Tesla Trumps Toyota: Why Hydrogen Cars Can’t Compete With Pure Electric Cars

[caraher]

Joe Romm updated his critique of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in a recent multi-part blog post. The problem with pushing for FCEVs now is that it is a gross misallocation of resources that extends, rather then curtails, use of fossil fuels in transportation. Yes, a few solar-powered hydrogen filling stations exist to serve a tiny number of vehicles - I don't think anyone really needs a proof-of-principle to know this is technically possible on a small scale if money is no object.

But realistically, if FCEVs are to exist on a large scale anytime soon, they will run, for many years, primarily on hydrogen extracted from natural gas - and that is a losing proposition. Note that only one FCV offers even a modest improvement over a Prius when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions - most are demonstrably worse:



As Romm notes,

The graph shows high-polluting cars on the left, and low-polluting cars on the right. And it’s plain to see that hydrogen FCV vehicles group to the left, while EVs group to the right. It’s actually worse than that because Cox does not appear to have included the impact of the recent measurements and calculations of methane leakage from methane production, which are so severe they undermine the case for replacing coal-fired power plants with natural gas fired power plants.

Even if we look at what kind of transportation we want in 20 years, hydrogen still looks like a bad bet, because it is wasteful. Romm quotes some numbers; even that assessment of the efficiency of the energy conversions involved for hydrogen are a factor of 2 too low, using zero-emissions electricity to power FCEVs is throwing clean energy away:

The entire process of electrolysis, transportation, pumping and fuel-cell conversion would leave only about 20 to 25 percent of the original zero-carbon electricity to drive the motor. In a plug-in hybrid, the process of electricity transmission, charging an onboard battery and discharging the battery would leave 75 to 80 percent of the original electricity to drive the motor. Thus, a plug-in should be able to travel three to four times farther on a kilowatt-hour of renewable electricity than a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle could.

Or shown graphically...



As I've said before, I do think fuel cell vehicles may have some niche uses, and should be developed. But for most transportation purposes, they're at best a distraction and at worst prolong the era of fossil-fuel dominance. If we get to the point where we have so much zero-emission electricity that we hardly know what to do with it, the energy efficiency disadvantages won't matter so much. We are at best decades from this being the case, and more likely we will never find ourselves in that kind of energy world.

[cantbeserious]

1. Chevy Spark Is Unobtainable In Most Of The US

eom

[caraher]

2. As are many of the vehicles on that list

Particularly the fuel-cell vehicles.

The main point is that for the near future, any kind of large-scale hydrogen vehicle deployment would rely on fossil fuels, with a net climate impact worse than that of vehicles already in widespread use such as the Prius. You don't need a Spark to do better than a fuel-cell Tucson, unless you're one of a very small number of people leasing under the pilot program who can draw all their fuel from a solar hydrogen electrolysis station. And even then, in the ideal zero-emission scenario, you could have squeezed more driving out of that solar array using it to charge battery storage EVs, than employing it to make and compress hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles. That's because you threw away most of that energy splitting water and heating running your fuel cell; it's an intrinsically inefficient intermediate step that's far more lossy than charging a battery.

[nationalize the fed]

3. Message deleted by DU the Administrators

[caraher]

6. What is the lifetime of any car?

Sure, batteries don't last forever. It does make perfect sense to consider the environmental costs of batteries. The comparison should be made considering also the costs in time and diverted resources of money and teams of uber-smart engineers to a technology that will not be deployed on a large scale anywhere near as quickly as BEVs could be, when replacing the fossil fuel infrastructure should be a top priority. Fuel cell vehicles on a small scale are irrelevant. On a large scale, they'll create more short-term demand for hydrogen, which in the real world would come almost entirely from fossil fuel sources.

I'd guess Romm quotes Cox because he thinks Cox summed up the case well. Perhaps Cox is a sleazy businessman with a conflict of interest, but the analysis checks out. Certainly all the uber-smart engineers working on hydrogen have as much skin in the game as someone making lithium batteries.

It's certainly well-known that BEVs today use all kinds of "dirty" energy. So would fuel cell vehicles if they existed at a scale that represented a significant portion of transport.

An apples-to-apples comparison could involve BEVs with clean electricity against fuel cell vehicles with clean energy; BEVs are superior on efficiency. Another could involve comparing BEVs with today's electricity sources with fuel cell vehicles using today's hydrogen sources. Exactly how well BEVs fare depends on where you're charging them, but in this case, they still outstrip fuel cell vehicles not yet available on any significant scale - and the latter, with their support infrastructure yet to be built, still don't outperform available technology like gas-powered hybrids.

A skewed comparison pits BEVs powered with a crappy fuel mix against fuel cell vehicles powered fueled by solar panels and sewage. That's the one comparison fuel cell vehicles win consistently, and its the one you seem to insist upon. But it's intrinsically slanted because BEVs could use the same energy sources.

[NYC_SKP]

16. I felt compelled to check the sources for some of those charts. "Well to Wheel" efficiency my ass.

I don't mind calling it Hydrogen Industry claptrap and skewed and bad data.

The comparative efficiency chart traces back to this page: http://cleancaroptions.com/html/about_us.html

Origin of this web site. The simulation work that forms the basis of this web site grew out of a summer retreat of the Board of Directors of the National Hydrogen Association in 2007. The NHA directors decided that we needed to develop a credible model to compare all the alternative fuels and vehicles, so that others could judge the relative merits of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, biofuels, battery electric vehicles and hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicles.snip

In May of 2010, Dr. Thomas was awarded the Jules Verne award for “superior service” by the International Association of Hydrogen Energy at the 18th World Hydrogen Energy Conference in Essen, Germany. The inscription on this award reads “for his leadership in system studies, analyses, and entrepreneurship in development and commercialization of hydrogen technologies.”

It seems a waste of energy to argue with someone so wholly committed to a single solution, willing to post such bad information.

I like your OP chart, which shows for the Spark EV which utility provider was selected for comparison. This indicates knowledge of energy infrastructure unlike those who say that EVs run on coal.

No they don't, unless they run on electricity coming from a coal-heavy electric utility provider.

That "comparison of total efficiency" "well to wheel" chart exists nowhere except the Japan Hydrogen Fuel Cell project and Toyota-promoted sites, and the data is totally skewed, comparing values for EVs under the assumption that the electricity is coming from thermal plants.

It may well be fair data for Japan in 2006, but I live in California in 2014.

Thanks for the OP.

[hunter]

4. Automobile culture needs to die.

I want to live in a world where only rural people need cars, people who are growing our food or mining a few select natural resources.

Everyone else can walk or enjoy public transportation. Even disabled people with electric legs.

Take out your smart phone, tap the screen or say a few words, and an artificial intelligence will calculate how best to get there, anywhere on earth, and maybe send a self-driving car to pick you up.

[caraher]

5. I agree

I think we get into a lot of trouble trying to replicate what we do right now rather than changing course.

[quadrature]

9. 'Jet Setters' need to be eliminated first.

let me know when that happens

[hunter]

10. If we don't solve this problem, Mother Nature will in her billions of years, very old ways.

As a person trained in evolutionary biology and human history I'm not an advocate of that "solution."

Heads disconnected from their bodies, or people bleeding to death out of all orifices, that's just gross.

People are ordinary mammals. Start there. Many mammals have come and gone in the history of this world.

We're not special.

[GeorgeGist]

11. A self-driving car to pick you up?

[hunter]

12. I'm not thinking something like a New York Taxi driven by a robot...

... but something electric and not fast. These cars might be able to link up as virtual trains too, driving bumper-to-bumper, further minimizing traffic.

But the simple and healthiest transportation system will always be legs.

[NYC_SKP]

7. FCEVs are an attempt to maintain a fueling infrastructure stranglehold.

The true EV or plug in hybrid or series hybrid model constitute a break from the "filling station" model.

Nobody in the corporate sector wants to let that go.

[nationalize the fed]

13. Honda proves you wrong

here: Honda Sets Up Compact Hydrogen Station in Japan

Honda Motor Co Ltd and Iwatani Corp developed the "Smart Hydrogen Station," the world's first hydrogen station unit containing hydrogen production equipment, hydrogen charging system, etc...



...The installation cost of existing hydrogen stations is reportedly about ¥400 to 500 million (approx US$3.68-4.6 million) per unit, but Honda aims to reduce it by 90%. Honda and Iwatani consider that the new unit will contribute to the spread of hydrogen stations. Honda, which plans to release a fuel-cell vehicle (FCV) in 2015, intends to use the unit for the establishment of basic infrastructure for FCVs...

...The Smart Hydrogen Station developed by the two companies uses utility power to electrically decompose water and produce hydrogen. It can also use renewable energy such as solar electricity for hydrogen production. The government of Saitama City installed the unit on the property of a waste incineration plant and uses electricity generated from exhaust heat produced by incinerating garbage for water decomposition...
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20140923/378241/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112775610

And so does Mike Strizki

Scientific American : Inside the Solar-Hydrogen House: No More Power Bills--Ever
A New Jersey resident generates and stores all the power he needs with solar panels and hydrogen

EAST AMWELL, N.J.—Mike Strizki has not paid an electric, oil or gas bill—nor has he spent a nickel to fill up his Mercury Sable—in nearly two years. Instead, the 51-year-old civil engineer makes all the fuel he needs using a system he built in the capacious garage of his home, which employs photovoltaic (PV) panels to turn sunlight into electricity that is harnessed in turn to extract hydrogen from tap water...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hydrogen-house/

[NYC_SKP]

14. How much for a home filling system? What's the efficiency loss versus EVs?

I think your reply validates my point.

Level II (I installed five) charging stations for EVs can cost as little as $2,500 all in.

What's the cost for an home H2?

Or will we all have to go to filling stations unless we're Jay Leno?

[Julian_Cox]

17. Bernie Sanders

There are three major sources of power in this world. Science. Economics. Bullshit.

In your advocacy for Hydrogen you have failed classes one and two and put all your eggs in number three marking you as unquestionably and fundamentally unfit to govern in a world demanding wise and productive progress in the first two.

Wake up sir. Japan / Toyota treats the environment with exactly the same contempt as preserving whale populations. Toyota is interested in fending off assault on its market share from US-built EVs and Japan is interested in cessation of imports of US produced Natural Gas. By supporting this nonsense you have been hoodwinked or bought. It is anti-US, anti environment and it is not good enough.

Clean hydrogen does not scale. Any mainstream demand for hydrogen will be met with low cost fracking and in Asia from Methane Hydrates - these are the perfect feedstock for Steam Methane Reforming, the world's most copious GHG emitting mining and refining cycle. Coal does not even come close!

Japan (and Korea) is trying to move its energy economy from being a net importer of fossil fuels to exploitation of its own offshore Methane Hydrates (that is what Toyota is talking about when it markets a vehicle for the 'next 100 years'). They think they have 100 years worth of Methane Hydrates offshore - disturbing those deposits will be a terminal event for any hope of addressing greenhouse gas emissions.

As for your ignorance of relating BEVs with coal, that is a Koch industries Tea Party line - and you are supposed to be a Democrat? Renewable inputs to the US grid are far outstripping EV outputs (and new fossil fuel inputs). If anything overnight charging of the small population of EVs currently on the roads can be said to use overnight wind-power almost exclusively that would otherwise have been curtailed. What matters to those capable of seeing trends in the big picture is that the price of renewable production, and access to low cost, high efficiency consumption in the form of EVs is falling through the pricing floor of fossil fuel production and consumption. Not so with clean hydrogen where the economics of dirty production prevail owing to gross efficiency losses in the conversion of renewables to hydrogen and back-conversion to electricity for use. This is physics and economics 101.

Hydrogen greenwashing is therefore the most dangerous possible distraction owing to its ability to hoodwink the scientifically and economically illiterate, like you sir, with corner case PR examples like biomass and uneconomic solar electrolysis.

I'll leave you with *message to you from Mitsuhisa Kato (Exec Vice President of Toyota on the Japanese launch of the Mirai assault on US industry, the US taxpayer and the environment in California):

&feature=youtu.be&t=2838

*Note Kato-san's use of the word Naphtha. Do you know what that means? If not I'll tell you. It means Saudi Arabia and with it an end to considering Hydrogen as a hedge against dreams of Hydrogen delivering independence from foreign oil.

[gopiscrap]

18. Welcome to DU

[notemason]

19. Excellent post!

Sure you're not Elon Musk?

[Julian_Cox]

21. I'm not Elon Musk

but I have to say I prefer the US solution of renewables and EVs to the Japanese solution of sell them hope and ship them bullsh*t.

It is pretty remarkable to me how the advent of a full sized super-sports sedan that costs sub $8.00 to home-charge from zero to full is not a universal wake up call that the only remaining urgency is how to deliver affordable mass production access to sub $8.00 charging.

That is unless paying upwards of $50 per tank and to hell with the planetary carbon sink is a small price to pay for the opportunity to sell $50+ tanks to everyone else (and that you don't like your own grandchildren anyway).

[mackdaddy]

20. But we can make Hydrogen from the Bullshit!

I finally see how the FCEV will be able to work. The economics of the "Hydrogen Economy" is a such a massive amount of Bullshit, that we can just capture the methane from this Bullshit, and reform it into Hydrogen!

Kind of like a primitive version of an "Infinite Improbability Drive" in which the probability of it working is so astronomically small that it just does. "So long and thanks for all the fish."

[caraher]

8. The infrastructure growth requirements are daunting for hydrogen

In the US, today, how many public hydrogen fueling stations are there? Twelve. Ten in California.

And a buildout of the required infrastructure is far more costly for hydrogen. Romm says

hydrogen fueling stations cost a LOT more than electric charging station, millions of dollars versus 1 to 5 percent of that cost for EV charging. In part that’s because of the related problem of a lack of FCVs on the road (versus some 234,000 plug-in vehicles in the U.S. alone). A third related reason is that more governments and companies have an incentive to build EV stations than hydrogen stations

Romm sums up the problem for hydrogen today this way:

The biggest problem hydrogen fuel cell vehicles face is that they deliver no obvious major consumer (or societal/environmental) benefit compared to the competition, but have a bunch of obvious consumer defects. These defects include high first cost, high fueling cost (compared to both gasoline and electricity), lack of fueling stations and lack of a nationwide fuel-delivery infrastructure — especially for renewable hydrogen.

[NYC_SKP]

15. I agree. There's a place in the energy world for Hydrogen, but it's not in passenger vehicles.

It might work for large fleets with centralized fueling points, but not for the average commuter.

It's plain silly (and inefficient) to take wind or solar, generate electricity, convert it to H2, compress that and fill the car only to convert it back to electricity.

H2 might have a place in renewables energy storage, or load balancing, but not as a portable fuel supply, IMHO.