The Economist: Electric cars Difference Engine: Tailpipe truths

434 miles is pushing Prius range. I could do Park City on one fill up and Whistler non-stop.

 

Toyota tries to sell it because the Plug-in-Prius is pointless without it. Home charging is a NECESSITY for Plug-in's.

It is not a necessity for hydrogen but it is an option so hydrogen is the clear winner regarding home fuel stations.

Exactly and the reason why plug in electric cars have a very limited market.

A 120V socket and EIGHT HOURS. I'll just leave my car at my work charger overnight and...hey...wait a minute. Even the four hours at 240V makes it simply impractical.

 

Why stop there - current crop of CCGT plants are around 60% efficient now. Co-generation plants can do even better than that. Looks like the current crop of single-cycle GT plants are around 40% efficient now.

Can they do CCGT & co-gen yet? I guess the major obstacle is finding a customer/use for that heat.

 

If co-gen is possible with a CCGT plant, I presume it is possible for a reformation plant too.

 

I remembered wrong, it was 50grams not ounces which makes a big difference in cost. GM was talking about 30 grams in the lab, it should make their 2015 model.


http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/09/gm-2gen-20090928.html

But that brings up the big reason toyota is hyping how many cars they will sell, they want more government cash just like gm did back in 2009. GM now says, fuel cell stacks need to come down in price, before fuel cell cars are viable.

These things are still very expensive. If they were as cheap as fuel cell advocates pretended, nissan could rip the batteries in their leaf out, and put in a fuel cell and sell it for less money.

The goal amount of platinum for gm and toyota is

There are serious issues with platinum if the fc stack does not drop content significantly.
Why the Hydrogen Feud Needs to End: Analysis - Popular Mechanics

we also get this from 2009
http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-many-miracles.html

If anyone really knows how much toyota's "next generation" fuel cell being developed for the fcv-r costs please let us all know. If they dropped the cost to $10K per car, there would be press releases everywhere.

 

Toyota said in 2009 that the FCHV-adv prototype used 30 grams of Platinum and they are looking to reduce it to 10 grams. There is no need to misguide with the outdated numbers. They also mentioned mass production of $50k FCHV in 2015. They showed FCV-R recently and that has to be it.

There are 3 to 7 grams of Platinum in catalytic converter in non-hybrid and hybrid cars. Large trucks have 15 grams. Fuel Cell vehicles don't have catalytic converter. The question becomes where you want your Platinum, in the exhaust or in the engine (fuel cell stack). The availability of Platinum becomes a moot point.

 

That should save some cost versus multiple tanks. Hydrogen tanks are non-conformable. A gasoline tank can be made to fit the irregular shape under the car. Hydrogen tanks need to be cylinder for strength. This limits their space efficiency, and requires designing around them as opposed to designing them for the space.

So Toyota had to borrow from the Volt's design for a large pack.

It's also how long each component lasts.

 

I think it is a small fraction but it is included in the well-to-tank -- the same way EV well-to-tank includes electricity transmission and distribution losses.

Under the same JC08 cycle, I believe the gas-electric Prius has about twice that range. Leaf is rated 124 miles under JC08.

 

Please show me where toyota says 30 gram platinum is in a demo car that is being driven.


I quoted a nobel lauriet from MIT that studies these things. But great, show me the cars. It seems you believe fuel cells are less than $100/kw, which means there is no reason for the us government to fund them. Why isn't there a toyota press release saying they have dropped the price to 10%, instead of ones saying they hope to, but..... we were supposed to have millions of fuel cell cars on the road by now according to past toyota statements. They were supposed to be less expensive than BEVs by now.

All I am saying the US government should not fund them until they fall to these levels. Show me the money.

 

Did you bother to read that section before quoting it out of context. It was abou owning car, any car, in Manhattan, where trump towers is.
In manhattan you don't NEED a car and if you choose to have on its too much of a hassel tokeep moving it for alternate side of the street parking, so its either pay for a garage or don't own one at all. Would be equally true for a H2 car as a ICE.

Hm. I sleep 8 hours and spend even more at home, I work 8 hours (well maybe a bit more).. Go ahead and call me abnormal, but I think I could actually let my car charge while I do either (or both) of those.

 

There is a conflicting information in the European site. It said:

The fuel cell stack is smaller than in previous FCVs, and sits under the seats, along with twin hydrogen tanks.

The twin hydrogen tanks and the FC stack are located beneath the vehicle floor, maximising both cabin and luggage space to create an entirely practical family sedan.​

This screenshot from this video shows two tanks.

I have read the stacks have been proven to be durable for for 200,000 miles (@80% original output) and reliable to start in -37 deg C. The stack in the second prototype seem to last only 7 years but the 3rd was aimed to last 15 years. It appears the recent improvements are very rapid.

 

lol... so if all cars switch to EV, how the heck would US fuel those cars... electric grid wouldnt be able to take even 5% of them. Nuclear plants take a decade to build.

So whats that nobel lauriet whining about exactly? EVs are not solution unless we start building nuclear plants today to have them ready for the switch in 2030.

 

Its possible for reformation.. and already part of what they do. The reformation process, however, uses much of the heat to support the reaction. Air products already built such a plant
http://www.h2alliance.com/pdf/Port_Arthur_122212258eprint.pdf

Also see http://www.powermag.com/gas/Port-Ar...eneration-Facility-Port-Arthur-Texas_408.html,

 

Simple stuff really. We use 41% of platinum in catalytic converters today.
http://www.cleancaroptions.com/Will_there_be_enough_platinum.pdf

If fc vehicles greatly increase this, which they do, then better tech needs to happen to reduce it. If a significant number of fuel cell vehicles gets built, platinum shortages ensue. Remember all these projections are for 100kw fc, but this is low power for the US fleet of cars and trucks.

Since the hydrogen plan is to use electricity to produce most of the hydrogen, and hydrogen vehicles use a great deal more electricity than a PHEV, then any grid problems are greatly increased by putting a national hydrogen fueling infrastructure up. Texas grid in 2030 should be able to supply 50% vmt in EVs with current build outlook if charging is done on the smart grid during non-peak hours, but also has hydrogen infrastructure. Other grids do not fair nearly as well, and FC exacerbate problems.

One thing that can reduce this waste is to use hydrogen fuel cells as range extenders in a phev. This means smaller fuel cells are needed as they only have to supply average power. It also means less infrastructure is needed as many will charge at home for most of their miles. The fuel cell lobby doesn't like to talk about this solution, because it means fc cars are not much cheaper than phevs. It also means that phevs need to come down in cost. That seems to be chu's funding prospective, instead of pretending fc costs are low today.

Does the US really need to spend hundreds of millions to commercialize fuel cell vehicles every year? What if in 10 years algea manufactured biodiesel becomes cheap and plentiful? Will continuing high funding levels for fuel cell vehicles seem smart then? Its one possible technology. Toyota says they can make the fuel cells cheap and use little platinum. Great. When they actually do that instead of just promise it, we an talk about increased funding for commercialization. Fuel cells are always the technology that is only 5 years away.

 

In 2009, this report said Toyota made comparable progress (30 grams) as GM. FCHV-adv came out in 2008. By 2015, that'll be 6 years later. I would hope they would drop Platinum usage to 10 grams by then.

I don't know how much the stack cost per kW. You'll also have to include the H2 tank cost as well. Toyota seem to be the leader in it.

The auto maker initially approached defense contractors for expertise, as most carbon-fiber tank-wrapping machines are built for military application.

That was abandoned in favor of the in-house process using automotive manufacturing techniques shown to be faster and more efficient.

“What we’ve done is looked at the best wrapping machines out there in the industry, and we’ve developed our own, (which) is six times faster than the current state-of-the-art,” Ward says. “And production quality is much, much better.

“We have less variance across our batches. So we think we’re going to have a significant advantage on the tanks and reducing the cost of the vehicle.”

Toyota believes even further efficiencies can be achieved in tank manufacturing between now and the 2015 commercialization target.​

We'll have to wait until 2015 to see the production FCVs from Honda, GM, Hyundai and Toyota. Which one will be the best? Cost the least? Will any of them show up?

 

There is plenty of excess power at night. Heck we even ideled 25TW of wind power, That is about equal to the energy in 700 million gallons of gasoline just being thrown away. because we could not use it.

Today's grid could power 80% of the US fleet if it were EV and were charging at night. That is without adding any new plants and we are still installing lots of wind power!

 

Link is dead, but given enough money reformation can be quite efficient. This happens for hydrogen for refining or large liquid hydrogen plants. The problem comes with getting the hydrogen to the stations, which in most cases requires liquification and trucking which gets rid of these energy advantages.

On site at a hydrogen fueling station the current costs are prohibitively expensive. You would need a extremely large volume to make it pay, which is why chu says reforming and compressing throws away 1/3 of the energy.

One plan is to put these reformers at big box stores like walmart, where they already have large amounts of space.

Similarly costs get quite high to get more efficient than ccgt tech to reuse the heat. Many cogenerators that can use the heat can get efficiency boosts in a cost effective way from combined heat and power from a simple gt or fuel cell box like a bloom box. These are smaller systems and a building or hospital might be able to put this heat to use.

 

Whaaat? Then he'd have to stop moving the goalposts.

Your typical car spends at least 90% of the time sitting and doing nothing. Most of the time, charging at L1 rates is more than enough to keep the battery topped off. One has to drive well over the average daily mileage 2 days in a row to require even 3.3 kW L2 charging.

Wow - I had no idea that much wind power is idled at night. That means that by charging at night one might even be getting 100% wind power (to take one of SageBrush's marginal power arguments now that it's convenient ).

 

Be my guest

Of course, charging up your car at night does not guarantee the windmill will be used. It depends which source the utility can buy cheapest, along with a host of political .... ahh .... inputs.

I recently read that OR has determined that the windmill shutdown last (fall?) favoring the hydro plants was illegal.

 

"using electricity" to make hydrogen . . . you're talking electrolysis, right? I didn't know it was 'prefered' over steam reformation of natural gas. I suppose it's the lesser of 2 evils. BOTH electrolisis and NG methods of 'acquiring' hydrogen actually waste the existing energy used to acquire the hydrogen ... ie; you're left with less energy then you started with. Strippinig hydrogen off natural gas molecules yields more hydrogen energy (ROI) than the electrolisis (but still leaves less energy than the NG already had), but I believe methane is one of the byproducts left behind after NG reformation. That makes electrolisis the environmental winner between NG and water distilation .... unless you factor in that appx 1/2 the nation's electricity is from coal. And of course, as you mentioned ... the grid is already in poor condition ... folks are crying about EV's using grid power ... yet PHEV's and EV's can go 3 to 4 times farther on electricity, had the electricity not been wasted by pulling hydrogen out of water via electrolisis.
The devil is in the details
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