Can We Convince You Fuel Cells Have a Future? - AAH 679
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ม.ค. 2024
- TOPICS:
- Fuel cells have a wide range of applications
- Will a hydrogen infrastructure ever get built out?
- Who’s right: Everyone that’s developing fuel cells or MAN’s CEO who says they won’t be viable until 2035 at the earliest?
PANEL:
Charlie Freese, Executive Director of Global Fuel Cells, General Motors
Lindsay Brooke, Freelance
Gary Vasilash, on Automotive
John McElroy, Autoline.tv
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No you and they cannot convince me. Here's why:
--Head of MANN trucking has already said that fuel cells are not competitive due to the 70% energy loss in creating the hydrogen. Also that if you get hydrogen from fossil fuels then there is no CO2 savings over using straight diesel trucks.
-Green hydrogen requires massive amounts of energy to make AND in the compression and shipping of hydrogen much more energy has to be expended versus just flowing electricity across electrical lines. Losses of around 70% versus just using the electricity directly in an EV truck.
-Tesla has already shown that their semi truck is much more efficient and cost effective per mile that fuel cell created electricity. Battery energy density is just going up. Already there are now batteries with twice the power than just last year.... recent announcements of batteries pushing 800 KWhr energy densities... which will make even commercial jets running on electricity viable.
-Hydrogen gas constantly leaks from storage containers. Hydrogen makes metals of almost all types brittle. Hydrogen atoms are so small that they can eventually leak around almost any seal. This is why most hydrogen used in industry is made on-site due to large losses in transport and storage.
-Hydrogen gas increases global warming by combining with disulfides in the lower atmosphere. Disulfides normally go into the upper atmosphere where they help degrade methane (which is much worse than CO2 for global warming), but by diminishing that mechanism, hydrogen will drastically worsen and extend global warming. This has been recently reported in scientific studies on the action of hydrogen in the atmosphere.
-Finally, hydrogen gas filling stations will require a completely new infrastructure. Hydrogen stations can only hold a certain amount of hydrogen in tanks and that amount reduces due to constant leakage. Even countries that have implemented fuel cell buses have now announced they are no longer being used because of the high cost of hydrogen and fuel cell maintenance costs. Fuel cells require extensive filtration of incoming oxygen. Therefore there is a lot of filters that must regularly be cleaned or replaced. Countries such as Denmark have closed all the hydrogen fueling stations in that country due to them being cost prohibitive and uncompetitive with electricity prices.
To summate....Hydrogen based fuel cells are a losing proposition. By the time they can be rolled out there will be much better battery solutions without the added cost of building a completely new hydrogen infrastructure.
Well said👍👍
Can we run on 100% renewables? well not exactly, we could however run on 300% renewables and batteries so that on the let's say 15 bad days of the year we have enough electricity to get by and on the other 350 days of the year we will have so much electricity that we will be throwing it away. In that scenario energy expensive hydrogen producing plants will be just fine.
As an energy store, making ammonia or methane from green hydrogen makes so much more sense than compressing, transporting, and storing elemental hydrogen...
@@danielstapler4315 Agreed, once we have transitioned to all renewable we will have massive amounts of over generation of power most of the year. That power will be virtually free. Hydrogen could be made with that. However the global warming damage from hydrogen I mention above would still occur.
Once there is so much additional energy I am sure we will think of new uses for it. Things like charging robotic fleets that do road construction and repair or build buildings? Think about massive swarms of robots building housing for the poor, constructing bridges, etc. All running on free energy.
What project couldn't be done?
@@kschleic9053 Agreed that solves the transport problem but creates one highly toxic chemical in ammonia. Methane already escapes in quantity from oil wells and is the worst of the worst in causing global warming. Rather than create more of it we might want to harvest what is escaping from oil wells and use it...... preferably for SpaceX rocket launches as they use methane. Oil wells will still be around for manufacturing plastics and if oil companies are smart they will sell their methane rather than just burn it off as a nuisance.... which they mostly do now.
Everybody knows that hydrogen is over - they have the cars have the resale value of zero
Cost to fill car 80-120 $
Cost to fill up EV 0-35
The hydrogen cars have a resale value of zero because hydrogen sells for $30 / kg, and the original owner of the vehicle already used up the hydrogen fuel voucher. That's why only idiots will buy a hydrogen vehicle, the smart people lease it, so that when the hydrogen voucher is used up, give the car back to the bank, and it will be their problem to figure out how to get rid of it.
Hydrogen FCEV is DOA. Non-starter being slung by Oil companies to delay electrification.
It’s happening! Lol. Please use your money not public funds.
@@nexxuskthe oil industry spent nearly a century defrauding public money or incentives.
Hydrogen 10000psi tanks !!
Kaboom !!
A red herring if I’ve ever heard one.
He knows his stuff unlike Elon Musk who cons you into thinking he knows his stuff
So the most enthusiastic hydrogen person you could find at GM still concludes the video by saying that fossil fuels are the only way to make hydrogen cheap enough
And it's still not cheap enough.
There are only three real hydrogen carriers that may work -> Ammonia, Dimethyl ether (DME) and/or Methanol. US has real studies on what the physics, engineering as well as economics could be ... Hydrogen infrastructure is just too expensive ...
Hydrogen is not a source of energy, so you can never get more energy than the energy that was used to isolate the hydrogen
It's early days. The first computers filled large rooms. The computer on Appolo 11 was way bigger than your smartphone which has 100 + times the computing power. The oil on the planet will run out so research is needed for a replacement.
It's one thing to say that the technical issues with fuel cells in vehicles have been solved and all the technical issues with hydrogen distribution have been worked out but it's a completely different issue whether it makes economic sense (i.e. least expensive tech that will do the job). I really didn't hear that fuel cells/hydrogen will be less expensive than alternative technologies that are zero emissions.
this... and would add none of those other things have in fact been worked out at scale and not in the decades of development (edit: of hydrogen tech in general I meant). But they have a shiny new factory and a $$$ partner in Honda so blue skies for while.
The only place green hydrogen will work at scale is where you need its chemical properties, like in petrochemical and fertilizer industries. Where you have no choice but to use green hydrogen. When you have a choice against competing solutions, hydrogen almost always loses by a large margin.
Hydrogen as energy carrier & store never adds up. It fails to compete on cost, on energy efficiency, and on engineering complexity to competitors like batteries and biofuels. Even the top European countries like France and Germany who spent loads of money on hydrogen pilots have all come out and said nope, it does not make any sense.
Hydrogen has no future when the retail price is $30 / kg, about 5x the cost of conventional gasoline and diesel.
Tesla built its own charging network. Is GM going to build out its own hydrogen refueling network?
As far as I know none of the folks making fuel cell devices have a plan to make or sell Hydrogen at scale. It's like the just expected "someone else" to automatically do it for them.
@@frankcoffey and it will be "us" thanks to intense lobbying and taxes..
Somehow they suckered the State of California into spending millions on a small number of fueling stations. These cost about $1.5-2M per stall. It might be better now, but I thought it could only support one car per hour. Fill ups are a fast 5 minutes or so, but the station has to recompress a "charge" to 10,000 psi for the next car.
Maybe GM Honda and Toyota could get together and build the infrastructure lol
They will really need to with the help of government funds. This along side of BEVs should be our future.
As Charlie stated, you still need a battery and electric motors. That sub-system will have the same efficiency as a BEV. Then you have the 40% loss through the fuel cell stack. Then you have the electrolyser losses in making hydrogen. Add the energy used to compress the gas at 300 atm and this propulsion method is no more efficient than ICE. Then you have to build all the infrastructure to produce, store and distribute hydrogen. BEVs use electricity, which is already ubiquitous in our built environments. Fuel cells are the last ditch attempt by fossil fuel industry to maintain relevance. They want the source to be “grey”, made from fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are providing the electricity to power your BEV too.
Bid Oil wins either way.
@@richardruscito1231 that's the talking point yes but power generated by big oil (or even coal) at a power plant and distributed out to the public through the grid is still far more efficient than petroleum or hydrogen. Also EVs don't really care where they get their power from - you could convert those plants to wind/solar/hydro etc and provide a far more green experience.
@@richardruscito1231 Not mine, I have my own solar generator. In any case, it doesn’t change the fact that fuels cells are less efficient than BEV and therefore result in higher emissions when you drive them.
@@MarksElectricLife
Considering all mining, diesel power mining machines, to make the battery, then all the coal powered electrical grids that power the factories and actually charge the BEV, I don't possibly see how H2 can be any worse.
How many days does a full charge take using your solar panels?
@@richardruscito1231 It takes two hours each day to recharge my EV using my solar panels. While it does that I get on with my life. No standing around at filling stations. All those inputs you refer to have to happen before you even begin to crack the water by hydrolysis to produce hydrogen for your fuel cell. Don't forget fuel cell cars have batteries in them also.
H2 is only necessary for chemical production. Not transport.
Simple answer to the question at hand is "NO"
You notice how Honda sends a salesman not an engineer.
Grid storage was the only sensible suggestion he made. Fuel cell will not displace BEV as a road transport propulsion system. That ship has sailed.
Hydrogen will not be a grid storage solution either. Same problems, and batteries are better here too.
Can't get this content anywhere else. Awesome.
Personally if was a GM executive I wouldn't mention Kodak.
H2 is going nowhere. Green H2 is way too expensive. The Petro industry is pushing this to a dead end
"Green" H2 isn't green.
It uses energy which could remove fossil generation from the grid and essentially throws at least 60% away.
H2 doesn’t occur naturally on earth anywhere in any useable quantity. So we have to make it. And to make it without fossil fuels is energy intensive.
True to some extent, but I also feel this is the same argument people make all the time against BEVs - all our electricity comes from coal so why bother. I think particularly as solar gets cheaper and cheaper we may see green hydrogen actually become a thing for industrial and heavy vehicle / aircraft operation.
@@ultrastoat3298not true. White hydrogen is abundant. Oil companies can procure it. Same tech as natural gas. For trucks it is a better idea. Batteries are to heavy for long range trucks. Heavy batteries cut down on gross weight capacity. It makes no sense for cars.
@@hoffingeryou been drinking too much Hydrogen Coolaide
Short answer?
No
Battery tech keeps seeing big improvements, saying you cannot do large vehicles eith batteries seems to ignore what is happening in the commercial truck space.
Orders of magnitude cheaper than refurl hydrogen trucks sounds incorrect. It is nice to know PepsiCo for example could install solar on their warehouses/factories and battery storage to make it do the can "refuel" with their own power. They can also help power the buildings, let alone the semi. Much simpler to install at a lower cost. Cheaper to build full electric and easier to maintain.
GM and Honda needs to apply as much of their resources on getting their EV programs working. The Tesla Semi is only getting better and production wilk be ramping up. This will make hydrogen commercial vehicles not make sense. GM will be fighting to be in a shrinking market. It will be like developing laser disc production when Bluray and 4k are in the market.
Nothing new here; no detailed comparisons to BEV class 8 trucks already on the road and damn few details on H2 TCO.
You don't need a comparison, just call up a California fuel station, and ask them what they are selling for. At 25 to 30 per kg, that's 5x the operating cost of gasoline or diesel. No trucking company would be stupid enough to operate class 8 hydrogen cabs.
This hydrogen “expert” is best explained by John Updike, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
What an incredibly interesting interview! Thanks!
Strapping in my kids car seat right above 10000 PSI storage tank. Yep thats the car for me!
so much BS, he's like a car dealer guy, telling you that you'll be happy with the POS used car they have in the back by the garbage cans.
H2 was a dead letter when we turned against massive nuclear energy adoption for no good reason. We'll never have enough excess grid capacity to spend excess gigawatts on splitting water and compressing the hydrogen.
Even that is a dumb big oil talking point. The new way to say it is that solar is going to be so inexpensive that we can just make hydrogen. Basic economics wants a word with this nonsense. Also, all that excess is going to be used to charge EV's. Nobody is going to build extra so these hydrogen vehicle fantasies come true. Industrial process hydrogen and that will be it.
This program convinced me fuel cells don't have a future.
Unfortunately you can't store hydrogen without leakage and the explosive aspect.
I saw a Mirai for sale dirt cheap, and thought hey, rip out the fuel cell and put in a little more battery, you have a nice BEV. But it was 1000 miles away, and how would I get it here? Couldn't drive it.
Before starting this vid, I will say I'll try to keep in mind that anything is possible and that the mark of a great man is to be able to change your mind at a moment's notice when presented with new evidence, so let's begin:)
There is no new evidence!!!
wtf are you talking about? hydrogen fuel cells were proven technology over 20 years ago. The financial economics just don't make sense when hydrogen is retailing for $30 / kg, about 5x the operating cost of conventional gasoline and diesel.
At 17 minutes "we had to prise the keys from the user's hands".
Sound familiar?
EV1 anyone?
gm led.
It is sad to see companies dumping money into hydrogen. It is extra sad to government money dumped into supporting hydrogen development programs.
I would bet hydrogen had higher development resources on average over the past fifty years. It is only in the last ten years did EV get the better finding and results are coming quick.
You’ll be able to convince the science illiterate that H2 has a meaningful future. But that’s it.
"Complexity appeals to stupid people" .... Oil&Gas + lagacy auto know this....
the problem is not the Fuel cell but Hydrogen , there is two way to produce it with petrol or with a large amount of electricity and you have loses all the way , to make it , to transport it it's less efficient compare to put electricity directly to a battery . But all electric it's not possible for certain usage maybe for them hydrogen can be a solution. Not for the mass market.
The cost question. H2 vs Battery.
Sure, a FCEV might be cheaper to produce than a BEV, but the Total Cost of Operation will never beat a battery now that we can build batteries for sub $100/kwh. The laws of physics say that BEV operation will always be at least 3x cheaper than H2.
And Batteries are just getting started. I expect the cost of batteries to fall another 50%. There is a path for BEV's sticker price to be less than FCEV's. It's only a couple of years away.
Agree with your take but how in the world can an HFCV be cheaper than a BEV? You still need a (smaller) battery, fuel cell, and high pressure H2 tank(s) + internal piping. Can't imagine how all those are less expensive than just a battery..
Agreed. Cost of LFP batteries already down to $50kWh in China for Chinese EV makers.
Drops cost of batteries $3000 a 65kW BEV.
And his cost of green H2 under $3 is dreamland. By 2030.
Being able to make a product is not enough. It needs to be the right product.
As a fuel cell vehicle enthusiast, I feel you definitely picked the wrong guy to champion this pathway. He's a sales guy and in it for the wrong reasons. It shows through and through. I hope you showcase a better representative of fuel cell technology in the near future. We need it.
Except there no one that can overcome the problems with thermodynamics that hydrogen has. Good luck chasing your hydrogen fuel cell dreams.
Tesla Semi did 1076 miles of 70,000 lbs deliveries at over 50mph in a day run and demonstrated a 410 mile run with charge left, by Pepsi at NACFE Run-for-Less trials.
Perhaps Mr Freeze can point to an independent trial of a commercially available FCV Semi that exceeds these parameters?
I was suprised maritime applications like container shipping didn't come up as that also would seem to be a good use case. I think the biggest enabler if we do see hydrogen mass adopted would be distributed production, particularly if you can efficiently and cheaply make hydrogen at places like remote mine sites from solar.
If at a remote site then why not just use batteries? No need for the added complexity of storage tanks, keeping hydrogen chilled, routine maintenance etc etc etc..
Let's try some logic.
You propose making hydrogen at remote sites (mines?) from solar.
.
Presumably that will be stored then used via a fuel cell to power electric motors ..... In vehicles?
(You don't want combustion engines in a mine)
.
That takes us back to the same old problem of requiring 3 times the solar to drive a HFCEV compared to a straight BEV.
.
Your choice would also require transportation, construction and maintenance (!) of sufficient plant to liberate the Hydrogen AND a water supply for the hydrolysis.
.
Alternative? Fly in containers of batteries.
Drop them on the site of the proposed Hydrogen plant and install 30% of the solar (50% to be safe?) All of which would be essentially maintenance free, plus fast to build in comparison.
.
As usual, the sums just don't add up.
@@rogerstarkey5390 You are assuming no improvements in hydrogen technology and that the 30% is some hard thermodynamic limit. Original solar cells were 6% efficient, with plenty of people saying solar would never amount to anything because it is too expensive and too inefficent. Also solar panels are super cheap now, where as energy storage is very expensive. It is easy to see a time when it is cheaper to install much more solar and store hydrogen in onsite pressurised tanks than to build less solar cells and have a big battery to story energy plus massive batteries in each of the vehicles. Massive batteries also add weight which reduces efficiency so there may well be use cases in the future where lighter hydrogen is more efficient than a bev for heavy duty vehicles. Will it happen? Nobody knows, but I think completely dismissing hydrogen without a realistic path to batteries with a similar energy density is a mistake.
@@erktrek Potentially expense and weight. When you are talking about megawatts of power required the cost and weight of the battery would be huge as well as issues of charging or swapping. It is easy to imagine a scenario in the future where it is cheaper to make and store massive amounts of hydrogen than build and move around massive batteries. Even with solid state batteries ~500WH/kg you are still 3-4 times less energy dense than current compressed hydrogen tanks and for big inefficent vehicles or vehicles than need to be light hydrogen may prove superior.
@@kingdomofashes except the infrastructure needed to maintain those large liquid hydrogen tanks - you wouldn't be using compressed hydrogen for long term storage at the power requirements you are suggesting and you'd still need fuel cells and slightly less heavy battery packs and a lot more routine maintenance.
I still don't see the case for Hydrogen. Anything that would be a candidate for hydrogen, it seems that a diesel hybrid would do better until a full battery electric is ready.
What a waste of resources and money - still no convincing argument for HFCVs vs EVs just fluff and softball questions. Pretty much all of the "advantages" apply equally to EVs and thanks to the expensive/difficult hydrogen infrastructure and lower efficiency HFCVs will always be worse no matter what the scale. Seems like a boon for the suppliers (Big Oil) though. As an aside one of the reasons they are using large vehicles is the high pressure hydrogen tanks fit better... Legacy auto will have just as much difficulty redesigning their manufacturing lines to fit the HFCV drive train as EVs, maybe worse due to the more complicated setup.
I am pleased to see that more people, including yourself, or catching on to the adorable distraction of hydrogen.
I think some folks are just mesmerized by the word ‚fuel‘ and falsely believing it’s NOT an electric car with an electric motor AND some battery.
Please correct me if I am wrong but as I understand it a typical semi tanker delivering compressed Hydrogen will only be enough for less than 40 vehicles. If this is true then every Hydrogen station will need to be refilled every hour?
How many H2 cars are there to be refilled?
The hydrogen is roughly 11 times more voluminous than a similar energy output for gasoline and that’s if it’s carried at 10,000 psi which would also make the tank 10 times heavier than the hydrogen it contains. A total loser due to the physics of hydrogen and nothing else.
No
Thanks for the interview seems like only real advantage is removing the point source pollution from the multitudes of diesels out there. Especially if we use fossil fuel to generate the hydrogen. But this does not really seem to be better than bev for passenger cars.
Gary, Hyundai's fuel cell truck is a class 8 (over 33,000 lb GVWR), not class 7.
It doesn't matter, at 25 to 30 dollars per kg, hydrogen is doomed
A feasibility study for ultra large static based green power plant storage is probably
a better way to *begin* to "pave the way" for the far more difficult small rolling vehicle
fuel cell storage and distribution systems.
As someone that has experienced an industrial H2 explosion, H2 is scary as h$ll.
We need charging stations for the cars Americans have already chosen to replace ICE cars. We don't need another type of car draining resources from that effort. Spend the billions you are wasting on fuel cells perfecting battery cars and developing a charging network that is reliable and available everywhere. It's true that most charging happens at home but we need to be able to travel also. This is not just for the car owners it's for any business that relies on travelers to survive. If EV owners decide to only go where they can fly or just stay in their area on vacation a lot of folks are going to lose.
Can I get a hydrogen fuel cell plugin, without the extra hydrogen fuel cell hardware? And more batteries? Man that would be sweet.
I will give Charlie Freese credit for being a smooth salesman for hydrogen, but it doesn't change the hard fact that hydrogen fuel cells will never be competitive with BEVs. A hydrogen fuel cell heavy duty truck consumes between 0.25 and 0.43 megajoules per ton-km, whereas a heavy duty BEV truck consumes between 0.03 and 0.09 MJ/ton-km. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2022) Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group III, Mitigation of Climate Change, p. 1146-7) No rational trucking company is going to spend 5-8 times more energy to move the same amount of cargo.
In California, the price of H2 is $36 per kg, and that is the only state where there are enough H2 fueling stations for hydrogen trucks to be used for long-distance transport. The Nikola TRE FCEV has a 70kg tank and a 500 mile range and costs $750,000 and takes 20 minutes to fuel. It gets a $40k federal tax break from the IRA, plus a $240k - $288k grant from the California HVIP, so it costs $422k with all the incentives. If I assume a 15 year lifespan, 54,000 miles per year, and zero maintenance costs, the TRE FCEV will have a lifetime cost of $4,504,400 or $5.56 per mile.
In comparison, the Tesla Semi has a 500 mile range and takes 30 minutes to fuel up to 70% of its battery capacity. We can guesstimate that it has a 900 kWh battery and a price tag of $400k, but it will get the $40k federal tax credit and $120k-$150k grant from California HVIP. The average cost of electricity in California is $0.27 per kWh, but trucking companies are probably going to charge their trucks at night when electricity is 40% cheaper, so they are only paying $0.16 per kWh or they are going to buy it on the unregulated wholesale market where the average price is $0.19 per kWh. However, small operators can't afford to install their own DC fast chargers, so they are going to charge at Tesla Megachargers and let's assume they are paying $0.60 per kWh.
If paying $0.16 per kWh, the total cost over a 15 year lifespan and 54,000 miles per year with zero maintenance costs would be $454,944 or $0,56 per mile. If paying $0,60 per kWh, total lifetime cost would be $1,128,540 or $1,13 per mile. Therefore, the hydrogen truck costs 4 to 10 times more per mile.
Most H2 fueling stations only pump at 1kg of H2 per minute, so it would take 70 minutes to fill a 70 kg tank, which means that the trucking company would have to install its own H2 pump if it wants to be able to fill the H2 tank in 20 minutes as Nikola advertises. Nikola plans to offering its own H2 fueling trucks so trucking companies may be able to fuel in 20 minutes and I'm guessing that Nikola will charge less than $36 per kg of H2, but I don't see the business case for hydrogen trucks when BEV trucks will be so much cheaper.
Electrolytic generation of H2 is just too much more expensive than putting the same electricity in a battery. The only way I see it being economically feasible is if they can make it at high temp in a nuclear reactor. Mr. Fusion maybe.
Maybe they can make synfuel economically (sorta). They can use existing distribution and engines for that.
EVs will charge with the same electricity that is used for H2 production. EVs will always have a 70% price advantage on H2 without subsidies
@@ultrastoat3298 I'm an engineer, so I never say "never".
@@jamesvandamme7786 Ok, a significant portion of your remaining life will be without a hydrogen economy. Likely the entirety of your remaining life.
Show us your vehicles in action. Legacy auto wants to continue making early last century technology at heart. This silliness will abate as you find you will have no customers for hydrogen vehicles. Truck industry has already come out in favour of EVs
Executive Director of Global Fuel Cells, General Motors. What did he do wrong to get that job? 😢
He has been working on this for a long time. Meanwhile battery storage has gotten better and much cheaper.
A hydrogen fuel cell seems perfect for large vehicle plug-in-hybrids. I'd say it'd be great for something like the Edison Motor's truck, at least until something better comes along.
The thing I struggle with regarding hydrogen, is this. The fuel cell makes electricity, but except for a limited number of applications, the fuel cell cannot deliver enough energy to power machinery, cars etc. So, at a minimum, it needs an electric motor, but generally ( as in a vehicle), it will also need a battery to act as a buffer. ( I can't really imagine a scenario where a cement mixer powered by a fuel cell makes any sense). So by increasing the battery size - you no longer need the FC and all its complex systems, and you also do away with the need for hydrogen infrastructure...
Surely, the only reason that hydrogen gets any traction (see what I did there ?) is because its a by-product of the fossil-fool industry, and they are trying to make a profit from it by lobbying politicians (who can be bought, let's face it !) as if it's a certain future fuel...
I agree that if you correctly size the factory, then you might as well eliminate the problematic hydrogen tank and fuel cell, which are both incredibly expensive and bulky. Not sure whether fossil FOOL industry was intentional, but if so, it was funny.
Even if you can get over the expensive and complicated problems of manufacturing fuel cells you still need batteries within the vehicle which creates as much complication as a conventional hybrid. The only clean way of producing hydrogen is electrolysis. That uses about four times the amount of electricity than that used by an EV. Distribution, storage and delivery are also problematic. There may be specialist applications but it is never going to be a commercial solution for the automobile market.
The other way of producing hydrogen, and the one most commonly used is hydroforming, which is high temperature steam and natural gas. Oil proponents of hydrogen are actually counting on it to be produced from natural gas, which is why big oil is secretly funding this nightmare.
1:04:00 sounds great, but it would cost 5-6 times more in electricity to run a FCEV than just running a BEV. This is why hydrogen makes no sense. Not to mention the safety aspect of this bonkers plan
3kWh of electrical energy = 1kWh of electrical energy out of a fuel cell.
Very clear what the future is.
Train's if they do it should only be extremely short term, which I doubt would be worth it. They've had a solution to their electrification for many decades. Overhead catenary lines and a pantograph are the superior option in all the cases I can see that don't involve stupidity or corruption.
H2 Fuel Cells are the future coming our way for all LARGE transport and Grid / Off Shore ( no need for massive cables ) etc, for cars its quite dicey for class 8 trucks for sure ...; pick ups maybe the best as well. Pilot the countries largest truck stop chain ( they are EVERYWHERE ) is building out a nationwide H2 fueling network. When and exactly where will have them is open to debate, but it , like all Electronic Civilization disruptions of the old Industrial civ. paradigm are on their way, but exactly when they hit you is debatable. Robotics, AI, Renewables, Greenhouse Vertical food production, etc Eco Architecture, all are the future you build or buy. PS the Reciprocal Trade economy is the biggest of all and gets the least press. As Universal Income is a necessity when zero marginal cost production hits bug IE no more jobs / one organization infrastructure....... IE robots and mega cyber markets ( Amazon, etc ) See Yanis Varofakis on the end of captialism. See Breaking Boundaries , Zeitgeist and MIT Limits to Growth 2040.
NO!
Even if you could get unlimited free Hydrogen at 10,000 psi ready to pump into vehicles, it would still not compete with BEVs. Just providing the fuel cell and maintaining storage for this problematic element might prove impossible. Haven’t run the numbers but suspect there is NO scenario that would make Hydrogen work.
Few whys but probably more:
1. Fuel cells need extensive maintenance after 100,000 km.
2. Hydrogen causes and brittle meant to all metals which have to be tested and replaced regularly.
3. Hydrogen being the smallest element, will leak out of practically every joint and destroy every material. It’s in contact with.
4. Hydrogen at 10,000 psi, which is the pressure it stored in the Toyota Mirai takes up nine times the volume of the equivalent energy you can get from gasoline. This drastically limited space in any passenger car. Note the cut away of a Toyota Mirai or a good part of the trunk, and a good part of the backseat is used up by the tanks.
5. Hydrogen pumping nozzles are very critical, requiring frequent checks and maintenance. Even so they will freeze up, and they certainly cannot leak.
6. Total Maria only has 156 hp believe to keep powertrain volumes to acceptable limits which would necessitate a larger battery to improve acceleration making it very close to a BEV.
7. Fuel cells are incredibly expensive expensive to manufacture, as is the rest of the fuel distribution system.
8. Only Tesla has been able to make BEV‘s profitable prices, indicating that competing with new technology and making it competitive is not as easy as everyone made it out to be acknowledging that BEV are super simple compared to FCEV.
Until energy storage cost parity ( or better ) is achieved on a
very *LARGE* scale is proven, the hydrogen path for mobile
applications will likely require multiple decades to 'work out'.
The folks making all the fuel cell stuff have no plan for this, not even a basic plan.
Fuel cell research has been heavily funded in the auto industry by governments the world over since about 1980. So yeah, at least 4 decades now.
@@royh6526 The liquid fuel business is threatened for the first time in over 100 years and it's one of the biggest revenue businesses in the world. You think they will let batteries take over without a fight?
@@frankcoffey I'm just upset about the government funded part. Oil companies have enough money to do their own development.
@@royh6526 Yeah that won't change. If anything they will get even more taxpayer dollars the worse things get for them. I wonder what the "real" cost of a gallon of gas is for the buyer if you include how much you gave the oil company in tax money.
H2 as compared to the efficiency of Battery Stored Electricity. Is more expensive to convert from water and Electricity, or from other petrochemicals. It must be held a way too low of a temperature, -457 degrees Fahrenheit at maximum, and if it is not, then the fuel will boil creating immense pressure. Now just think of a 100 degree F Day…. The third problem is since H2 is the smallest atom, it leaks through metal, so cheap Gasoline tanks won’t due. It can be held on a metal hydride, a porous metal within the containment pressure vessel, which will make the storage unit heavy, like a Lithium Battery! The consumer will end up paying more for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline in Hydrogen form, the cost will be much more expensive than gasoline. The efficiency of converting the hydrogen and oxygen into electricity to run electricity motors in the fuel cells, further drives up the cost per mile.
For a car, or light pickup truck, battery electric vehicle, hydrogen just doesn’t fit, considering there almost no infrastructure to make and distribute the gas! Leaked Hydrogen is major contributor to Global warming! That is just what you want, a vehicle pouring out an ice slick by the tailpipe, in freezing weather. How many people will slip and fall?
Would love to see hydrogen go to oceanic shipping. They need to ban bunker oil and get hydrogen container ships going
Hydrogen is not even suit for big commercial bus. Australia has tried that and it's turn out Hydrogen powertrain has high maintenance and low lifespan than BEV or even Diesel. Who would have thought of that
I like how they are accelerating green trains, but the rest of the planet is already doing electric trains and have done so for numerous decades already. Only in the US are the railways too incompetent to go electric and save on running costs. Nope, gotta keep burning that diesel! Or maybe switch to stupidly expensive exploding hydrogen. Sense making is important!
You go hydrogen boy. Don't let anyone tell you your dream is stupid and dangerous and just bad for the environment.
Plenty of technical talk about how they do it so to hide the fact that there’s no why.
The problem with hydrogen fuel cells isn't the fuel cell, it's the hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen is an expensive, bulky and difficult to store fuel. If a fuel cell could be designed that works on cheaper easy to store fuels, that might have a future.
They need to develop natural gas fuel cells for homes as back-up generators.
10 years ago I looked at a 7 kW fuel-cell for my boat that ran on propane and I believe the cost was about $18,000. You should be able to get a back up battery at half that price.
@@colingenge9999 Yes, but battery can only last for so long. Most residences have natural gas pipe lines running to their homes. It would be complementary to batteries and eliminates/reduces the noise pollution. Can't they just run a secondary pipe to mitigate CO2.
@@magnusauto7941 You could expect the storage battery to last 20 to 30 years easily. Rather than just dropping dead, they’ll lose say 3% on first year and say 1% for each year thereafter so at 20 years, your battery would still have over 75% capacity. Lead acid batteries lose 10% per year so they’re done at 7 years. You can check out those specs but be sure to compare to life expectancy of the fuel cell and maintenance required.
You cannot run a fuel cell directly into your home since its output is somewhat fixed and your load will be all over the place. You’ll need a battery buffer to load match fuel cell output to your usage.
Every one of these cases needs to be worked out for your conditions. Where I live, an $18,000 20kWh battery would be a useful backup because I use 7 kWh per day staying away from heavy loads such as dryer but keeping fridges running with light and some left over. We’ve had one power failure for a few hours in the past 3 years so mostly it would do nothing. However, I get free power at night so I could save 20 x $0.30/kWh x 30= $180 per month or $2,000 per year which would give me a 10% return on my investment so the back up function was free. That’s the ideal case; for sure my savings would be lower. There was another catch that had to do with charging rates or discharge rates that made it less ideal so now I just charge my car at night and run the washer/dryer at night to get a good chunk of savings with no investment.
What do you mean by “ run a secondary pipe to mitigate CO2”.
In general, when natural gas, which is a short chain carbon, hydrogen molecule is run through a fuel cell, the carbon combines with oxygen, and is released as common dioxide. What advantage of the battery storage is that does not produce any carbon dioxide directly.
EVs are not perfect but they are real. You can drive them today. The batteries are getting better all the time.
Not in Chicago when it is cold! Apparently 😂😂😂
@@lesliecarter4295 it's about 2C here today. We have our moments of cold but they don't last long
@@lesliecarter4295 I charge and drove on both Monday and Tuesday at -10F to -20F
They seem to just think of hydrogen from reformed natural gas = not renewables
Operating costs of a BEV are already cheaper per mile than ICE. Lots of R&D money flowing into battery chemistry to increase storage capacity, durability and cold weather range. Plus no transmission, exhaust system, reduced brake wear with BEV regen, no pollution controls, less noise, no oil changes, lower maintenance costs. Batteries used in both vehicle and stationary storage for onshore wind and solar (now cheaper than coal or nat. gas plants) and replacing fossil fuel peaker plants. ICE will be a niche market in 20 or 30 years.
Fuel cells can make sense, just needs to be the right use case.
Can't think of any... oh, rockets. Maybe.
@@jamesvandamme7786 Just no infrastructure so static depots. Mining, shipping, etc.
Like bilking ignorant government agencies out taxpayer money.
@@davidmccarthy6061 why build infrastructure for something that is not economically viable
You need H2 for one thing: Rockets 🚀.
So the issue with Fuel Cells always comes back to the following key points:
1 KG of Hydrogen costs $9.47 ❗️
It costs $3.85M to build a small H2 refuelling station❕
“I charged my BEV to 90% at home, yesterday for just $11.27”
Every U.S vehicle under 25 tons will use batteries 🔋
Good luck with your road going bomb! 😂
As a mechanical engineer who likes to view technology rationally I don't see a hydrogen fuel cell as anything but a novelty technology. Battery technology is already so good for transportation in cars and small trucks. Getting hydrogen to the pump and then store it and compress it to get it into the car and then operating it at 10,000 psi is much too complicated and unreliable.
Fuel cells have 2 big problems Physics and Economics. $35 per Kg now in California and that is dirty grey Hydrogen where you would be better off just burning the natural gas in the first place.
👍
Forget the price of H2, I went and looked at the price of Platinum, and they are putting $700 per cell. I think they need to invest in asteroid mining 🚀.
Thief are going to cut them out like catalytic converter to get precious metals
kept waiting for Nicola and their GM partnership to come up but for some reason it didn't, Trevor was at least entertaining
Hydrogen, with all of its conversion steps, is WAAY more complicated and WAAY less energy-efficient than electricity.
He’s gonna run out of oxygen if he doesn't stop to breathe once in a while.
To sum it up. Fuel cells could be great, but probably not.
Just clicked on this, not even 1 min. In but HFC ARE the future!!! Electric vechiles have not proven as scaleable with the car buying public. HFCs solve many of those issues.
No, because they dont.
Fuel cells are replenished at a "station" . My electric car is charged at home. No contest. BEV wins.
There is a place for hydrogen with steel and cement. Everything else is a waste of time and money. It is just too difficult to store and transport.
Excellent guest. What a relief to have a thoughtful well-spoken engineer using balanced arguments on Autoline AH.
Unless hydrogen fuel is made from either solar or wind power, it can't be energy efficient. Yes, hydrogen on forklifts and in-building applications is good, it is not practical OR cost effective for over the road use.
And storing excess solar and wind in batteries is more efficient than making hydrogen and storing it.
Not happening, as the people said below, no one is going to build an infrastructure for this, and most Hydrogen is not clean anyway. I did not watch this waist of time, and please keep doing good interviews. Please don't do Solid State batteries next Thursday!!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂
All to deflect from BEVs and be further comfortable with Big Oil...
Great video. I hope his company is successful. We need a more diverse green energy infrastructure.
Operating costs of a BEV are already cheaper per mile than ICE. Lots of R&D money flowing into battery chemistry to increase storage capacity, durability and cold weather range. Plus no transmission, exhaust system, reduced brake wear with BEV regen, no pollution controls, less noise, no oil changes, lower maintenance costs. Batteries used in both vehicle and stationary storage for onshore wind and solar (now cheaper than coal or nat. gas plants) and replacing fossil fuel peaker plants. ICE will be a niche market in 20 or 30 years.
@datamatters8 battery storage and green energy is absolutely not even close to a gas plant in cost yet. I wish it was, but that is wildly inaccurate. And cost of ownership is higher still for all BEV in america by A lot. Most people qualify for no tax credits.
no
PLEASE STOP saying: “..is is that..”. You only need one ‘is’ ❤😂. ‘The thing I wonder is, will fuel cells be reliable?’ For example...
Not, ‘What I wonder is, is that will fuel cells be reliable?’
Thanks!
Low energy density, storage, low overall chain efficiency, cell capacity limited conversion rate, lack of fueling infrastructure, no real prospect of economics of scale.....
In terms of automotive: dead end street especially compared to both EV and ICE.
No no, just let the BEV boneheads sit and stew in front of chargers for hours on end... till they get it.
If someone wanted to make this simpler, they'd develope a liquid carrier for the hydrogen. Perhaps a carbon based liquid.
Huh. You may be on to something. Maybe a little oxygen just to make it a liquid.
Acetone is one option.
@@danielstapler4315 Of course, the free flowing acetone fountains everywhere...
@@brilantoI should have said Ammonia, but we can have free flowing fountains of Ammonia. Liquid at room temperature is easier then high pressure Hydrogen gas.
NO.
Have we solved the storage of Hydrogen yet .
You have either liquid hydrogen that’s stored at absolute zero ( like -450 degrees) , or gaseous hydrogen requires super high pressure like 10,000 psi .
Once you solve this issue , you might have a chance
For industrial and commercial use, fuel cells may begin the solution. Infrastructure has to set up for this. And oil industries tycoons are going to be against it.
Disagree - Big Oil knows they are increasingly losing their petrol gravy train and desperately wants to keep us hooked on something in order to keep those sweet profits flowing. It's hard to see this until you experience the (relative) freedom of an EV.
This is as dumb as it gets from a first principles physics standpoint. WOW!
😂😂😂😂😂