Carmakers prepare to shift to hydrogen fuel cells

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-fuel-cell-cars-20141026-story.html#page=2

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Carmakers prepare to shift to hydrogen fuel cells[/font]

October 28, 2014

[font size=3]Concerned about slow sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids, automakers are increasingly betting the future of green cars on hydrogen fuel cell technology.

Even Toyota Motor Corp., maker of the popular Prius gas-electric hybrid, will use hydrogen instead of batteries to power its next generation of green vehicles.

"Today, Toyota actually favors fuel cells over other zero-emission vehicles, like pure battery electric vehicles," said Craig Scott, the company's national manager of advanced technologies. "We would like to be still selling cars when there's no more gas. And no one is coming to our door asking us to build a new electric car."

…

Elon Musk, chairman of the battery-electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc., derides hydrogen-powered cars and calls the science behind them overcomplicated.

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[nationalize the fed]

1. One day, possibly soon

Musk will regret bashing "fool cells". It proves that he's not as smart as millions of people think. Also, he's living in a bubble- everyone surrounding him treats him like some kind of God.

And one day, if Tesla survives, they will adopt "fool cells" because hydrogen is a better battery.

“Personally I don’t really care what Elon and Carlos (Nissan) and Jonathan (Volkswagen) have to say about fuel cells. It’s very reminiscent of 1998, 1999 when we first introduced the Prius.”- Bob Carter, senior vice president for automotive operations, Toyota Motor Company

Meanwhile, it's great that the poor and middle class get to subsidize a rich man's $80,000 toy with tax credits, isn't it. That one day will need a new >$15,000 battery.

[tinrobot]

2. It will be an uphill battle for hydrogen, unfortunately...

As much as I want to like hydrogen, the numbers just don't add up. According to the article, a single hydrogen station costs $2 million, and the Toyota FCV is $68 grand, almost as much as a Tesla.

On the flip side, a CHAdeMO fast charger for an electric vehicle costs $10-20K. So, for the price of one $2 million hydrogen station, you could install 100 fast chargers for EVs.

On top of that, you can home charge an EV cheaply and easily using existing infrastructure. Plug it into a dryer outlet or a $600 level 2 charger. Home hydrogen stations, when available, will be a lot more expensive, and they'll require natural gas, a fossil fuel.

So, the costs and momentum tend to favor EVs. The key is EV battery size. A 200 mile battery with available fast charging will be the tipping point. Once that milestone is hit within the next few years, it will be hard for hydrogen to catch up.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. I guess it's all in how you look at it…

The Toyota FCV is almost as much as a Tesla.

Or… the Tesla costs more than the Toyota FCV, but without the advantages of the FCV.

A "fast charge" of a Tesla is not a full charge. http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

Tesla Superchargers allow Model S owners to travel for free between cities along well-traveled highways in North America, Europe and Asia. Superchargers provide half a charge in as little as 20 minutes and are strategically placed to allow owners to drive from station to station with minimal stops.

Compare this to the refueling time of the Toyota, (i.e. 3 minutes for a full tank.) There are reasons why all of the major auto manufacturers are still pursuing hydrogen fuel cells. Doing so makes good business sense.

http://green.autoblog.com/2013/12/11/2015-toyota-fuel-cell-hydrogen-vehicle-prototype-review/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]2015 Toyota fuel cell hydrogen vehicle prototype[/font]
[font size=4]Part 1: in which we drive and discuss[/font]

Posted Dec 11th 2013 2:58PM

[font size=3]…

Toyota is not walking away from hybrids – in fact, it sees them playing a role for a long time into the future – but the company believes that unless there's a quantum leap in battery technology, hydrogen-powered vehicles will be the greater part of a diverse mix of vehicles used for medium- and long-range applications. What drives that idea is not an idealistic worldview, but a business case.

Said Toyota Technical Center Principle Engineer Matt McClory, "This is always a kind of mythical issue and I really don't know where it comes from. We could never have started – not only Toyota but all the major automakers – we would not have started doing fuel cells back in the '90s if we thought it would not make sense to come to market as an economical and sustainable solution."

…

While we wait for the production sedan and those refueling stations, Toyota will be refining technical items like the electrode catalyst – specifically its deterioration, and the production line and engineering, among other things.

It will probably be much closer to its on-sale date that we'll have an idea of how much the thing will cost. The price of the stack alone in the FCV-adv was a million dollars, which could only be amortized across 100 lease vehicles. Toyota's got that down to about $100,000 now and figures it will be about $50,000 by the time of launch, but again, that's just for the stack. Assuming Toyota is correct and fuel cell cars do become popular, they envision getting that down to down to $1,000 through technology and economies of scale. It's been widely reported that a price of between $50,000 and $100,000 is what the company is working on, the official quote being that a price of "less than 10 million yen is ideal." That's a no-brainer, since that equates to $100,000 and Toyota knows that won't fly. Considered in the pricing matrix are a planned total global production of 5,000 to 10,000 units and that Toyota wants "a price that's going to stick – we don't want to penalize early buyers." The much more reasonable price of $50,000 – compared to $100,000, that is – represents a healthy loss on each car, but that can still be considered a steep premium to join the fuel cell party when the car won't offer the kind of flash that one expects of other vehicles for that sum, beyond its powertrain.

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[tinrobot]

7. True, hydrogen fuels faster

But with only a handful of stations nationwide, there's not many places to fill up in three minutes. With stations costing millions, it may take a while to build out that network.

Yes, the Tesla gets a half charge in 20 minutes, full charge in about an hour. Not ideal, but apparently acceptable. Owners aren't complaining too much. Plus, the free nationwide network is already in place.

And Tesla makes a profit when it sells at $70K+ for each car. I had no idea Toyota was losing so much on each FCV.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. How much does it cost to construct a Tesla Supercharger Station?

How much does it cost to construct a typical gas station?

You can’t dismiss things by saying “With stations costing millions…” without putting things into some sort of perspective.

“(Tesla’s) free nationwide network is already in place. ” Nationwide, but nowhere near me.

[nationalize the fed]

11. It's not "free" either

“(Tesla’s) free nationwide network is already in place"

From Tesla Motors.com:
Q: How much does it cost to use the Supercharger?

A: Supercharging is free for the life of Model S, once the Supercharger option is enabled.

How much does it cost to "enable the supercharger"?
$2,000

Imagine, you've been driving for 5 hours, you pull in to a Supercharging parking lot and guess what- there's a line. It will take you half an hour to charge, but you are #4 in line so you better find something to do for 2 hours while you wait.

Also, these superchargers are terribly vulnerable to people knocking them over. They're just sitting there in a parking lot.

The cost for Tesla is between $100,000 and $175,000 depending on the station, and a lot of those come from the permanent modifications needed at the site to support the Supercharger itself...
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/26/inside-teslas-supercharger-partner-program-the-costs-and-commitments-of-electrifying-road-transport/

[tinrobot]

14. They charge $2K on the lowest model only. So, instead of a $71K price, it is $73K.

Outrageous!

[tinrobot]

13. On average, $150K for a 6 bay station, more for solar.

According to this : http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/12680161-113/truckee-tesla-electric-station

So that is about $25K per plug. So for the projected cost of $2 million for a single hydrogen station (from the above posted article), you could install over a dozen supercharger stations with approx 80 plugs total. And if you don't live near a supercharger, then any 220V outlet can charge the vehicle. You do have electricity where you live, correct?

And, may I ask, how far is the closest hydrogen station? How far is the one after that?

[nationalize the fed]

17. $2 million?

If you watch these videos and think that these stations would cost $2 million dollars when mass produced you're dreaming.

Of course, even if they were $2 million dollars each, why not put that into perspective?

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying
$10.54 million for Total Cost of Wars Since 2001.

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying
$8.43 million for Homeland Security Since 9/11.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/

So, "Homeland Security" + Wars = 19 MILLION DOLLARS PER HOUR.

If the US took a 24 hour day off on these $ wasters, that could build 10 hydrogen stations (at the pre-mass market price of $2m) PER HOUR


Factor that.

[tinrobot]

18. Read the article

I'm just taking the number from the article in the original post

Experts put the price of building a single hydrogen fueling station, excluding the cost of the real estate, at about $2 million. A single nozzle at his Burbank station costs $12,000, Poppe said.

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-fuel-cell-cars-20141026-story.html#page=2

[nationalize the fed]

6. So battery tech will continue to improve

but Hydrogen tech is stalled out? That is absurd.

Can you name any technology that is not improved and that doesn't cost less over time? What did a 486 mhz computer cost in 1991 and what was it capable of?

Hydrogen would be even farther along if Obama's first energy secretary Chu didn't stop funding. Then, in the last year or so, he said he was wrong to do what he did. Yet another bureaucrat that lacks vision.

Hydrogen tech hasn't even begun to be refined, perfected and improved. There are advances in the materials that split water (no platinum required) and there are advances in compression tech- ever hear of ionic compression? Probably not.

Honda's new home unit doesn't even need a compressor. Factor that.

[tinrobot]

8. I never said hydrogen wouldn't improve

It just may not improve fast enough to beat batteries.

I may be wrong, but I suspect the tipping point will be a 200+ mile battery with fast charging. At that point, most of the objections fall away and EVs will be more widely adopted. GM and Tesla are both promising this for below $40K in the next few years. If hydrogen doesn't catch up by then, it may never gain traction.

[hunter]

4. I hear it will come with a free " I *HEART* FRACKING! " bumper sticker.

What makes these cars attractive to anyone but the dirty gas industry?

They are electric vehicles with a fuel cell tacked on. Why would I want one?

More things to go wrong, more irritating to fuel, and if fracking isn't outlawed everywhere then gas will be the primary source of hydrogen.

How do these vehicles benefit me or my community?

I can almost see them as a replacement for compressed natural gas fueled diesel or diesel hybrid buses, or maybe some kind of fleet delivery vehicle, but I'm not seeing it as a personal automobile.

What's the attraction?

[nationalize the fed]

5. You missed the big Hydrogen news of the year

What makes these cars attractive to anyone but the dirty gas industry?

Honda opens new Solar hydrogen filling station in Swindon

Japanese manufacturer hopes to kick start the uptake of hydrogen-powered cars in the UK with the opening of its own filling station


Honda's solar hydrogen station can produce 20 tonnes of H2 per year

Autocar.co.uk 31 October 2014

The hydrogen it produces can be dispensed directly into fuel cell vehicles such as Honda’s own FCX Clarity.

Fuel cell cars are still under development and so far have only been manufactured in small volumes, but Honda fuel cell expert Thomas Brachman says that if made in numbers of 100,000 a year or more, the cost of a Honda hydrogen fuel cell car could already compete on price with a conventional combustion engine-powered car of today.

The hydrogen station is the first to produce commercial quantities of renewable hydrogen at the point of use. It has been developed by a consortium of companies including the British Oxygen Corporation, with funding from the government’s Innovate UK.

The plant will also supply a small fleet of bi-fuel Ford Transit vans belonging to Swindon Borough Council and two fuel cell-powered fork lift trucks working in the production facility...MORE
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/honda-opens-new-hydrogen-filling-station-swindon

****************************

Solar farm will power Honda car plant in Swindon

A huge new solar farm has been officially opened at South Marston in Swindon. It's taken the owners, the sustainable energy company Eneco almost a year to install the 40,000 solar panels. They'll provide nearly two thirds of the energy needed to power Honda's car factory.



Video: http://www.itv.com/news/west/story/2014-09-03/solar-farm-opens-in-swindon/

************************

Watch a Hyundai Hydrogen electric being fueled at a SOLAR HYDROGEN station

******************************

apparently no matter how many times the concept of solar and renewable hydrogen is explained some people will ignore it.

#hydrogenclaptrap

Edit to add: If you voted for Obama, who has based much of his energy strategy on fracking, you love fracking too. And Hillary loves fracking. It's a big fracking family, the 3rd way democrats.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Where does the electricity to power a battery electric vehicle come from?

(Please don’t say from windmills and solar panels.)


If the electricity used to charge an electric car is generated by burning natural gas, it’s more efficient to use it in a fuel cell.

[caraher]

12. Thanks for this

The last graphic shows an important analysis (though I wish its source were more disinterested than Toyota!). It really shows the importance of moving away from fossil-fuels for electricity, because powering our cars with natural gas, whether using EVs or fuel cell vehicles, still leaves us with very substantial emissions (even if we can knock those down by a factor of two or three).

It shows that for roughly the same gains as powering EVs with natural gas, cars already on the market provide essentially the same benefit. It also shows that a vehicle with a nonexistent infrastructure that could only be produced at an enormous cost might provide modest benefits over having everyone just drive a Prius.

But mostly it shows exactly how the the fuel cell vehicle can make prolonging dependence on fossil fuels seem more palatable. Its advantage over EVs in this analysis lies entirely in the higher "well-to-tank" efficiency, which goes away when the original energy source is solar, wind or nuclear - anything other than fossil fuel. But we cannot get emissions down to levels required to avert catastrophe (if that is even still possible) by an efficiency gain in fossil fuel use by a factor of two.

This doesn't show that fuel cell vehicles are preferable to EVs in developing a zero carbon emission transportation system; rather, it shows that an enormously expensive technology can make modest though nontrivial improvements in how efficiently we can use natural gas in transportation.

For the level of investment required to create a viable hydrogen fuel cell vehicle system with zero carbon energy sources, we could instead invest in EVs and zero carbon energy sources and wind up buying a lot more "clean" energy useful outside transportation. But less of that investment would go through the hands of the automotive industry.

[hunter]

19. It's obvious what's going on here...

...electric cars or (gawds forbid!) abandoning automobile culture entirely, is a terrible threat to many twentieth century business models.

Entire industries are doomed if people switch to electric cars or they decide to live and work in communities where they don't need to own a car.

I also think affluent people who own reliable cars have no idea how stressful it is to depend on a less reliable car to drop off the kids at daycare, drive to work, pick up the kids and drive home, all the time knowing a "funny" car noise can escalate into personal economic catastrophe at any moment. That's how the loan sharking "no credit check" used car dealers stay in business. Most low wage employers and daycare providers will tolerate a couple of "bad car" days a year, but no more. Beyond that it's lose everything, move back with mom, or get placed in emergency housing at some crumbling 'sixties main street motel. The scummy used car dealers have desperate customers.

My wife and I could probably afford a new car with some sort of ridiculous loan, but neither one of us is interested, and neither one of us needs a car to get to work. If my wife and I owned one electric car and one gasoline powered car we'd probably visit the gasoline station only once or twice a year. And the gasoline car would be one of the same cars we own now, probably her 10+ year old car, not my 30 year old car with the salvage title. A hydrogen car would be useless to us even if the nearest gasoline station sold hydrogen too.

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. Perhaps you would prefer this chart

http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/10001_well_to_wheels_gge_petroleum_use.pdf

Items:
DOE is pursuing a portfolio of technologies with the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and petroleum consumption. This record documents the assumptions and results of analyses conducted to estimate the GHG emissions and petroleum energy use resulting from several fuel/vehicle pathways, for a future mid-size car and a mid-size sport utility vehicle (SUV). The results are summarized graphically in the following figures.


…

[Gregorian]

15. That is not true in the case of renewable energy generation.

It looks good under current schemes, but still hydrogen is not the way forward.

To paraphrase the foremost hydrogen scientist, Ulf Bossel-

Move electrons, not molecules.

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. Ah yes, renewable electricity will be different

However, for the life of a car made today, the majority of our electrical generation will be non-renewable.

[tinrobot]

16. You need electricity to create hydrogen as well, so I'm not sure what your point is.

With either, you can install solar relatively cheaply if you have concerns about the source of your power.

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. How did you miss my point?

“If the electricity used to charge an electric car is generated by burning natural gas, it’s more efficient to use it in a fuel cell.”

(You can “reform” natural gas to produce hydrogen, for use in a fuel cell vehicle. Or you can burn it to produce electricity to charge a battery vehicle. The former is more efficient.)

[tinrobot]

23. So fracking for natural gas is the only way to be more efficient.

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. Uh… no.

At this point, the majority of electricity in the US is produced by burning either Natural Gas or Coal.

Using electricity, generated in this way to charge an electric car is less efficient than using the same fuels to generate hydrogen for use in a fuel cell vehicle.

If the grid were powered solely by non-carbon sources, then a battery powered car might be more efficient. However, that does not describe today’s grid, nor will it describe our grid for decades, so the point is moot.

[tinrobot]

25. "If the grid were powered solely by non-carbon sources...."

Exactly.

Isn't getting off of carbon the ultimate goal here? Might as well start now.

[OKIsItJustMe]

26. Shouldn't decreasing the production of greenhouse gases be the immediate goal?

Hopefully I don't need to establish my preferences for renewable sources of electricity.

However, try as hard as we may, we will not convert the entire grid to renewable sources overnight, and, even if we did, and even if the efficiency of fuel cells never increased at all, fuel cell vehicles have significant advantages.

[tinrobot]

27. Fracking for natural gas releases methane

Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases
"Fugitive methane" released during shale gas drilling could accelerate climate change

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-would-emit-methane/

Methane is scary stuff when it comes to climate change. Fracking also messes up the water supply. Best not to go down that road...

[OKIsItJustMe]

28. True, but not relevant

If you “frack” gas to generate electricity to drive battery-powered cars, or “frack” gas to run fuel cell powered cars, you will frack less of it per mile for the fuel cell powered car.

I am not a fan of “fracking.” I’m one of those New Yorkers. However, I know that it is being done, and that it will be done, and one of the chief reasons it is being done is to generate electricity.

So, please don’t point to a fuel cell car, and say it encourages “fracking” implying that a battery-powered car does not.