Whats your opinion on Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs)?

[fotomoto]

 However, because about 70% of the electrical energy in North America is derived from coal, its actually more environmentally friendly is most cases to drive a regular ICE vehicle than a BEV. 

 

No, this is WAY off.  Coal only accounts for 39% of the grid and is decreasing.*   The grid is getting cleaner with new solar and wind generation added everyday.  Although a fossil fuel, nat gas is cleaner burning than coal and because of the shale boom gas generation plants are also increasing.

 

Plug-in owners in many areas can choose their electricity generation source and fill the cars up with only clean energy electrons.  It's my understanding that's something a hydrogen car will never be able to do.

 

 

*http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

[hybridbear]

There are a couple issues with fuel cells:

pollution - to refine one barrel of oil into approximately 19 gallons of gasoline you also need: electricity, water & another hydrocarbon fuel to burn to create heat, an EV can drive the equivalent distance of a gasoline car with 19 gallons of gas just from the electricity used in refining, meaning that an EV leaves you with: all the water, other hydrocarbon fuel & one barrel of oil, creating much less pollution. Fuel cells have a similar issue. The energy required to make H₂ available as a fuel is very high and an EV can do so much more with so much less energy. The key to reducing GHGs in the atmosphere and addressing climate change is to reduce overall energy consumption, the efficiency of electric motors and battery packs allows this. Reducing energy consumption solves all the other issues (GHGs, pollution, etc).

 

The well-to-wheels (w2w) efficiency of an ICE vehicle is about 14%. The w2w of an electric vehicle is about 28%. However, because about 70% of the electrical energy in North America is derived from coal, its actually more environmentally friendly is most cases to drive a regular ICE vehicle than a BEV. For example, a Mazda 3 has about the same environmental impact as the Tesla Model S (85kWh) in many parts of the US. (322gCO2/mi and 320gCO2/mi in Michigan, check it out at fueleconomy.gov) The car with the least environmental impact isn’t a BEV at all, its the Toyota Prius at 222gCO2/mi.

The reformation process of nat gas to H2 is about 85% with newer plants, fuel cell efficiency about 60%. After the H2 is delivered and compressed FCVs produced about 300gCO2/mi for a small SUV, depending on which study you prescribe to. With the infrastructure the way it stands, they are actually on par with BEVs and HEVs for GHG emissions.

Heres a neat breakdown (although I think a little bias to FCVs): http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/13005_well_to_wheels_ghg_oil_ldvs.pdf

This is incorrect. Also, if you're going to count the pollution caused by electricity generation then you need to count the pollution from refining the oil into gasoline.

 

Let's consider the car pollution lifecycle, comparing ICE cars with BEVs:

• manufacturing
• maintenance
• fuel

Manufacturing - It's generally accepted that BEVs require more resources to manufacture than a gasoline powered car. I'm not sure how an FCV would compare but it's likely in the middle.

 

Maintenance - BEVs are much cleaner than ICE cars because they don't need oil changes which create a lot of pollution. FCV maintenance is not publicized.

 

Fuel - an ICE car creates pollution during the extraction of oil from the ground, transporting the oil to a refinery, refining the oil, transporting the gasoline to a gas station, burning the gasoline. A BEV creates pollution during the extraction of coal/natural gas/etc from the ground or in the form of nuclear waste, etc, some power plants create almost no pollution such as hydro, wind or solar. There is also pollution when transporting the fuel to the power plant and when burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. However, there is no more pollution after that. There is no pollution caused by transporting electricity across the grid to an outlet and no pollution caused by transforming electrical energy into kinetic energy by the electric motor.

[TopherTheME]

No, this is WAY off.  Coal only accounts for 39% of the grid and is decreasing.*   The grid is getting cleaner with new solar and wind generation added everyday.  Although a fossil fuel, nat gas is cleaner burning than coal and because of the shale boom gas generation plants are also increasing.

 

Plug-in owners in many areas can choose their electricity generation source and fill the cars up with only clean energy electrons.  It's my understanding that's something a hydrogen car will never be able to do.

 

 

*http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

 

Good catch. I made a mistake, I ment to say "fossil fuels" including coal and natural gas, not just coal. I was using data from 2012 which stated 37.4% coal and 30.3% nat gas which in total is 68%.

 

 

But still, for the average American a PHEV or BEV isn't really any better for the environment than a fuel efficient HEV or ICEV. I am one of those people who pays more to have my electricity provided by wind, however that doesn't mean my electrons are coming from windfarms, its just not how the grid works. It simply just means I'm paying more to promote alternative energy sources.

 

"Plug-in owners in many areas can choose their electricity generation source and fill the cars up with only clean energy electrons.  It's my understanding that's something a hydrogen car will never be able to do."

 

Why can't H2 come from renewable sources as well? Many thermochemical and photochemical methods of generating H2 are far more efficient than photovoltaics.

Edited September 2, 2014 by TopherTheME

[kostby]

 I am one of those people who pays more to have my electricity provided by wind...

 

Me too. I have a pipeline carrying the hot air directly from state legislative chamber windfarm, but it only works a few months of the year, because Indiana doesn't have a full-time legislature. Yet... ;)

Edited September 2, 2014 by kostby

[MomsHugs]

Ahhh... this discussion brings back memories of working with nuclear engineers with the promise of nuclear power for pennies on the dollar. Also memories of the OPEC embargo that pushed the US into finding alternative energy sources (e.g., garbage) & pushed car manufacturers into making smaller, lighter cars to reduce oil consumption. So many assumptions hit the wall of reality in due time. Developers built all-electric homes on those promises, only to have those owners angrily paying out the nose for electricity. Manufacturing facilities negotiated sources of fuel & generated their own power (ADM's corn syrup plants come to mind). Car manufacturers met the 'Wall of Resistance" in the market of consumers' demand for huge, safer, gas-guzzling SUVs.

 

The fastest way to reduce consumption of fossil fuel is to move goods x-country by railway using H2-powered engines - instead of diesel-powered 18-wheelers on Interstate highways. It was possible to piggy-back the trailers on rail cars several decades ago, which would have saved billions just in repair & maintenance of the Interstate highway system. It has not happened for lack of political will.

 

Vehicles will change when physicists figure out an alternative to the internal combustion engine to move wheels. That discovery will likely come out of left field as an unintended consequence to something else... much like gasoline did & thus the ICE. 

[MomsHugs]

Me too. I have a pipeline carrying the hot air directly from state legislative chamber windfarm, but it only works a few months of the year, because Indiana doesn't have a full-time legislature. Yet... ;)

 

Since you're close, have you seen the huge number of giant wind generators in western Iowa? An amazing sight! More are being built across Kansas & Nebraska to take advantage of their constant winds. 

[kostby]

There are already hundreds of wind turbines in several huge windfarms visible along Interstate 65 in Benton, Jasper, and White counties in northwestern Indiana, about an hour north of me.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Indiana

This is one of the largest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm

[joe]

Unfortunately, I seriously doubt we will ever see a conventional sized car with 500mi range that charges in <5min. About the most energy dense battery we can build is the Li-Air battery and even with that kind of energy density a target of 500miles would be difficult. Charging in under 5min is nearly theoretically impossible for batteries of this scale, not to mentioned the power requirements for it.

Never say never.  20 years ago, a 100 meg harddrive cost $500.  I have on my desk a waffer thin SD card that holds 32 gigs, with fast load speeds, and cost @ $40.  There is also the interim alternative of swap out batteries in which you pull your car into a facility and your battery slides out and a fully charged battery is slides in, and your out in 5 minutes or less.  It will require more infrastructure but it is feasible.

I also agree with statements stating that at some time, oil will become a limited commodity.

[Kelleytoons]

Be careful about computer technology analogies.  We've known about Moore's law since the 60's, and it was accurate for quite some time (only now is it slowing down and showing signs of not being a good predictor.  Still, for a half-century run it's impressive).  So even though your 100 meg drive was expensive those of us in the industry were absolutely certain it would not remain that way.

 

Battery technology does not follow Moore's law -- far from it, there have essentially been no huge breakthroughs of the same scale as that law for hundreds of years, since batteries were even mass produced.  That doesn't mean we don't hear ALL THE TIME about an exciting new process that will "revolutionize the battery!"  Indeed, it is because batteries have such a slow growth of improvement that they are so ripe for revolution, but it never seems to come to pass.  That isn't to say they don't get improved, just not on the same order of magnitude.  To put it another way, if batteries had followed your hard drive example, we'd now have a AAA battery that could run for years and provide ten times the power of conventional ones, all for a fraction of the cost of such a AAA 20 years ago.  Not going to happen, not in my lifetime and most likely not in yours (if anything, batteries that are improved tend to cost more and more).

Edited September 3, 2014 by Kelleytoons

[TopherTheME]

Battery technology does not follow Moore's law -- far from it...

 

 

Absolutely. I would also like to add that we already know the limitations of battery technology. You can only go so far up and so far left and right on the periodic table until you run out of elements and the laws of physics will let you. The higher up you go, the less mass the element has, and the farther left and farther right (except for noble gases) you go for the anodic and cathodic electrode materials, respectively, the more "electro-active" the elements are. Think of the most used battery ever created, the lead acid battery, Pb and PbO2 near the center of the table. Then the NiMH battery (H/NiOOH), and now the Li-Ion battery (Li/MOx, where M is a transition metal). The next revolution for more energy dense (gravimetrically speaking) battery is to use the lightest metal you can , Lithium, and then use a cathode material which doesn't have to be carried on the battery at all, Oxygen. Hence the Li-Air battery. After that there isn't much further to go. You could use Florine as a cathode but its such a reactive gas that it would be a nightmare to use from a safety stand point. A pure lithium anode could be used instead of a lithiated carbon anode to increase energy density if you could find away around the dendrite formation problem. Other than that the next most energy dense chemistry that could be used is Hydrogen and Oxygen. Hydrogen being the most energy dense reactant thats available (2.7x the specific energy of gasoline) and I don't think I need to tell you where that leads...

 

Edited September 3, 2014 by TopherTheME

[joe]

Be careful about computer technology analogies.  We've known about Moore's law since the 60's, and it was accurate for quite some time (only now is it slowing down and showing signs of not being a good predictor.  Still, for a half-century run it's impressive).  So even though your 100 meg drive was expensive those of us in the industry were absolutely certain it would not remain that way.

 

Battery technology does not follow Moore's law -- far from it, there have essentially been no huge breakthroughs of the same scale as that law for hundreds of years, since batteries were even mass produced.  That doesn't mean we don't hear ALL THE TIME about an exciting new process that will "revolutionize the battery!"  Indeed, it is because batteries have such a slow growth of improvement that they are so ripe for revolution, but it never seems to come to pass.  That isn't to say they don't get improved, just not on the same order of magnitude.  To put it another way, if batteries had followed your hard drive example, we'd now have a AAA battery that could run for years and provide ten times the power of conventional ones, all for a fraction of the cost of such a AAA 20 years ago.  Not going to happen, not in my lifetime and most likely not in yours (if anything, batteries that are improved tend to cost more and more).

I wasn't thinking about Moore's Law regarding battery technology.  The point I was making is that we shouldn't assume that if we don't see how to make it today,  it doesn't mean we won't know how to make it tomorrow.  The idea of waffer thin solid state drives in 1991 would have been seen as futuristic.   It is possible we may never make a really better battery than the ones we have today but building a better battery would certainly support an easier solution rather than the more complex hydrogen fueled solution.

[shinytop]

Solid state drives are not as impressive to me as the drives for your cameras and phones.  Up to a 128 Gig smaller than your fingernail.  I built computers when you put the memory in a chip at a time bending the spider legs carefully to fit.

[MomsHugs]

Most of our scientific advances have come from looking for something else. Computer chips became nano-sized due to discovering new materials, combinations of materials or new uses for old materials. Same thing happened with MRI & CT scans. We wouldn't know anything about DNA sequencing if it weren't for radiography. Endocrine disruption by BPA plastic was discovered while looking for cancer. Even those ubiquitous sticky notes came about due to faulty adhesive at 3-M's labs. Such 'happy accidents' probably occurred as far back as the discovery of fire FCOL. So who knows what might be discovered in the way batteries can be made in the future. It will likely happen while someone is looking for something else!

 

As an aside... my first computer class in the early 70's involved writing code using IBM cards. While I did my homework in the computer lab, my 2 little kids played games coded in one of the other IBM machines. Anyone else recall how those cards worked?

[C-MaxSea]

Just happy to have cleaner & quieter air in my neighborhood now. 
 
Looking only at the here & now, and speaking with zero cred & little understanding; seems like minimizing (& controlling) pollution point sources makes best sense - and fewer ICEs &/or ICE hours/miles serves that end well.  (Sorry for being off topic)  IOWs, happy to have 'hybrids' & EVs, even if only a band aid to the future of HCVs or otherwise.
 
Nick (sorry for the diversion)
 
(I am biased, I prefer kayaks to motor boats ............. as well, unless, of course that's an E boat)

 

Edited September 5, 2014 by C-MaxSea

[C-MaxSea]

 

 

I'll take a dozen Hes with just a scosh of Kr on top, please.

[joe]

Most of our scientific advances have come from looking for something else. Computer chips became nano-sized due to discovering new materials, combinations of materials or new uses for old materials. Same thing happened with MRI & CT scans. We wouldn't know anything about DNA sequencing if it weren't for radiography. Endocrine disruption by BPA plastic was discovered while looking for cancer. Even those ubiquitous sticky notes came about due to faulty adhesive at 3-M's labs. Such 'happy accidents' probably occurred as far back as the discovery of fire FCOL. So who knows what might be discovered in the way batteries can be made in the future. It will likely happen while someone is looking for something else!

 

As an aside... my first computer class in the early 70's involved writing code using IBM cards. While I did my homework in the computer lab, my 2 little kids played games coded in one of the other IBM machines. Anyone else recall how those cards worked?

Regarding early exposure to computers.  I worked as a summer employee in 1966 and 1967 at ATT&Ts computer center in NY.  In 1968, I took computer programming and really liked it.  When I tried to sign up for advance classes, I was told that I couldn't take the advance computer courses because I was an English major and would never have any reason to use a computer.  For my term paper (program), I wrote a program that would hyphenate words.   It wasn't until the 1980s did I get the opportunity to use and program computers.

[MomsHugs]

There seems to be some awesome minds on this thread. Considering how primitive computers were 50 years ago, only far-sighted geniuses would have comprehended how they could be used. THAT is the analogy that leads me to believe gasoline will be seen as a primitive source of fuel 50 years from now with fuel made from new chemical combinations (e.g., fertilizer components). Whichever country is the source of basic materials from which fuel, batteries or fertilizer are made will be the richest. Regardless, WATER will trump everything else so of primary importance is how to invent new fuels using salt water with/without salinization... or not use water at all.

[fotomoto]

For plug-in/BEV tech, I like to use the digital camera industry as an analogy.   :camera:   

 

Just like with the first hybrids, the early digi-cams were inferior to the mature and highly developed film camera on almost every measure but folks could see the possibilities.    Die hard film fanatics cried that digital would never have enough quality or be cheap enough for the masses but less than 20 years later Kodak was dead.   Now the digi-cam industry is in danger of smartphones/tablets taking over.   I see the first plug-in's as the first smartphones cameras.  These phone cameras had ho-hum performance but people found them incredibly convenient and easy to use.; just like plugging in at home every night and driving on EV the next day!   :flirt:    Now, current camera phones are equal to consumer digi-cams for most folks needs.  I see the next generation of plug-ins (longer range, reduced costs) of doing the same.

[Kelleytoons]

But it's *really* hard to predict technology (folks who have bet money on it always go broke).

 

Good case in point is the "TV-Phone" or whatever you want to call it.  Everyone was *dead* sure it was coming... in the 60's.  The technology was in place, and only needed some slight improvements.  Except... it never happened (still faces a LOT of pushback even today, when nearly everyone has the technology in hand somewhere, on their PC or Smartphones).  It's one thing to predict the technology advance (which in itself is hard to predict): it's quite another to read people's response to it.

 

I'm fairly sure alternative energy vehicles will continue to improve -- I'd be FAR more skeptical they will replace petroleum vehicles that have been around for over a century with a fully developed infrastructure.  I think it would take a fairly drastic change to move most folks away from them (perhaps gas tripled in price from today, but all of a sudden and not the gradual change that folks seemingly keep accepting).  This isn't to say there won't always be a small, but loyal group of folks who are looking for different approaches.  Just that a major sea change is far from easy to predict.

 

And your camera example is an excellent proof of this -- the camera industry STILL doesn't exactly know where they are going (for example -- are video cameras dead?  Because most still image cameras can also record video, and in many cases are better at it than dedicated camcorders.  But camcorders continue to sell and to be developed). 

 

The only sure thing: hindsight is 20/20.

[MomsHugs]

This discussion reminds me of how people responded to the first ATMs. Some people were afraid of them or very skeptical about using them - others welcomed them with open arms. Same happened with budget billing of utilities & using ETF to pay. First ETF required the amount be the same every month, but major thefts at credit card processing centers caused them to change their tune so the balance could be paid by ETF automatically every month. The latest new bank services tool is person-to-person (p2p) to facilitate parents sending college kids monthly payments without mailing checks. People adapt rather quickly when change brings easy & efficiency to their lives.

[Kelleytoons]

Yeah, and some folks *never* adapt.  I'm still amazed that most barbershops/hairdressers won't take debit/credit.  Every place in the country (EVERY place, including movie theaters which were also a long holdout) now don't require cash or check, but I've yet to find a place to cut my hair that will (it's truly the only place I need cash for -- I don't use hard currency anywhere else, and I haven't written a check in the last decade).

 

I'm looking forward to NFC, so I won't even have to carry a credit card.  Perhaps even within my lifetime I can do away with the need for a wallet (I can dream :>).

[RockwallRick]

Just read this article about a new breakthru in Hydrogen production Technology. Maybe this will help get the ball rolling on FCV's??

 

http://phys.org/news/2014-09-hydrogen-production-breakthrough-herald-cheap.html

[hybridbear]

I'm looking forward to NFC, so I won't even have to carry a credit card.  Perhaps even within my lifetime I can do away with the need for a wallet (I can dream :>).

If the new ApplePay catches on you might be able to.

[Kelleytoons]

That's what I'm hoping (we've already ordered two of the new phones).

[kostby]

A Wired writer drove a disguised FCV test mule for 15 minutes in San Francisco, and gives it a big 'meh'.

 

"All in all, it drives like an underpowered electric car."

 

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/toyotas-new-hydrogen-powered-car-asks-high-price-mediocrity/