The Economist: Electric cars Difference Engine: Tailpipe truths

Would love to see what assumptions they are making to get 39% well-to-take for EVs and 67-70% well-to-tank for hydrogen.

 

USB,

The graphic you posted from Toyota has too many unstated assumptions to take seriously. One obvious example is the infrastructure cost comparison. Seems clear that the graphic assumed expensive EV charging stations that are the only way to charge up EVs; and at a (relatively) slow trickle at that. They ignored home charging, or inexpensive L1 charging at work -- which is the obvious and main way E* cars will get a large fraction of their E* miles.

Toyota is awesome, but that graphic is worthy of GM.

 

Well its simple, the toyota slide is simply putting incorrect data out there. Note the DOE says 1kg is a gallon equivalant toyota makes it sound as if its 1/3? Why? They must think a fc gets 65 mpge while a car gets 21 --- but the prius phv gets more than 50 mpge. You will note that the L2 charging in the graphic is much slower than current leaf and tesla L2 chargers. It is comparing using a less efficient grid from the past for phev and bev vehicles versus some proposed new structure in 2025 for hydrogen

DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program: 2010-2025 Scenario Analysis for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles and Infrastructure

The current scenarios in the US are the state of california may force oil companies to sell hydrogen. Some may come from renewables in which case it takes more than 2x the solar energy per mile as simply putting the same power in a battery. Some may come from steam reformation of natural gas which would be about as efficient as a bloom box or combined cycle natural gas power plant going to a bev or phev. Each hydrogen fueling station costs around $2m. Honda is the most optimistic that they can sell production cars in 2018. The close dates are small fleets of demo cars.

honda has a plan to sell solar stations so individuals will not have to pay the high prices and find hydrogen fueling satations.
Honda Worldwide | Environment | Solar Hydrogen Station

Which means soon you can pay a lot more money to put 30 miles a day into your car... Or you can buy a leaf, tesla s, volt, rav4 bev and charge it from much cheaper solar cells on your roof It seems if you want to use renewables, that fc vehicle better at least be in 10 mile phev like the prius phv.

 

We need more details to make a fair comparison. The hybrid is AWD only. What is the FCHV? How about it's battery size?
The hybrid's 3 motors and battery weigh 396 lbs going from the curb weight of the 2WD V6 model. The 2WD 4cyl. weighs 3946 lbs and produces 187hp. The FCHV produces120hp. Those that drive a Highlander will likely be disappointed by the fuel cell one's performance.

I'm not against fuel cells. An alcohol or natural gas one might end up being the best range extender for an EV. It's the hydrogen fuel that is the issue. It's low energy density requires storage at higher pressure. Which leads to the need of heavy, bulky tanks. Then there are the energy loses involved in it's production. The only advantage it has over batteries is in refueling times. It might serve for energy storage and nighttime use at a CSP. For vehicles we have better options.

 

Also note that Toyota is a partner in the build out of the hydrogen filling stations infrastructure in CA. Honda FCX filling up at Toyota hydrogen filling station.

Those two are up to something.

America’s first pipeline-fed, retail hydrogen fueling station opened in Torrance, California, within Los Angeles county on Tuesday. The station will provide hydrogen for fuel cell and hybrid vehicles in the area. It was built through a joint effort by Toyota, Air Products and Shell alternative energies, with funding from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The station’s first customer was the owner of a Honda FCX Clarity.

Actually more than those two.

Fuel cell cars — promised by manufacturers including Toyota, Daimler, GM, Honda, and Hyundai — are not slated for mass market availability until 2015, though.

It probably ties into the Toyota executives comments that EV's are "not ready for prime time" due to the range and refueling issue. Possibly Toyota's research leads them to believe EV will always have that issue and they hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles are the next step in zero emission, no fossil fuel vehicles.

The fact that the H2 fueling station is pipeline fed is also significant, testing the means of transporting the H2 from closest local source. H2 can be produced anywhere there is a power source and a water supply. Solar farms in LA converting sea water and piping it inland to fueling stations.

 

The Shell/AirProducts/Toyota refueling stations are charging the FCX clients $4.99 per kilogram. So a fill up (3.5 kilograms) would be $14.00 for 210 miles based on 60 miles per kilogram. Prius buying $14.00 of gasoline would go 175 miles based on 50 miles per gallon.

 

And right now I can charge my volt at my local walgreens for free.

The shell/Airproduct/Totyta got a large grant for the station.. they can give it way for free for a while to be able to get good press. Have to see if the costs are subsidized to figure out if its sustainable.

 

So your subsidized charging station for 50 miles and the subsidized chargers all over CA vs. subsidized hydrogen fueling station for 240 miles going up around LA.

Actually BOTH of these promotions of zero emissions cars are what I want the government to be subsidizing. Finance all the promising technologies. We never know which one will catch on or have technological breakthrough such as new battery technology or manufacturer or MIT's announcement of breakthrough on super efficient catalyst for solar manufacture of hydrogen.

 

39% well-to-tank is high for US. It may be the average for worldwide. I wonder how they could get 67% well-to-tank for hydrogen. My guess is from natural gas and not the dumb way to split H2 and O from water using electricity.

 

Yea, it seems unfair because they are probably using the fastest and probably the most expensive chargers. A regular household 20A plug is basically free and existing. We don't have such infrastructure for H2 now. But overnight charging using a regular plug will not go more than 50 miles.

I think the point the graphic trying to make is the number of vehicles it can refuel using a "fast" refueling station, which translates to cost effectiveness.

 

I think your reasoning is incorrect.

FCHV-adv is a midsize SUV based on the Highlander. The 4 cylinder Highlander is rated 22 combined MPG. FCHV-adv gets 60 miles per kg of H2. That's pretty much the difference between 23% (non-hybrid) and 59% (FCHV) tank-to-wheel efficiency.

 

That's a good point. HH only comes in AWD and FCHV-adv is only 2WD. There is a huge difference in power as well (280hp vs 120hp).

I think getting H2 from NG is very efficient and clean. US has a lot of NG so I think FCHVs is a great alternative here. Toyota was toying around with the idea of Camry Hybrid runing on natural gas (NGHV). That approach requires internal combustion so it'll be inferior to FCHV.

The battery is 274V, 100 lbs according to this. It has more illustrations showing where each components are located. There are 4 H2 tanks with each holding 10,000 psi!

I believe the tanks are made with carbon fiber so they are very light but gotta be very expensive. I believe Toyota found an inexpensive way to mass produce them. We'll be seeing the production version of FCV-R in 2015.

 

Problem is burning the natural gas to power the car directly is much more fuel and energy efficient. Using fossil fuels to create clean fuels is inherently self defeating.

MIT's research on catalytic assisted hydrogen distillation from water via electricity makes that the way to go. No doubt that process will improve in efficiency as they build prototypes.

Sustainable energy would be using solar, wind, nuclear to distill hydrogen fuel from water. The pipeline transport of hydrogen is building out now in the industrial gas industry. One of the reasons AirProducts is sponsoring the H2 fueling stations along with Toyota and Shell.

For US strategically, environmentally and for sustainable economy going forward, using the natural gas to replace coal is the best way for US to get big decreases in greenhouse gases to meet goals of 80% reduction by 2050.

 

I doubt that. NG has about half the GHG footprint of coal, NG alone cannot create 80% reduction.

 

Of course not but it can cut US greenhouse gases by 50% and do it very quickly. That is huge.

Coal and natural gas both have high environmental costs of extraction and that has to be addressed, mitigated and weighed in the equation.

Getting back to hydrogen generation, the build out of the H2 system underway with AirProducts, Shell, Toyota, Honda and others needs to be built on sustainable H2 production via wind or solar. For example, Bonneville Power Authority is shutting down 1 gigawatt of wind generators due to excess water in its hydro power system. Using the wind power and the water source to create hydrogen becomes "free" and is the way to go to build a sustainable power system with hydrogen as the transport fuel.

 

This is definitely true. Air Products can use their efficient hydrogen reforming process for methane, the exxon refiniery, then sell some hydrogen at a shell station. Unfortunately that doesn't doesn't roll out well, especially if you don't have the oil refineries. If you have more expensive hydrogen at other stations, why would not shell raise the price.

My point was on renewables, where it takes more than twice the energy to make hydrogen. IMHO all these fc vehicles will have to be phevs and pay the cost of phevs. The toyota fchv uses 20kwh of batteries. You can plug in your volt or tesla or leaf and go 180-200 miles on the same renewable energy hydrogen would take to go 60 miles or less, and this uses less equipment.

You know facts are facts and bs walks. Toyota is saying that 1/3kg of hydrogen is 1 gge, while the doe says 1kg is 1gge. Then toyota wants to use a non epa test to say mpge is higher. Now in some fictional world toyota can make a magic 120hp highlander hybrid and have it get better fuel economy and cost less than a honda clarity, but its not reality in fact. Its as if they took the 95mpge of the cd range of the prius phv, and said it was really 270 mpge on electricity.

 

That was my guess, too. But then we might as well just burn the NG right in the car. It will be more efficient, and a whole lot cheaper.

 

Depends on what you pay for fuel to generate electricity. Wind and solar are zero. Bonneville has to shut down 1 gigawatt of wind generators because of over capacity in a system that powers up much of the West coast.

Additionally, the latest catalyst assisted hydrogen generator via electricity are very efficient so there's a convergence.

And the idea is to build up the sustainable system at this prototype stage. Burning natural gas to create hydrogen makes not sense from energy efficiency or green house gas standpoint. It's OK to use it to build out and test the infrastructure but long term it has to be sustainable so solar, wind basically.

That's why BMW's direct burn is inherently more efficient and likely more sustainable. Barring some breakthrough in battery technology and production, I doubt the resources exist to replace current fleet of cars are trucks with battery power in gasoline or fuel cell assisted mode.

An advantage of the hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles, like the gas engine powered hybrids, the battery can be kept small so it extends the resources to build the batteries.

And it's all evolutionary. Get a couple million hydrogen vehicles on the road helps.

 

I actually pay for wind, and its not 0 We need grid improvements, that is why some wind is wasted. These improvements are happening in some places but not others. Solar costs a lot more than wind unsubsidized But we need to build more of both.

The best in the lab is around 80%, then its another 15% power to compress the hydrogen. Once in the car its less efficient than a battery. Hydrogen is certainly not bad for a range extender, but much less efficient than electricty for those initial miles.

Which is why steven chu, wanted to cut the budget
Germany is building a fueling structure for a test case for these things. There is no reason the US taxpayer needs to build another one in California while the cars are so far from production. Fuel cells contain so much precious metal right now that simply the material costs are too high to make affordable cars. There is no reason to build a hydrogen infrastructure until fc are developed that use much less expensive metal DOE did want to continue funding that research. Money has been moved from higher priority items to fund this waste of energy. Again. The most successful fuel cell is the bloom box, which runs on methane. Other successful fuel cells run on methanol. Currently most methane and methanol come from natural gas or oil, but can come from renewable sources in the future. If cng or methane turns out to be the best method, it would be a shame to waste all these resources pumping up a hydrogen economy. There is already a ng distribution system, and a methonal one is cheaper to build than hydrogen

 

No. Wind cost is zero. You pay for someone to harness it and deliver it. Reasons BPA (Bonneville Power Authority) shuts down the wind generators has nothing to do with distribution system. BPA makes more money selling hydropower. It's a huge ongoing battle between BPA on one side and wind power, conservationists, salmon fishermen on the others side.

Using MIT numbers based on catalyst assisted hydrolysis, about 55kw per 1 kg of liquid hydrogen, end to end. Using the 1 gigawatt of wasted energy about 18 million kg of liquid hydrogen. Equivalent to 50 million gallons of gasoline. Figure 400 million gallons a day used in the US, that's 14% we can cut and that's just from the wasted wind power in one part of the grid.

That's 14% fewer US troops in harms way, 14% lower military budget, lower trade deficit, lower greenhouse gases and most importantly more spill and salmon. Gotta keep our priorities straight.

And then there's the competition with Germany, China, Korea, Japan to own the engineering and production industry for the technology. US got blown out by Germany, Korea and China on solar and wind power industries, let's not repeat that mistake.