The Economist: Electric cars Difference Engine: Tailpipe truths

Or don't get an electric car that requires a garage with a charging station. Lack of garage with charging station eliminates a huge chunk of the market. You had said people living in apartments can't afford electrics and my point about Trump Tower is that millions of high income Americans, potential customers for electric cars, have no access to home chargers.

No. Hydrogen or other fueled vehicles DO NOT NEED garage charging stations. That is exactly why electrics are at such a disadvantage, electrics require the home charging and hydrogen does not.

It is an ADDED advantage that hydrogen can offer home charging but does not require it anymore than current gasoline powered cars require it.

 

Which is true of all forms electrical generation also. Losses at every step. With solar and wind where the fuel cost is zero, we are not as concerned with the small differentials in energy loss between generating electricity or hydrogen. Catalyst assisted electrolysis (MIT 2008) greatly increased the efficiency of hydrogen production via electrolysis.

The reason for the hydrogen is the limitations of range and refueling that, barring a breakthrough in battery technology that allows for fast and furious recharge at the filling station (10 minutes max), electrics are too limited to do the job of replacing gasoline. Hydrogen can replace all transportation fossil fuels.

 

Currently natural gas and oil are the main sources of hydrogen. In California oil is number 1. This is because they are the least expensive methods. But lets look out to 2025 when this switch over to hydrogen is supposed to happen. By that year supposedly the grid will be cleaner with more renewable. Also by that year natural gas is likely to not be plentiful enough to run the transportation fleet. Those thinking about this want to produce the hydrogen when excess electricity is on the grid, allowing the base power plants (coal, ccgt, nuclear, hydro) to continue to run and renewables to run at full efficiency. This electricity should be less expensive to produce and make the grid more efficient.

Using the electricity to charge smart grid phev and bevs will do the same function, and DOE's chu wants to do this in stationary fuel cells. Any way you cut it BEVs can use this energy more efficiently, but may lack the range.

NG is mainly methane. The problem with using methane or natural gas or biogas is that it may be more productive for other uses. If the goal is also to cut ghg by 80%, natural gas won't go low eneough unless its sequestered. This is much easier to do at ccgt natural gas and igcc coal plants. It is likely if the steam reformation method is used, natural gas would start to get expensive, and coal would be used in many parts of the country.

Germany is one of the chief research countries. They want to use excess french nuclear electricity and European wind power to generate the hydrogen. Europe and Japan do not have the natural gas resources North America has.

Yes, the long term solution may be to use fuel cells in a EREV PHFCV. Or it may be to use biofuels in a PHEV. We may have more natural gas than we think and hydrogen from that might work in the future. We just don't know, other than fuel cell vehicles have not come down in price as fast as the proponents have promised. If the FC gets inexpensive enough then maybe we will have a better idea of how much natural gas we have. The grid needs to get cleaned up in any case. Doing plug in fuel cell busses seems like a good use of the technology at current prices.

 

FYI the reason most current hydrogen is distilled at oil refineries is that hydrogen is an industrial gas used in the refining of oil products.

Another plus for hydrogen in that most oil refineries flare off large volumes of excess hydrogen which is present in oil. They don't call'em hydrocarbons for nothing.

So as hydrogen supplants hydrocarbons as fuel the hydrocarbons help supply the hydrogen to make the transition.

 

BPA orders NW wind farms to curtail production | Local News | The Seattle Times

Wind has been shut down twice in recent days, illegal or not.

 

Hydrogen vehicles do seem to be either leased by corporations like Disney or movie stars or the super rich.

Why not help out these unfortunates with large subsidies for creating more hydrogen vehicles. They are the 1% and deserve all the government money. Bob Lutz used to want one. Jodie Foster has hers.

 

Hadn't seen Honda's list of leasees. Where did you see that?

As with any highly sought after new technology status symbol, those with power and influence will manage to get to the top of the list. And the car makers are only too eager to have the cachet of the rich and famous wanting to be seen in their product. It's all good.

With vehicles like the FCX it is important for the car makers to have people who will put in miles in normal use to get the feedback they need to make improvements. A movie star who parks it like a trophy is not really useful.

So you will see the initial leases going to people who are going to drive the car no matter what their socio economic status.

 

An over abundance of wind generated electrical power and an over abundance of water....hmm...now what could we make with that?

 

2009 Honda FCX Clarity Deliveries Begin - Car News - Car and Driver

Doesn't look like they care about feedback Its about promotion.
What about this average guy with 4 other cars

We Talk With The Third Lessee of a Honda FCX Clarity - Interview - Car and Driver

Its not really there fault, at a lease price of $600/mo (maybe free to celebreties) how many middle income people want them.

So why build it?
Why Fuel Cells Won't Work | Honda FCX Clarity: Beauty for beauty's sake - Los Angeles Times

Does that mean it will be a solution to scarce oil or ghg?

 

Makes sense. Glad to see your imagined problems were just that.

Hydrogen is definitely an answer and one that is applicable for all transportation uses. We currently make enough hydrogen for 10% of gasoline needs so building upon the existing substantial industrial hydrogen infrastructure and distribution system should make the transition easier.

 

Its very clear you have never lived in Manhattan. People with money in Manhattan, and people with nice cars in many cities, pay to keep them in garages. It does not matter what type of car they own.. if you want to keep your car nice, you keep it in a garage. If you don't want to waste time playing a find-a-parking-spot game you pay to keep it in a garage. I know, I lived there and have many faculty friends that did/do live there. If you can afford to live in in trump towers, you get parking.. I believe trump towers include 24hr valet parking.. (a little extra for valet is nothing if you live there). Even normal apartments in cities have included garages or one pays extra. Heck, even the faculty housing at 125st has allocated garage parking -- one spot included and faculty can rent a second.

And there are even progressie apartment building for normal folks, e.g.
"New" Volt owner #3515



In many paces condo's cannot stop EVs nor owners installing charging, e.g. in California they have this law SB 209 Senate Bill - CHAPTERED)


I'll agree that apartment dwellers are going are to have a harder time, but that does not mean we push hydrogen over EV. Its a invalid argument to say since some people, a minority, cannot use EV, then everyone should be heading for hydrogen even though its far less efficient on renewable energy. Yeah you can refuel faster than an EV, but so can NG and gas and ethanol.









You really don't get it.

 

We could charge a lot of EVs.. or make hydrogen for half as many cars..

 

Public garages with no charging stations and meters though some enterprising garage may start doing that.

The requirement for home with a garage and charging station remains a huge impediment to mass acceptance of electric cars. Likewise the range and refueling issues.

Nor does Toyota, for one, who noted that the range and refill issues made the EV's "not ready for prime time". I'll stick with Toyota, MIT, Honda, AirProducts, Shell et al who are building out the hydrogen cars and infrastructure as they think that hydrogen can replace gasoline while EV cannot.

 

You can't actually because the windpower is disconnected from the grid due to excess capacity. One could redirect that excess capacity to hydrogen production though vs. shutting down the wind mills.

And it would be about 70% as many hydrogen cars based on catalyst assisted electrolysis.

 

Looks like Bloom is still running in secret mode, but they let it out that their latest generation of solid oxide fuel cells is over 60% efficient now and they have doubled output to 200 kW in the same footprint as their last gen 100 kW units (which were in the upper 40% efficient).

A rare peek behind Bloom Energy’s next-gen fuel cell tech

Could it be much longer before these utility scale fuel cells are more efficient than the best CCGT plants? They also announced that that they are installing 30MW of fuel cells for a utility in Delaware - the biggest fuel cell installation ever.

I did notice in the interview that they said that the units do degrade over time - I have to wonder how fast they degrade and how much it costs to get them back to spec? They seem to be very secretive on costs, but the costs must be competitive to get a utility to use them for generation and not just be used for net-generation by businesses.

So - to bring this back on topic - Bloom seems completely focused on the utility market. One can easily see that the 200 kW unit is still very large - appears to be appx the size of a semi-trailer. There's no way one can fit a 30-40 kW unit into a car - 30-40 kW of Bloom box is the size of a car. Granted it's probably still far from space optimized given that they've reduced the size by 50% in just a couple years, but still. I'd like to see an army of these used to replace coal and old gas turbine plants - to then charge plug-ins. 60%+ efficient Bloom box * 85% efficient BEV = 51% natural gas to wheel efficiency.

And we can do this today.

Huzzah!

PS - Since these Bloom boxes are DC internally - One could use these to directly power a DC quick charger and avoid a DC/AC and then AC/DC conversion step with a single DC/DC voltage adjustment to improve BEV charging efficiency.

 

The important thing about these bloom boxes are they are small. 60% is about the theoretical limit of efficiency

They are about $1250/kw, but bloom may be able to drop the price. There are government incentives especially if they burn biogas. Bloom had said with the current boxes this would be about 10 or 11 cents per kwh. The new ones should be less expensive, and costs could continue to go down. This still is much more expensive per unit power than a ccgt plant, but they can be added in small chunks. They also have slower start up than the new ccgt.

This new ge combined cycle plant can cycle fast to be compatible with wind and solar but the tech needs to be in the hundreds of megawatts. Bloom boxes are small enough for google or apple to just add them to the grid.
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Its incapatible tech for cars, unless they are erev. It takes awhile for the catalysts to heat up. It is also much more expensive with a much higher usefull life than a car needs.

Yep. a PHEV has fast fill ups and can use efficient renewables or other sources like bloom boxes.

 

Hmmm, I was reading the that the theoretical limit was a bit over 80%... It would be quite impressive if they actually were at the theoretical limit already since cost and technical issues usually prevents that.

Yeah, slow ramp rates will make them best for baseload applications or other loads with matching ramp rates.

 

60% is around the theoretical limit of the type of fuel (CH4) and fuel cell they are using. The rest is heat, which could be used. Bloom is now trying to decrease cost. On many grids load varies greatly with weather and air conditioning usage. Bloom boxes not only allow distribution of power generation, but an easy way to cheaply add summer power that doesn't consume fuel in the winter.

If you make a larger system with different types of fuel cells that reuses that heat, efficiency goes up. If the fuel source is hydrogen some experimental fuel cells can be 90% efficient. If the heat of the fuel cell is used to drive a very efficient steam reformer, then the system from methane to electricity can get much more efficient. Such a system depending on fuel cell type, could have fast system response with a hydrogen storage tank. In smart grid applications it could also buffer the grid by using electrolysis to create hydrogen during low loads, and providing power for peak loads. Such a system if made in expensive enough could replace diesel and simple turbine generators, while allowing for more solar and wind.

 

I don't want to burst your optimistic balloon ... but you might want to re-read that MIT link again:

Most folk understand the magic word 'could'. It means that it "might"... and that it equally means maybe ... and that it equally means maybe NOT ... and equally means might NOT. It equally means nothing. That means don't hold your breath, because history has proven that 100% of the hydrogen "maybe's" and 100% of the hydrogen "could's" and 100% of the hydrogen "might's" so far, have all been 100% illusory. The other hydrogen word coined for 4 decades now is vaporware. As for Toyota, they are coming out with Gen II RAV-4EV ... and the folks on the wait list won't have to pay 6 figures for it. But the hydrogen cars that Toyota gets big research dollars for ... the hydrogen 'price estimates' always have been unaffordable, or not willing to be mentioned. But, keep up the optimism, because as the MIT articles says ... "it could" ... I guess.

 

As do the scientists at MIT who noted if the technology was applied. It's kind of like US "could" be 50% more energy efficient using current technology and policies proven by European developed nations. Unfortunately for the US, there is no "magic", and US will not advance in this crucial area even though it easily...magic word coming...COULD.

Could means it is possible to do if country has brains, foresight and courage to do it. The technology is there as the MIT work demonstrates regarding efficient production of hydrogen by catalyst assisted hydrolysis.