GRA
Well-known member
mux said:The point is exactly that even though you can typically refuel in about 10 minutes start to finish, you require detours and planning all the time. This in turn really limits the effective range, because you can't even plug in to get to the nearest actually working, not-repressurizing fueling station - you have to keep some reserve (most drivers seem to err on the side of caution and keep ~20-30% reserve) to be able to refuel.
I'm not saying this is an inherent issue with all hydrogen cars ever, it's just that BEVs have gone from being demonstrably inferior in both range (sub-100mi) and refueling speed (maybe 50kW if you're lucky and it's not cold) to superior range (300-350mi actual range) and charging speed (250-350kW, plug&charge, no detours, no queues) in the span of the existence of the 1st gen Mirai.
While I agree with many of your points, it seems we disagree over the definition of "effective range". Where FCEVs fall short now is in areas of access, which is an infrastructure issue, not (as we've both noted) inherent to the car's tech, any more than ICEs have limited effective range where there aren't any gas stations (although as previously mentioned, their fuel is more portable than either electricity or H2). We also disagree that BEVs have achieved "superior range" to FCEVs, especially if you're talking about effective range, or superior charging speed, as neither is the case. That they're superior to earlier BEVs is undeniable, but not relevant to a comparison with FCEVs. Nor are BEVs yet capable of not having to make detours or requiring no planning - even the Supercharger network in the U.S. has major gaps remaining, especially if you want to go off-interstate, and Electrify America is still completing their major interstate routes. Given the large spacing between SC/QC sites in rural areas, large reserve % are required of BEVs as well, with the additional disadvantage that use of same will increase degradation to a greater or lesser extent over the long term. Perhaps the most accurate statement is that BEVs currently require less planning in many areas.
Re re-pressurization, as was to be expected, the first generation of sites had issues - what new tech doesn't? The second gen sites now coming on-line have two instead of one dispensers, much more capacity (800 kg. in the one most recently opened here, versus 180 kg. (and one dispenser) typical of the first gen, and IIRR are required to support 8 full refuelings/hour. We'll see how they do, but in no way can they be considered inferior to BEV charging speeds, especially if you're talking full fills.
mux said:In the meantime, the only way hydrogen has been able to sort of respond is by making a physically significantly larger car to accomodate an extra fuel tank (Nexo) and building about 1/5th of the promised new fueling stations, both in Europe and the US.
The roll-out of stations here has undoubtedly fallen behind schedule, indeed we've only got 40-some in California now when it was initially calculated that it would take 68 (IIRR) up front just to make an initial deployment of FCEVs feasible. I regard that as a glass half empty/half full issue. As to vehicle size, given rapid refueling you don't necessarily need to have the same on-board range as a BEV must have, given the BEV's limitations on usable SoC for longevity (and keeping recharging times reasonable), provided you have a sufficiently dense fueling infrastructure (which doesn't exist yet). Not that I think high-pressure gas storage is the ultimate end, but hopefully an intermediate method on the way to adsorption/nano tube storage if we can commercialize one of those.
mux said:This is not news, but it's typical that we see this happening for an alternative fuel again and again. Remember CNG? That was supposed to be the bees knees, and it theoretically was: about 30% lower emissions without the need for any other changes to the car, smaller engines for the same power. It even had the advantage over hydrogen that you could refuel at home, if you had mains gas. But large fuel tanks and very sparse fueling stymied the technology. There were plenty of promises even by oil companies like Shell and BP that they'd offer CNG widely, there were large metro areas that retrofitted buses and taxis to CNG and built their own publically funded refueling infrastructure. All of this has happend over the past 20 years or so, and where is it now? It's basically a zombie technology.
Before CNG, it was liquified gas.
I've predicted this for 10+ years now, but this is what's happening to hydrogen and has been for all the time I've been involved with the tech. Nobody still supporting hydrogen vehicle technologies at this point will be easy to convince of this - obviously this is a self-selecting group - but it's pretty obvious. I'm really surprised BEVs have been able to garner so much support and have progressed so much in so little time.
We agree about the difficulties of any alternative fuel deployment, and how long any such transition will take. We do disagree a bit about CNG, as while it never took off for consumer vehicles, commercial vehicles, especially buses, are another matter. True, it's a bridge tech on the way to something better, but it's certainly improved the local air quality around here, where the transit buses are all CNG (plus a few FCEV) instead of diesels. IDK if FCEVs will have a similar primarily commercial deployment as with CNG, or if they will also be widely adopted by consumers, especially by people who don't live in detached, single family homes with charging on site. That self-selected group you refer to includes China, Germany, S. Korea and Japan so that's a lot of convincing you need to do.
I'm not partial to any particular ZEV tech, only that we get off fossil-fuels ASAP. It happens that my particular use case is better matched by the current capabilities of FCEVs (assuming the infrastructure/pricing improvements previously mentioned) rather than BEVs, but as my sig says I don't believe in silver bullets and do believe we need to advance on multiple fronts as rapidly as possible until we've solved the problem, accepting that there'll be much money/effort wasted along the way while we go down what turn out to be dead ends, or are no more than niches. This is the same process as when electricity or cars were first introduced, so why would we expect anything different this time around?