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Why 'Fool' Cells.... WHY?
- Thread starter nwdiver
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- Electric Vehicles
tonybelding
Active Member
I've heard this idea many times, but I don't really buy it. I think Toyota are true believers in hydrogen. I think they are mired in groupthink and don't realize the ground has already shifted under their feet.
No, I think Toyota is releasing the Mirai for regulatory reasons. The research behind it is a different matter.
To a country with very high population density, little private off-street parking, a service culture and an economy based on exporting technology, a system with fast public refueling based on advanced technology seemed like a very obvious way to go.
But battery technology has advanced in totally unexpected ways.
The poll ought to have more options.
Fuel cells are improving rapidly enough that they are now used commercially in some space applications. They are hopelessly uneconomic today, almost entirely due to the cost of producing hydrogen sufficiently pure to serve the purpose.
If we consider recent history, it is less than 20 years ago that li-ion was not practical for EV due to high cost, chemical instability and inadequate thermal control, among other things. There was lots of nasty surprise for transportation users and simple transportation. remember burning EV's, burning Boeing 787, exploding B747 and so on? Not too long ago...
Moral: whatever technology is used a lot of ratholes will be investigated before the practicality or lack thereof is proven.
So, just in the last few months successful demonstration of solid-state hydrogen storage has been done, using nano-scale technology and very expensive, but it works.
Of course the Mirai will be no more successful as a commercial venture than were the EV1 and it's ilk in the 1990's. Of course gobs of government and non-government funding will be burned up trying to improve the current ridiculous state of fuel cells.
I applaud the efforts because I am sure the state of human knowledge will be advances by this attempt. I do not want to buy one or even lease one. The only reason to do that is curiosity.
When I was a teenager Chrysler Corporation fielded a gas turbine car as a test. It was ridiculous, but the industry learned a lot. The Wankel is another such effort. Those had zero to do with energy efficiency but both advanced the state of the alert in materials science which later provided rich benefits, but in ways quite unrelated to the original effort.
So, why diss the Mirai because it is not a practical car? Nobody really thinks it is. Toyota and some others are betting that it can be made so. We'll see. I hope it eventually works.
For that matter i hope the PSA developed compressed air energy storage works too. We need all the new ideas we can find. Li-ion will be obsolete sometime soon. What's next? ...and when is 'soon'? I have no idea but I am enjoying the new discoveries.
Fuel cells are improving rapidly enough that they are now used commercially in some space applications. They are hopelessly uneconomic today, almost entirely due to the cost of producing hydrogen sufficiently pure to serve the purpose.
If we consider recent history, it is less than 20 years ago that li-ion was not practical for EV due to high cost, chemical instability and inadequate thermal control, among other things. There was lots of nasty surprise for transportation users and simple transportation. remember burning EV's, burning Boeing 787, exploding B747 and so on? Not too long ago...
Moral: whatever technology is used a lot of ratholes will be investigated before the practicality or lack thereof is proven.
So, just in the last few months successful demonstration of solid-state hydrogen storage has been done, using nano-scale technology and very expensive, but it works.
Of course the Mirai will be no more successful as a commercial venture than were the EV1 and it's ilk in the 1990's. Of course gobs of government and non-government funding will be burned up trying to improve the current ridiculous state of fuel cells.
I applaud the efforts because I am sure the state of human knowledge will be advances by this attempt. I do not want to buy one or even lease one. The only reason to do that is curiosity.
When I was a teenager Chrysler Corporation fielded a gas turbine car as a test. It was ridiculous, but the industry learned a lot. The Wankel is another such effort. Those had zero to do with energy efficiency but both advanced the state of the alert in materials science which later provided rich benefits, but in ways quite unrelated to the original effort.
So, why diss the Mirai because it is not a practical car? Nobody really thinks it is. Toyota and some others are betting that it can be made so. We'll see. I hope it eventually works.
For that matter i hope the PSA developed compressed air energy storage works too. We need all the new ideas we can find. Li-ion will be obsolete sometime soon. What's next? ...and when is 'soon'? I have no idea but I am enjoying the new discoveries.
The 3 major products from oil refining are gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel fuel. There are many other products made in smaller amounts. Jet and diesel are slightly more energy dense than gasoline and are a bit easier to store due to lower volatility.
What products from oil refineries do you think are wasted? A modern oil refinery converts all the C and H in crude oil into a product that is sold, other than the small percentage of intermediate products that are burned to fuel the oil refinery.
Well to tank emissions produce (on average) 20% of the well to wheels CO2 emissions of gasoline, so there is a fairly efficient conversion of the crude oil primary energy source into products that can be used. By far the biggest inefficiency are the losses in an ICE vehicle, where something on the order of 70-80% of the energy in gasoline is lost as waste heat.
Agreed. An entrenched corporate culture is incredibly difficult to change. History is littered with examples of large successful corporations that were severely damaged by groupthink. They were unable to be nimble or adapt their business strategy to changes in the landscape.
Toyota decided that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the future of personal road transport. One can see the product of their pro FCV groupthink in their FCV advertisements. They ignore the customer convenience advantages of home charging and pretend that DCFCs don't exist. They are blind to the coming wave of more affordable 200-mile range BEVs. I think Toyota is in denial and can't see how much BEVs have advanced.
The big difference between PEV and HFCV is the opportunity for incremental advances.
Make batteries cheaper and you'll sell more cars.
Make batteries denser and you'll sell more cars.
Make batteries faster to charge and you'll sell more cars.
If li-ion gets supplanted by a different battery technology, there's no reason why you'd have to throw away your current home charger.
HFCV is not incremental. Either it becomes cheap enough to sell in large numbers, or it will not work at all, because the public refueling infrastructure has both to be convenient and comprehensive, and without volume, you have low density, and with low density, individual filling stations will not be financially viable.
I'm at 54% EV in my Volt with no use of public charging. It's a 2013 Volt.
The Gen 2 2016 Volt release is imminent. It's:
- slightly cheaper
- charges slightly faster
- has 39.5% more rated AER
- is rated 11.4% more efficient in EV mode
- is rated up to 12% more efficient in hybrid mode (unanswered questions on highway rating)
- ... while now using regular instead of premium gas
- ... and apparently will have a slightly more efficient and beefier heater
- ... and apparently will have a lower ERDTT threshold (number not yet revealed; sadly no override)
- is quicker overall, particularly at low speeds.
Excluding any long road trips we're 60% EV right now. With a Gen 2 that'd be over 70%. _And_ we'd using less electricity per mile, using less gas per mile, paying less per gallon, filling up less, and the fuel will have fewer evaporative emissions (and also not smell as bad).
In other words: the 2016 Volt is a significant incremental improvement. And it requires _ZERO_ public infrastructure to make it work.
And now consider the Tesla model. Tesla spends less than $300k to create a Supercharger site. Let's say $1,000 of the car's price goes towards construction of the network. Then for every 300 sales, a new Supercharger is built. If Tesla sells 20,000 Model S in the USA it would pay for 66 2/3 Superchargers per year. It would take 15 years at that rate to pay for 1,000 Supercharger sites. But 1,000 aren't necessary to do the essential part of making trips around the USA possible. You can cover the Lower 48's Interstate network at 80 mile separation with fewer than 600 sites. 600 sites at 66 2/3 per year is 9 years. And we expect Model 3 by 2018 or 2019.
Together, home charging and hybridization make such a fundamental difference to growth potential of the technology; without the paradigm shift, sales of the Mirai are simply pointless at this time.
I don't argue with your points; they are all valid, although BEV is inherently much simpler than is PHEV so over time battery improvements should gradually diminish the usefulness of the supplemental ICE.
My point is that exploration of new technologies makes sense, not because they will be better now, but because they test the viability of new approaches. Innovation is good, even if it does not make a market success.
If I thought fuel cell vehicles made sense today i'd buy one. They don't, and probably won't in my lifetime, but will someday ahve practical use. In the meantime I do not expect ever to buy anything other than another Tesla BEV.
You asked "So, why diss the Mirai because it is not a practical car?".
I always appreciate research, the issue at this point is that they're selling them with no tangible benefit. Since there's no paradigm shift in range and refueling, what exactly are they going to learn?
It selling it that's a reason to diss it.
JohnSnowNW
Active Member
Well, the real issue is that their viability is being forced and funded by the American taxpayer. They can try to sell as many FCEVs as they want, who cares...but don't fund the experiment (and especially at the cost of BEV funding) with public money.
Exactamente! CARB's corruption is merely creating a roadblock to the BEV revolution.
Mirai is just a compliance car. They only sell them to local governments etc and let them (and national government) spend money on hydrogen infrastructure, to stimulate economy. No intentions to make it widely available IMHO.
Toyota made zero investment in Hydrogen infrastructure. No Mirai in their dealers. No TVCMs.
I think Japanese government, hydrogen team is the culprit. They have a mission to export technology and try to force them into market. Toyota obliged but failed. Mr. Abe thought it'd be a good opportunity to spend money in infrastructure so he did, with knowing that it's going to fail.
At least that's my take...
Toyota made zero investment in Hydrogen infrastructure. No Mirai in their dealers. No TVCMs.
I think Japanese government, hydrogen team is the culprit. They have a mission to export technology and try to force them into market. Toyota obliged but failed. Mr. Abe thought it'd be a good opportunity to spend money in infrastructure so he did, with knowing that it's going to fail.
At least that's my take...
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
I'm pretty sure Abe and the Japanese government is doing it for the Olympics also. They wouldn't be alone: China, Canada, UK also did hydrogen demonstrator fleets for their Olympics. Also it's a way to placate the public from the fact that even Abe does not have a viable plan to replace nuclear (it's similar to Bush's energy plan: it gives a nice talking point).
I wonder how this compares to the BEV experience a decade or more ago. There were certainly some infrastructure issues then. Charging at home is a huge advantage, though.
I find this warning rather scary:
robertvg
Extremely Well-Known Member
+1
Your are right. People that still doubt the viability of electric cards have clearly missed something.
The change is inevitable.
We wouldn't pump oil out of the ground and refine it just to get petroleum coke, road tar, asphalt, or likely even heavy fuel oil. Those things make up about 10-12% of what you get from oil.
Coke and heavy fuel oil have a much higher carbon content than gasoline, so when they are burned they make more CO2. My claim is that you should penalize the well to wheel of gasoline with the extra carbon over a clean replacement fuel ( natural gas ) from burning all that stuff.
Road tar and asphalt boil off nasty things into the atmosphere that are far worse than CO2. We wouldn't be dumping that on the ground if we didn't have it as a cheap byproduct of gasoline, so all the deleterious effects should also be laid at the feet of gasoline.
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Fuel cells have been used in space for decades - since the beginning of space exploration. Their continued use in space implies nothing about rapid improvement.
When you measure the cost to put something in space in the dollars per gram, the cost of the fuel cell itself is not meaningful.
The fact that fuel cells make water or can be reversed to make oxygen is also incredibly useful in space, and those reasons are probably sufficient to use them over other sources of electricity that have advantages in terms of efficiency or mass.
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The somewhat annoying part is that since everyone had glommed onto CO2, it's like there isn't any other type of pollution, so only CO2 gets debated. It would be far harder for the deniers to fight all the many pollution byproducts (including CO2) than just CO2.
As JB said, all cars will be electric and there is nothing that can reverse that trend. If you look at where battery technology is going, this is obvious. In 10 years we will see BEVs with 500 miles range and in 20, 800 miles. Eventually BEVs will have enough range to drive all day long without recharging. I think sceptics sometimes forget they can't driver forever. They need to sleep too. Therefore the maximum range needed is determined by how long somebody can drive in a day. This is somewhere between 500-800 miles depending on who you ask. That is achievable within 10-20 years.
As the range of EVs increases, long distance charging use will drop because you are starting your journey with more range. Eventually the only charging will be overnight wherever the car is parked. Wait times for charging will be zero. That means in best case scenario fuel cells could be a transitional technology between now and when BEVs have more range than you can drive. However as far as a transitional technology goes, it performs terribly. If somebody is not happy with range, charge times or price of BEVs, they should just buy a PHEV.
As the range of EVs increases, long distance charging use will drop because you are starting your journey with more range. Eventually the only charging will be overnight wherever the car is parked. Wait times for charging will be zero. That means in best case scenario fuel cells could be a transitional technology between now and when BEVs have more range than you can drive. However as far as a transitional technology goes, it performs terribly. If somebody is not happy with range, charge times or price of BEVs, they should just buy a PHEV.
Isn't that a bit like saying you're with the Flat Earth Society? Science isn't a belief. 400ppm CO2 isn't a game.
Every time that I think hydrogen has no real chance (even with billions of "believing" tax dollars thrown at it), I'm reminded that there are folks who just don't get it in general.
Yes, hydrogen could drastically hinder the gains that battery cars have made, while never being successful in the market.
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