rocket engines.

The first type that they've used, as used in the Merlin and Kestrel families, uses liquid oxygen as the oxidizer, and RP-1 (kerosene) as the fuel. Note that this is the traditional cheap option for spacegoing rockets.

The Raptor family is being developed for Mars missions, and uses methane in place of RP-1 as the fuel.

Finally, for thrusters and such, they have the Draco and SuperDraco families, which use nitrogen tetroxide as the oxidizer, and monomethyl hydrazine as the fuel.

Basically, because SpaceX isn't a money-is-no-object operation, they have to use cost-effective propellants.

 

yea but when they add passengers (their ultimate goal) ... where is that breathable stuff - water & electricity coming from ...

i hadn't realized they'd done w/out hydrogen fuel cells. So - like the OP's link ... even Space X found 'em to be financially impractical. Oh the irony
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Sure, but as a taxpayer, I don't think we should keep increasing the bad money spent after good. I mean right now california's idea of subsidizing stations 60% then paying for maintenance costs until the car's come, doesn't make much sense in a world where phev's and bev's produce low enough levels of unhealthy pollution to solve california's light fleet pollution problems, and produce less ghg. Cars like the all teslas, prime, volt, i3 already have a nationwide infrastructure and can be fueled at home too. Sure in 20 or 50 or 100 years a clarity might get cheaper to build than a phev, but right now it costs many times the cost and gets subsidized in the US many times more.

I'm not saying the tech breakthroughs will never come, but the whole h2 will do it so we don't need plug-ins, and people will like the h2 cars more than plug-ins is just wrong. Yeah, I know a h2 in indiana would produce less ghg than a tesla, but no one is buying a h2 car in indiana, and its probably much better to spend the dollars to continue to lower unhealthy pollution and ghg from the grid than to spend it on some notion that somehow taxpayers will h2 enough to get people in coal states to buy a lot of them.

Again, let's finish the 100 stations in california, lets let the extra high subsidies for cars slow down. When the cars don't come in 5 years, lets let some of the stations close down instead of throwing more money at them. A great test is going to go on in Japan. They have trade barriers to the teslas and bolt, and volt, and i3, so much less competition. They are funding hydrogen from coal shipped from australia, a really expensive way to do it, but no air pollution in Japan from it to let people know the source of the fuel. Let them find a way to make it something people want there, before carb pushes the US government to again increase funding for what appears to be a technology that has no place in america for at least a decade.

What in your lifestyle would favor a mirai or clarity over a prius prime, or fusion phev, i3, or even a plain old hybrid? All those hybrids and phevs can fuel much more cheaply and conveniently than a 10,000 psi hydrogen car if you only subsidize hydrogen to the point where wild technology improvements will drop the cost.

 

Tesla has had problems with liquid oxygen to burn with the kerosene (similar to jet fuel) on the falcon 9. If they work with it long enough they may solve some of the problems and costs associated with liquid hydrogen, which would make supplying distributed H2 stations less expensive.

For electricity generation kerosene now has fuel cells. Jet-fuel-powered fuel cell developed that produces electricity at room temperature

Although kerosene needs a smaller volume and is less expensive than liquid hydrogen, it is heavier, so with a lot of fuel, and the bigger spending of a manned mission, you would probably pick liquid H2. This has the benefit of proven, safe technology, to have fuel cells supply both clean water and electricity to the crew. Methanol is another option. It is cheaper than liquid hydrogen, and lighter than kerosene and can supply water and electricity to the crew with the byproduct of CO2. Space X is experimenting with this. I would think longer missions would be H2 still.

 

I am not aware of the plan in California and how it was being funded. As a scientist I love the purity of the h2 fuel source and it being so abundant. We fight over oil so badly now and it will just get worse. Electric cars are awesome as well just have some pretty big negatives for those of us who drive a lot (we easily do 350 miles or more over a weekend traveling to go see family etc). The Article I found, if it is correct, from The New Atlantis was published 10 years ago. A lot is happening in research. Check out what Ohio University is up to with Urea as a source. Urea electrolysis This requires way less energy input and lots of us make this every single day.

Insane to do all that subsidizing for something that isn't there yet. Clearly not well thought out. The con subsidies for ethanol could be put to better use investing in newer energy technology (EVs or hydrogen). I think Electric and PHEVs do lower our dependence on oil and lower emissions but we need a cleaner world. 81% of our energy comes from fossil fuels and dirty to extract and use. I just want to see a cleaner world that isn't prone to fighting over the sludge of animals past.

Nothing, sadly. If all were equal I would still choose hydrogen for the cleaner operation. Toyota/Honda should have done what Tesla did with the free charging by putting hydrogen filling at their dealers or select dealers to create a network where people can refill. They also created a mass market car to start with rather than focus on a luxury type that would lure affluent buyers. Those buyers created the investment and allowed further refinement of their product to now be approaching the point of offering mass produced vehicles.That is what has set Tesla apart and has given EVs the advantage for now.

I love my Prius v and think this technology is stepping stone we needed to change the world. Just need to keep the momentum going by not thinking one technology is the cure all for our energy needs.

I recently read about the company Nikola and their work to change transportation from the top down with Hybrid trucks. Now that is some awesome thinking and needs more encouragement! Nikola Motor Company | Premium Electric Vehicles

 

Yes - & with enough wind or pv solar - you can not only offset home use - you get to use your surpluss for refilling your battery - rather than getting a puny credit from your utility provider.

the purity of h2 - just like electricity, turns on the energy that brings it into usefulness. Unfortunately Japan has chosen the cheapest fossil fuel to bring about its hydrogen supply. They are going to use Australian coal to reform hydrogen. Imagine the tons & tons of coal ash not to mention the other byproducts. Isn't it an irony that fossil fuels belching CO2 are the most economical way to reform/ extract hydrogen? Yet we call it "renewable"? The hydrogen Lobby is huge on boasting how renewable methods can be used to get h2, but they never really are using them because they're just not economical. But like you mentioned, there are plenty of reformation methods & products continually being experiment with.... & like the lobby always says, "in just 10 more years" . Who knows. Maybe it will really happen - like they keep on saying.
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As a scientist you should be aware that H2 is not abundant. Sure H2O is abundant, but it takes energy to get it in a usable form.

Electrons are even more abundant than H2 if we are just counting things to determine their abundance.

I love the purity of using electrons as a fuel source and them being so abundant.

Mike

 

Refilling hydrogen can take minutes if the station wasn't busy recently, and it is the latest and greatest. If they had a recent run of cars filling up previously, or things got too hot, refilling for those 300 miles could take 15 minutes or longer with older stations. Handling gases will never be as quick and easy as handling liquids.

Using a 12k psi standard Japan is moving too would be better than the 10k psi the US is using, but improvements to refueling for hydrogen aren't like improvements for batteries and charging. A better battery comes out, and current plug ins take a hit to their depreciation. Faster charging means building out the improved chargers, but plug ins can still charge at home. A faster hydrogen refueling improvement requires the station to be upgraded, and some methods in development may not be compatible with current cars on the road or in development.

Fuel cells could have a future in cars. Nissan's FCEV runs on 110 proof alcohol. A Volvo group developed a generator sized one that runs on diesel that could end up in their commercial sleeper trucks. Hydrogen's nature means the refueling infrastructure for it will always cost more, and the tanks on cars heavy and bulky, than any liquid fuel. Fuels which we can make renewable if the desire was really there.

 

There are so many better hydrogen carriers than compressed hydrogen gas. Although not 'popular', I like anhydrous ammonia since the byproduct is nitrogen. I'm also fond of metal hydrides.

Bob Wilson

 

While very, very, very much lower compared to hydrogen for cars, anhydrous ammonia is still stored in compression vessels. The penalties are much limited compared to the 10k psi tanks, but still there when comparing to likely liquid fuels. I think the hang up most have with using it has more to do with its being a toxic gas in addition to being flammable. There is a difference between farmers having access and everybody. The farm use also leads to potential taxation issues.

I have a romantic notion in regards to the disc based metal hydrides. These CD sized discs could be pulled out and swapped like propane tanks, possibly even in a vending machine, instead of relying on hydrogen stations to be built before selling the cars. Actaul hydrogen refueling stations would only be needed on major thorough fares like fast DC chargers at first, and could lead to faster adoption. The issue is that, while the required infrastructure is smaller, one is still needed with the attended cost.

Ammonia would also require some infrastructure to be built. Ethanol, and maybe methanol, would need the petroleum distribution system to be upgraded in the event of a major shift to them for transport fuels. Renewable diesel or gasoline wouldn't have such issues.

 

Nice.

Unfortunately, my engineering instincts see a problem. Pair claim they can make ammonia to fuel cars for just 20 cents per liter
First you need to get cheap hydrogen, then you need your fuel cell car to compete with a flex fuel ammonia car. And these flex fuel cars would also likely be able to run methanol ;-), so your price of ammonia needs to be able to compete there too. If its expensive, sure fuel cell will do better than a common flex-fuel ice, but ... can it compete with a phey you can partially fill with electricity at home?

Now you may say, methanol that is going to come from natural gas because that is the cheapest way, so you have a CO2 problem versus ammonia. Well, today ammonia is produced mainly from natural gas and coal, it simply moves the CO2 to the production from the tail pipe.

even more problems. Its energy density is much better than 10,000 psi hydrogen, but the same as methanol, and worse than ethanol or gasoline.

metal hydrides would definitely help the fuel tank and infrastructure problems with hydrogen. It doesn't solve the problems of expensive fuel cells or stations. Maybe those will be solved in a decade or two ;-)