mspohr
Well-Known Member
The core problem with H2 is that the thermodymamics for creating, transporting and using are all wrong and there is no way to fix that.
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Hydrogen vs. Battery
- Thread starter siry
- Start date
The only breakthrough I can see working is to have a pump with several independent paths. This would really just be having X number of pumps in one housing. I don't know how the nozzle would hold up though. The only cost it would reduce is the amount of land required. And the pump housing would have to be much larger. A real Rube Goldberg mechanism. I guess that a breakthrough can be put in the same category as magic fungus.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
2008 Roadster 0-60 3.9s. Who, back then, was saying "In 10 years Tesla will demo a street-version with 0-60 of 1.9s"
Similarly, price of Wind generation was never predicted to fall as fast as it has and, here in UK, the rate and extent to which installing out in the hostile environment of the North Sea would become "routine" in such a short time.
Good, progressive, engineering and R&D
So I struggle to gauge which of these H2 showstoppers are insurmountable (in which case they are known to be so to the H2 Car builders and yet they stubbornly plough on?), or just "hard" / "hopefully not insurmountable"
Similarly, price of Wind generation was never predicted to fall as fast as it has and, here in UK, the rate and extent to which installing out in the hostile environment of the North Sea would become "routine" in such a short time.
Good, progressive, engineering and R&D
So I struggle to gauge which of these H2 showstoppers are insurmountable (in which case they are known to be so to the H2 Car builders and yet they stubbornly plough on?), or just "hard" / "hopefully not insurmountable"
2008 Roadster 0-60 3.9s. Who, back then, was saying "In 10 years Tesla will demo a street-version with 0-60 of 1.9s"
Similarly, price of Wind generation was never predicted to fall as fast as it has and, here in UK, the rate and extent to which installing out in the hostile environment of the North Sea would become "routine" in such a short time.
Good, progressive, engineering and R&D
So I struggle to gauge which of these H2 showstoppers are insurmountable (in which case they are known to be so to the H2 Car builders and yet they stubbornly plough on?), or just "hard" / "hopefully not insurmountable"
Wind power and battery/mechanical technology are mechanical and chemical problems. Chemistry is trying combinations until a better one is found, and mechanics is structural dynamics and strength of materials. Chemistry and mechanics have no limits that are known, only limits of specific items. Hydrogen is thermodynamics, which is orders of magnitude harder to solve because physics sets some rather hard boundaries. Hydrogen can't be made less corrosive. It has to be liquid or highly pressurized to get a reasonable energy density, etc. Even if the magic fungus approach can be scaled to make a sufficient quantity of hydrogen with little energy input, there's still the energy used to pressurize it, the energy used to transport it, and the loss to convert it to electrical energy. Electricity doesn't lose nearly as much because electricity always stays as electricity until it goes into and out of the battery (very small loss), and gets converted to mechanical energy.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
Very helpful explanation, thanks.
Tangent: but my expectation is that H2 will leak away if e.g. parked at the airport for a week or two. In practice I have found that parasitic drain on Tesla battery can be a similar problem; (and Gasoline will deteriorate if left in tank for long periods); I read on Jag forums that iPace have zero loss after being parked for a couple of weeks (more correctly: I have read that the Guess-o-Meter still says the same range - I haven't actually asked anyone if it genuinely lost no range, or if its a software bug on the G-o-M not adjusting for battery leakage ...)
It isn't that the battery "leaks", it's that power is used to check the 12V battery SOC, the internet connection, the main battery temperature, etc. Now the car does go to sleep and the longer it sleeps, the deeper the sleep is. It's worse if you keep connecting with the App, and have some of the various automatic functions turned on.
I've heard that other cars have zero loss. I believe that must be some trickery on the GOM because they all use power when parked, or that certain loads aren't counted, so when the driver gets back it shows the same (but perhaps the first few miles are "overcharged" to correct the estimate). Another way would be to run everything when parked off the 12V. No one would ever know unless the 12V got very low. (This is all just speculation, I don't really know about what the other cars do.)
If Musk had decided that H2 was the solution, Tesla would be bankrupt.
If Musk had decided to prohibit home charging, requiring Tesla's could only charge at supercharger stations, using fuel that costs the equivalent of $15/kg.....with stations that cost about an order of magnitude higher.....for a vehicle with less range and less acceleration.
Wow this is a 10+ year-old thread of Hydrogen vs. Battery!
Does anyone on this thread think a Toyota hybrid with 100 miles of EV range(probably with Toyota's solid state battery), plus 500+ miles of Hydrogen range, a viable combo or not?
Viable in the sense that it bypasses the need of frequent fill-ups, and yet provides the range for long trips?
Hyundai, Honda, Toyota all have HFCVs, these 3 have the deep pockets to bet on all fronts, while Tesla can only bet on one.
Does anyone on this thread think a Toyota hybrid with 100 miles of EV range(probably with Toyota's solid state battery), plus 500+ miles of Hydrogen range, a viable combo or not?
Viable in the sense that it bypasses the need of frequent fill-ups, and yet provides the range for long trips?
Hyundai, Honda, Toyota all have HFCVs, these 3 have the deep pockets to bet on all fronts, while Tesla can only bet on one.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
Well, you better not go on too long of a trip in a hydrogen-powered car because you have a very slim chance of there being a hydrogen filling station when you arrive (unless your hobby is visiting the 35 hydrogen filling stations in California). There are only 5 in the rest of the country. Plus, you're going to need lots of disposable cash because hydrogen is about 6 times as expensive as gasoline per mile (which makes it around 18 times as expensive as electricity). And, no, the hydrogen filling station network is not growing significantly.
Haha! Now that's funny!
Blu Zap
Grinning member
Only situation where I have seen hydrogen as a viable energy source is in fleet management. I read about a Japanese company that powered all their forklifts in a plant with Hydrogen. They had their own infrastructure and since the vehicles did not venture very far, they were right there to re-fuel.
A private vehicle in the USA? forget hydrogen.
A private vehicle in the USA? forget hydrogen.
A 100-mile EV range + 500-mile hydrogen range Toyota hybrid can be 5+ years away, so by then the CA network can be around 200(per CA mandates). Can't speak for other states though.
BTW, there are 3 hydrogen refill stations around here. Local Honda dealers recently advertise Honda Clarity lease:
$379/month, $2878 drive off for 3 years, 20000 miles/year
$5000 CA HFCV rebate(even for lease)
$15000 hydrogen fuel credits
21 days of rentals from Avis
HOV access
The above looks competitive to a Model 3 lease, right?
I was surprised to read that there are 20000 hydrogen fuel cell forklifts in the US.
Fact of the Month November 2018: There Are Now More Than 20,000 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Forklifts in Use Across the United States
Hyundai just started selling their HFCV SUV Xeno, with similar perks like Clarity($5000 CA HFCV lease credit, $13000 fuel credits, 7 days/year rental, for 3-year lease), it looks like an interesting option to check out.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
LOL! Only to someone lacking the most basic critical thinking skills. There are no hydrogen filling stations in Washington State for example. Or Oregon or Nevada or Utah or Colorado or New York or Ohio, etc. etc. etc.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcel...-publicly-available-hydrogen-fueling-stations
3 hydrogen refill stations within 10 miles are workable(with a few more ready by end of the year). Obviously things are different in the epicenter of EVs and everything tech, so it is natural other states can lag behind for 5-10 years.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
3 hydrogen refill stations within 10 miles are workable(with a few more ready by end of the year). Obviously things are different in the epicenter of EVs and everything tech, so it is natural other states can lag behind for 5-10 years.
Even if a basic hydrogen filling network is built out, it won't be very dense due to the high price of building a hydrogen filling station.
And a hydrogen network will not solve the fact that it costs drastically more to fuel a hydrogen car than a gasoline car which, in turn, costs a lot more to fuel than a purely electric car. Do you really want to pay the equivalent of $16/gallon?
I'm with Musk on this, hydrogen cars make no sense. No one needs the complexity or expense, particularly when we have battery-electric cars that are cheaper to fuel, cheaper to service, have a much longer lifespan and are much more environmentally friendly. Not to mention offering better performance and safety.
JohnSnowNW
Active Member
The costs of generating and transporting, combined with the number of stations required and the high maintenance costs of said stations, necessitates the sole reliance of hydrogen for transportation. If you remove 95%+ of that reliance by adding a plug, you've just killed the entire model.
In short, "No."
Sure, as long as you don't put any value on how the car drives.
Even then, natural gas or electric will always be cheaper. If the H2 comes from natural gas, there is inherently conversion loss, and if it comes from reforming water by electrolysis, there will be conversion loss. Plus the fuel cells themselves have conversion loss. The laws of physics simply do not allow hydrogen to be a viable energy storage or transportation solution.
With a hydrogen filling infrastructure, it'd work. But I don't think it'll ever happen.
Keep in mind, every single fuel cell car out there has had a battery pack - the response time of the fuel cell to throttle inputs isn't adequate for traffic, so they are all mild hybrids.
The largest cost in a FCEV by far is the fuel cell stack, with its precious metal catalysts. I think the Clarity 100 kW stack was nearly a million, though they've gotten cheaper since.
So the manufacturers have to have known for decades that they could greatly reduce the costs by going with a Volt or i3 approach - building a battery to handle all acceleration and making the fuel cell stack just big enough to handle freeway travel.
Something asking the lines you suggest would be cheaper to build, lighter, and much more practical than any FCEV to date (though 100 EV miles is excessive for a PHEV. 40-50 covers the vast majority of trips and gives a smaller, lighter, cheaper package.)
Despite that, I'm only aware of one concept PHFCEV. I believe the reason for this is the motives of the folks who offer FCEVs.
Allowing you to charge at home for 90% of your travel breaks the oil company supply paradigm. It's a lot harder to justify hydrogen filling stations if they are almost never used.
It is unlikely that hydrogen will ever be as cheap to run on as electricity, and the current trends in battery and fuel cell pricing make it unlikely that the fuel cell car could be enough cheaper to produce to offset the difference in running costs.
Hydrogen cars inherently have additional wear items, failure modes, and safety risks as well - and at the moment they have mandatory retirement ages based on the need to certify and replace the high pressure side of the storage system after a number of pressure cycles.
So in principle it's a better solution than an FCEV, but I don't actually think it's a great solution for our roads today - and I do think the fact that it isn't being proposed says a lot about the folks that do propose FCEVs.
jelloslug
Active Member
Toyota claimed that they would have over 60 station by 2016 in California but there still less than 40 operational now in 2019. It's been five years since Toyota developed their current FC car and they have not even hinted at increasing the range.
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