I've had the opportunity to drive a Hydrogen fuel cell car and here are a few quick takes:
* The carbon footprint is likely larger than a Tesla but smaller than a comparable gasoline vehicle.
* The cost of fuel is currently several times higher than gasoline (normalized for driving distance) which is why all the major hydrogen carmakers are giving away 3 years of fuel for free. This likely doesn't help the carbon footprint.
* It takes a little longer to refuel than a gasoline car (few minutes) but less time than an electric car.
* Range depends on environmental conditions and driving habits. As it is a hybrid, nonfreeway driving in stop/go traffic appears to be most efficient (this is where you get the 300+ mile range). Otherwise, in the freeway, in the mountains (uphill) and when the A/C or heater is on at full blast, be prepared to lose up to 30% of range.
* There aren't as many fuel stations yet so it is a good habit to check station status online and refuel before the tank gets too empty. Stations in the USA are currently open to the public in California and a few places in the Northeast.
* Some models have little trunk space as quite a bit of volume as been reallocated to the hydrogen tanks.
* Some jurisdictions may require periodic (~yearly) tank inspections.
* The vehicles generally handle like an electric (or hybrid in electric mode) vehicle.
And where does the hydrogen come from? The h2o -> electrolysis -> hydrogen -> fuel cell -> h2o round trip is only 50% efficient, and electrolysis is not even currently the most cost effective way of making hydrogen. The most cost-effective source is natural gas, and the process releases vast amounts of CO2.
Surplus power from renewables when supply exceeds demand. Haven’t you seen all these stories about how renewables will hit a wall because there’s not enough energy storage? Japan thinks that hydrogen is the solution for that.
Electric vehicles are the solution. When a country has roughly half as many cars as people you have a tremendous buffer. Combine this with a grid connection to another country that has peak demand at a different time of day from your own and a lot of the problem goes away.
A back of the envelope calculation might go something like this. Vehicles are idle 95% of the time on average, most countries have something like one vehicle for every two people, if all are electric and all have a 40 kWh battery (more than a original Leaf, a bit over half my Tesla S) that is on average 50% charged then in a country like Norway (roughly 5 million population) there is a storage buffer that can source or sink something like:
(5e6/2) cars * (40 * 0.5) kWh capacity * 0.95
that is 47.5e6 kWh , also known as 47.5e3 MWh, or 47.5 GWh.
With real time pricing and the ability to deliver current from the car as well as to it and you have pretty much solved the problem.
The total installed generating capacity in Norway is just over 30 GW. If we harnessed just the batteries in the cars we already have we would have a buffer of something like
200e3 cars times 20 kWhr * 0.5 battery capacity
that is about 2000 MWh, or 2 GWh. Something between one and two hours full power for the whole country.
I hope I haven't got a power of ten wrong in there.
I think your numbers are good. Brings up a point I've seen about the difference between renewable power systems and fossil fuel based ones. Apologists for the latter will often try and impose the same reliability standards on renewables as fossil fuel systems, the day storage requirement. Then they declare renewable economically unworkable.
The fallacy is fossil fuel systems are susceptible to supply disruptions. So they need to store 7 days worth of fuel to keep the thermal plants running. Less than that and they could potentially run out of fuel.
Renewable's never run low on fuel due to war, accidents, and hurricanes like oil and gas does. Capacity issues (dark and stormy) is solved by long distance interties not local storage.
Amounts of CO2 are one thing, but on the other side: imagine the amount of waste produced by the electric cars running on lithium-ion batteries... Imagine millions of cars each having 10.000 small batteries which can be scattered around in case the disposal is not strongly regulated and controlled...
Elon has been very dismissive about hydrogen at least a couple of times saying that hydrogen is not a power source, that is horribly inefficient and fueling cars with it is blatantly stupid. He also added that this will become evident to everyone sometime in the future. I'm not educated enough to understand if his statements are true or he's just defending the battery model because Tesla went for it. I also can not figure out why - if hydrogen is so obviously a fail - such a company as Toyota is betting on it. Is anyone available to elaborate on that in order to help me to better understand Elon's dismissive position on hydrogen as a fueling technology for cars? Genuine question, and thank you to anyone willing to ELI 5.
Toyota and VW are the world's two biggest auto makers. VW is going strong on battery ev's, while Toyota is sticking with hydrogen. I think VW is going to clobber Toyota very badly in the coming years.
What secret they understand that rest of us don't ? Is it cyclic efficiency ? Residual discharge loss ? Environmental cleanup cost ? Lithium sourcing ? Chance of future tech progress ? Charging time ? What ?
They spent decades researching hydrogen fuel cells and finally brought a car to market with the technology. Their Mirai is essentially a fuel-cell hybrid, where the ICE component has been replaced with a fuel-cell equivalent and the only waste product from the hydrogen fuel is water. All told it is actually pretty cool, and it is nice to see an alternative to pure electric battery-driven drive trains. Ripping up the crust for Lithium isn’t much of an improvement over ripping it up for hydrocarbons, but it might be a century before we collectively agree.
>Ripping up the crust for Lithium isn’t much of an improvement over ripping it up for hydrocarbons
If everyone converted entirely to lithium-ion batteries, the crust would still be ripped up about one millionth as much it is at present for fossil fuels.
Han system is still alive, just transformed into corporate structures. Samurai does not question, samurai is ready to fall on his sword for the Shogun. Change of direction comes only after transfer of power to the new leader.
From what I've heard, Japan has a history of betting big on future technology that ultimately fizzled out - the best example I know of is their Analog HDTV. Hydrogen cars might become another one.
Bribes from the oil industry. Hydrogen (in the context of evs) has always been about disposing of money that otherwise would have gone into battery research.
* The carbon footprint is likely larger than a Tesla but smaller than a comparable gasoline vehicle.
* The cost of fuel is currently several times higher than gasoline (normalized for driving distance) which is why all the major hydrogen carmakers are giving away 3 years of fuel for free. This likely doesn't help the carbon footprint.
* It takes a little longer to refuel than a gasoline car (few minutes) but less time than an electric car.
* Range depends on environmental conditions and driving habits. As it is a hybrid, nonfreeway driving in stop/go traffic appears to be most efficient (this is where you get the 300+ mile range). Otherwise, in the freeway, in the mountains (uphill) and when the A/C or heater is on at full blast, be prepared to lose up to 30% of range.
* There aren't as many fuel stations yet so it is a good habit to check station status online and refuel before the tank gets too empty. Stations in the USA are currently open to the public in California and a few places in the Northeast.
* Some models have little trunk space as quite a bit of volume as been reallocated to the hydrogen tanks.
* Some jurisdictions may require periodic (~yearly) tank inspections.
* The vehicles generally handle like an electric (or hybrid in electric mode) vehicle.
A back of the envelope calculation might go something like this. Vehicles are idle 95% of the time on average, most countries have something like one vehicle for every two people, if all are electric and all have a 40 kWh battery (more than a original Leaf, a bit over half my Tesla S) that is on average 50% charged then in a country like Norway (roughly 5 million population) there is a storage buffer that can source or sink something like:
that is 47.5e6 kWh , also known as 47.5e3 MWh, or 47.5 GWh.With real time pricing and the ability to deliver current from the car as well as to it and you have pretty much solved the problem.
The total installed generating capacity in Norway is just over 30 GW. If we harnessed just the batteries in the cars we already have we would have a buffer of something like
that is about 2000 MWh, or 2 GWh. Something between one and two hours full power for the whole country.I hope I haven't got a power of ten wrong in there.
The fallacy is fossil fuel systems are susceptible to supply disruptions. So they need to store 7 days worth of fuel to keep the thermal plants running. Less than that and they could potentially run out of fuel.
Renewable's never run low on fuel due to war, accidents, and hurricanes like oil and gas does. Capacity issues (dark and stormy) is solved by long distance interties not local storage.
https://youtu.be/yFPnT-DCBVs
They spent decades researching hydrogen fuel cells and finally brought a car to market with the technology. Their Mirai is essentially a fuel-cell hybrid, where the ICE component has been replaced with a fuel-cell equivalent and the only waste product from the hydrogen fuel is water. All told it is actually pretty cool, and it is nice to see an alternative to pure electric battery-driven drive trains. Ripping up the crust for Lithium isn’t much of an improvement over ripping it up for hydrocarbons, but it might be a century before we collectively agree.
“Mirai” by the way, means “future” in Japanese.
If everyone converted entirely to lithium-ion batteries, the crust would still be ripped up about one millionth as much it is at present for fossil fuels.
https://youtu.be/8cNhROauWrM
... And Michael Fisher; same road trip :
https://youtu.be/euUiIjXA-zc