GM to Offer Hydrogen-Powered Vehicles in Four-Year

I see what you're saying but everything that you said is also true of electricity. Darell's point is that the generation, distribution, and storage of electricity are already WAY ahead of the same for hydrogen. In fact the first two are very mature and the third is decent/getting better all the time (Like the Modern English song).

If the ultra caps can be designed to store as much as a battery then we're done. The time to market is way in favor of the EV. Obviously we're already there in a way that is comparable to what the FCV crowd wants to be able to produce. It seems to me that the path to a replacement paradigm is much shorter pursueing the EV route than the FC route.

That and the conversion losses are much more favorable to the EV scenario as has already been pointed out.

 

This whole debate of which will come to market, the EV or the FCV has already been answered for us....



The battle has already been won - no fuel cell can ever compete with this:

* Tens of thousands of deep cycles
* Recharge in 5 minutes
* Environmentally safe for disposal
* Exceptional calender life
* Inherently safe (overcharge, puncture, crush etc all fine)
* Huge power output possible (3kW per kg)
* Raw material costs cheaper than standard lithium-ion
* Functional all the way down to -30oC
* Already meets all Tier1 supplier safety and performance requirements
* Already being manufactured in millions for use in power tools
See for yourself here

So there's no more waiting around to see if a battery is up to the job, there is.

This means the only issue is which option, EV or FCV, is cheaper and which option is more efficient.

The EV can go 4 times as far as the FCV on the same amount of energy, or dollars to the motorist.

It's just a no-brainer.

 

What I was trying to do was refute the often used position of "Hydrogen is stupid because they're just going to make it from Natural Gas and it would be more efficient to directly use the Natural Gas in the cars". You can make the same argument against electricity. "Electric cars are stupid because they're just going to produce the electricity from Natural Gas when it would be more efficient to directly use the Natural Gas in the cars."

Now an expected defense of electricity is that you can produce it from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, and hydro. What I was pointing out is that the same can be said for hydrogen.

Here are two promising techniques for producing hydrogen directly from sunlight. The first uses ordinary, unmodified pond scum algae maintained in controlled conditions. The second called "solar hydrogen" uses special solar cells that use a photoelectrochemical reaction to directly use solar energy to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. It should be noted that this technique is not a photovoltaic cell + electrolysis process. No electricity is produced as an intermedate step.

Algae: Power Plant of the Future?
Sunlight to Fuel Hydrogen Future

Neither of these are ready from commercial use, but they are being actively developed by various companies who hope to bring them to market.

And on a related note, are you sure that the efficiency of converting Natural Gas into electricity, trasmitting it across the country, and then charging a battery is really that much better than directly stripping the hdyrogen out of Natural gas and then using it to produce electricity in a fuel cell?

What is the efficiency of a Natural Gas power plant? My guess is that you throw away alot of the potential energy in Natural Gas when you use it to generate electricity. Then you have the trasmission loss when you send the electricity to the consumer. Did you know there's a 10%+ transmission loss between the power plant and your wall outlet? And lastly you have charging inefficiencies.

 

Man! That was harder than I thought! Seriously. But I did it... for the most part. And I thank you for your non-confrontational presentation of your argument.

I got a chuckle out of this because I'm being called to the mat what the FCV crowd is doing in reverse. Where I've chosen to concentrate on is the current state of technology that could be helping/harming us NOW. The FCV folks are ignoring what we have/could have NOW, and instead are concentrating so hard on what we could theoretically have in the future. And it still looks bad. I'm not sure I like the sound of my "thinking being flawed" but hey. I understand your point.

Yup, still hard... but I'm hanging tough. And thank you for not asking me to "bare with you" as even *I* have limits.

You make a good point, of course. Yet another thing missed here is that today we already CAN run our liquid-fueled vehicles without using any fossil fuels. Biodiesel, Alcohol... and who can say what sort of gasoline-alternate we may come up with in the future. And yet, for some reason, we just keep on plugging away with gasoline for the most part. My point here is that we ALREADY have alternatives that are cheap and easy (way cheap and way easy compared to H2!) and we aren't even using those! Who's going to shift to H2 when we won't even shift to the cheap and easy stuff?

And I'll just end with where this started because I still don't consider my thinking to be flawed in this matter. We have had NG vehicles on the market for quite some time. Tested, sturdy, desirable vehicles that perform roughly the equivalent to their gasoline counter-parts. We've had Honda Civic, Toyota Camry, Crown Victoria, Minivans - certainly not fringe vehicles here! They cost a bit more to buy, but the fuel was cheaper and maintenance was less. There are thousands of refueling stations in CA alone. So why now have ALL CNG programs been terminated (except for Honda)? Why were they never advertised strongly? Why no more public demand for these amazingly clean vehicles that are filled with a compressed gas just like FCVs would be? If there ever was a model for how the whole H2 distribution and infrastructure thing is going to work, then CNG vehicles are it. What makes anybody think H2 will be embraced, where CNG has been shunned? The SAME car makers who are swearing by H2 are the ones who've terminated their CNG programs. In the near future, H2 vehicles will, for all intents and purposes, be insanely complicated, expensive, wasteful NG vehicles. Yes, we might be able to move away from using fossil fuels for H2 eventually (well, we'd have to). But why start the hard, wasteful, expensive way, instead of the cheaper, more efficient and proven way we have NOW that is already better than what we HOPE to achieve with H2? (oops, I'm starting to slip! Better end it!)

Thanks. Tough to quit cold-turkey like that.

 

Every time you point to 5 minute charge times of new battery technology I feel compelled to point out that no matter how fast the battery is capable of being charged, it would never be practical to charge an EV vehicle in 5 minutes.
An EV car that could travel 500 miles on one charge would have a 150 kWh battery. In order to charge that battery in 5 minutes, you would need a 1.8 megawatt charger. That just ain't going to happen.

To give you an idea of how big 1.8 megawatts is, you should note that power plants range in capacity from small ones at 50 megawatts to a enourmous ones at a little over 2000 megawatts. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is small for a nuclear plant, but with an 816 megawatt capacity it dwarfs many natural gas power plants. The Three Mile Island power plant would only be able to simultaneously charge 450 EV cars in 5 minutes.

I also noted that while your press release states exceptional calender life for the battery, they never actually state what they consider to be exceptional. Since Lithium Ion batteries have a calendar life of around 2 years from the time they are manufactured, one could consider 2 and a half years to be exceptional.

 

OK... we can get back to EVs now, right?

Yes, but we currently (and by "currently" I'm comparing a 10-year-old real-live production EV with a prototype FCV that can't yet be commercialized!) only need to generate 1/4 the power for an EV. So this is NOT the same argument. If we can make green power, there is still no benefit in throwing 75% of it away, is there? Every way we produce power will have a negative effect on *something*. Let's use it wisely.

Yup. We can do it. And it may or may not be cost-effective to make H2 in this way.... we don't know because it doesn't yet exist in the real world. And once we've produced the H2.... now what? The cost of storing, transporting and dispensing H2 is still daunting. There are so many complicated facets to the whole H2 equation - so many hurdles to overcome, that I keep coming back to "why?" Why are we putting so much effort into this when we already have something that's proven and better TODAY. Or to put it another way, just what is the perceived benefit of a FCV over a BEV? And please avoid the common mistake of comparing a 10-year-old BEV technology with pie-in-the-sky 10-years-from-now FCV technology.

Yes I am sure. By far. The amount of electricity needed just to compress the H2 into the onboard tanks of a FCV is HUGE! And here you seem to be ignoring that I can *directly* charge a BEV with PV panels if I so choose. Electricity for charging can come from MANY sources, and can be available damn-near anywhere with very low infrastructure cost.

Of course there are conversion losses everywhere. (your 10%+ number is a bit too generous though, the average nation-wide loss is typically considered to be <10%, but 10 is a nice round number that I see no reason to argue with). Turning NG into electricity for a BEV is still SIGNIFICANTLY more efficient than any way we've found to produce and distribute H2. And again we're comparing a commercialized, tested process (making and distributing electricity directly over power lines) with what we *might* be able to accomplish in the future. You speak here of all the conversion losses of charging a battery, but seem to ignore the huge energy losses of storing and transporting H2 (regardless of how it is made). And speaking of those nagging facets I brought up before: We have electricity EVERYWHERE in this country. Yes, the grid might need to be grown and will need to modestly change... but nothing new needs to be invented here! For an H2 infrastructure, we have to start from scratch, spending untold billion$ on something that really won't benefit us as much as electricity already does.

I do think that H2 energy storage has its place. I just don't see the benefits of using it in automobiles. At least not while we have unexploited options that are available today, and better in every significant metric.

 

A couple of things...

With fast charging, there is no logical reason to have such insane range. The only reason we have that kind of range in gas cars is because it costs next to nothing to install a bigger fuel tank, and because of the limited gasoline infrastructure that makes refueling far less convenient than charging (at home, business - or even special gasoline-equivalent stations along the road). With fast chargers, 200 mile range would still be overkill. But all that said, you have a good point about the battery charge times. It doesn't take away from the fact that the batteries can be quickly charged, which is also valid, but you are correct that it does not directly translate into practical "vehicle-sized-pack" charge times.

Ah! And to keep this topical, we should compare the lifespan of the PEM - the heart of the Fuel Cell stack. We still need a breakthrough to have it last as long as batteries from 15 years ago are lasting. But again, it is a good point that there isn't enough info regarding calendar life of these batteries. I do know some folks who are using the batteries currently, so in 2.5 years, I guess we'll have some answers. So far, these things are proving to be astonishing performers in EV applications. If we can make them cheap enough, a three year life may even be sufficient.

 

Agreed, a 1.8 MW charger is unlikely to appear at any service station soon.

But as I've pointed out before, quick charge need not mean filling up with 500 miles in 5 minutes.

60 kW chargers are currently in use in some established EV charging points. It would be relatively trivial to double these up to 120 kW.

120 kW for 5 minute provides 10 kWh, which in an efficient EV like the T-zero would give about 50 miles range.

I think plug-in hybrid owners would be quite happy with 50 miles range for 5 minutes at the recharging point (or 10 minutes with today's existing 60 kW chargers).

As for longer range EVs, 300 mile range would only take 30 minutes to fill up with a 120 kW charger. I think most motorists would be quite content with having to take a half-hour recharging break every 300 miles of driving. The recharging stations would love it too, as it gives them a chance to charge punters for coffees and food etc. Those that don't fancy the wait will buy plug-in hybrids.

BUT the major reason I pointed out the A123 battery was not for the fast charge capability, but for the safety, longevity, temperature window performance and the fact that it is a real product that's already being manufactured. Like I said, no fuel cell, past, present or future, can compete with the A123 stats.

 

Oh, and regarding the calender life issue, it's worth noting that lithium-ion does not necessarily have an inherently short calender life. According to Saft America, the calendar life of their lithium-based batteries for hybrid use is estimated to be 15 years.

(From http://www.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuel...rgy_storage.pdf)

Regarding testing of the SAFT LiIon cells:
"After over 600 days, the calendar life at 37.5°C, estimated from a data fit, was approximately 17 years. However, there was considerable spread in the data at test temperatures below 40°C, so a conservative estimated life of 12 years was arrived at by using data representing the lower end of the data band."

I recall reading >10 years for the A123 batteries but can't find the link now - sorry!

 

I have been trying to think of some type of cells we could "pick up" from the service stations "precharged cells" that were trucked in that are disposable when depleted... but then the price would be worse than gas?

then I thought of capcitors that could be exchanged.. but then you never know how much energy your really getting in the exchange....

If we had some form of checks and balance that we could trust such as hydrogen cells that dissolve in water "in the gas tank or cylinder", ..... just brainstorming... sorry...

 

From the Economist, January 28th 2006 page 78

" 'Forget hydrogen. Forget hydrogen. Forget hydrogen!' That was the rallying cry of Jim Woolsey, a former director of America's Central Intelligence Agency, at an energy-technology event this week in Washington, DC. He was referring to the idea that America might make itself less dependent on foreign oil by encouraging the development of hydrogen-pwered cars. Instead, the former spy-chief has joined a curious coalition of environmental activists, national-security hawks, claen-energy experts and politicians to unveil a national consumer campaign in favour of 'plug-in' hybrid-electic vehicles.
Another surprising supporter of plug-ins, Orrin Hatch, a senator from Utah and a conservative Republican not known for supporting green causes, also dropped by to declare that this obscure technology could be the 'silver bullet' America needs to end its addiction to oil.

The event, and the campaign it was designed to support, are the brainchildren of Austin Energy, a power-generating utility owned by the city of Austin, Texas. Austin Energy's campaign has already won the endorsement of dozens of cities and towns, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver, as well as Austin itself, and also more than 100 utility companies. It now plans to collect millions of signatures from individuals requesting that big car firms start making plug-in hybrids.

Plug-in technology itself is a modified version of hybrid-electric cars such as the Toyota Prius. Instead of relying solely on energy from a petrol engine to charge them up, plug-in hybrids can, as their name suggests, be plugged into conventional power sockets. That allows a plug-in to travel 30-50 miles (50-80 km) without petrol, rather than just a couple of miles, as with the Prius. Since most American motorists travel only 20-30 miles a day, they could drive in all-electric mode most of the time.
This has the potential to lift fuel economy from the pitiful 20 miles per gallon common in American cars to 80 mpg or more. But, as in a conventional hybrid, once the battery was drained, the petrol engine would kick in - thus ensuring that the driver was never stranded.

Enthusiasts reckon that this technology would dramatically reduce oil use (which is why the national-security types are interested) and curb greenhouse-gas emissions (which is why the environmentalists are interested, although this benefit would depend on what method was used to generate the electricity in the first place). And prototype plug-ins developed by the University of California, Davis, by the Electric Power Research Institute (the research arm of America's power industry), and by enthusiasts who have 'hacked' Priuses to enable them to be connected to the grid, suggest that the idea can work in practice.

The main obstacle is that the longer range requires a bigger battery, and bigger batteries are heavier and more expensive. Andrew Frank, one of the researchers in the team at Davis, reckons that 'retrofitting' a Prius-type hybrid with a big enough battery that uses conventional nickel-metal hydride technology adds about 70kg (150 lb) to the vehicle's weight. Using lithium-ion batteries (common in mobile phones) adds less than 25kgs but costs much more. Still, it is an interesting idea, and if it came to pass it would radically restructure America's energy economics by shifting demand from the filling station to the power station. And, who knows, it might even shift the global balance of another sort of power - the political variety. "

 

Would you like to watch the video?

http://www.connectlive.com/events/austinen...50k-archive.asx

 

This press conference can be seen at pluginpartners.org

 

Darell beat me again. I either need to learn to type faster or do my research faster.

 

One of the factors that went in to my buying a Prius was that I had read that they could be converted to hydrogen fuel cell technology when it became available to the individual consumer. The problem with hydrogen, though, reared it's head not long after I bought the Prius. I read an article then that said that the fuel cell technology was ten years down the road. It immediately occurred to me that 'wait a minute, you guys said that fuel cells were ten years down the road almost five years ago. Shouldn't you be saying that it's five years down the road now?' It began to sink in that fuel cells were a pipe dream. Or, at best, it was turning out to be a lot harder to come up with than they thought it would. It's great that my Prius can be converted to plug-in hybrid and that's what I'll do but I'm not sure when that will be. The questions that cropped up while watching the video:

1. How big would a solar panel have to be for me to be able to charge the plug-in when not close to an outlet and could I attach it to the car's roof or store it in the back?

2. Where can I get the Prius converted to plug-in and what will it cost?

3. Would the conversion cause problems with Toyota with the warranty?

4. What would it take to make the car capable of handling biodiesel?

5. Would I run in to difficulties down the road when better batteries become available in terms of being able to exchange the old ones for the new ones?

I'm sure that other questions will pop in to my head after I post this so I may add the on later.

I believe that the best way to get people in general to get interested in reducing our dependence on petroleum is to prove it and be a real-life, up close example of someone who is doing it so that they can ask their questions. I'm already doing that with the Prius, answering people's questions about the technology and the car itself. I see a lot more Priuses these days and I like to think that it's partly due to their seeing me driving one. We can't wait around for someone else to get the ball rolling.

 

Who would is going to the market faster... fuel cell or next gen Solar cell?

I saw this article in the SF Chronicle and thought they might get to it faster than our slow moving auto industry.

Here is the article. Enjoy.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...&sn=001&sc=1000

 

Sounds like the perfect solution.

[Sarcasm Mode ON] The oil companies will buy up all the rights to ensure we never see it as nothing more than an expensive hobby [Sarcasm Mode OFF]

 

H2Hybrid

The Next Best Thing to a Fuel Cell Vehicle.
Fuel cells are the future, but you can drive the Hydrogen Highway today. Hybrid electric vehicles converted to run on hydrogen are a practical, affordable and user-friendly alternative that offer most of the benefits of fuel cell vehicles at a fraction of the cost. Quantum's H2Hybrid provides an opportunity for you to develop your hydrogen fleet as a precursor to fuel cell vehicles. Hybrid electric vehicles equipped with hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines can stimulate the demand for hydrogen, expedite the development of infrastructure and provide a bridge to fuel cell vehicles. Hybrid electric vehicles equipped with hydrogen-powered internal combustion engines are energy efficient and have the potential to virtually eliminate VOC, CO and CO2, and significantly reduce NOx and other toxic emissions associated with vehicles.

Benefits & Characteristics
Cost-effective
Energy efficient platform
Environmentally friendly - SULEV emissions
Daily demand for your hydrogen fueling station
Ideal for fleet use and technical demonstrations
Demonstrated reliability of internal combustion engines
User-friendly
Quantum's H2Hybrid package, currently available for the Toyota Prius, is designed to meet SULEV (super ultra low emission vehicle) standards. Additionally, the H2Hybrid generates comparable power to the gasoline version along with increased fuel economy.

The H2Hybrid Includes:
Electronic multi-point hydrogen injection system using Quantum's hydrogen injector and engine controller
Turbocharger and intercooler for increased performance and efficiency
Compressed hydrogen or metal hydride fuel storage modules - both with Quantum's pressure regulation system
Hydrogen fuel delivery system using proven hydrogen compatible components
FMVSS crashworthy design and validation
Vehicle Specifications
Turbocharged and intercooled 1.5 L inline 4 cylinder engine
Horsepower: 75 HP at 4,000 rpm
Torque: 82 lb-ft at 4,000 rpm
Fuel consumption rating: 50 MPKg City, 42 MPKg Hwy (estimated)
Fuel capacity: 1.6kg at 5,000-psi (35 MPa) utilizing Quantum's compressed storage; 4.0kg at 1,500-psi (10MPa) utilizing T.O.H.S. metal hydride storage
Payload & passenger capacity: 772 lbs. utilizing Quantum's compressed storage; 252 lbs (est) utilizing T.O.H.S. metal hydride storage

 

I would definitely be interested. I understand from an investor in a local BMW dealer that they have already purchased property and started plans for a hydrogen station in anticipation of the release of some hydro BMWs, so fuel should be available in my area. Those who had the GM electric car seem to have loved it. Although GM quality hasn't been great, that seems to have changed in recent times, at least with some of their lines (speaking to owners of Escalades mostl have told me how much they love them and that they have had little or no problems), so GM has it in them to produce a decent product. Plus, it would be nice to be able to buy American made, by and American company again.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jceh1 @ Oct 20 2007, 06:05 AM) [snapback]528134[/snapback]</div>

You realize this thread was from March '06, yes? (the article that started the thread isn't even available any longer)