Stellantis Abandons Hydrogen Fuel Cell Development (arstechnica.com) 143
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For some years now, detractors of battery electric vehicles have held up hydrogen as a clean fuel panacea. That sometimes refers to hydrogen combustion engines, but more often, it's hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs. Both promise motoring with only water emitted from the vehicles' exhausts. It's just that hydrogen actually kinda sucks as a fuel, and automaker Stellantis announced today that it is ending the development of its light-, medium- and heavy-duty FCEVs, which were meant to go into production later this year.
Hydrogen's main selling point is that it's faster to fill a tank with the stuff than it is to recharge a lithium-ion battery. So it's a seductive alternative that suggests a driver can keep all the convenience of their gasoline engine with none of the climate change-causing side effects. But in reality, that's pretty far from true. [...] Between the high development costs and the fact that FCEVs only sell with strong incentives, the decision was made to cancel the production of hydrogen vans in France and Poland. Stellantis says there will be no job losses at its factories and that R&D staff will be put to work on other projects. "In a context where the Company is mobilizing to respond to demanding CO2 regulations in Europe, Stellantis has decided to discontinue its hydrogen fuel cell technology development program," said Jean-Philippe Imparato, chief operating officer for Enlarged Europe. "The hydrogen market remains a niche segment, with no prospects of mid-term economic sustainability. We must make clear and responsible choices to ensure our competitiveness and meet the expectations of our customers with our electric and hybrid passenger and light commercial vehicles offensive."
Hydrogen's main selling point is that it's faster to fill a tank with the stuff than it is to recharge a lithium-ion battery. So it's a seductive alternative that suggests a driver can keep all the convenience of their gasoline engine with none of the climate change-causing side effects. But in reality, that's pretty far from true. [...] Between the high development costs and the fact that FCEVs only sell with strong incentives, the decision was made to cancel the production of hydrogen vans in France and Poland. Stellantis says there will be no job losses at its factories and that R&D staff will be put to work on other projects. "In a context where the Company is mobilizing to respond to demanding CO2 regulations in Europe, Stellantis has decided to discontinue its hydrogen fuel cell technology development program," said Jean-Philippe Imparato, chief operating officer for Enlarged Europe. "The hydrogen market remains a niche segment, with no prospects of mid-term economic sustainability. We must make clear and responsible choices to ensure our competitiveness and meet the expectations of our customers with our electric and hybrid passenger and light commercial vehicles offensive."
A sad day (Score:2, Interesting)
The concept does seem so promising. But fortunately, other carmakers haven't stopped.
BMW, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and GM all are at some stage of development of hydrogen fuel cell cars.
Toyota and Hyundai both already have production models for sale.
The technology works, it's just that it's still expensive to produce.
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Informative)
Promising? How? It's a concept that's only been kept limping along by the fossil fuel industry, that carries the best selection of the worst downsides: Expensive and currently fossil-sourced fuel like an ICE, high up-front vehicle cost and slow "refuel" times like an EV, a fuel with very few filling stations in the world that needs to be stored at enormous pressures, burns with an invisible flame, can escape through solids and embrittles steel on the way out like...hydrogen.
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Promising? How? It's a concept that's only been kept limping along by the fossil fuel industry, that carries the best selection of the worst downsides: Expensive and currently fossil-sourced fuel like an ICE, high up-front vehicle cost and slow "refuel" times like an EV,
It's not really that bad. You can put probably ~500 miles of range into a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle in 7 minutes versus 200 miles in 15 minutes on a modern EV. It's actually pretty comparable to a gasoline-powered vehicle. But you do still have to stop, unlike with an EV, where 90% of your charging can be done plugged in at home while you sleep. So in that sense, it's slow.
a fuel with very few filling stations in the world that needs to be stored at enormous pressures, burns with an invisible flame, can escape through solids and embrittles steel on the way out like...hydrogen.
I've said similar things about NASA's Artemis mission for the same reason. Doesn't everybody want to use a fuel that is almost imp
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
BYD's new electric vehicles can add around 250 miles of charge in 5 minutes now. Of course we're not allowed to buy them in the US, hooray for our "free trade" economy, right?
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I haven't seen details on the grid upgrades required to have 6-12 of such chargers running at the same time on one property. We're talking random gas stations needing massive infrastructure levels of power.
Fair to say the US grid is a decade or more of intelligent upgrade from that being viable - and realistically a lot longer.
Still not an argument for hydrogen, but the bridge to ubiquitous charging needed for true mass adoption seems fuzzy still.
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Do you really think they would have 12 chargers will be running constantly all together? I'd imagine you can set a queue system up, 3 at once or whatever - you plug your car in, and while you go off to pay/shop when one car is finished it will start charging yours, by the time you get back to your car yours would be almost done.
Added to the fact that gas stations typically have the chargers all together because the infrastructure mandates it, with electric chargers not so - you don't need a huge tank inst
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Do you really think they would have 12 chargers will be running constantly all together?
If BEVs are to replace ICEVs then such things will have to be worked out. Consider a large fleet of BEVs in one place and they all need charging. Examples might be school buses, city buses, rental cars, police cruisers, fire engines, ambulances, garbage trucks, delivery trucks, and so much more. There could be a hundred of such vehicles in one place, and they'd all need to be charged overnight for use the next morning.
This is clearly not an issue today as there's people that worked out the logistics to f
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
We were talking about 12 1MW chargers to do five minute fill-ups. If you have a hundred buses, you need 100 chargers operating at overnight speeds. A bus with a long route will consume about 300 kWh in a 24 hour period (200 miles, so really a *very* long route, but let's be conservative for the sake of it). So 100 buses all driving long routes will need 30MWh of electricity overnight. Divide by eight hours, and you get the hourly rate of 3.75MW for all 100 buses, or a 37.5kW charger for each bus.
That's not nothing -- but it's also absurdly over-specc'd, because most buses don't travel anywhere near this far. A more typical number is 100 miles, ie 15MWh of electricity.
You treat this all as though its some complex theoretical problem, all the while ignoring that there are dozens of cities operating thousands of EV buses, and these problems have all been addressed without those cities' infrastructure falling over. But then, the cities are outside the US so obviously they immediately don't count, amirite?
Signed, a Londoner who lives near the 113, 13, SL10, 226 and a bunch of other routes that are served by EV buses, and is very happy about the quieter streets and cleaner air that I now get to enjoy when I do this curious European activity called walking.
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I don't think fleet vehicles should be much of an issue. Look at this way you have probably a full 12 hour window 6pm - 6am where those things can be parked.
School buses, mail trucks, plumbing vans, and the like don't actually need all that much range, maybe 200 miles. EVs don't pay the penalty for idling the ICE vehicles do.
Stuff like A/C and things would use power but these are public school children we are talking about, we'll make them open the windows, and when they do get to school we'll serve them s
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Typically they will have a power management system that limits the maximum output on a first come, first served basis.
Say you have 1000kW maximum to share between all chargers. Two cars start pulling 400kW each, and a third arrives. It will get 200kW, until one or both of the others slows do or disconnected, at which point the full 400kW will become available to it.
Some sites have batteries to increase the maximum output beyond what the grid can supply too.
Or there are a couple of manufacturers doing batter
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I can't think of a reason why they would not?
I mean, if you look at the typical US gas station, at most any given time of day, you can see most pumps are being used for filling cars.
And, considering that many folks do not and will not have the capability of charging at home, or may at any time be out on a long trip, sure I can see the need for multiple chargers refueling at a "gas" station simultaneously.
We have a
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Do you really think they would have 12 chargers will be running constantly all together? I'd imagine you can set a queue system up, 3 at once or whatever - you plug your car in, and while you go off to pay/shop when one car is finished it will start charging yours, by the time you get back to your car yours would be almost done. Added to the fact that gas stations typically have the chargers all together because the infrastructure mandates it, with electric chargers not so - you don't need a huge tank installed underground - small convenience stores could have 3 chargers outside whereas for them to have gas pumps would be a non starter.
Now I know America has lost that forward thinking intelligence that made it great but surely you could sort something out? (Not hydrogen, I agree Hydrogen sucks)
You've clearly never traveled on Florida highways during holidays. There are gas stations that have dozens of pumps (literally) that still manage to form lines of cars waiting to refuel.
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Fuck China.
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The train I used to go to work with was replaced by a hydrogen fuel cell train. It was such a shitshow in regards to technical problems and difficulties with duelling that it was mostly replaced by a bus after a few months and a diesel train after two years. Its range was also shit in the hilly terrain here because its recuperation batteries are too small so its fuell consumption is much higher than originally planned. The fuel cell cars will have the same proble - either high fuel consumption or large ba
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They tried a hydrogen train here in the UK too a few years ago. It quietly sank without trace.
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Buses are a different public transport story though: TfL has 20 hydrogen buses running in the centre of London on routes 7 and RV1.
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They've been around for a while, probably waiting for them to life expire. All the recent zero emissions buses have been battery.
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The single decker ones have been around a while, but the double decker ones entered service recently in 2021. Looks like there's a trickle of them being deployed around the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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if hydrogen could be a drop in replacement for use in distribution pipelines, it would have a reason to be followed. But it doesn't. Rebuilding the infrastructure on top of it's $15-20/gallon equivalent cost is just never going to take off.
It will have a niche place out towards power grid edges and you need mobile fueling w/o solar+batteries, but that's where the cost gets justified.
Liquid hydrogen [Re:A sad day] (Score:2)
I've said similar things about NASA's Artemis mission for the same reason. Doesn't everybody want to use a fuel that is almost impossible to keep from leaking, and then spend the better part of a year with the rocket stuck on the pad trying to fix the leaks so they can launch it? :-D
Not sure what your thinking is here. Hydrogen stages for rockets have been in routine use [newspaceeconomy.ca] for well over sixty years. By now it's a well-developed technology.
But orbital boosters can afford liquid storage at -253C; they only need to store the liquid hydrogen for a few hours, and the cube-square law means that the 150 tons of hydrogen needed for a rocket takes a lot longer to boil off than a hundred kilograms in a car. Liquid hydrogen would be an absurd choice for a car.
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Hydrogen does not leak in the modern world. ... or so.
That was true in the 1930s
Promising? [Re:A sad day] (Score:2)
Promising? How?
The killer problem with hydrogen is that it is so hard to store. The density is low, so although it has high energy per unit mass, it has terrible energy per unit volume. High pressure tanks, low temperature tanks, storage as liquid, storage as adsorbed hydrogen on metal (typically platinum or palladium)-- all of these are unsatisfactory in one way or another for vehicles.
May be good for stationary applications, where you can afford huge tanks, but it's simply not a good choice for vehicles.
It's a concept that's only been kept limping along by the fossil fuel industry
I think this poi
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Yes, every new technology has a lot of downsides early on. All of the issues you pointed out, can be solved over time.
The promising part is, they emit only water vapor. That's a win.
Re: A sad day (Score:2)
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Refueling a H2 car is faster than a gasoline car.
The fuel gets pumped into the car under high pressure.
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had the choice between: an EV I could charge up at home or indeed anywhere that has electricity, even via my own solar panels - or a Hydrogen car where I'm dependent on stations owned by a billionaire cartel + taxed heavily by my authoritarian government - why would I want hydrogen ?? Even if the two had identical performance?
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Me?
I'll just stick with ICE until they work out the "kinks" in the systems and make it just as convenient to fuel and depend on an EV as it is for my ICE vehicles....
Nope, can'
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What kinks? Genuinely asking here. As someone who has *NO* kerb no driveway and no ability to charge at home, none the less owns a PHEV and has had zero issues getting literally anywhere with it, I genuinely want to know.
Okay I come from a country which took EVs seriously but the reality for me is I don't understand what kinks you are talking about. For me the EV is a car, one which once or twice a week I plug in at a charger down the road and otherwise use like any normal car. I drive it like normal, I let
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S. is somewhat lagging behind, because right now, it's some kind of anti-virtue signalling to go fossil despite the advantages of electric. This fad will ebb.
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Electric company cars have an even larger tax exemption.
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No...it's lagging because compared to ICE, EVs for many people is a royal pain in the ass and inconvenient.
For many people, charging at home over night, is not an option.
EVs are significantly more $$$ to purchase.
Insurance rates on EVs are more $$$.
They take way too long to recharge (a major sticking point if you cannot charge at home every night).
And used E
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The U.S. is somewhat lagging behind, because right now, it's some kind of anti-virtue signalling to go fossil despite the advantages of electric. This fad will ebb.
It would ebb immediately if apartments were forced to include power in their parking spots. Until then, you can expect about 60% of the population to fight you tooth and nail to keep their lives from getting demonstrably worse.
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I live in a deep red county and I can tell you this is not the case. I won't say there are not some guys that just want to 'roll coal' because they think it looks cools, there are, but that is true of every strange hobby out there, in terms of numbers they don't matter.
The rest of the people not buying EVs are doing it because they
1) Don't have the have the capital or credit required to purchase a 'new' anything, they are in the used market and the used EV market does not have the products they want.
2) The
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Posted by someone who clearly hasn't driven much in the United States.
Europe != USA, but Europe !== USA.
Re:A sad day (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense.
I've driven an EV from Oregon to Maryland and back. I had absolutely no problem finding places to charge, because the car finds them for me as part of the navigation. If there is electricity, you can charge - campgrounds with RV hookups are just funny looking L2 chargers if you have an adapter in your car, and having the adapter is called "planning ahead."
Yes, the country is 3,000 miles across. No, people still do not regularly drive more than 300 miles in a day, which means that the range problem isn't nearly the problem people seem to think it is.
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What were your views on the Nomad, back in the day?
If you can't see how much *more* convenient it is for the majority of people in the US and European countries who have off-street parking to be able to charge at home rather than have to go to a filling station, there's really no hope for you
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Well I've got some bad news for you - it was either Hydrogen, something similar, or we'll be sticking with fossil fuels. Most people will not adopt electric, no matter how much pent-up anger you exert to will it so.
I'm not sure why you say most people won't adopt electric. Batteries are well down the learning curve, and the electricity distribution system is well developed and even more widespread than the gasoline distribution system. We power all sorts of things with electricity; cars are just one more.
Completely disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
"The technology works" only in so far in that it can power a car. It's more expensive, less efficient and has loads of other disadvantages compared to EVs. The companies that are continuing their efforts are just trying to get something out for their investments.
Hydrogen is flammable, corrosive, hard to transport/store and producing it is not efficient and a lot of it is still produced via fossil fuels. And as the summary mentions, the have even mostly abandoned the hydrogen combustion engines - you burn hydrogen to create electricity to power an electric motor. The only real advantage touted is the faster refuel time. In the meantime, due to physics, you can't refuel hydrogen particularly fast, while at the same time EVs charge faster and faster - Xiaomi's latest charge at 500kW for example!
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He has a depressingly large number of dumb takes on the world
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All of the disadvantages you mention, are problems one would expect with an immature technology.
Most of the disadvantages I mentioned are the inherent properties of hydrogen :D
In addition to faster refuel time,
I didn't elaborate on that, but the "faster refuel time" is not that certain if you think about it. Hydrogen cars can refuel in say 5 minutes. But you also have to drive to the fuelling station. It's becoming common for EV cars to charge in 0 of *your* minutes, but plugging them in where you park (home, office, parking).
And, as I said, EV superchargers are becoming faster and faster, that Xiaomi one I mentioned is for a 500 mile
Re: Completely disagree (Score:3)
"In addition to faster refuel time, fuel cell vehicles emit only water vapor. That's a win."
It's a big lose compared to EVs.
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Informative)
There is only one situation where hydrogen could make sense: if you can use surplus electric energy in your hydrogen generating plant, so you can get the energy basically for free. But that means that you have quite the discontinuous process, which sounds not very efficient.
A second problem with fuel cells is the way they are spec'd out. To save on cost, they are combined with a traction battery and cover only about 30% of the total power output of the car, acting as a range extender for the traction battery rather than the direct power source for the motor. This makes sense if you are moving mainly in flat terrain and in stop-and-go traffic, where you only need short bursts of high power output. But if you are living in mountainous terrain (as I do), they don't fit. Just the mechanical energy necessary to lift a car about 1000 or 2000 feet will exceed the traction battery's energy storage, and the time to travel up that ramp is too short for the fuel cell to recharge the battery. It means that somewhere around 1000 feet, your battery runs empty, and now your car has only 30% of power left to pull it upwards. Europe with its many mountain ranges, from the Pyrenees over the Massif Central via the Alps to the Balkan Mountains is not the right terrain for fuel cell cars, as they are quite challenged to get across.
The town of Innsbruck, where I live, was testing a fuel cell powered bus two years ago on the line 590 (Innsbruck - Neustift im Stubai). With a height difference of about 1500 feet between the bus stops Innsbruck Süd and Schönberg, the bus was losing power for about a third of the distance, having only fuel cells for about 75 kW of the 225 kW of installed electrical power.
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Fuel cell cars emit only water vapor. That's the win.
We should *also* use batteries. A mix of technologies, is better for the environment overall, than relying on only one single technology. Every technology has advantages *and* drawbacks. Relying on a mix, dilutes the drawbacks.
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Where is the hydrogen coming from though?
If it's commercial hydrogen, the answer is "oil and natural gas" somewhere above 90% of the time. So, yes, while what comes out of the vehicle's tailpipe is water vapor, in order to get that hydrogen you had to use steam methane reforming to extract the hydrogen from natural gas (CH4 + H2O -> 3H2 + CO) , and the resulting carbon monoxide that is left behind is still released into the air.
Combine that with the waste streams caused by hydrogen embrittlement that ha
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No it does not seem promising anymore that was 20-30 year ago. Hydrogen is dead for personal transportation, not just automakers big oil companies have killed their hydrogen projects. These existing cars may not even be able to find fuel anymore. I thought toyota owners sue toyota because they are left with undrivable cars with zero resale value since stations are closing or just out of service all the time leaving them with unusable cars. A small toyota or Hyundai costs over $200 to fill up (if you are lucky enough to find one working station), so a hydrogen truck or SUV would be $400-500 per tank ? Who's going to want to that when just putting in gas is 4 times cheaper or you can charge an EV at home for a few dollars.
The pity is that it was pretty obvious those many years ago that hydrogen wasn't going to be a solution. And I had to laugh at (FTA) "Hydrogen's main selling point is that it's faster to fill a tank with the stuff than it is to recharge a lithium-ion battery."
Heck, water would be quicker too. How many among us buy a vehicle based on how long it takes to fill the tank?
EV use is just a different paradigm. You just have to work it correctly and pay attention. And here in waterlogged PA, I see EV's from
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EV use is just a different paradigm. You just have to work it correctly and pay attention.
I fully agree with the first part of this. For the second part, I think the key here is that many people really struggle to cope with even small amounts of change. They are *emotionally attached* to the way their ICE vehicles work, and really infuriated by the idea that they have to change their behaviour a small amount to get the most out of an EV. Instead of saying "wow, I can plug in overnight at home, drive 200 or 300 miles to my destination, and plug in there while I do what I came to do, that's conven
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Hydrogen fuel cells are already obsolete for cars and utility vehicles. With 1000kW charging, long range batteries, and battery swap tech that takes a few minutes, it's just not worth the extra complexity and inconvenience of needing to produce, transport, store, and transfer hydrogen.
They may still have uses in other areas. Possibly aircraft, or very heavy machinery. Even haulage is using batteries now though. They keep improving and the cost keeps falling. LFP is also very safe.
We already have H2 turbine engines (Re:A sad day) (Score:2)
They may still have uses in other areas. Possibly aircraft, or very heavy machinery.
I'd like to see how fuel cell aircraft work out. I'd expect it to work out a lot like the transition from piston engines on aircraft to jet engines on aircraft.
As piston engines on aircraft were developing they started with naturally aspirated engines as seen with any automobile engine of the time. Then they added gear driven super chargers. Then came turbo chargers that were powered by the exhaust gasses through a turbine. Then someone realizes that the hot exhaust gasses leaving the engine can be dive
Re:A sad day (Score:4, Informative)
Hydrogen fuel cells are already obsolete for cars and utility vehicles. With 1000kW charging, long range batteries, and battery swap tech that takes a few minutes, it's just not worth the extra complexity and inconvenience of needing to produce, transport, store, and transfer hydrogen.
They may still have uses in other areas. Possibly aircraft, or very heavy machinery. Even haulage is using batteries now though. They keep improving and the cost keeps falling. LFP is also very safe.
Side note: You might enjoy this link. The Mentour Now YT channel - 737 pilot gets to fly an EV plane. He loved it within it's limitations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com].
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Thanks, I do enjoy Mentour Pilot.
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hydrogen is an economic non-starter being promoted by Big Oil; sure the engines can be developed but the infrastructure is unsustainably expensive. it's not going to happen
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Hydrogen is the fuel of the future. And it always will be.
Currently most hydrogen is produced by splitting up fossil fuels into hydrogen and CO.
The result is that it's just as expensive and just as polluting as those fossil fuels. If not slightly more due to the extra steps involved.
The alternative is splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, electrolysis.
This process is clean if you don't account for how that electricity is generated.
Also, it's very inefficient. An EV with a battery would do three times as
Hydrogen's main selling point... (Score:5, Interesting)
is a lie. Or at the very least a mistruth. Firstly it takes far longer to fill a hydrogen car than a gas car due to the careful rate control needed to fill the tank. If you have appropriate cooling and heating systems to maximise density while filling while also preventing the handle from freezing in place it still takes you >6min to fill a car. But there's different hydrogen refueling stations on the market with different capabilities. And certainly some out there take about as long as a refuel on a highway fast charger.
On top of that hydrogen refueling stations do not store hydrogen at bulk pressures required for vehicles since having a large 700bar tank is hugely expensive and dangerous, instead bulk hydrogen is stored at a lower pressure and compressed before being put into small temporary storage and loaded into your car. This means refueling stations are rate limited often to as little as a few vehicles per hour. Not a problem now, but certainly a problem if every car were hydrogen. This is less of a problem with trucks which run at far lower pressure.
People have this view that the hydrogen experience is identical to ICE. It's just not. It's more of a hybrid between hydrogen and older EV charging (the first MCS chargers for consumers are being deployed which personally I find insane, we don't need 750kW+ to fill our car in a blink of an eye. ).
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... You do realise that Toyota has already developed this concept [global.toyota]?
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Lots of inaccuracies here.
Filling time for hydrogen cars is 3 minutes per industry standard. Also, the handle would not freeze in place, because hydrogen heats up when expanding (reverse Joule-Thomson [wikipedia.org] effe
Re: Hydrogen's main selling point... (Score:2)
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It's 3-5min for a high end modern filling system. But it is very much lower for a system which doesn't pre-chill the hydrogen and heat the nozzle as those are primarily the limitations (along with the temperature of the tank). Odds are if you're driving a hydrogen car right now you'll be plugging into somewhere that takes 6min or longer to fill the car. Just like EVs a few years ago would take 30+ minutes to top up your car.
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Filling time for hydrogen cars is 3 minutes per industry standard.
Absolutely false. I have not seen one proposal from a vendor yet that could achieve 3 minute filling rate. And yes as part of my job I have gone to tender for hydrogen filling stations.
Also, the handle would not freeze in place, because hydrogen heats up when expanding
Err no. Hydrogen is *heated* it doesn't heat up, specifically to avoid issues with refuelling. Like ... do you even physics bro? The tank itself heats up toward the end of the filling cycle, but freezing of the hydrogen nozzle is something that has been extensively studied and is the subject of many papers on the topic - do a
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Hydrogen's just stupid in the end.
You can burn hydrogen like in an ICE, but that's a completely stupid way to do things because the efficiency of doing so is even worse than an ICE.
The only way to use hydrogen efficiently is to generate electricity in a hybrid EV where a fuel cell converts it to electricity to charge a battery, and you use the battery to power an EV powertrain. This has much higher efficiency
But that completely neglects the fact that that the conversion efficiency of hydrogen if you try to
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"The market" is accepting batteries just fine. Mostly it's people who fear the unknown who are staying away from batteries, they learn as other people around them adopt it. Seriously your comment would not have been out of place in Norway 10 years ago, yet look where they are now. Heck your comment would not have been out of place in my house 3 years ago. Now I'm a very happy EV owner, quite ashamed at how hysterical I was about it a few years ago. What changed? I tried it and realised the problems were mos
Good. (Score:3)
Hydrogen is not a great energy storage medium. More importantly, the primary source of hydrogen is a fossil fuel. Switching to a fully electric source of hydrogen is far more difficult than it is to simply charge batteries. Producing hydrogen is an unnecessary inefficiency.
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Hydrogen is not a great energy storage medium. More importantly, the primary source of hydrogen is a fossil fuel. Switching to a fully electric source of hydrogen is far more difficult than it is to simply charge batteries. Producing hydrogen is an unnecessary inefficiency.
And by "more difficult", you mean that there is a massively larger amount of efficiency loss. If you're lucky, you recapture 60% of the energy in the fuel, and multiply that times the 75% efficiency for electrolysis, if you're lucky, and you're throwing away more than half the energy that goes in. So if folks are freaking out about the power grid not being able to handle EVs, imagine what would happen if you doubled the power requirements.
A different kind of "hydrogen economy" (Re:Good.) (Score:2)
Switching to a fully electric source of hydrogen is far more difficult than it is to simply charge batteries. Producing hydrogen is an unnecessary inefficiency.
Then don't use hydrogen produced by electricity. Or at least not produced by electricity alone.
There's more efficient ways to produce hydrogen than with electricity. There's perhaps a half dozen promising technologies that use heat alone or heat with some electricity as the energy source. A sample of these technologies can be found with only a few minutes of research on the internet. Those that assume hydrogen is only produced by electrolysis of water, or some process that extracts hydrogen from fossil
Inefficient [Re:A different kind of "hydrogen...] (Score:2)
Then don't use hydrogen produced by electricity. Or at least not produced by electricity alone. There's more efficient ways to produce hydrogen than with electricity.
Yeah? Name one.
There's perhaps a half dozen promising technologies that use heat alone
At extremely low efficiency.
or heat with some electricity as the energy source
Back to electrolysis.
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Then don't use hydrogen produced by electricity. Or at least not produced by electricity alone.
I think the primary problem with this method is that we immediately became dependent on gray hydrogen because it was cheap and easy. Due to political conditions in the US, non-fossil-fuel based sources must compete economically with gray hydrogen which is all but impossible. Any progress will be seen as a tax and/or simply having to pay more to solve a problem they don't believe exists and they absolute will fight that tooth and nail.
Competing with fossil-fuels to make an expendable chemical fuel which can
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Over 90% of commercial hydrogen production is done by methane steam reforming. Natural gas (CH4) + steam (H20) = 3H2 + CO. There's usually a catalyst present to increase the speed at which it happens (nickel oxide [NiO] or nickel alumina [NiAl2O3). It's an endothermic reaction so it requires constant energy input to create the steam and keep the reaction hot enough to happen.
Why spend all the energy to reform methane into hydrogen with added energy cost, in order to make a fuel that is less energy dense,
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At net zero there are no great storage mediums when batteries don't work for you. The primary source of electricity is still fossil too.
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The primary source of electricity is still fossil too.
True, electricity is generated by about 60% fossil-fuels in the US but renewables continue to expand annually. Natural gas continues to expand as it eats coal's lunch but together they seem to be a near constant value. What this really tells us is that a carbon tax is needed to offset the pollution being generated.
Going somewhere to fill up is the opposite of good (Score:3)
The convenience of an electric car is every time you leave your house you already have a "full tank". "filling up fast" means you have to go somewhere to fill up that you don't want to be.
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The convenience of an electric car is every time you leave your house you already have a "full tank". "filling up fast" means you have to go somewhere to fill up that you don't want to be.
I agree 100% but this is something some EV advocates seem to miss: that convenience is out of reach for many people.
I live in an apartment complex and I have my dedicated parking spot in the underground garage but the landlord has no plan to install or allow tenants to install charging stations. A lot of people don't even have a dedicated parking spot and park on the streets with a residential permit.
Without the convenience of overnight charging an EV is not an option I'm willing to consider and I'm definit
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While that's absolutely true, it will also change over time. New builds are starting to include EV chargers, and retrofits are also happening. Even in buildings that will never be retrofitted, it may still be possible for people to go EV as the wider charging network improves. My sister lives in Vancouver, BC and has an EV in a building with no chargers. It works out fine for her because the public charging infrastructure in that city is widespread enough that "filling up" when she gets groceries, etc. is m
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Your example: the landlord isn't feeling any commercial pressure to change yet. But my 85 year old father-in-law died a couple of months ago, and the managers of the little block of retirement flats that he lived in, 90 minutes outside London, UK, in the commuter belt, has just written to my wife to say they're going to put in chargers for each of the flats' parking spots. Because EV uptake in the UK has reached enough of a tipping point. It will happen everywhere in time. The commercial pressures will be t
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Natural gas vehicles offer the means to fill up at home offering that same convenience of never having to make an out of the way trip, and the convenience of always leaving home with a full tank.
Depending on your country that might not be an option or might be a pretty inconvenient one actually.
I don't think installation of a gas compressor for private vehicle refueling is allowed in many European countries and those who do allow them I'm pretty sure it's under very strict regulations.
Furthermore, cars with a natural gas tanks are usually prohibited from accessing some parking places, especially underground ones, and even from traversing some tunnels.
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Natural gas is only liquid at cryogenic temperatures. That's okay for trucks, but doesn't work for most consumers. Maybe for EV range extension for roadtrips or towing loads, but having a cryocooler at home just for that is a bit of a stretch.
Also not net zero.
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Natural gas is only liquid at cryogenic temperatures. That's okay for trucks, but doesn't work for most consumers. Maybe for EV range extension for roadtrips or towing loads, but having a cryocooler at home just for that is a bit of a stretch.
Natural gas vehicles don't use cryogenic tanks, they have high pressure tanks storing natural gas in compressed gas form at 200-250 bar. Natural gas has enough energy density to allow decent mileage without having to liquify it.
Said that, the compressed gas is still dangerous and natural gas cars might me barred from underground parkings and tunnels and require certified gas compressors for refueling.
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There are some left over CNG buses, but the greatest use of natural gas for transport is LNG for trucks (well those and LNG carriers, but those are a shoe in).
For CNG you might just as well use EV at this point, liquid is the only thing which makes sense ... same as with hydrogen.
Stupid Idea Anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
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They're only incompetent and dimwitted if you think their intention was to build a viable product, as opposed to create the illusion of a future path to enable them to continue with current tech and disparage the obvious (and viable) alternative. In other words, between malice and incompetence, I'd go with the former in this instance.
Hydrogen died years ago (Score:2)
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Gasoline cars didn't have much for an infrastructure in distributing fuel when first introduced, so the current rarity of hydrogen filling stations should not be considered an impediment long term.
Early in the development of the ICEV there was the distribution of fuel by cans and drums, with the fuel pumped or poured into the vehicles by hand. There was also fewer restrictions on people that wanted to distill alcohol for use as a fuel. Prohibition killed off alcohol as a fuel for a while, but by then this
Re: Hydrogen died years ago (Score:2)
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Hydrogen is a net zero technology, not a low hanging fruit technology. At net zero every energy storage solution for where batteries don't work sucks, so hydrogen sucking will matter less. Until there is some major force pushing hard to abate transport to net zero emission, hydrogen obviously can't compete.
At the moment if EV doesn't work for you, you just use dynojuice and put CO2 in the air.
Energy density (Score:2)
As someone who likes cars, driving and motorsport, the big issue in battery EVs for me is the weight. When I've had EV or hybrid hire cars, you go "cool" when you hit the loud pedal, then you go "yuck" when you go round a corner. While I love a petrol engine, I'm OK with an electric powertrain (torque!). However, no one has mentioned energy density yet, which for me is the key thing in powering a car. There was a good scientific study a few years back (can't find reference right now) that compared the energ
Good. Fuck greenwashing the fossil fuel industry (Score:2)
Now hopefully people will see through their stupid plan, they will finally FOAD and the rest of us can get on with saving our civilization.
Stellantis does not have much hydrogen tech anyway (Score:5, Informative)
I am a researcher on hydrogen technologies at an independent institute and I have led EU projects for about 30 million euros, so I can claim I have some inside knowledge of the industry.
Stellantis never had any significant activity in hydrogen, so they are not really giving up anything. Of all the brands of the Stellantis group I have never met one at the meetings of the EU's Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Joint Undertaking; the only one that was ever active was FIAT, not very convincingly and very long ago: they bailed from the H2moves [europa.eu] project more than 10 years ago, never heard from them since.
Other companies have much better developed hydrogen programs: BMW, Daimler, Volvo, each with its ups and downs. Volkswagen and their controlled Scania have a schizophrenic relationship to hydrogen since a previous CEO, Diess, was very much against, but a lot of engineers were in favour. Outside the EU it is of course Toyota and Hyundai that lead worldwide.
In any case, it has been clear for years that it is a lot easier to electrify cars for personal use with batteries, and hydrogen FCs have repositioned themselves for the heavy-duty market (trucks, trains, ships). Stellantis does not have any significant activity in this sector, so it makes sense for them to focus what little resources they have on batteries. Of course, if they had any competence in batteries, since they suck at them too.
Trucks would create a market (Score:2)
IF long range trucks went for liquid hydrogen, then for vans and pickups a range extended EV using liquid hydrogen starts making sense at net zero. The trucks solve the chicken and egg problem.
Re: Trucks would create a market (Score:2)
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Cost effective is relative. At net zero it competes against different things than now.
- Dinojuice + direct capture and sequestration
- primary metal air batteries
- synthetic fuel
There will be a huge hydrogen logistics chain for industrial use regardless (volumetric heating in industrial processes, green ammonia, probably steel production too, etc). So that could help a little.
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The last vehicle to use liquid hydrogen was the Saturn V rocket.
stellantis is small (Score:2)
Stellantis is a small player. They can't afford super long term projects.