Featured Review of hydrogen

No need to make up new definitions. A hybrid can just as easily be defined as having two complementary power sources, so that the deficiency of one canceled by the abilities of the other. Wiki seems to agree that a FC car fits in the serial hybrid category. CARB thinks FC cars are a battery powered car with a range extender... The FC is, in their mind, the range extender and the battery pack + motor is considered the motive power source.

No need to make anything up. It's all out there somewhere.

Dan
P.S. I'm sure this post will be proven wrong. If you look long enough you can find something on the 'net to prove any point.

 

I am going by SAE and other technical sources usage were the HEV, BEV, FCEV, etc. acronyms come from.
Then the cars having the hybrid label all have an ICE,

 

This sounds like the chicken and egg problem. "If only there were enough charging stations distributed around, more people would want to buy these FCEVs." But no one will invest their own money in these stations. So this is usually followed by a request for 100s of millions of taxpayer money to build these stations. "Build it and they will come!"

There's no need to do this. The chicken and egg problem has been solved in Germany. They built 56 hydrogen fueling stations distributed around Germany over the past few years. And yet there are only 386 fuel cell vehicles in the country. That's one station for every seven vehicles!

They built the stations, and no one came. I wish California would wake up and start cancelling all these wasteful taxpayer funded programs supporting an inefficient, dead-end technology. Think what could be done with that money. We could replace more diesel school buses with electric buses, build out more charging infrastructure, give more incentives to buy electric cars.

 

This is not an issue with H2 properties, but it is a potential issue with FCV economics if they have to cool off the H2 to -40C (approx =-40F) to get a good tankful, that does not sound economically attractive on the surface.

 

It isn't, but the only advantage over a BEV a FCEV has is the refueling as fast as gasoline cars.

Green hydrogen can come down in price. Pipelines and onsite production can cut the distribution costs. But compressors and refrigeration are mature technologies, there isn't much room for improvement. Hydrogen needs to be around twice the price of gasoline to be cost competitive, and with high pressure gas and liquid hydrogen, that doesn't seem possible with cheap fossil hydrogen.

A break through in something like metal hydrides might mean less energy for filling a hydrogen car.

 

And lower cost, longer range, lighter weight cars.

 

it's arguable that FCEV's tech doesen't even have THAT going for it. Remember? When the hydrogen lobby tried to scuttle EV's ?? .... by creating legislation stating 5 or 7 minute fuel time? And tesla bent their lobby over by creating a battery swap that was faster than filling up a gasser?
But EV drivers didn't want to bother with a swap, as the "charge takes too long" was simply - for the most part, a red herring concocted by the ev haters.

.

 

The charge takes too long. I spent 40 minutes in my car charging on Monday. It was intolerable except that I had a work meeting which I took on my phone.

Even a few minutes gassing up is too much for me. I can handle it if I can clean the windows or something too. But 2 minutes for gas, 5 minutes for windows and a three minute bathroom break is about my limit for tolerance when it comes to doing nothing at all. I'd rather watch paint dry.

Sitting and waiting for the car to charge is about as much fun as oral surgery.

 

I looked for information to support this, but kept running across sites that claim that FCEV are cheaper than BEV.... once you remove the EV subsidies and include up to 50% price subsidies for the FCEV to get the price down to $30,000. Does not sound real cheap.

Those sites also claim that FC stack costs will drastically decrease with economies of scale in the future. How does that work when 40% of the car's cost is the precious metals in the FC stack? Wouldn't those get more expensive as demand goes up?

Dan

 

puny battery - puny charge speed. ie; 1kw to 3kW's ??
far cry from 250kW's +
.

 

I know there are other H2 fueling station vendors...maybe someone has a better system (Lurgi etc).

 

The new Model S is 743 pounds heavier than the base Mirai, but buyers aren't going to care if a car is heavier when it is more efficient and performs better.
The Model S range is now 412 miles to the Mirai's 402. The S drops to 330 when not fully charging it, but the hydrogen tanks will rarely be filled to the top.

The S...costs a lot more. Then it is a different class of car. It has more space for people and cargo, AWD, and supercar level acceleration. It sounds like Tesla has much better seats than Toyota too. Niceness is subjective, but reviewers have compared the Mirai to Buick and Lincoln. Performance is around that of a Camry without the V6.

The point of fast refueling and long range is to make zero emission appealing for those trips. Toyota themselves say BEVs are for short trips and FCEVs for long. The Mirai's trunk is under 10 cubic feet. that is tiny for a road trip car. The Corolla has 13.1, and the Corvette 12.6.

Toyota's pricing of for the Mira is odd. They've lowered the price for the base, which is great, but the difference between the US and Japan is big. It is about a $3000 cut for Japan, but around $8000 in the US. The Prius Prime is cheaper here, and the federal tax credit for FCEVs was set to expire in 2021, so maybe this doesn't mean anything. The Limited pricing is over $16,000 though. With other models, the difference is in the $4000 to $6000, and I didn't see anything that the Mirai gets to justify that price jump.

But, yes, the Mirai is cheaper. While being $13,000 more than the Avalon hybrid, and $12,000 more than the Rav4 Prime.

The precious metals amount has been greatly reduced. The economies of scale comes with a large number of units though. Projections for the price drop are at 500k fuel cells a year. Toyota only plans 30k for this year, and this is the first year they weren't basically being hand made.

Compressing hydrogen to over 12,000psi and chilling to -40 to fill a 10,000psi tank just takes a lot of energy. Some systems are probably better than others, but not enough for a drastic energy savings.

 

Bob, you keep saying that, but it makes no sense. You kept the $45,000 car with twice the battery that still needed two hours to charge and which has a pretty restricted range from that REX package. Stopping for gas every 75 miles must get old quickly. Especially if you misjudge and end up stranded short of the next gas station.

But then you sold your Prime for a loss and bought a $50,000 Tesla. It does not make much sense.

 

Why are you sitting in the car while it charges? Buying electricity from a public charging station is almost always more expensive than using gasoline. Charging at home is a no pain, low cost proposition. Once the battery is empty gas should complete the ride.

Just my opinion.

Dan

 

Well, Of course I understand toys. After all, I'm a gadget freak. Your previous posts made it sound like the Tesla and BMW had some practical advantage or were a better financial deal. I kept trying to figure out where the advantages were and was stymied.

On the plus side, I did get to learn a bit more about the i3-REx, though I'm still a bit puzzled about their design decisions.

Dan

 

Those are numbers from june 2019, and probably because there was only one "mass produced" FCV by then, which is/was the Toyota Mirai.
But the plan is first to help fuel trucks and busses, and looking quite firm;
German state announces plans for a hydrogen economy | Autovista Group

 

250kW *minus*. If Teslas could charge at 250kW, from 0% to, say, 90%, that would be somewhat okay. But they only charge at 250kW when the battery is both warm and right around 20% of full-charge. It still takes an hour to get from 15% to ~90%.

Because there's nothing else to do.

I was at a free charger.

Works well - when I'm home.

My son doesn't like using gasoline, and he was with me.

 

Is it though? It certainly is more compelling than the model it replaced, but they still will need to heavily subsidize leases (lose money on every one) to get even to their 30,000/year world wide production goal. Most of their target market would rather get a plug-in (bev or phev). Between vw group and tesla they sold just under a million of those last year, and it will grow much higher this year. The mirai would be much more compelling with the engine, motors, and battery from the rav4 prime.

The hydrogen network with free subsidized hydrogen is not going to grow fast outside of korea and japan as the fuel cell vehicles are just not compelling enough for the government to continue to pay. We are talking 100 stations in the US in 2022 or 2023, that means you are extremely limited for long trips, much more limited than in a tesla bev.

Why compare it to the S instead of the model 3? The model 3 already is more luxurious with more passenger and cargo space than the mirai. The 350 mile long range dual motor version is less expensive and weighs about the same as the mirai (4250 lbs versus 4255 lbs for mirai and 4134lbs clarity fuel cell). Still most opt for the rwd model 3 standard plus (250 mile range) which is 3650 lbs - a full 600 lbs lighter than the base trim of the mirai. Time to stop acting as if fuel cell light vehicles are lighter than long range bevs unless you think Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai have much worse engineers designing these things versus the ones at tesla and vw group.

I'm guessing with the current price of lithium batteries, dropping the size of the fuel cell stack and adding a battery might actually make the cars less expensive to produce. Still its going to cost much more than a phev to make, and with a phev is going to be lighter and easier to design as the engineers don't need find space for the large hydrogen tanks. You can build that phev flex fuel and use that hydrogen to make methanol and still be better off ;-)

The bigger hydrogen lobby push is that people can't plug-in vehicles if they are renting. That sliver of people that has the money for a fuel cell vehicle and can't charge but don't want ghg in their car is not really likely to be a big segment. For these people vw groups porsche is producing "green" gasoline. It costs a lot more than oil based gasoline but solves that problem.

Economics have told mercedes that their phevs and bevs are a lot better than their phev fuel cell. Why lose tens of millions more on the project when they can just lose hundreds of thousands on fuel cell trucks.