AndyH
Well-known member
With absolutely zero snark, cBeam, I get that. I'm really not sure why this message is so difficult for many to understand. I keep trying to shine the light on it from different directions but so far I'm failing miserably. Mea culpa.cBeam said:AndyH said:We have 40 years at most to get rid of ALL fossil-fueled transportation and electricity generation and building heating. How many LEAF batteries will it take to haul 40,000 lbs of toilets from San Diego to our local Home Depot?
AndyH, I don't understand what you are arguing.
If you read this thread, you will find much agreement on the first part of your statement - the key words being 'passenger cars' - actually a subset of them - the relatively small pax vehicles used for commuting. Yes, Tesla has longer-range cars but they're neither priced nor built in quantities to reach the middle class much less the working class.cBeam said:There is no doubt in my mind that we need to get off the oil burning habit. Or the fossil fuel habit overall, for many reasons (we run out of it, climate change, real costs of burning C (not only the cost we pay today, but also the cost of repairing the damage that we do burning it)).
There are many challenges to get off fossil: how fast, which changes are needed, who pays, what gets subsidized, etc, etc. Many vested interests to overcome.
I understand that this thread is about Hydrogen and FCEVs.
- Like others I think that batteries will be the better storage devices for passenger cars. I do not see fuel cells competitive for this application.
Actually, H2 storage is being installed and it is more capable and less expensive/more profitable than batteries. That's really important. In addition to storing renewable energy that would otherwise be curtailed and returning most of that energy to the grid at a later date via fuel cells, it can be directly burned in a gas turbine and can provide process heat for making steel. Electricity is the least efficient way to heat anything on the planet. Even if not used in a fuel cell, H2 will support the BEV fleet by supplying electricity.cBeam said:- I can see that for stationary storage hydrogen as energy storage medium might have a chance. I doubt it, but I do not rule it out yet. Most likely candidates are large scale (utility sized) facilities to decouple energy production and energy consumption. Still, this technology will need to compete with batteries.
Again - if you become familiar with the five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution all of this will click into place. It's more than 'just' the very important need to electrify transportation. There's a ton of synergy and multiple benefits to using H2 over a battery. Needing a bit of grid stabilization in a region and solving it with a battery is a 1+1=2 linear solution. Using H2 to provide the same benefit, while also enabling a fueling station and replacing natural gas is a 1+1=4 situation. (Grid storage, temporal energy shifting, transportation, process heat, eliminating fossil fuels in multiple categories...)cBeam said:- Then there is the middle segment, i.e. trucks and very large vehicles. Maybe batteries will be too heavy /too large for them to be really usable, maybe not. But let's assume we'd need to build a hydrogen infrastructure just for them, building filling stations in a density that enables them to operate countrywide or even globally. I have a very hard time to see that this can be cost effective, the unsubsidized price of hydrogen as fuel will be much much higher than the cost of filling up batteries with electrons.
So, are you arguing that hydrogen fuel cells for Leaf or Tesla sized cars have a future? Or are you just arguing that we need a good solution for trucks and large vehicles and batteries will have to have competition?
Just limiting it to cars/light vehicles, though - today's fuel cell vehicles are priced in Model S territory but have the same range and sub-3 minute 'recharging'. That's one plus for FCEV over BEV. In addition, the folks in the middle of the country that are shoveling snow today benefit from being able to use the heat and defrost at full speed without losing range - that's another plus for FCEV over BEV. There is at least as much R&D in the fuel cell world as the battery world today - and while the lithium battery is a fairly mature tech and is very low on the cost curve, the fuel cell is still young and still much higher on the cost curve. It's pretty clear that there is plenty of room for fuel cell prices to fall, but there is very little room for lithium battery prices to fall. This suggests very, very strongly that the Hyundai Tucson fuel cell vehicle will fall in price much faster than a BEV with similar range/power. So yes - in addition to large trucks, medium trucks, and F150-ish work trucks that will benefit from lighter and less expensive power packages, it should also translate to less expensive FCEV commuter vehicles as well.
For one example - here's a group in the UK that's taken the Rocky Mountain Institute's hypercar tenets to heart and have FCEV commuter vehicles on the road: http://www.riversimple.com/ The fuel cell stack is smaller, lighter, less expensive, and faster to 'recharge' than a lithium battery. In addition, their business model is more along the car sharing/short-term car rental model that's more in tune with Gen-x and Millennials. Personal transportation desires are changing - the future is already looking to be less about 'three cars in every garage' to 'I want a car when I need one and I want my bicycle the other 48 weeks of the year'.
We need ALL forms of electric transportation and we need them as quickly as we can turn them out. We have about 40 years of highly-condensed solar energy we can use for a transition. Or we can continue to argue about solutions, keep burning oil for 40 years, and have no replacement capability in 2040. I hope we do the former and not the latter.