Hydrogen vs. Battery

[dgatwood]

Again, they are thinking ahead. Current H2 prices aren't relevant when they are planning for the future.

Hydrogen isn't relevant when planning for the future. Either:

• You are turning fossil fuels into hydrogen, in which case you are inherently less efficient than just burning the fossil fuels, or
• You are generating hydrogen from electricity, and it will always be less efficient than just using the electricity directly.

There is no plausible universe in which hydrogen could ever be cheaper to produce than the electricity or oil that is used to produce it. And that is what would be required for hydrogen to make sense.

If we get fusion working, then and only then will it make sense to use hydrogen as fuel, because the energy obtained from fusion would be much greater than the energy spent breaking the chemical bonds between hydrogen and whatever it is attached to.

Same way, when we add BEVs to a system, it is very likely to bump up the consumption of the worst component, like coal.
If not, then that's what should be done FIRST - minimize the use of the worst component. Agreed?

No. Actually, it's quite easy to imagine a situation in which doing so makes emissions worse. Suppose you reduce coal and natural gas during the day to zero by adding huge amounts of solar power, and then you start dipping into nuclear power production (which is at that point the dirtiest power source). What happens at night? Well, the nuclear base load can't be quickly curtailed, so now you are producing less clean nuclear power, and every bit of the energy that makes up the difference at night is coming from dirtier sources than the nuclear power that the solar power displaced.

Let's take the example of Indian grid that I was checking recently due to the Delhi pollution and increasing coal usage until recently.
Indian coal plants are at 51.5% utilization. indian coal is also inferior. so they burn 0.7 kg of coal/KWh, which is 0.7 kg * 2.2 lbs/kg * 44/12 (CO2/C) = 5.64 lbs of CO2/KWh. When there are electric cars, these will crank up their utilization by burning more coal to meet extra demand.

Assuming that the current energy mix won't change over time is really not a valid assumption, but let's go with that.

Let's say India replaces 1 million ICE cars like Camry, running at 26 mpg and annual miles of 12k miles.
With this move, India will reduce (by takign them off the road)
12000 miles /26 mpg * 19 lbs/gallon * 1 mil = 8.769 M tonnes of CO2 <= Plain vanilla ICE CO2

Then, the 1M replacement BEVs @ 333 Wh/mile will need:
12000 * 0.333 KWh * 1 mil = 4000 kWh * 5.64 lbs CO2/KWh * 1 mil
= 22.560 M tonnes of CO2! <- BEV CO2 - Net addition of 13.7 M tonnes of CO2

If we replaced the same 1 million cars with hybrid Camrys, then @ 52 mpg these will add back only half of original CO2
A net reduction of 4.384 M tonnes of CO2.

Cool story, bro, but all of your numbers for EVs are badly wrong.

First, India's coal-fired power plants are estimated to produce only about 2 pounds of CO2 per kWh, on average. While that's still twice as dirty as U.S. coal plants, it's barely a third of your estimate.

Second, 4000 * 5.64 * 1 million = 10.23M metric tons, not 22.56M. So that number was off by another factor of two.

So now let's do the same math with real numbers instead of made-up numbers.

12000 * 0.333 KWh * 1 mil = 4000 kWh * 2 lbs CO2/KWh * 1 million cars = 3.628 million metric tons.

That's a reduction of 5.14 million metric tons, which is considerably more than the reduction from using hybrids. And many, many people have done that math and concluded that even with coal, EVs are typically cleaner than hybrids. Usually when your math runs contrary to a mountain of evidence, it probably means you got something wrong.

 

[mblakele]

New day, same ol' FUD

I'll yield my time to Brad's article in Forbes:

Nice to see that Brad Templeton is largely on the same page we are. He's a smart guy.

What’s Hydrogen’s Future As Transportation Energy?

Hydrogen is often touted as an important transportation “fuel” in the future, though it has never gotten significant traction. One reason is confusion over what it is – it’s not an energy source, though it is used like a fuel, but rather a form of energy storage. You take some other energy source (today it’s natural gas, in the future it’s renewable electricity) and you generate the hydrogen, which you can then turn back into useful energy through a fuel cell, or even by burning it.

Hyundai’s Mobility Innovator’s Forum closed a week of 3 different California mobility conferences I attended.

[...]

People had hopes for hydrogen cars, and due to regulations, some have been produced such as the Toyota Mirai. They are not very good, and few have sold, and with filling stations being very rare, not convenient to use. Boosters of hydrogen didn’t predict the way that lithium battery prices would plummet, and it seems it’s time to declare batteries as the winner, at least for now, in electric cars.

[...]

Hydrogen may still have promise as a truck and bus fuel. While these are also being built with batteries, the amount of batteries they need is very large, and the amount of power needed to charge them in a reasonable time is immense – several megawatts. The weight of such large battery packs is very high compared with both diesel and hydrogen, and trucks and buses can handle having large tanks on board. As such, this is where the action may be for hydrogen in ground transport.

[...]

So the future isn’t probably full of hydrogen as its boosters imagine, but there is hope yet.
​

There's more; but it's off-topic for this particular thread, which is about EVs and hydrogen.

 

[Curious George]

Hydrogen isn't relevant when planning for the future. Either:

• You are turning fossil fuels into hydrogen, in which case you are inherently less efficient than just burning the fossil fuels, or
• You are generating hydrogen from electricity, and it will always be less efficient than just using the electricity directly.

There is no plausible universe in which hydrogen could ever be cheaper to produce than the electricity or oil that is used to produce it. And that is what would be required for hydrogen to make sense.

If we get fusion working, then and only then will it make sense to use hydrogen as fuel, because the energy obtained from fusion would be much greater than the energy spent breaking the chemical bonds between hydrogen and whatever it is attached to.

No. Actually, it's quite easy to imagine a situation in which doing so makes emissions worse. Suppose you reduce coal and natural gas during the day to zero by adding huge amounts of solar power, and then you start dipping into nuclear power production (which is at that point the dirtiest power source). What happens at night? Well, the nuclear base load can't be quickly curtailed, so now you are producing less clean nuclear power, and every bit of the energy that makes up the difference at night is coming from dirtier sources than the nuclear power that the solar power displaced.

Assuming that the current energy mix won't change over time is really not a valid assumption, but let's go with that.



Cool story, bro, but all of your numbers for EVs are badly wrong.

First, India's coal-fired power plants are estimated to produce only about 2 pounds of CO2 per kWh, on average. While that's still twice as dirty as U.S. coal plants, it's barely a third of your estimate.

Second, 4000 * 5.64 * 1 million = 10.23M metric tons, not 22.56M. So that number was off by another factor of two.

So now let's do the same math with real numbers instead of made-up numbers.

12000 * 0.333 KWh * 1 mil = 4000 kWh * 2 lbs CO2/KWh * 1 million cars = 3.628 million metric tons.

That's a reduction of 5.14 million metric tons, which is considerably more than the reduction from using hybrids. And many, many people have done that math and concluded that even with coal, EVs are typically cleaner than hybrids. Usually when your math runs contrary to a mountain of evidence, it probably means you got something wrong.

My last rebuttal got deleted for 'trolling'. LOL. I'm just going to be short this time.
My mistake in thinking 1000 lbs as a ton. With metric tons,
ICE @26 mpg = 4.153 million metric tons.
Hybrd @52 mpg = 2.076 million metric tons
BEV at best case 0.91kg CO2/KWh = 3.628 million metric tons ( taking your number) + CO2-e of large battery pack + coal ashes for smog.

Hydrogen: Only solution for large scale electricity storage and fast refueling ZEV cars.

Yeah, I'm all for a zero emission grid in India and China and elsewhere.
But China is adding over 100 GW in coal plants. With over 2 mil electric cars..

 

[nwdiver]

Hydrogen: Only solution for large scale electricity storage and fast refueling ZEV cars.
.

A battery that can't economically vary the rate at which it's charged (needs to keep 'charging' >90% of 24/7/365) is ~worthless as grid storage. Electrolysis is >20x too expensive to be viable for that purpose.

Also.... even if H2 COULD be produced economically from 100% wind or solar the idea that its best use would be to power cars is a non-sequiter... we STILL need ~10B kg/yr of H2 for other uses; we STILL have aircraft that CANNOT be easily electrified.....

BEV at best case 0.91kg CO2/KWh = 3.628 million metric tons

The 'Best Case' for a BEV is 0kg CO2/kWh if you plug in your EV when you get home, have an average commute a 200 mile range and can charge during curtailment events.

It's gonna be a LONG... LOOONG time if ever before the equipment required for electrolysis is cheap enough or curtailment frequent enough that even a tiny fraction of H2 will come from surplus wind or solar.

 

[JRP3]

Hydrogen: Only solution for large scale electricity storage and fast refueling ZEV cars.

Hydrogen can't scale up and with so few filling stations and few on the horizon they are no solution for fast refueling. Meanwhile EV charging speeds keep increasing. Hydrogen is always chasing a moving target, and falling further behind.

 

[dgatwood]

My last rebuttal got deleted for 'trolling'. LOL. I'm just going to be short this time.
My mistake in thinking 1000 lbs as a ton. With metric tons,
ICE @26 mpg = 4.153 million metric tons.
Hybrd @52 mpg = 2.076 million metric tons
BEV at best case 0.91kg CO2/KWh = 3.628 million metric tons ( taking your number) + CO2-e of large battery pack + coal ashes for smog.

Of course, that's still based on using the worst coal plants in existence. They don't build coal plants like that anymore, even in India and China, because the efficiency of those old designs is too low, so they cost too much to run. Modern coal-fired plants produce about half as much CO2 per kWh. So if you're talking about forward-looking projections of CO2 for new vehicles added to the roads, the BEV still blows the ICE cars away in any plausible future, even if you don't factor in alternative energy.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Hydrogen: Only solution for ... fast refueling ZEV cars

Lotus Evija BEV 100% recharge in 9 minutes, 6 minutes for 80%. Won't be long for trickle-down

Meanwhile EV charging speeds keep increasing

 

[FutureShock]

Lotus Evija BEV 100% recharge in 9 minutes, 6 minutes for 80%. Won't be long for trickle-down.

Meanwhile EV charging speeds keep increasing.

Yup. The two things the (few) fuel cell guys like to flog as being in their favor are range and refuel times. But, those advantages are diminishing by the day (and never made up for FCVs' drawbacks in the first place).

Range? Several EVs now with 300-375 mile range, and more coming. Vast majority of drivers do not need more than this.

Refuel/recharge times? Down to 15-20 minutes with Tesla V3 superchargers, and continuing improvements in battery chemistry and infrastructure will cut that to 10 minutes and less in coming years. Not much for H2 to hang its hat on... aka "but we only take 5 minutes, that is, not counting the extra time you have to drive to even FIND an H2 station, and IF that station is pressurized and ready to go."

The reason why fuel cell is doomed, at least for passenger vehicles, isn't just that it's well behind in terms of infrastructure and mind-share. It's also that BEVs are a moving target... they're continuously improving, and at a faster rate than FCVs can hope to keep up with, due to all the investment flooding into battery R&D and production, BEVs, and BEV charging infrastructure.

IOW, FCVs aren't just behind... they can't ever catch up. The fact of 100 new BEV models to be released in the next five years is just the writing on the wall spelling out what's already obvious.

It's too bad for eternal-FCV-pusher Toyota, but they willfully keep backing the wrong horse, I guess 'cuz of their sunk costs/soon-to-be stranded assets in FCV. Ah well. They can stop banging their heads against the wall whenever they wish.
.

 

[nwdiver]

It's too bad for eternal-FCV-pusher Toyota, but they willfully keep backing the wrong horse, I guess 'cuz of their sunk costs/soon-to-be stranded assets in FCV. Ah well. They can stop banging their heads against the wall whenever they wish.
.

I'm pretty sure that it's their sunk cost/soon-to-be stranded assets in ICE that are motivating them to push technology (FCVs) that are at least 20 years away from being a threat to ICE.

 

[FutureShock]

I'm pretty sure that it's their sunk cost/soon-to-be stranded assets in ICE that are motivating them to push technology (FCVs) that are at least 20 years away from being a threat to ICE.

That too, yep.

But while Toyota likes ICE, they also dream of a post-ICE era they think they can dominate much more thoroughly, due to their investments and technology lead in FCVs.

Problem is, BEVs and Elon upset the apple cart, and the future isn’t going to play out the way Toyota planned.
.

 

[Curious George]

15 min battery charging? Really? Just watched the TFL Model X towing video in the other thread on ford vs cybertruck towing. 2 hrs 10 mins to charge from 2%.
Tesla Takes Tug-of-War With Ford to Twitter

In that time, I will be 150 miles away after filling up the zero emission fuel cell car.

Toyota: Oh look. Who just made a bundle of profit and is not sweating with the new EU regulations!
Toyota announces $1.8 billion share buyback after strong second quarter

Operating profit rose 14% to 662.3 billion yen (£4.7 billion) for the three months to September 30 as Toyota enjoyed its strongest second quarter since 2015.
The profit beat an average forecast of 592.3 billion yen, based on estimates from nine analysts, Refinitiv data showed.

It sold 2.75 million vehicles globally, up from 2.18 million a year earlier.

Sales in North America, Toyota's biggest market, rose 5.6%, while sales in Asia climbed 3.4%.

 

[nwdiver]

15 min battery charging? Really? Just watched the TFL Model X towing video in the other thread on ford vs cybertruck towing. 2 hrs 10 mins to charge from 2%.

Then they're doing it wrong. I'm planning a ~400 mile trip to Austin that will require ~22 minutes of charging... which will extend the length of the trip by 0 minutes because I'm gonna spend ~30 minutes stretching my legs and eating lunch

 

[FutureShock]

15 min battery charging [with a V3 supercharger]? Really? Just watched the TFL Model X towing video in the other thread on ford vs cybertruck towing. 2 hrs 10 mins to charge from 2%.
Tesla Takes Tug-of-War With Ford to Twitter

Nice attempted FUD, gassy fanboi.

First off, if you'd watched your own vid, you would've seen the part a bit over one minute in, where the guy – who's on a V2 supercharger, NOT a V3 – says he's been charging for about 45 minutes (not 2 hrs. 10 minutes, just to be clear). And his Model X is at 282 miles of range at that point, aka 87% charge, which is more than what most ppl charge to on the road.

Typical EV charging is to go from about 10% to 80%, 'cuz 1) no one likes to cut it close, regardless what vehicle type, and 2) the last 10-20% of charging is slower, aka 'trickle charging'. So, even on the slower V2, he's charging a lot faster than you imply.

Now, there's a part near the end of your vid where's he's on a shared V2 charger this time, and running on fumes, and the screen tells him 2 hrs 10 min to go from 2% to 100% in THAT situation. But again, that's not a V3 supercharger... heck, it's only a half-speed V2, 'cuz it's shared with the guy in the stall next to him (while V3s are full power to each and every car being charged).

Far as seeing the 15-20 minutes on a V3 I was talking about, check out the vid below.

The guy goes from 2% to 10% in 2 minutes.
He goes from 10% to 50% in another 9 minutes.
He goes from 50% to 80% in another 16 minutes.

So okay, from 10% to 80% in 25 minutes, not 15-20, I'll give you that. Still, it's a perfect 'coffee and bathroom visit' break.
But, if he was in a big hurry, he could've gone from 10% to 50% in just 9 minutes, and had over 150 miles of range.
And superchargers are generally spaced around 100-120 miles apart. Hmm.

Finally, the vast majority of EV charging is done at home, overnight, in one's garage. Super-convenient, and you can't do that with H2.

V3 vid below... get used to it :

In that time, I will be 150 miles away after filling up the zero emission fuel cell car.

Well actually, you won't be, 'cuz

1) Fuel cell cars ain't zero emission, on account of using natural gas to make the hydrogen.
2) The guy on the shared V2 supercharger probably didn't charge to 100%, but the more time-efficient to 80%.
3) The guy in the stall next to him probably drove off at some point, and the charging speed doubled.
4) V2s are being replaced by V3s.
5) You probably didn't drive 150 miles, 'cuz that'd take you out of the hydrogen filling stations' very limited nationwide footprint, and you'd then need a towtruck.

Toyota: Oh look. Who just made a bundle of profit and is not sweating with the new EU regulations!
Toyota announces $1.8 billion share buyback after strong second quarter

If you had looked at your posted chart more closely, you'd see that Toyota is projected to rack up about $600 million USD in fines, hardly something to crow about.

Anyhoo, I think you probably did know that a lot of the things you posted were off or at least misleading, but hey, being willfully disingenuous never stopped a FUDster before, right? LOL.

Hydrogen will lose in the passenger vehicle market. Most everyone besides you and Toyota knows this already. Enjoy watching the 100 new EV models rolling out over the next five years, while FCVs (continue to) fail to gain traction.

But I do honestly hope you're at least getting paid for your posts, as it would be a colossal waste of time in a losing cause otherwise.

.

 

[dgatwood]

Nice attempted FUD, gassy fanboi.

In that time, I will be 150 miles away after filling up the zero emission fuel cell car.

5) You probably didn't drive 150 miles, 'cuz that'd take you out of the hydrogen filling stations' very limited nationwide footprint, and you'd then need a towtruck.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you'll be a mile away and you'll have his shoes....

which he'll need to walk back to the nearest hydrogen station after driving 150 miles.

 

[JRP3]

In that time, I will be 150 miles away after filling up the zero emission fuel cell car.

You won't be anywhere because there is no place to fuel up outside of a few small areas.

 

[FutureShock]

You won't be anywhere because there is no place to fuel up [on hydrogen] outside of a few small areas.

Maybe he just likes to drive around in circles in the Bay Area and LA, lol.
.

 

[ZsoZso]

15 min battery charging? Really? Just watched the TFL Model X towing video in the other thread on ford vs cybertruck towing. 2 hrs 10 mins to charge from 2%.

That's a load of BS. I have made ~10,000 km round trip in my Model S from Toronto to Grand Canyon and back (going via Kansas on the way there and coming back north via Dakota) back in 2015 when the supercharger density was MUCH lower than today and never needed to spend more than an hour even if charging from very low % SOC to full -- which is never recommended, much better to charge to 80% and stop more frequently, which you can do with the frequent supercharger deployment today. I did need to do full charge a couple of times back in 2015 due to sparse charger layout.

In that time, I will be 150 miles away after filling up the zero long-pipe CO2 emission fuel cell car.

Yup, in the wrong direction hoping to find an H2 station, then double back losing 2-4 hours for your fill-up detour, like it has been documented up-thread!

 

[JRP3]

Curious George on a "long distance" trip

 

[S'toon]

Instead of worshipping Toyota one should be criticizing them. They are firmly on Team Trump backing his move to destroy California's emissions standards...and therefore all of humanity.

GM, Toyota, and FCA pit themselves against humanity in move that will kill more people with pollution — Opinion - Electrek

 

[JRP3]

China to Eliminate Subsidies for Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars: Report

China will reportedly eliminate hydrogen fuel-cell car subsidies at the end of 2020, raising questions about Beijing's goal to have a million of the vehicles on the road by 2030.