I’ve expressed skepticism about hopes for a “hydrogen economy,” but I just saw an ad for a new hydrogen-powered Honda. Will this catch on? Replace the gasoline-powered car? Are there any stumbling blocks? (The website does not, anywhere I can find, say what the car costs. The Prius hybrid has been on the market a few years now and it still costs about twice as much as a comparable only-gasoline-powered model, AFAIK.)
Not sure where you are getting your twice as much figure. Looking at Toyota.com for my zip there appears to be about a 4K difference on a Camry between a mid line gas engine and the hybrid. (24K-28K).
Let me ask two questions about the Honda Hindenburg.
- When was the last time you saw a gas station that offered H2?
- Will AAA bring you a can of hydrogen if you run out?
Three words leap to mind: lack of infrastructure.
Well, here are a couple of them (warning, .pdf file).
The big problem isn’t building fueling stations…it’s making the hydrogen both cheaply and in great enough quantity to actually make a difference. That and changing the publics ridiculous perception of hydrogen blowing up like a bomb…unlike, say, gasoline.
Sure…why not? Assuming there are hydrogen fuel stations when these things come out (and I figure there will IF there is a market for them big enough to encourage the capital investment), why wouldn’t AAA be able to refuel your vehicle? Do you think there is something inherently impossible about that scenario?
If you build it, they will come. If there is a market for it, lack of infrastructure won’t be a barrier…as some smart (and soon to be rich) guy will come along to fulfill that need. IF hydrogen becomes viable as a fuel source, and IF vehicle manufacturers actually make these things cheap enough for the general pubic to buy, and IF a way to mass produce hydrogen cheaply and in huge quantities comes along…then the infrastructure (fuel stations and logistic support to GET the hydrogen to them) will be pretty much a matter of capital.
Course, got to solve all those tiny problems first…
BTW, you are right…the OP’s estimate that a Prius costs twice as much as ‘as much as a comparable only-gasoline-powered model’ is pretty much off the mark. I see hybrid technology as a stop gap measure between our current model and whatever is going to come next…fuel cells of some kind would be my guess (I think it will be methane that wins out over hydrogen but who knows?).
-XT
Does hydrogen have any advantages over electricity? We already have hybrids and a few plug-in hybrids are out there. Producing hydrogen just means getting energy, so I don’t see why transmitting the energy as electricity wouldn’t be easier, unless we can produce hydrogen from oil or natural gas without releasing the carbon from them into the air. That would cut CO2 emissions, but it wouldn’t do anything to help the energy supply, it would make things worse.
The oil infrastructure is massive, saying we’ll just replace it is like saying we’ll just replace the roads if something better comes along.
Fuel cell vehicles are a distant future possibility and other technologies are developing much faster.
First is the cost. You didn’t see a price because it is not for sale. A concept showpiece too costly for prime time by a longshot.
Infrastructure. Honda at least has thought some about the infrastructure problem. Their answer is a Home energy station that uses natural gas to simultaneously produce hydrogen to fuel your car, heat and electricity. But you are still left with the problem of fueling on the road or else you have an exclusively commuter vehicle. Nothing wrong with that but you can do it a lot more efficiently with a BEV. And I’ll come back to that. Also there is the question of natural gas supplies, as is discussed below.
Beyond infrastructure is the supply issue. How do you make the stuff?
Well you can steam reform natural gas, that produces greenhouse gases too. An improvement over ICEs but still 40% of ICE levels. And natural gas is also a limited commodity. We already need to import significant amounts from Canada and they have less to sell us. Our supplies could not possibly fuel the transportation sector. So factor in the energy and carbon emissions involved with transport of LNG. If you could get enough of it.
Electrolysis. Very inefficient.
Using microbes. Now that’s an idea with promise. Microbes can do the heavy lifting. Algae fuel cells use photsynthesis to do some of the work, and other approaches use multiple bugs, and others use anaerobic bacteria with a small current to digest cellulose into H2 with great efficiency using small amounts of electricity (can’t find that cite right now though, sorry).
But those methods are in extremely early stages.
Meanwhile battery technology is improving dramatically. The infrastructure for home charging is here. The costs are getting competitive with ICEs. If 120 miles a day of range is enough for you (and it is for me) affordable BEVs are coming out this next year, from the futuristic Aptera to the more conservatively styled vehicle from the Miles Auto Group to way cool thrill rides like The Venture One - all to sell for under $30K and in the bargain save a thousand or so a year in gas and maintenance costs. But we like our fantasy of being able to drive cross country. The first phases may require EVs with range extenders, like GM’s in the works Chevy Volt, and fleet vehicles with greater battery capacity that can afford a high power recharging station in a central location for once a shift (200 miles driven) rapid recharges.
Electricity can be made domestically from a variety of sources including renewables. Home charging infrastructure sufficient to power most commuters daily drives and more is already in place. Extended range EVs (EREVs) can drive any distance imaginable and an infrastructure for rapid recharges of BEVs would be a fairly easy roll-out from a fleet base.
Even if hydrogen could be doable, it has become moot.
I agree with that. Today, for reasonable cost, we can build plug-in hybrids that can commute to work and back all-electric, or switch in what is essentially a gas-powered generator to provide electricity to extend the range. Based on typical usage patterns, the estimate is that these vehicles could get up to 500 mpg on average.
At that kind of consumption level, fuel’s just not a problem. We can grow enough biofuel to provide that level of demand if we have to. A vehicle like that would only consume a gallon or two a week - we drink more milk than that.
The future of transportation is increasingly looking like a mixed system with hybrids, all electrics, flex-fuel and diesel vehicles being around for a long time, with the electric marketshare growing over time as the price of fuel goes up. Once it gets to a certain price point and demand level it will become sustainable, and the market will settle on a ratio of vehicles reflecting the supplies available.
I think the demand for exotic propulsion is going to slow. The debate is rather going to shift to the means of powering the infrastructure, as it is already doing. The actual mechanism for getting the power into the transportation fleet is becoming increasingly irrelevant compared to the larger issue of figuring out how to supply the energy.
Well, which can store more energy – an electric battery, or a hydrogen fuel cell of equivalent size/mass?
That’s not a rhetorical question; I really want to know the answer.
Apples to oranges comparisons. The fuel cell itself doesn’t weigh too much; the issue is the material to store the hydrogen, the form you store it in, and how much you store, and those are the works in progress.
Li-ions store about 0.10 to 0.15 kWh/kg (depending on the battery, some less, some more … you sometimes trade off power density for energy density, but that’s another issue) … plus some for the pack and the cooling system.
That said the current Honda FCX goes 270 miles on a fill up and few proposed EVs have that range.
OTOH EVs win hands down for well to wheel efficiency.
If it’s not for sale, why are they advertising it on television?
The big advantage of hydrogen over electricity is that you can refill Hydrogen tanks quickly. In order to recharge a battery system you are looking at least at a few hours. That’s really the advantage of a plug in hybrid. You get the pollution reduction benefits of an electric car, yet maintain the range of a traditional gasoline engine.
To link their brand name with cutting-edge tech.
BG, as Bryan points out, to try to gain some cutting edge cred. Plus it is going to be available for lease, allegedly $600/mo.
treis, some EV batteries (most famously Altinairno’s Nanosafes) already have 10 minute rapid recharge capability with the right recharge station (which would be an easier infrastructure roll-out than hydrogen stations) and almost all the batteries could do it … or at least so they claim. But you are right about the range advantage.
I guess I’m going to have to see it to believe it. It’s not just a matter of how long a battery takes to charge. It’s the amount of energy that has to be transferred. Charging a car at 240 Volts and 1000 amps for an hour transfers the equivalent energy of a little under 7 gallons of gas. I don’t really know what sort of voltage the batteries in cars are, but I don’t think it’s higher than the 10s of volts. That means you are probably going to draw more around 10,000 amps, and no one is going to sit for an hour waiting for their car to charge. Say 10 minutes is the max, and now you need 60,000 amps. I just don’t see how that would ever be practical.
treis
Currently only practical for fleet vehicles perhaps, but still demonstrated.
You are correct that the difficulties of managing that kind of voltage are not trivial but still probably less difficult to surmount than a hydrogen roll-out.
Another approach for a pure BEV future is proposed by Shai Agassi in his Project Better Place. His idea is rapid battery swaps and slow charge at stations. He’d own the batteries and charge a monthly fee like a cell phone plan for providing freshly charged batteries in a rapid swap. Israel may be the first place to roll it out and he recently received support from the Israeli Cabinet for the plan.
I have a hard time seeing that model working in America. But again, the number of times a typical American really does drive more than a 120 miles in a day is small, and most potential purchasers have another family vehicle at their disposal for those road trips. And even if all went with BEVs then the rapid recharge need would really be on interstates, since most charging would be done more slowly where you parked overnight. Nevertheless, that concern is why Extended Range EVs (EREVs) like the Volt will be more appealing for most.
Others have answers some of this but figured since you addressed it to me I’d give you my take anyway.
Hydrogen does have some advantages over electricity as a personal fuel system (not source), mostly in that it acts pretty similar to the system we currently are using…namely oil/gasoline/diesel. Electricity for personal vehicles implies some means of getting that electricity INTO the car…and right now that pretty much means batteries, unless you are planning to run electric rails around the country and give people the equivalent of slot cars to drive.
Batteries are big and heavy. They take time to charge. They don’t hold enough charge (currently) to go more than a few hundred miles, tops…and then you have to recharge them again (or swap them out…did I tell you they were heavy?). Over time batteries degrade and lose efficiency…and so need to be replaced or you will get less range and have longer charge times. I’m not sure how well batteries can be recycled…and we will have to recycle a LOT of them as they will need to be replaced fairly regularly (every 5-10 years IIRC…currently of course).
Hydrogen has the advantage that you fill up just like you do with gas…drive up to a station, stick in a the pump, fill up, drive off. They also have greater range than electric vehicles currently have. They are also lighter (remember, hydrogen fuel cells ARE electric vehicles…without the big batteries). They don’t lose efficiency over time. They are also VERY expensive atm, especially for the most efficient ones. That may change in the future…or it may not.
Believe me, big car manufacturers, especially those in Europe and Japan, would not be investing billions in looking into this technology if there was nothing to it. I don’t know if some of the technical challenges will be met to enable a full blown hydrogen revolution (challenges such as making, storing and transporting the hydrogen in massive quantities)…but it’s not quite the write off some folks in this thread are making it out to be. Nor are EV’s clearly the best way to go…yet. It’s all still up in the air…the next few years of development and breakthroughs will tell the final tale. We are sort of at the very beginning of the ICE when it competed with electric (yeah, it’s actually been looked at before) and steam powered engines and no one knows if hydrocarbon based fuels would win out (there were a lot of early challenges there to).
Well, remember, that producing electricity for everyone’s car (if we go that path) ALSO means getting energy. Transmitting electricity is certainly easier than shipping out hydrogen (assuming we have that abundant, cheap hydrogen in the first place)…but we already have an infrastructure that with little change can be adapted to hydrogen…the current oil/gas based infrastructure.
I’ve seen several methods of producing hydrogen ranging from greater use of nuclear power to bio-methods using modified bacteria. You could also use methane which is very abundant (though a green house gas as well). It’s hard to say what will be ‘best’ 5 or 10 years from now when all this is shaking out…I’m just glad it’s going to be market dependent. If the government were deciding today by fiat what would be ‘best’ for us…well, I shudder to think what we’d be getting. The way it is, it will be VERY interesting to see how it all pans out. I almost hope that hydrogen wins out…just to see the looks on the faces of the folk who try and dismiss it as a potential viable alternative.
Whether we go hydrogen or all electric we are going to need more energy. Remember, if we go all electric we are talking about plugging in millions (tens of millions, maybe hundreds in time) of devices that are drawing pretty large amounts of power from the grid when taken as a whole. That energy isn’t free…and currently all that extra capacity isn’t available. Unless I’m mistaken we’d need to build more power plants to take up the new load on the system. Both have their costs in the current power infrastructure.
Not quite. If we are talking about hydrogen then much of that infrastructure (certainly the logistics and end user fueling station concepts) can be adapted for use.
If we go the all electric vehicle route, again, much of the end use fueling station infrastructure could be adapted for use (assuming rapid charging technology or some kind of rapid swap out is possible you could STILL have gas stations converted into charging stations). I think either way we go (or maybe something none of us are even thinking of that isn’t even on the radar yet) it won’t be the same as when ICE first came out and all that infrastructure (including those roads) had to be built from scratch.
-XT
xtisme, just a few quibbles with your generally excellent post -
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Lithium batteries are recyclable. The method is pyrolysis. So far they haven’t been in large numbers for several reasons: the market isn’t so big when lithium out of the ground is fairly cheap and plentiful; most of the current lithium batteries used up are hard to recover out of the generic trash that disposable electronics get tossed into; and it isn’t worth the effort since lithium can be just tossed into the landfill as it isn’t toxic like many other battery types. Massive use of evs would provide both the market for recycled lithium and the easily recovered supply - car batteries don’t just go in the regular trash flow.
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Replacing every 5-10 years? The top end and beyond is what the experts are talking about now (and they keep raising it up with every new development cycle). Realize that those old NiMHs are still running in Toyota RAV4 EVs exceeding 100K. The current crop of lithium batteries are much better and range for complete charge discharge cycles from over a thousand to over ten thousand. Most are about five thousand as I understand it (although I have no cite to back that up). And please note that most are designed to either never or rarely go through a complete charge discharge cycle, since that is the fastest way to wear these things down (GM for example has theirs being designed to cycle between 80 and 20% to extend life, which is why they need a 16kWh battery when they can travel their 40 miles on around 8 kWh). They are expected to last at least ten years under normal use. By then every expectation is that a pack will run about $200/kWh, and since the car itself has little else to wear down … (GM would love to just lease you the pack since they see that as a probable major profit center in the future.)
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“and currently all that extra capacity isn’t available. Unless I’m mistaken we’d need to build more power plants to take up the new load on the system.” Actually that extra capacity is mostly available, right now, during off peak hours, right when most of these would charge. At least a switch to plug-ins and EREVs could be handled, entirely for the MidWest and East and a bit less so for the West. Moreover, the fact that EVs charging during traditionally off-peak hours would make wind a more cost-attractive option a its big problem is that it produces when the electricity is not currently needed.
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Existing infrastructure could be easily adapted to use for hydrogen? Are you sure about that? Hydrogen certainly can be stored as a liquid but the requirements for that storage and transport are very different than for gasoline. You are talking about some high pressure containment here, not just moving a sloshing liquid around and putting in a regular double walled tank in the ground. Low pressure storage is possible but would require some sort of solid substrate to place it in … not just easily adapting existing infrastructure in any case.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally writing off hydrogen. But it is no where near ready now and evs are. I think that few saw that the curves of oil prices and battery technology improvements would be crossing so quickly. They either thought that the hurdles of hydrogen and fuel cell costs would crossed more quickly than they have panned out, or that they’d have more time before competing technologies became competitive. Once you’ve sunk this much money into the research you won’t walk away too easily.
And the two are not mutually exclusive. That’s why Lutz is smart to position the Volt as a flexfuel system. The basic concept could just as easily have a fuel cell with hydrogen storage as its range extender if that becomes cost effective. Some day.
I’m very hopeful that it does but it is going to take a huge political effort involving government to develop the economic climate to develop the infrastructure required. I have some “answers” and I have questions as well.
Firstly, we have two large issues before us, namely carbon dioxide and the rising price of oil. Sooner or later, I think we can all agree that these issues need to be confronted politically.
Both hydrogen and electricity for our cars will require a huge increase in electrical generation capacity. If we all look at our personal energy bills at home compared to our vehicles, it would appear to me that we’ll need to more than double that electric generating capacity. This may be arguable, but unless we bite the bullet and start constructing a whole whack of nuclear plants, the price of electricity will either rise, with utility companies making huge profits or we will somehow curtail the use of electicity for vehicles.
Assuming that increasing the elecrical supply is a given, I see no reason for hydrogen not to happen.
General Electric has recently developed an electrolyzer that can produce hydrogen from water at a cost of $3.00 per kg. A kilogram of hydrogen is equivalent to a gallon of gas. Now I have no illusions that the price of oil won’t double in the next ten years. I’ve seen the price already double in that time span. It won’t be long before hydrogen will be regarded as cheap.
What I don’t know is why all this fuss with hydrogen fuel cells. What’s wrong with burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines ?
One more thing. Transportation. We could use the electrical grid to transport electricity to turnkey electrolyzer/filler stations throughout the country.
Flying Dutchman never let referenced facts contrary to your expectations get in the way of posting. :rolleyes:
What referenced facts ?
See item 3 in the post above yours. The thread is still on its first page, reading the posts in it isn’t too much too ask, is it?