Hydrogen and FCEVs discussion thread

[GRA]

The Tesla approach flies very well with the mass market.

Tesla's SC stations stack the 10kW car chargers that the car uses, - instant scale
and each Tesla sold amortizes the cost of the charges in the SC station, something H2 can't do unless they have on-board electrolysis.

Hydrogen Infrastructure cost = free Teslas

Any car that starts at $76k, with $2k of that for SCs, isn't the mass market. As they move down the price curve, they won't be able to tack on $2k to every car. As the cars come down in price, more and more of their potential market will be living in rental housing with no ability to charge at home. Barring workplace or low-cost public L1/L2 charging, people would need to use the SCs for routine charging, and Tesla is already pulling back from that, partly because of congestion, but primarily cost. They are facing this issue now in cities outside of the U.S. , but have no choice but to allow it if they're going to sell their cars there.

 

[ydnas7]

what part of
Hydrogen Infrastructure cost = free Teslas
is difficult to understand?

electricity grid and hydrogen are both able permeate.

electricity grid is able to power street lights, security cameras and parking meters, in the long term, L1 charging is cheaply solvable.

high pressure, chilled hydrogen also permeates, thus the high cost of hydrogen infrastructure.

there is real physics, behind the real engineering, resulting in the real costs for hydrogen.

 

[epirali]

what part of
Hydrogen Infrastructure cost = free Teslas
is difficult to understand?

electricity grid and hydrogen are both able permeate.

electricity grid is able to power street lights, security cameras and parking meters, in the long term, L1 charging is cheaply solvable.

high pressure, chilled hydrogen also permeates, thus the high cost of hydrogen infrastructure.

there is real physics, behind the real engineering, resulting in the real costs for hydrogen.

I am not trying to be difficult but I don't understand this. Electricity has a very high infrastructure cost, we just pay for it many other ways.

Time to charge makes electrical charging not very scalable, in contrast to adding more "pumps" for hydrogen. I really think that IF Tesla sells a large number of 3 series the cracks in the supercharger network will rapidly show.

BTW you may not know it but you have been subsidizing fuel stations for years, not car companies. The hydrogen fuel infrastructure will probably will follow a similar path. And if charging is ever going to be a serious option then so will it require a great deal of public financing. The business case for electrical charge stations is just not there without support. Tesla included.

 

[edatoakrun]

Report on H station development in Japan includes a summary of Japanese Vehicle manufacturer's differing views on the future of BEVs VS FCVs:

Japan’s major automakers support hydrogen society. Some more, some less

July 1, 2015 By Bertel Schmitt

Japan’s three major automakers held a rare joint press conference today, throwing their weight and support behind fuel cells and a zero-emission hydrogen society. That support had been far from unanimous in the past. While Toyota is fully in the fuel cell camp, Nissan is on record that BEVs are viable now, while FCVs may be a drawn-out dream. Honda, having to deal with more pressing problems than the future of the planet, is somewhere in the middle. Today, all three united and shook hands on the noble cause of jump-starting the hydrogen station infrastructure in Japan.

... the automakers vowed to spend up to 40 million US$ to defray up to a third of the operating costs of hydrogen fuel stations. This financial support comes on top of that by the Japanese government, which will pay roughly half of what a hydrogen fuel station costs to build.

The outlays will be split among the three automakers according to the numbers of FCV cars they sell. This will shoulder Toyota with most of the cost, while Nissan and Honda will show mostly moral support, at least in the beginning. Toyota is the only company that has released a commercial FCV car, the Mirai, even if it will be limited to homeopathic numbers for the time being. Honda said it will release an FCV next year. Nissan’s lukewarm support of the hydrogen society may result in an FCV by the end of the decade.

Aligned in front of a full court Japanese press, the representatives of Japan’s big automakers practiced the high art of the subtle snub. On the Toyota side, Senior Managing Officer Kiyotaka Ise stuck to the company’s party line that FCVs are for the big cars, while BEVs are perfect for the confined spaces of the inner cities. Hitoshi Kawaguchi, SVP of Nissan, was not happy about this remark, and he countered by saying that BEVs enjoy the world’s densest charging network in Japan, with 5,000 public quick chargers, and 9,000 conventional ones, in addition to the tens of thousands of home chargers, which shows that FCVs need help.

Polite smiles all around.

Japan wants to have some 100 hydrogen fuel stations next year, a target it is likely to miss...

http://dailykanban.com/2015/07/japans-major-automakers-support-hydrogen-society-some-more-some-less/

 

[GRA]

Sounds like more of a test bed than a prototype, still (via ABG):

BMW shows off 245-hp, hydrogen-powered 5 Series GT

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/07/02/bmw-5-series-gt-hydrogen-test-car/

Part:

At the heart of BMW's latest FCV prototype is a new electric motor derived from the i sub-brand. It produces the equivalent of 245 horsepower, making it roughly comparable in output to the brand's latest 2.0-liter, turbocharged, four-cylinder gas engines. It draws its fuel from a hydrogen fuel tank that sits between the axles. The BMW-patented storage system can hold enough compressed hydrogen to take the hunchbacked 5 Series 300 miles before refueling.

BMW and Toyota first inked their FCV partnership back in 2013, with the goal of having "an initial group of approved components ready by 2020," and sales beginning at some point in the next decade. While Toyota has been touting its successes with hydrogen in the form of the new Mirai, this 5 Series marks the first time since the agreement was signed that the German company rolled out one of its hydrogen-powered cars to the public.

 

[GRA]

Via GCC:

Energiepark Mainz comes online; hydrogen from wind power; Siemens 6MW electrolysis system

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/07/20150703-mainz.html

. . . Around €17 million has been channelled into the project, which is also being funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy within the framework of its “Förderinitiative Energiespeicher” (Energy Storage Funding) initiative.

Fuel-cell drive technology has advanced greatly and is now being launched to the market. If this technology is adopted on a wide enough scale, it has the potential to significantly reduce traffic-related environmental pollution. Today, most of the hydrogen that Linde supplies to filling stations is already green. Energiepark Mainz has the capacity to produce enough hydrogen for around 2,000 fuel-cell cars.

—Dr. Wolfgang Büchele, Linde Group CEO

In the project, Linde is responsible for purifying, compressing, storing and distributing the hydrogen. The company’s efficient ionic compressor technology gives the plant a high degree of operational flexibility. The hydrogen produced in Mainz-Hechtsheim will be stored on site and partly loaded into tankers to supply hydrogen fueling stations. Some of the hydrogen will also be fed into the natural gas grid for heating or power generation.

Siemens delivered the park’s hydrogen electrolysis system. The PEM-based high-pressure electrolysis system—comprising three 2MW units—has a peak performance of 6MW—the largest system of this kind. The energy park therefore has enough capacity to prevent bottlenecks in the local distribution grid and to stabilize the power supply of smaller wind parks.

The energy park is directly connected to the medium-voltage grid of the Stadtwerke Mainz Netze GmbH utility company. It is also linked to four neighboring wind parks that belong to the Stadtwerke group.

There's some good info and discussion in the comments, although much of it repeats what's already been discussed here (with similar levels of vitriol).

 

[epirali]

Just to add (hydrogen) fuel to the fire...

BMW is joining the club.

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/07/bmw-shows-off-first-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-5-series-gt-crazy-i8-prototype-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29

 

[RegGuheert]

Via GCC:

Energiepark Mainz comes online; hydrogen from wind power; Siemens 6MW electrolysis system

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/07/20150703-mainz.html

Germany is massively overbuilt on wind power in the North Sea. As a result, they had 50,000 grid interventions during May 2015 to keep the grid stable (>1600 grid interventions/day on average :shock: ). It has now gotten to the point that transmission lines get overloaded by wind energy even in the absence of any storm:

Online German NDR public radio here wrote last week how northern Germany’s power grid had suffered a major bottleneck that led to the overload of the Flensburg-Niebüll power transmission line in Schleswig Holstein last week.

The overload resulted from a power surge from North Sea wind parks when winds picked up a bit. What is unusual in this case, however, is that there was no storm present and the overload was caused by normal wind fluctuations. Thus the incident illustrates the increasing volatility of wind as a power supply, even under regular weather conditions.

If you ignore the very high costs of building these wind farms in the North Sea, then this extra electricity has zero (really negative) value. So let's see how much is costs to store and then retrieve this "free" electricity using this new "world's largest" hydrogen production plant:

Electrical power consumption: 6 MW
Lifetime of this research project: 4 years
Cost of system €17M.

Electricity consumed over the lifetime of the system: 210 GWh (100% uptime assumed)
Efficiency of PEM electrolyzer (assumed): 80%
Efficiency of PEM fuel cell electricity generators (assumed): 50%
Electricity available after round-trip efficiency losses: 84 GWh (100% uptime assumed)

If we assume zero cost for insertion and retrieval of this hydrogen from the natural gas pipeline (not a valid assumption) and that the 2.4MW of fuel cells needed to consume this electricity have a similar total cost and lifetime, we get the following cost for storage of this energy.

Estimated cost of storing each available kWh: ~€0.40/kWh. In the meantime, they will also throw away ~124 GWh of electricity production.

 

[GRA]

Via GCC:

Honda CEO: pushing to bring new FCV to market before FY end; electricity to be core technology in next-gen mobility products

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/07/20150706-honda.html

In a speech outlining his future vision for Honda Motor, new President & CEO Takahiro Hachigo said that the company will strive to begin sales in Japan of the next-generation successor to the Clarity fuel cell vehicle (earlier post) before the end of the current fiscal year (ending 31 March 2016).

Hachigo also said that as the next-generation of mobility products, Honda will evolve products that use electricity as a core technology. In the shorter term, the next-generation Civic will be equipped with a new platform and downsized turbo engine, while core global Honda models CR-V and Accord will undergo full model changes in the future to make them more attractive vehicles that feature more new technologies, higher competitiveness and innovative designs. . . .

 

[GRA]

Via GCC:

Energiepark Mainz comes online; hydrogen from wind power; Siemens 6MW electrolysis system

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/07/20150703-mainz.html

Germany is massively overbuilt on wind power in the North Sea. As a result, they had 50,000 grid interventions during May 2015 to keep the grid stable (>1600 grid interventions/day on average :shock: ). It has now gotten to the point that transmission lines get overloaded by wind energy even in the absence of any storm:

Online German NDR public radio here wrote last week how northern Germany’s power grid had suffered a major bottleneck that led to the overload of the Flensburg-Niebüll power transmission line in Schleswig Holstein last week.

The overload resulted from a power surge from North Sea wind parks when winds picked up a bit. What is unusual in this case, however, is that there was no storm present and the overload was caused by normal wind fluctuations. Thus the incident illustrates the increasing volatility of wind as a power supply, even under regular weather conditions.

If you ignore the very high costs of building these wind farms in the North Sea, then this extra electricity has zero (really negative) value. So let's see how much is costs to store and then retrieve this "free" electricity using this new "world's largest" hydrogen production plant:

Electrical power consumption: 6 MW
Lifetime of this research project: 4 years
Cost of system €17M.

Electricity consumed over the lifetime of the system: 210 GWh (100% uptime assumed)
Efficiency of PEM electrolyzer (assumed): 80%
Efficiency of PEM fuel cell electricity generators (assumed): 50%
Electricity available after round-trip efficiency losses: 84 GWh (100% uptime assumed)

If we assume zero cost for insertion and retrieval of this hydrogen from the natural gas pipeline (not a valid assumption) and that the 2.4MW of fuel cells needed to consume this electricity have a similar total cost and lifetime, we get the following cost for storage of this energy.

Estimated cost of storing each available kWh: ~€0.40/kWh. In the meantime, they will also throw away ~124 GWh of electricity production.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Germany has gotten their renewable generating and transmission/storage capacities out of sync. Germany does have one of the best grid interconnections in the world, both N-S and E-W, but even so they need to improve it (or more storage, which is what this project is about). As to the cost of the H2, please include the lifecycle health costs of all the brown coal they're burning (instead of nukes) instead of H2 in your calculations. If Germany (or any country) is to transition to variable renewables and away from fossil-fuels and nukes, interconnections or storage only get you so far; you need both. The exact ratio between them depends on the situation in the individual country/region .

 

[GRA]

I can't remember if this has previously been posted, so here's a short paper from the UCS, looking at the Tucson FCHV:

How Clean Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles?

http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/10/How-Clean-Are-Hydrogen-Fuel-Cells-Fact-Sheet.pdf

For pure NG, its CO2 emissions/mile are equivalent to a 38 mpg vehicle; with CA's 33% RFS for H2, it's equivalent to a 54 mpg vehicle; the state projects that by the end of 2015 H2 production here will be 46% renewable, at which point the Tucson's emissions would be equivalent to a 63 mpg vehicle. Apparently the RFS will increase to that level once production reaches 3,500 metric tons/year.

 

[RegGuheert]

I can't remember if this has previously been posted, so here's a short paper from the UCS, looking at the Tucson FCHV:

How Clean Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles?

http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/10/How-Clean-Are-Hydrogen-Fuel-Cells-Fact-Sheet.pdf

For pure NG, its CO2 emissions/mile are equivalent to a 38 mpg vehicle; with CA's 33% RFS for H2, it's equivalent to a 54 mpg vehicle; the state projects that by the end of 2015 H2 production here will be 46% renewable, at which point the Tucson's emissions would be equivalent to a 63 mpg vehicle. Apparently the RFS will increase to that level once production reaches 3,500 metric tons/year.

It seems union of scientists is not THAT concerned about the environment since it appears they have completely ignored the massive amounts of energy and natural resources required to manufacture both the vehicle AND the refueling stations it requires. (And, yes, since those refueling stations only last about as long as the vehicle, that is relevant.)

There is a reason there is such a massive price tag for manufacturing both the car and the refueling station. It costs a lot of money to do that much damage the environment!

 

[JeremyW]

Isn't H2O a greenhouse gas? Isn't the water that these fuel cell vehicles emit considered an "emission" of some sort?

 

[GRA]

I can't remember if this has previously been posted, so here's a short paper from the UCS, looking at the Tucson FCHV:

How Clean Are Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles?

http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/10/How-Clean-Are-Hydrogen-Fuel-Cells-Fact-Sheet.pdf

For pure NG, its CO2 emissions/mile are equivalent to a 38 mpg vehicle; with CA's 33% RFS for H2, it's equivalent to a 54 mpg vehicle; the state projects that by the end of 2015 H2 production here will be 46% renewable, at which point the Tucson's emissions would be equivalent to a 63 mpg vehicle. Apparently the RFS will increase to that level once production reaches 3,500 metric tons/year.

It seems union of scientists is not THAT concerned about the environment since it appears they have completely ignored the massive amounts of energy and natural resources required to manufacture both the vehicle AND the refueling stations it requires. (And, yes, since those refueling stations only last about as long as the vehicle, that is relevant.) <snip>

Yes, Reg, that must be it. :? http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy#.VZ28BHqUzGc

http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/clean-vehicles#.VZ28InqUzGe

 

[RegGuheert]

Yes, Reg, that must be it. :? http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy#.VZ28BHqUzGc

http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/clean-vehicles#.VZ28InqUzGe

I don't see anything that refutes what I stated (that you bolded). The paper you linked ignores the elephant in the room.

 

[GRA]

Yes, Reg, that must be it. :? http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy#.VZ28BHqUzGc

http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/clean-vehicles#.VZ28InqUzGe

I don't see anything that refutes what I stated (that you bolded). The paper you linked ignores the elephant in the room.

Or perhaps, they don't consider the elephant to be an elephant, having done the calcs. You were talking about a "massive amount of energy and natural resources" used to build the vehicle and the refueling station. Well, how much extra are we talking about, compared to PV/wind turbines (either far more energy intensive than nukes, owing to the low energy density and the large amount of aluminum, steel and cement required), or gas stations? No, none of the links I gave directly referred to the energy and resource questions you asked, but then I didn't drill down to look at every paper they've produced over the past umpteen years. My objection was to your claim (I was going back to change my bolding to limit it to just the first clause, when I saw you had already replied) that "It seems union of scientists is not THAT concerned about the environment". That is patently false. If you feel that they haven't adequately addressed the energy/resource issue in any of their papers, you should feel free to suggest to them that they do so.

 

[JeremyW]

Isn't H2O a greenhouse gas? Isn't the water that these fuel cell vehicles emit considered an "emission" of some sort?

Water Vapor Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change

New Study Confirms Water Vapor as Global Warming Amplifier

 

[Zythryn]

Could the recent Mirai news release, i.e. within the last week to 10 days, have had some impact on the
decline of the Tesla stock this week?

You are really grasping at straws here.
The two day TSLA slump started when Deutsche Bank downgraded TSLA from a Buy to a Hold.
A second bank did the same the next day.
Some profit taking probably added to that.

Still, at almost $260/share it is doing quite well.

 

[lorenfb]

Could the recent Mirai news release, i.e. within the last week to 10 days, have had some impact on the
decline of the Tesla stock this week?

Absolutley. People are leaving Tesla powered cars at airports and abandoned on the streets, clamoring for the Toyota Hydrogen car.

One former Tesla owner (who didn't want his name released for fear of persecution from Elon Musk himself) said he particularly enjoys not having to think about about all "those" Superchargers, and instead can focus his attention on the several public hydrogen stations.

Another P85D owner, who only got his car weeks ago, has donated his car to a charity. "I just couldn't handle the INSANE car anymore. Who builds a car that actually says INSANE?", said the former owner. He is camping out at a Toyota dealer now, waiting to be one of the lucky dozens of people to get their hands on this "car-of-the-future"! He is considering a trip to Japan to buy one there, and ship it to the USA.

Another former Tesla stockholder claims that, "Tesla was only successful because nobody had produced that compelling hydrogen car. Now that Toyota has done that, there is no future for Tesla."

Fox News, in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, will have an expose coming out VERY soon that will show all the shady back door dealings and "smoke and mirrors" that Tesla uses to make it seem like that have a good car, knowing that the end is near with the emergence of this Toyota SUPER car!!!

Wise investors are quietly dumping Tesla stock, and buying up all that Toyota and Linde stock. Don't be stuck in the past! Get out of TSLA while you can!!!

Most all auto OEMs are hedging their future product line by either closely monitoring FC development
or actually in development of a FC product, obviously with the exception of Tesla. It's easy to joke
about a future FC vehicle and be myopic about it as a Tesla owner who spent $80K - $100K for vehicle
that may become another Fisker. If in the next year or two when two or three OEMs market a FC vehicle
and once the infrastructure for re-fueling develops, Tesla is basically "done" or a very small niche
player for those that need another "Rolex".

 

[epirali]

Most all auto OEMs are hedging their future product line by either closely monitoring FC development
or actually in development of a FC product, obviously with the exception of Tesla. It's easy to joke
about a future FC vehicle and be myopic about it as a Tesla owner who spent $80K - $100K for vehicle
that may become another Fisker. If in the next year or two when two or three OEMs market a FC vehicle
and once the infrastructure for re-fueling develops, Tesla is basically "done" or a very small niche
player for those that need another "Rolex".

As much as I am personally in favor of hydrogen for a long term solution I do also have to say the BEVs are here to stay. They have a very solid use case for a portion of the population (including me) as a second or third car, or for people who really only need "local commute" cars. Even if hydrogen fuel cells were common, cheap and there was a station on every corner I would still own at least one BEV for my daily commute. It is just really nice to plug your car in and not have to worry about it, and not have to go to a "filling station" of any kind.

I just think the hydrogen approach is the way to go for everyone else, who is stuck in the gas mode or needs "unlimited" range.