Hydrogen Highway's Dead End. FINALLY !

I guess you missed all the recent studies showing that the CURRENT electricity grid could accept at least 70% of the cars today as plugins.

The grid is not a problem, in fact it would be stabilized and made more efficient by plugins. It would also allow for the adoption of more intermittent power generation from wind and solar.

The making, distribution and storage of H2 is expensive and will never be cost effective enough to compete with battery electrics in the transportation sector.

 

Well go ahead and tell everyone that this summer when the grid goes down AGAIN, because everyone has their AC on. Or the people in Florida that lost power for days because of a grid failure. I'm sure the grid can, on average, take a considerable amount of charging from plug-ins, especially if done at night, but full scale recharging and at peak times?? It can;t handle the loads NOW. Link that study, I'll check it out though.

Under todays tech, yes, but it wasn't long ago people said the same about batteries. Plus show me the battery pack that can muscle 60,000lbs of an 18 wheeler down the road for 10 hours. (or even one on the drawing board)

Yes advance in battery technologies is important, and will be responsible for most of the future efficiency, but you still need a fast loading potential energy source. If batteries can do it, so be it, but I don't see batteries that can allow a car to drive 600 miles in a day and be rechargerd in under 5 minutes. As we now do with oil or another potential energy source.

 

Well, you do a good job living up to your name!

For the same price, they can. A basic fuel-cell powered car would cost multiple times that of a Tesla, which has a range of over 200 miles per charge. Recharge while you sleep at home.

Today's commercially sold H2 comes from natural gas. Not real environmentally friendly either.

Again, H2 is made from natural gas. We would have to import that, probably from Canada. Can't import H2, because it's a terrible transport medium - it's the smallest element in nature, can leak thru anything including steel - which it makes brittle as it does so. Leaks can't be visually detected. Ethanol or biodiesel can be retrofitted into existing oil pipelines.

Same could be said for powering EVs.

It would need to be considered. I doubt the grid would collapse, it would just be more utilized at night. It will take a decade to really make a difference on the makeup of the consumer fleet.

Okay I won't tell you that. It could be done, but it's already largely done for other options, so why build something new for something that still needs breakthroughs in production, storage, and economic fuel cells?

Even if you could make a fuel-cell powered vehicle for under $100K, it would still need a good set of batteries to handle the sudden power needs of acceleration. Fuel cells would be best suited for a serial hybrid layout.

 

Try this article for starters: How Plug-ins will save the grid.

Cheers.

 

Why not just electrify the Interstates. Drive and charge your battery at the same time. Use the battery for local. It works for trucks to. No new technology required.

 

Advancing fuel cell technology is too expensive compared to advancing battery technology. At least that's what my sister said who worked for 2 fuel cell companies.

Yes. Biofuels is a loser in america. Too many people drive and we don't have the water to grow enough fuel.

Fuels cells is not a source of energy, it's an expensive battery. There are not pools of H2 to be drilled and pumped into our fuel cell tanks. That'd be like saying that loaded springs is a good energy source except for the fact that we have to wind up the springs before we can use them. The energy to split the h20 to h2 and 02 will inevitably come from dirty fossil fuels, so you might as well combust the dirty fuels to get mechanical enery which would maximize your energy return INSTEAD of combusting them to convert into H2 which in turn you would chemically convert with 02 to H20 to extract electrical which you then would convert to mechanical energy.

Are you saying we would be cleaner if instead of having large electrical facilities to make electricity for many, we each by our own individual gas powered electrical generator and install in every household. That just doesn't make sense.

Well of course it wouldn't happen over night. As the demand increased then so would the supply. Limited fossil fuels supplies would drive up the price making green energy more competitive thus giving us the ability to green the grid.

So you're saying that overnight(that's what 5 years is) we could implement a never used new technology infrastructure, but plugins would collapse an existing infrastructure because that couldn't grow?

The other negative would be the exorbitant expense.

 

Isn't ethanol too corrosive for pipelines?

 

Artificial gasoline and kerosene, made from atmospheric CO2, would be carbon neutral and much easier to distribute and use in vehicles than hydrogen.

 

Are you referring to this technology: Sun converts carbon dioxide into fuel | Emerging Technology Trends | ZDNet.com

 

There have been several good discussions of this in the distant past on PriusChat. In one of them, I looked up the facts on electrical generation and did some calculations. On average, day after day, in the US, the nighttime trough in demand is half the daytime peak. So there's a big hole that can be filled with car battery charging at night, without requiring additional capacity.

If people would be disciplined enough (or if the chargers were set up to require) nighttime recharge, I estimated that nearly all US passenger car miles could be displaced by electricity before you would get to the point of straining the grid with the recharge load. The only trouble I saw was Fridays in August, when a) there's high air conditioning demand and b) lots of people are on long road trips for vacation. (Yes, travel distance really is that seasonal). There have been several, more careful studies that have said more-or-less the same thing plus-or-minus the August-Friday thing.

So for the near term at least, this is a non-issue. As others have pointed out. It would take a lot of cars to fill the existing nighttime load trough.

More to the point, by loading the grid evenly over the daily cycle, you get a) cheaper average cost per KWH and b) lower average pollutant per KWH. In the short run it's a win-win.

So the point is well taken that you'd eventually have to accommodate the extra electrical demand from EV/PHEV, but if the vehicle recharge load is restricted largely to nighttime, this will not be an issue for decades yet.

 

Nope, batteries are an excellent choice for the haulage industry, and for garbage trucks/construction etc.

The most successful EV businesses here in Europe (Tanfield and Modec) are not producing passenger vehicles but trucks.

At the moment they are only producing vehicles up to 7.5 tonnes, but the potential for scaling is certainly there as the bigger the vehicle, the better the case for batteries.

Why start with truck EVs first and not passenger cars? Because for a haulage or delivery business FUEL is by far the biggest cost of the business (>70% in some cases, vs only 20% for a passenger car).

For example, the fuel bill for a delivery truck doing 50,000 miles per year at 10 mpg would cost about £25,000 here in the UK, while it would cost only £5,000 if those miles were done on electric power. Those are huge savings for any haulier which is why the sales of EV trucks are taking off so well here.

Battery-electric heavy goods vehicles: Feasibility analysis

 

That could work out as a way to do it, yes. Direct condensation and electrolysis are proven technologies but rather expensive, so people are looking for cheaper methods, such as (potentially) the one you cited.

 

That's awesome. Medium to large diesel trucks are so loud smelly I look forward to seeing EV trucks replace them. I'm really glad to hear that it is possible. It can't happen soon enough for me.

 

Haven't seen any yet. I hope to soon. What make or size are they?

 

And the $0.50/gallon of OUR tax money paid to people who produce ethanol in the U.S.
And the tax credits to GM for every 'flex-fuel' vehicle made. Just put parts that aren't sensitive to alcohol in ALL vehicles. No need to have 'flex-fuel' parts and 'regular rubber' parts. Maybe we should tax them double their credit for every flex-fuel vehicle they sell where there is no E85 available to the public.

As usual, GM is using the laws as written, not as envisioned to further their goals. Clearly no congress (wo)man had something like the H2 in mind when they set the definition of 'commercial' on weight alone for EPA CAFE exclusion and commercial vehicle tax credits.

 

And if we consider that people will finally have to get off their "I NEED MORE POWER" horse, the amount of energy needed to drive those miles will decrease.

Arnold's conversion of an H2 to run on H2 isn't "green". It is still a hog that uses WAY more energy to drive a mile than is necessary or reasonable.

Whether a 2 seat commuter or a 'I have a family of 6' vehicle, any Plug-in will be designed to use as little energy as possible and still get from here to there in reasonable fashion.