GM lent me a Fuel Cell Chevrolet

Toyota and Hyundai are almost ready to mass produce ~$50k fuel cell car according to the latest news.

 

Yes, according to the spec, both the traction motor and the stack are rated at 90kW. It doesn't say much about how long it can keep up the peak or how fast it can ramp up.

I said maybe because I am unfamiliar with inner working of FCV from GM, Hyundai, Nissan or other manufacturers. Toyota fuel cell vehicle always had been hybrid with NiMH. Which is why it is called FCHV (Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle). It is a variance of HSD and uses the same NiMH cells as the Prius.

I also think the battery is needed to capture regen braking energy since FC stack can not convert the braking energy back to hydrogen.

 

Can you provide the source of that figure? I want to know if that figure is arrived when hydrogen is made from water or natural gas.

 

so what we really need is an EV that has user adjustable range.

a battery "unit" that has say 12 slots where only 2 slots are "active" at any one time. that would provide say a 40 mile range. with all 12 slots filled, you are looking at 6 pairs *40 miles or 240 miles.

when a pair is run down to a certain level. the pack automatically switches to the next pair. for local in town driving, some may only need one or two pairs to cover their daily needs.

for longer trips, you would of course have all 6 pairs installed. you can drive, stop at a station, exchange exhausted batteries for a fresh recharged one and continue on.

sounds good, but a few hurdles need to be addressed. access to pack would have to be much easier as the current under car location would make swapping batts too hard. but i dont think that is an insurmountable hurdle. the other thing would be reducing battery weight. these modules would have to be replaced by the service station which would make the cost prohibitively expensive. so a weight light enough for the average person to handle means we need to reduce current battery weight significantly.

so, long way to go. wont happen overnight, but neither will hydrogen

 

For NiMH (as used in RAV4) to hold 60kWh, the pack will weight over 1,000 kg. Hydrogen weights just 1 kg.

 

wow, hadnt realized the price was that low. so once again, we only need a refueling infrastructure. hmmm can we afford to do EV and hydrogen??

then again, i guess we really cant afford not to.

 

Hyundai-Kia "confident we can beat" Toyota's $50,000 price on fuel cell cars — Autoblog Green

Hyundai is set to release in 2012 and Toyota in 2015. I know there has been a lot of broken hydrogen promises before. I think it is real this time with the advancements made in the last decade.

 

I'm really interested in Honda's FCV, Clarity. Honda's approach is to also sell (or lease) you a Home fueling station which not only refuels your car but makes electricity to run your house. Not being a scientific person I'm not sure how reasonable it will be but Honda seems to be very optomistic about it and they have some cars running around in Southern California.

 

Dave ... saying hydrogen will "only cost xxxxx" is as valid as GM saying the Volt will come in at under $30K. Obviously they won't tell you it'll never be able to cost under 6 figures, because everyone would be up in arms at the horiffic waste of R & D money. But tell folks, "under $50K" (when in fact there is no basis in fact for those numbers) and you face no consequences for the statement ... well ... "let the spin continue".

 

This statement does not ring true to me. A fuel cell stack produces a constant amount of current that can be altered only very slowly. A car demands power at abruptly changing levels. The car must have a buffer, which means batteries.

It would be possible, through computer control, to send some electricity directly from the stack to the wheels, but some must go sometimes to and from the batteries. I am confident you spoke with someone who simply understood nothing of how the car functions.

EXACTLY!!!

Although H2 can be produced from renewable energy (as is done in Iceland), H2 in this country is produced almost entirely from natural gas.

In other words, in the U.S., hydrogen is a mediator for the use of fossil fuel! It would be great for Exxon and BP, but does not solve anything.

You are mixing two entirely different things!!!!! Natural gas is a fossil fuel which can be reformed to extract hydrogen, and in fact this is where most of our H2 comes from in the U.S. today. Water is a chemical with no energy (it is at the lowest possible energy level, so there is no energy to extract). It can be used to make hydrogen by breaking it into its constituent parts, but that requires you put more energy into it than you will eventually get out (due to inefficiency losses).

And if cheese could fly we could make it into flying carpets. Or if rain was gasoline we could collect it and run our cars for free.

We actually have lots and lots and lots of free energy. We just need to build the infrastructure to collect it: The sun and the wind.

Better Place has solved the technological aspect of battery switching. The real problems that remain are stocking sufficient replacement batteries at the stations, and convincing consumers to either: lease the batteries so if the company goes bust they have a car that won't go; or give up their own brand-new batteries for swapped-out used ones that may have been abused or may be degraded by age.

Wrong comparison: A BEV has batteries and electric motor. A FCV has a hydrogen tank (and a 10,000 p.s.i. tank will be HEAVY) plus the fuel cell stack, plus the motor, and it will still need about as many batteries as a Prius has to buffer the flow of electricity from the fuel cell stack and trap regen braking energy.

So either you need to have a truck bring H2 to your home on a regular basis, or you need a roof-mounted solar array to provide the energy to make H2, or you use grid power to make H2. All those systems are problematic. And the latter two can dispense with the million-dollar fuel cell car and use that electricity to drive a BEV three times as far for the same electricity, according to Darell. The FCV might have a somewhat longer range, but without a refueling infrastructure, it can no more make long road trips than a BEV can. Except that fast charging is being built now, whereas an H2 refueling infrastructure is nowhere in sight.

 

Its from water. hydrogen is often produced from steam reformation of natural gas, but it can also be reformed catylitically, or though solar energy. The energy cost is much less to convert methane to hydrogen, but the energy in the methane should also be accounted for. Methanol can also be converted with very low energy costs of conversion.

Good catch. I'm sure there is some use for this technology in the future.

 

Hi FuelCell, thanks for sharing your data and experience! I have to say i am an H2 sceptic. i can see it's use as a range extender (a Volt with 40mile EV and 200 mile H2 range would be good - provided i can get the H2 from a renewable source) but as primary propulsion? BEV makes more sense. As others have said, some pics or further descriptions about the display, interface and controls would be good. Did they give any indication of the battery storage (in kwh), and whether it will ever be fitted with a plug?

One small point, the energy density of gasoline is ~36.6kwh per gallon, and hydrogen is ~40.1kwh per kilo, so your signature should be 1kg of hydrogen = 1.1 gallons of gasoline.

 

Cutting to the chase...

2008 FCHV-adv weight: 1,880 kg
2008 Base Highlander (gas): 1,805 kg
2008 Highlander HSD: 2,045 kg

Converted to lbs.... FCHV-adv is 364 lbs lighter than Highlander hybrid but 165 lbs more than a base gas Highlander.

FCHV-adv has 518 mile range. Highlander BEV does not exist. If there is one, how much do you think it will weight? Also consider how long will it take to charge and how much the vehicle will cost.

 

not really. their all or nothing solution is an option that will work for some but still does not address the issue of carrying around 1000 lbs of batteries 100% of the time when only 300 lbs are needed 90% of the time nor the masses that may not be able to afford to buy a $15,000 battery pack.

i think that the EV industry is really going about it all wrong. if you could get a glider for $15,000 and modules at $1000 each and only needed two of them to do 40 miles, we would have an "entry level" EV for $17,000. then you have the option to buy additional modules that could sit in the garage ready to use on those occasions that you need them or lease them for when you need to make that 1000 mile trip.

the BIGGEST problem right now with new technology is the starting point price wise puts more than 80% of the buyers out of the market. (only 20% of buyers are "willing" to pay up to $25,000 for a new car)

so we have people who need more range, but cant get it and have the money.

we also have people who dont need the additional range and dont have the money.

when you market one product at one option. 100 miles for $25,000 u miss a WHOLE lot of interested people who simply cannot make it work.

 

While present BP switching stations replace the whole pack, their demonstration of that technology makes it a trivial matter to design switching stations that could switch an arbitrary number of modules in a modular pack.

The problem is not the technology for switching less than all of a modular pack. The problem is public acceptance of battery switching, which leaves you with an unknown battery after every switch.

Another problem with your modular idea is that batteries in a pack must be matched. Once you begin using different numbers of battery modules on different days, you risk having mismatched batteries.

Nissan has already said that at some time in the future, the Leaf will be available with different size packs for different needs and budgets.

 

umm, no. u simply match the voltage you are looking for. ONLY two modules are active, the others sit dormant. therefore there can be any number or battery modules either present or not as long as there is two active ones we are ok. as the active ones drain, the car will switch to the next pair automatically. a display on the dash will show you which battery modules are charged, which are not, etc.

now, this is all a pipe dream and may simply not be possible on the scale I envision. i prefer to have the modules light enough so the average person can plug them in on their own. the current requirements required for highway operation may make this option not viable in the near (5 years?) future.

the other thing that makes the battery swapping thing more viable is that unlike my Zenn where i can easily abuse the batteries i have by running them too low, etc. the swapping and customized range options puts more of the battery management into the hands of the car where it belongs and out of the hands of the user.

why risk running out of juice if its a question of stopping at the corner and swapping out a pair?. what i would envision (very active imagination here!) is a car that can hold up to say 6 pairs. most people would have at least 2 pairs. now i say pairs, but weight might make it 4 or more. we dont want the modules to be over say 20 lbs?

in normal in town driving, when on your last charged pair, you have 40 miles (or whatever the range is) to replace or charge the other pairs.


another thing i see is a leasing of the batteries. where you only buy the charge that is in the batteries. pay a deposit for the "cores" then you can either charge them at home or swap them at the station if you are on the road.

either way, i think if EV's did not have that 1000 lb gorilla AKA the $25,000 battery pack, we would have a lot more people in the market for them

our attitude has changed in the past 6 years when i started driving my Prius. back then, there was no one who really understood the concept of using anything other than gas. the Prius, although not electric, has shown many indirectly how viable EV's can be. by looking at the Prius, many have become exposed to the idea of a car run on electricity.

but we still have the 95% who cannot afford to spend $50,000 on a car that might not fit all their needs. now granted, the 10% who can spend $25,000 on a 2nd car with limited range will help the EV movement, but until we can put out a much much cheaper EV, it will not go mainstream.

 

This is as correct as when Toyota sales people claim that the Prius battery is only charged during regenerative braking. I'll eat my shorts if the FC stack isn't charging the traction battery pack. If the car is carrying around a bunch of battery only to recapture regenerative braking, then somebody needs to get fired.

Sure the H2 doesn't weigh much... but what about all the other stuff that is weighing the car down? The bullet-proof tank to hold 10,000 psi? The FC stack and all the plumbing and fans and valves? Oh... and the batteries. FCVs don't weigh any less than battey cars. Doesn't really matter what the fuel itself weighs. Or... we could go that rout and claim that the electricity stored in a BEVs batteries weighs even less than the H2 stored in the 10,000 PSI tank!

Again... as compared to a FCV? Seriously? We drive around in 500 hp gasoline cars today. Talk about a bunch of extra crap that isn't needed most of the time!

 

Okay. I withdraw my objection regarding mis-matched batteries.

In that case, I won't quibble with most of your ideas. Yes, the modular idea has a lot going for it.

Neither modular battery design nor swapping is needed in order for the car to manage the batteries for long life. The Prius does it and the battery lasts the life of the car. The Leaf will do it. Tesla does it. The Zenn and the Xebra are poorly-designed, cheap cars that cut far too many corners, one of which was battery management. That will be a thing of the past as the cars coming out from reputable, major manufacturers will all protect their batteries.

Here I will quibble: While some unthinking people may go for this, remember that if you lease the batteries, and if they are proprietary, as will be likely, given the profit-first, customer-last ethic of capitalism, if the company goes out of business you will be left with a car that cannot move. A lesser, but still significant problem, is that as the batteries age, if the company does not replace them, you will be getting less and less range for your money. A benevolent company might keep their batteries good. A profit-oriented company will spend as little as they can, while charging the customer as much as they can. And with proprietary batteries you will have no option but to sell your car.

Would you lease batteries from GM, remembering what they did to the EV1? The founder of Better Place may be an idealist who will do everything in his power to keep your EV going, and at a reasonable cost. But what happens when his company is usurped in a hostile take-over and he is replaced by someone who only cares about profit? Or worse yet, replaced by someone from the oil industry who wants to kill electric cars? You think that's not likely? Look at what happened with NiMH batteries! GM sold the patent to the oil industry, which held the patent for the sole purpose of keeping it off the market!

I will never lease my batteries!

True. But trivial. Cost of batteries is the biggest problem for EVs today.

Or until gasoline becomes so expensive that electric is cheaper, even with the cost of batteries. That time is not all that far away.