Hydrogen and FCEVs discussion thread

PowerCell Sweden receives first marine order for two S3 prototype stacks; on-board H2 production via solar electricity

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PowerCell Sweden AB has received the first marine order for two PowerCell S3 prototype stacks, which Swiss Hydrogen will install on a ship powered by photovoltaics. . . .

The ship will be supplied with a system that encompasses on-board production of hydrogen gas from solar electricity, storage of hydrogen gas and two fuel cells each one 30 kW, which amounts to 80 hp in total. . . .

More countries are demanding fossil-free energy for marine fields of application. The Netherlands has decided to develop fossil-free ferries. Norway, that was an early user of battery operations, is far advanced in establishing fuel cell-powered ships. Over the next few years car ferries, passenger ferries and a fishing boat will be powered by fuel cell technology in Norway.

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TonyWilliams said:

Dear hydrogen folks,

It appears the "gig is up". But, don't worry; the state of California will still be giving uber-favorable status to hydrogen cars (over EVs), while sucking tens of millions in taxpayer fund for hydrogen stations for the next ten years or more. They will get their hands on oodles of the VW "dieselgate" bucks, and lots more.


https://electrek.co/2016/11/07/toyota-long-range-battery-powered-electric-cars-2020-hydrogen-fuel-cells-failing/


"Now one of the most prominent proponents of hydrogen fuel cell cars, Toyota, is reportedly planning to mass produce battery-powered long-range electric cars by 2020."

"The news comes as Toyota is having difficulties selling the Mirai, its hydrogen cars, in the US. Despite cutting the price on several occasions, with now a lease at only $350 (down from $500) in California, the Japanese automaker can’t find a market for the vehicle and only delivered 782 units since it started deliveries last year – and that’s including the state buying dozens of them for their own fleets to justify the millions of dollars spent on refuelling infrastructure.he hydrogen lobby will be still cashing checks from the state of California for a decade or more."

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Like some, you've surmised more than the reality, i.e. Toyota for the near term will "push" the hybrid
to its next phase, a BEV, as an interim small market vehicle as will most automotive OEMs. As do most
automotive OEMs, Toyota views a long term "seamless" transition for the typical ICEV consumer as a FCEV.

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lorenfb said:

TonyWilliams said:

Dear hydrogen folks,

It appears the "gig is up". But, don't worry; the state of California will still be giving uber-favorable status to hydrogen cars (over EVs), while sucking tens of millions in taxpayer fund for hydrogen stations for the next ten years or more. They will get their hands on oodles of the VW "dieselgate" bucks, and lots more.


https://electrek.co/2016/11/07/toyota-long-range-battery-powered-electric-cars-2020-hydrogen-fuel-cells-failing/


"Now one of the most prominent proponents of hydrogen fuel cell cars, Toyota, is reportedly planning to mass produce battery-powered long-range electric cars by 2020."

"The news comes as Toyota is having difficulties selling the Mirai, its hydrogen cars, in the US. Despite cutting the price on several occasions, with now a lease at only $350 (down from $500) in California, the Japanese automaker can’t find a market for the vehicle and only delivered 782 units since it started deliveries last year – and that’s including the state buying dozens of them for their own fleets to justify the millions of dollars spent on refuelling infrastructure.he hydrogen lobby will be still cashing checks from the state of California for a decade or more."

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As I posted in the Mirai thread:

Like some, you've surmised more than the reality, i.e. Toyota for the near term will "push" the hybrid
to its next phase, a BEV, as an interim small market vehicle as will most automotive OEMs. As do most
automotive OEMs, Toyota views a long term "seamless" transition for the typical ICEV consumer as a FCEV.

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Chevrolet Colorado ZH2 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Appears At SEMA (w/videos)

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rcm4453 said:

I highly doubt the long term solution will be a FCEV for the following reasons:

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finman100 said:

OMG. that is the funniest thing I've read today. thanks for the laugh. wow, the denial of a wasted/failed transportation "fuel" like Hydrogen is so far-fetched. just. wow.

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lorenfb said:

Any company, e.g. Tesla, relying on a single technology to maintain long term growth and not maintaining an R&D effort to transition to new technologies, e.g. FCEVs, as they become competitive is very likely to become marginal or non-existent, e.g. Kodak, Blackberry, IBM (marginal), HP (marginal), Intel (marginal compared to Qualcomm), and Microsoft (before the cloud). An automotive OEM would be very naive and negligent to their shareholders to not maintain a development effort for a FCEV, since it provides the most "transparent" transition from an ICEV for the consumer.

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RegGuheert said:

What I object to is the idea that hydrogen is somehow the "end game". I believe this is the message being pushed by some in the oil industry since they believe that they have a chance to at least partially control the hydrogen market while they have little they can do with BEVs except lose market share to them. However, for most applications I believe BEVs are the "end game" and hydrogen is now simply a distraction from the steady roll-out that is now occurring.

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RegGuheert said:

6) There are many people, corporations and governments who are pushing hydrogen as the end-game when BEVs are that for most personal transportation applications. That tells me there are ulterior motives for the push for hydrogen. It is clear what it is for petroleum companies.

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RegGuheert said:

FCVs cannot compete with BEVs in ANY of the significant cost areas:
- Manufacturing cost
- Fueling infrastructure costs
- Fuel costs

There is NO crossover point for fueling infrastructure costs or fuel costs, so BEVs will always win there. While there is a possibility of a crossover point in manufacturing costs, the differences today are so great that it is extremely unlikely. And even if that happens in a couple of decades, the issue of fuel efficiency will always result in BEVs being the best overall solution for the environment and the economy.

The simple conclusion is that FCVs are NOT the end-game for transportation, BEVs are, since they are the solution with the lowest overall costs and also the lowest impact to the environment. FCVs need not apply for any task that a BEV can handle, which includes most personal transportation tasks. Because FCVs are so much more expensive than BEVs, the opportunity cost of funding their deployment today is huge: many more BEVs could be fielded with the same government expenditure. As a simple result, each time the government spends so much money to put an FCV on the road, they do significant damage to the environment through the massive expenditure of resources, but they also cause many more ICEs to be put on the roads that would have otherwise been replaced by efficient BEVs.

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RegGuheert said:

What I and others have demonstrated repeatedly in this thread is that whatever resources are required to transition the world's energy resources to renewable generation and battery-based storage are a small fraction of what would be required by the "hydrogen economy" which has been dreamed up by politicians and economists who somehow believe that physics does not apply to their pet project. Put another way, any transition away from fossil fuels by storing energy in H2 will require more resources and will produce more waste and will result in more damage to the environment than will an approach which stores the energy in batteries (or capacitors). As such, hydrogen will ONLY be applied in applications where other, more efficient, storage technologies cannot meet the requirements (or where politicians can distort the economics enough to overcome hydrogen's glaring inadequacies).

The "hydrogen economy" is a political idea which is directly at odds with physics. Physics will always win in the end, but that does not mean that politicians will not ruin the world in the meantime.

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RegGuheert said:

Physics tells me that BEVs are the end game, not hydrogen. Plus, I really like refueling at home.

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RegGuheert said:

epirali said:

- Actually physics tells me the opposite: with technology recycling water-> H2 / O -> water is the end game, NOT batteries with chemicals. Its so simple it is obvious. Assuming the technology improves I would then say the same: electro-chemical batteries are just a stepping stone in energy storage.

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The truth of the matter is exactly the opposite of what epirali has written.

Here are statements of fact which will help everyone understand why H2 electrolysis/transportation/delivery/fuel cell cannot and will not EVER achieve the efficiency of Li-ion batteries:

FACT #1: NO CHEMICAL REACTIONS ARE INVOLVED IN THE FUNDAMENTAL OPERATION OF A LI-ION BATTERY

Li-ion batteries are fundamentally different than other battery technologies in that chemical reactions are NOT involved in the charging and discharging of the battery. Instead, the charging and discharging of a Li-ion battery involves ONLY the movement of lithium ions from the anode to the cathode and back again. That is the reason why efficiencies approaching unity are already being achieved in Li-ion batteries. From Battery University:

Battery University said:

Charging and discharging batteries is a chemical reaction, but Li-ion is claimed to be the exception.

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Losses in Li-ion batteries are associated with electrical resistances and unwanted chemical reactions occurring inside the cells. The areas of research ongoing are focused on solving these issues. The result is that efficiencies will move closer to 100% and battery life will be extended dramatically from where it is today. And, as I have already posted, these batteries will be made from materials which are more and more recyclable and

FACT #2: CHEMICAL REACTIONS ARE INVOLVED IN THE OPERATION OF BOTH ELECTROLYSIS DEVICES AND FUEL CELLS

There are several chemical reactions involved in the so-called hydrogen cycle, with most steps separated from each other. Here are some numbers I have found for theoretical maximum efficiencies:

Electrolysis: 120%
Transportation/Storage: 95% (depends on the distance traveled and time stored)
Delivery: ~75% (per compression cycle) (This number is being generous since you really need to HEAT and then COOL the H2 during delivery. There is virtually NO possibility to save here and still allow H2 to achieve its singular benefit: refuel time.)
Fuel Cell: 83%

Overall H2 THEORETICAL efficiency: 1.2*0.95*0.75*0.83 = ~70%

But we know that we are nowhere near these numbers today, as has been discussed at length.

The bottom line: H2 as a storage medium suffers from the fact that many chemical reactions as well as compression/decompression and leakage will ALWAYS hinder its efficiency. Li-ion does not suffer from these efficiency hits since the many challenges of chemical reactions and compression/decompression/storage do come into play.

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RegGuheert said:

BEVs ARE the end game for nearly every passenger vehicle application. FCVs need to find applications where BEVs CANNOT play in order to have any chance for market acceptance. Even then, they need to be able to beat out incumbent ICE technologies. They are not close to that point today.

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RegGuheert said:

Here is Toyota's prediction for BEVs back in 2005:

Jim Press - Then COO of Toyota North America at 49:40 said:

There's a lot of debate today about what powertrains will emerge tomorrow: internal combustion engines, hybrid-electric, diesel, fuel cells, solar. All of these are great new technologies that are emerging that are making internal combustion engines better.

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The point is that their disinformation campaign is designed to point people away from BEVs and make people think that hydrogen is somehow the end game. This approach allows them to continue the status quo and to therefore build massive quantities of gasoline-powered cars.

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RegGuheert said:

lorenfb said:

RegGuheert said:

Since we know that BEVs are the end-game technology for personal transportation

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We do?

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Yes, we do...from first principles. I have covered this in detail multiple times: Because there is no chemical reaction involved in energy storage in a LI-ion battery, 98% round-trip energy efficiency is achieved with today's battery technology. This is approximately 3X the efficiency achieved with hydrolysis and a fuel cell.

A world striving to wean itself off fossil fuels cannot reasonably increase worldwide electricity production by 50%. Getting to 100% of today's electricity production will be a monumental challenge in itself.

As a clear result, H2 FCVs will be relegated to ONLY the tasks which cannot be accomplished in a more efficient manner.

ETA: Look at what OakLeaf just posted: MIT Study: Electric Vehicles can meet 90% of our transportation needs

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RegGuheert said:

lorenfb said:

Any company, e.g. Tesla, relying on a single technology to maintain long term growth and not maintaining an R&D effort to transition to new technologies, e.g. FCEVs, as they become competitive is very likely to become marginal or non-existent, e.g. Kodak, Blackberry, IBM (marginal), HP (marginal), Intel (marginal compared to Qualcomm), and Microsoft (before the cloud). An automotive OEM would be very naive and negligent to their shareholders to not maintain a development effort for a FCEV, since it provides the most "transparent" transition from an ICEV for the consumer.

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That all assumes that hydrogen is the end-game when it comes to transportation. It is not, as I have pointed out repeatedly in this thread as well as others:

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DOE FY17 SBIR Phase I Release 2 topics include fuel cells, EV batteries, engines

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. . . The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the 2017 Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) Phase I Release 2 topics, including three subtopics focused on hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. The fuel cell subtopics include innovative materials for bipolar plates; liquid organic hydrogen carriers; and emergency hydrogen refuelers. . . .

The fuel cell topics:

• Innovative Materials and/or Technologies for Bipolar Plates for PEM Fuel Cell. This subtopic solicits applications that directly or indirectly address the cost and weight reduction of PEM fuel cell stacks. Applications should focus on innovative materials, manufacturing processes, and/or designs of bipolar plates. All proposed projects must demonstrate potential to meet or exceed DOE’s 2020 bipolar plate technical targets as well as the cost target of $3/kW.
  
  Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC). Applications are sought for the development and demonstration of a reversible LOHC that is non-toxic and enables hydrogen delivery to a refueling station or centralized terminal at <$5.00/kg, including the cost of the carrier itself, cost of the catalyst, and energy consumption associated with hydrogenation/dehydrogenation.
  
  Emergency Hydrogen Refuelers. Applications are sought for the development of two types of emergency hydrogen refuelers. The first is a roadside assistance—portable emergency hydrogen refueler to be carried on roadside assistance vehicles and capable of providing hydrogen to at least three stranded vehicles before needing to be recharged. The second is a personal device—portable emergency hydrogen refueler that can be carried onboard the fuel cell electric vehicle, such as in the trunk, easily handled by the driver, and able to provide hydrogen to at least one stranded vehicle. . . .

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lorenfb said:

RegGuheert said:

lorenfb said:

Any company, e.g. Tesla, relying on a single technology to maintain long term growth and not maintaining an R&D effort to transition to new technologies, e.g. FCEVs, as they become competitive is very likely to become marginal or non-existent, e.g. Kodak, Blackberry, IBM (marginal), HP (marginal), Intel (marginal compared to Qualcomm), and Microsoft (before the cloud). An automotive OEM would be very naive and negligent to their shareholders to not maintain a development effort for a FCEV, since it provides the most "transparent" transition from an ICEV for the consumer.

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That all assumes that hydrogen is the end-game when it comes to transportation. It is not, as I have pointed out repeatedly in this thread as well as others:

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You have some valid points. But if you were the Engineering Director of R&D whose responsibility was to advise
corporate and the Board of Directors about future competitive technologies, you would assume the risk for the
corporation's future viability of not budgeting for R&D funds to evaluate and position the corporation for future technology breakthroughs, e.g. fuel cell generator and/or H2 production cost reductions, right?

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lorenfb said:

You have some valid points. But if you were the Engineering Director of R&D whose responsibility was to advise
corporate and the Board of Directors about future competitive technologies, you would assume the risk for the
corporation's future viability of not budgeting for R&D funds to evaluate and position the corporation for future technology breakthroughs, e.g. fuel cell generator and/or H2 production cost reductions, right?

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RegGuheert said:

lorenfb said:

You have some valid points. But if you were the Engineering Director of R&D whose responsibility was to advise
corporate and the Board of Directors about future competitive technologies, you would assume the risk for the
corporation's future viability of not budgeting for R&D funds to evaluate and position the corporation for future technology breakthroughs, e.g. fuel cell generator and/or H2 production cost reductions, right?

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I'll start by saying this is PRECISELY the mistake that the VP of Engineering made at Toyota. He bet on H2 FCVs over BEVs, even though BEVs have a broad range of superior characteristics. As a result of this poor decision, Toyota is in the unfortunate position of playing catch-up in a battle they should be winning.

But to answer your question: I agree that the VP of Engineering for a very large auto manufacturer needs to keep options like H2 FCV in play. There absolutely are applications where that technology will have a benefit, fleets being the main applications we have discussed here. OTOH, if you are Tesla, you absolutely need to focus on what will win. Tesla has access to huge growth for the foreseeable future just within BEVs. As such, Elon Musk is not hurting himself by eschewing H2 FCV. In fact, Tesla is hurting ALL H2 FCV efforts BECAUSE they are so laser-focused on BEVs.

If you want to sell H2 FCVs, you need to find a market where they can win. Indoor forklifts is one. Heavy trucking might have a possibility, but that market is sensitive to fuel cost, so perhaps not.

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lorenfb said:

given the marginal growth of the BEV, the marketplace has not accepted it as the
ICEV replacement.

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Battery-electric cars cheaper, better at cutting emissions than fuel cells: Stanford study

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. . . Battery-electric cars are better at reducing emissions, and are more cost-effective than fuel-cell cars, according to researchers from Stanford University and the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Their study, published in the journal Energy and conducted with some support from BMW, looked at the potential effect of large-scale battery-electric and fuel-cell car adoption on overall energy use, focusing on California. . . .

Researchers used the town of Los Altos Hills—located just a few miles from the Stanford campus—as a test case for hypothetical future scenarios. That included one scenario for the year 2035 that assumed battery-electric and fuel-cell cars would make up 38 percent of vehicles in the town. It also assumed hydrogen would be produced locally in the cheapest way possible, be it with electricity generated from renewable sources or taken from the grid. Researchers also considered the possibility of using excess solar power to produce hydrogen and, conversely, to use excess hydrogen for electricity generation, or as an alternative to natural gas for home heating.

In the end, battery-electric vehicles were found to be the better option. In order to be cost-competitive, fuel-cell cars would have to be sold at much lower prices than battery-electrics, researchers concluded. . . .

As for using excess hydrogen to generate electricity and home heat, researchers found that to be a non-starter. Only a small amount of solar-generated hydrogen will be used for heating buildings in 2035, they concluded. . . .

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GRA said:

Hardly news, but via GCR:

Battery-electric cars cheaper, better at cutting emissions than fuel cells: Stanford study

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http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1107320_battery-electric-cars-cheaper-better-at-cutting-emissions-than-fuel-cells-stanford-study

. . . Battery-electric cars are better at reducing emissions, and are more cost-effective than fuel-cell cars, according to researchers from Stanford University and the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

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Stoaty said:

GRA said:

Hardly news, but via GCR:

Battery-electric cars cheaper, better at cutting emissions than fuel cells: Stanford study

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http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1107320_battery-electric-cars-cheaper-better-at-cutting-emissions-than-fuel-cells-stanford-study

. . . Battery-electric cars are better at reducing emissions, and are more cost-effective than fuel-cell cars, according to researchers from Stanford University and the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

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That's what some of us have been saying for the last 372 pages of this thread. Now confirmed. In other news, it is now believed the sun will rise in the East tomorrow and water is wet. No matter how much you keep pushing FCEV for a task for which they are not competitive.

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