Featured Toyota Believes Fuel Cell Prices Will Match Hybrids

It sure looks easy on paper, with a few graphs and charts. Getting it done in the field is much harder. It cracks me up every time some journal writes about something like this. They aren't funding it, getting the permits, doing the work. It's very easy when all you have to do is write about it.

 

Those are just the stats. It is my opinion that people who own and live in a home, most of which have a garage (whether used for cars of full of junk I have no idea) are more likely to want to own an EV or PHEV.

But every time we discuss EV sales, someone brings up that many people rent apartments and can't charge them at home. My point is that EV sales are currently relatively tiny and if they can only be sold to home owners, initially, we have plenty of potential customers for many years. While this is going on there will be more infrastructure built (such as chargers at work, new apartments built with chargers, chargers at dealers, chargers at gas stations, etc) so that the market can expand to renters as well.

Mike

 

Yes, the study acknowledges this, but the think previously was that there wasn't enough sites for pumped water worldwide for supporting renewables in a meaningful manor. Just 1% of these sites being suitable once the ground and paper work is done, negates that thinking.

 

@Trollbait I do not think the H2 tanks for the car are too heavy, do you? Carbon fiber or composite right?

Was just seeing something interesting on PBS on historical rocket development, and let's see if I remember this right, Goddard or Von Braum realized to escape earth's gravity the only fuel with enough power and low enough mass was Hydrogen.

 

Carbon fiber is strong and light. 10,000psi is a lot of force to contain though. The strength and weight of carbon fiber is what makes it the only material that is practical for a car hydrogen tank.

The goal for hydrogen tanks was to get too 5% weight, which means the weight of the held hydrogen equals 5% of the filled tanks weight. The tanks on the Mirai just missed that, but they are actually designed for 12.5k psi. Its tank, and other hydrogen cars', holds 5kg; that is also the amount used for filling time targets.

At 5% wt., a tank that holds 5 kg of hydrogen weighs 95kg, or about 209 pounds. That's lighter than a battery, but 5 to 10 times heavier than a liquid fuel tank.

They are also bulky. Assuming a density of 2kg/L(best case I found for carbon fiber), a tank takes up 230L/ 60 gallons/8 cubic feet or so of space for that 5 kgs of fuel. Physics dictates that the tanks be spheres or cylinders, which means more space is taken up in the car's frame. Well, you could make them different shapes, but then you need more material to reinforce corners and edges, which increases weight.

The Clarity FCEV loses about as much trunk space as an older Camry hybrid in comparison to the PHEV model. It is also a little bit heavier.

The bulk is the real disadvantage, but people hear hydrogen, and assume everything involved is light weight.

Upper rocket stages have different requirements in their fuel than ground vehicles. Hydrazine could make a good fuel for FCEVs also. As a liquid is has advantages over hydrogen. It probably isn't a good idea also.

I note that the first stage of rockets tend to use kerosene or a solid propellant. SpaceX doesn't use hydrogen at all.
SpaceX rocket engines - Wikipedia

The low density of hydrogen is also a drawback for rockets. You need bigger tanks for it. It's advantages in the upper stages can be worth it.
Liquid rocket propellant - Wikipedia

 

The 10,000 psi hydrogen tanks in current fuel cell cars are carbon fiber. These tanks must be protected and combined with the fuel cell weight makes the heavier than gasoline or battery powered cars.

Honda Clarity and Toyota Mirai Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars Compared! | Comparison Test | Car and Driver
The clarity is 4148 lbs, the mirai is 4097 lbs. By contrast the tesla model 3 long range is 3814 lbs around the same as lexus es hybrid at 3822 lbs. The tanks are not too heavy, but the idea that because hydrogen is light the cars will be light compared to similar range bevs is just not true. The model 3 has more interior room and more trunk room than the mirai. It has 5 cubic feet less interior room, but 3 cubic feet more trunk room than the clarity. The battery in the 325 mile epa range weighs about 1050 lbs, which means the protection, tanks, fuel cell, battery, etc in in the mirai and clarity must weigh more, especially since the model 3 has a better suspension and more powerful motor.

I believe it was goddard that was the big proponent of using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in rockets. Hydrogen has some very good and very bad characteristics.

 

10,000 psi? Holy Rocket Propelled Destruction!

Having been in a lab when the lab next door had a 2,200 psi O2 cylinder fall, lose it's valve, and then smash through a cinder block/brick wall, I don't think there's any way I'd ever feel safe within about a 1/4 mile of one of those. What are the fail-safes for a crash?

 

Armored like a tank with a non-explosive but brisk failure process

 

There's where the difficulty lies...

 

Where's usbseawolf when you need him? LOL

 

What I've learned from this thread so far:

• FCEVs use smaller traction batteries than BEVs. You can get considerably more FCEVs than BEVs on the road per ton of lithium mined.
  
• The fuel cell needs a significant amount of platinum, not without its own interesting geopolitical baggage from the mines on up.
• Hydrogen fill-ups sound like a pain in the butt, unless you can do it in your own driveway overnight.
• Priuschat armchair car designers really enjoy winner-take-all games
• Nobody is going to buy any of these in signifcant quantity until they are slightly cheaper than ICE cars

A question:

If you took the Toyota Mirai and added a battery charger, would it really be much different than a Chevrolet Volt? It goes a bit on battery and uses a chemical reaction as a power source for range extension. The relative sizes and electrical capacities in the hardware do not match- I get that. But are they really that far apart?

 

The analysis above is okay, but it forgot a couple things that favor/disfavor - turning on which side you want as winner-take-all ) a fuel cell. Namely, the cost of fuel, & the ease/cost of building out infrastructure. Even though the fossil fuel industry would have a win-win if there were a massive hydrogen interstate highway, they were willing to sue to assure that they weren't forced to build it. I'm sure there actuaries and bean counters took all of the variables into effect.
As for a change in the hybrid system, whether it is an ice versus battery or a hybrid system using a platinum Stack & Battery, both have the same issue. Added cost. Even as more & more folks slip out of the middle-class, returning to the multi millennium / historic norm of haves & Have Nots, bigger costs will play an ever-increasing role in viability of any vehicle.
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Worthy of further exploration. Both have huge challenges- making the hydrogen in the right places and quantities, shortly before it is needed. Not easy. Generating more electricity, and moving it to where it is needed in a timely manner may not be equally hard, but it also remains almost equally yet-to-be-done.

 

Yes - both are niche. Hydrogen is still a niche w/in a niche. For prospective - if one factors tesla's best production quarter .... then factor just one month of that quarter, your total of tesla cars is still greater than all hydrogen cars on the road today. And that's just teslas. Considering all their warts? that's something to ponder.
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The Nissan van is ingenious. They tested it in Brazil because Brazil already has 100% Ethanol pumps throughout the country. But the experiment is over now. I wonder if Nissan is going to do anything more with the technology.

 

That's the thing that will stop hydrogen cars from going to volume: $3 million to build two stations! And maintenance is very expensive too (much more than a gas station). How many charging stations can you build with $3 million? That's why in the entire US there are only a handful of stations around San Francisco and Los Angeles even after 10 years of pushing the technology (and none actually in the city of San Francisco or in Oakland). And how much do they have to charge for the hydrogen to make up the cost to build and maintain the station (not even mentioning the hydrogen cost)?

Without government money, no one is going to build hydrogen refueling stations, and only hobbyists will buy a car that can only drive near two cities in California and cost more to refuel than gasoline.

 

For accurate comparison, make sure these stations are powerful enough to get the BEV from 20% to 100% in 6.5 minutes.

It might not cost $1.5M per station, but it's not going to be cheap to meet the same standard of performance.

 

Here is the problem. I need to drive for days to get to a public hydrogen station, while infrastructure is already in my garage for all my daily needs, and in the wild in 2 years for 20 minute charges to get about 170 miles of range. How many long trips are people going to take? Why is 6.5 minutes needed (clue, the 5 minutes came from the hydrogen lobby and when tesla demonstrated battery swap in about 2 minutes they screamed it was unfair). Because of the battery technology if you are going to do it faster than 10 minutes then you probably need a swap station. Enough people aren't really willing to pay $45 for a swap in 2 minutes versus $20 to take 20, and if you did both unsubsidized that $45 is for 200 miles of range is really what hydrogen would cost in 2025 (right now its much much more) and the $20 for 200 miles is really what tesla is charging in california ;- for the model 3 for 200 mile charge). Governments are the only ones that will really pay for the infrastructure and Japan is paying, about $20K/car and over 100 stations for about $500 M, plus billions for hydrogen R&D. If they get to their 40K fcv goal by next summer (they are at less than 10% today) then incentives plus infrastructure will be about $30K/vehicles. If you take long trips and have a phev something like the clarity or prime you still can charge most miles in your garage and add that gasoline for longer drives much more conveniently and less expensively than hydrogen. I don't think US or European taxpayers are willing to pay hundreds of billions of dollars for hydrogen infrastructure then pay more for fuel. Hydrogen is really in the R&D phase, and it may never get to mass commercialization like plug-ins are today.

Let's continue running the experiment in japan, but Toyota is dreaming if they think they can bring unsubsidized fueling/maintenance/and car cost for a 10,000 psi hydrogen vehicle down to a phev anytime soon. Maybe they can get the vehicle cost down to a hybrid, but maintenance and fueling unsubsidized with be much greater and less convenient than phevs and bevs for at least the next decade without significant breakthroughs. That is why they frame it strangely and talk about fueling convenience assuming the government will build a great infrastructure quickly and it won't add to the costs.

Battery swap would be much less expensive than hydrogen infrastructure, and its likely we see it rolled out fastest in china.
The Faster, Cheaper, Better Way to Charge Electric Vehicles | WIRED

California infrastructure of 40 hydrogen stations is already strained in some areas with less than 7000 vehicles on its roads. These stations cost around $120M in subsidies so far and they need to be subsidized more to stay operational. $120 M could probably build about 60 battery swap stations and packs that could buffer the grid, and have a throughput of around 5x the cars at peak as the current hydrogen stations. Each supercharger costs tesla about $175K which means you can add them easily in a distributed network like gas stations, so a network of home charging plus supercharging plus swap stations would be much less expensive than a hydrogen network.

 

I thought we were limiting the scope to public refueling. I could put up an electrolyzer and a chiller/compressor at home (admittedly very difficult and very expensive at this time) and also achieve overnight home refueling for an H2-powered car.

Likewise, I would need to drive for days to get to an EV charger that could do the job in six minutes.

Reading these debates are always interesting and informative. I've learned a lot along my way.

A few personal preliminary conclusions:

If I ever switch to a BEV, it'll only be charged at home. If I need to go further, I'll be using another mode of transport altogether. Given my present personal and family travel needs, this means I can't commit much of my family transportation budget towards a BEV, since it's only capable of solving about a third of my total travel needs.

If I ever switch to a hydrogen FCEV, it will always get gassed up down at the corner H2 station. No sign of one yet so this path doesn't look likely at all.

I agree that battery swapping has legs to it- works great for my lawnmower!

 

Something that probably wasn't covered earlier, has there been studies done on hydrogen embrittlement? Not just on fuel cell vehicles, but the equipment at hydrogen filling stations. Would that cause a safety issue if it fails? People like watching explosions so long as it's not happening right by them.

Might also limit where you can build them because people will scream "NIMBY!" (Not in my backyard) the moment someone starts bringing up explosions. Unless all that equipment is buried underground and directed towards the sky?