How to Promote the Hydrogen Economy Hoax

Discussion in 'General' started by Pushmi-Pullyu, Jan 7, 2018.

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  1. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    I am curious about your personal experience with the Clarity. For example miles and operational scenario. For example, is this a daily commuter or used for special trips.

    My motivation for coming to Insideevs was to find information that improves usage of our plug-in hybrids. Not you but others have attempted to hijack this forum away from plug-in and plug-in hybrids. Consider a diesel advocate posting here, well that might be 'farting in Church.' <grins>

    Plans are good, accomplishments better.

    I would probably add Yosemite.

    Were the maps I generated before about fuel cell ranges around hydrogen stations applicable to your ride?

    Thanks,
    Bob Wilson
     
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  3. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    Nikola's plans are not credible. Not selling its FCEV truck, and not building large-scale H2 fueling stations.

    Nikola is a sham company. Like Faraday Future, if it's not an outright investment scam, as it appears, then it's at best a company whose claims are unrealistic to the point of being ridiculous.

    There is a possibility of replacing, in part or in whole, diesel-powered heavy trucks with BEV trucks, because using electricity to power a vehicle allows for the possibility of a considerable cost savings per mile over diesel fuel. But H2 is about twice as expensive as diesel, per mile, so there's nothing there to attract any commercial trucking company except possibly a bit of greenwashing by buying a token truck or two.

     
  4. TeslaInvestors

    TeslaInvestors Active Member

    Bob, it's all documented in the thread I created. Honda->Clarity->Clarity Fuel Cell. That was the main idea for me to create it. Read from the beginning though. Today my energy info shows 71.4 miles/kg.

    Your maps are interesting. But I'll likely never go near the boundaries. One flaw in your map is, of course, that it measures aerial distance, but that probably compensates for using Mirai's range instead of Clarity's higher range. But it clearly shows that most part of California is well covered by stations now.
    Just a year ago, situation in SF Bay Area wasn't very easy.

    I mostly use it for commuting (40 miles RT) and then my wife uses it 5 times a week to pick my daughter. (13 miles RT). Then, about 2 times a month, I make a 140 mile RT trips. Occasionally, a trip to Sacramento. The loner trips weren't possible in my Spark EV. The Spark started off nicely with 105 mile range when new, but has since dropped to 75 miles in summer and 70miles in winter. After I made one RT to work, it was time to recharge, which I did at work mostly.
    But it got little tiring making two trips to office charging station everyday to charge the car. I had a daily alarm set in my outlook for 4 years to charge the car :)

    Once my daughter starts her new school 10 miles away, I will be driving more than 2k miles/month by the Clarity. It does drive much nicer compared to my other non-premium cars. I was thinking of a midsize or large luxury sedan, but with the horrendous mpg they have, I decided I'll give the Fuel cell cars a try.

    Most drivers like the driving experience of FCEVs. Here is one new Clarity FC driver.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/automobiles/wheels/first-came-the-hydrogen-cars-now-the-refilling-stations.html

    BTW, I've got nothing against PHEV, or even EVs. But they all have some hidden environmental footprints, just like H2.
    From a consumer point of view, H2/PHEV/HEV are definitely easier to adopt.
    I think simple hybrids are the best. If everyone will be driving efficient hybrids, the world vehicular CO2 emissions would be halved.
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2018
  5. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    It is a question of goals and objectives. I'm here for plug-in news and tips like EVSE and batteries. I get my general, efficient car news in PriusChat that has a much broader coverage.

    I was after a rule of thumb to figure out the areas that might be visited. I used an optimistic, aerial radius of Mirai range. The Mirai because it has been out there for a while and I come with Toyota hybrid history. What I like is the BMW range map:
    [​IMG]
    Source: http://www.bmwblog.com/2015/06/29/bmw-i3-rex-one-year-review/

    BTW, Tom often contributes articles here from his blog. In this case, the same model year as our BMW i3-REx.

    So:
    ~200 mi = 5*40
    ~85 mi = 5*13
    - - - - - - - -
    ~285 mi vs 366 mi range​

    You're topping up weekly and then an extra one on the Sacramento trip?

    What is the price of hydrogen you're seeing?

    That is why we went plug-in hybrids, "I've never depended on the kindness of strangers."
    We did 11 years in Prius hybrids, a Gen-1 and Gen-3, and compared to the alternatives, they were great. Yet the Jetta TDI advocates would occasionally visit to advocate their rides. VW encouraged this cyber bully behavior:

    When I replaced the 175,000 mile, Gen-1 with a used BMW i3-REx with dynamic cruise control and automatic emergency braking, the 70,000 mile Gen-3 had to go. A 2010 Prius, it was replaced by a 2017 Prius Prime with TSSP.

    Another member (not you!) worked hard to hijack threads into fuel cell advocacy. Those posts were eviscerating the reason I came here, to share plug-in technology and tricks. Thankfully this thread is a 'honey pot' for fuel cell advocacy so we can still have plug-in threads.

    Bob Wilson
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2018
  6. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    Thanks! My Marine Corp drill instructor once said,"A grain of observation out weighs a pound of bovine fecal matter any day." I can model systems but prefer those I own to correct the model.
    Indeed it is but the absence of TSSP spelled its doom for us. You might want to have the cooled exhaust valve and plumbing checked before she leaves. The Gen-3 taps the exhaust manifold before the catalytic converter and this can lead to coking and gumming up this area. There are several independent Prius shops in San Francisco, Art's Automotive, and Berkley, Lucious Garage, who can do this for a fair price and any other tweaks.

    Yes but it is not a blanket recommendation due to the maintenance risks. Lease would be good or a used one with miles and years left on the warranty. The 2014 was the first year and we've touched several 'infantile' problems fixed in subsequent years. If you'd like more details, lets take this to another thread:
    https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/comparing-total-greenhouse-gas-emissions-between-phevs.2269/#post-18482
    This is exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks!

    In 1972 I was driving a VW Microbus in Riverside CA and taking a cloverleaf, my eyes teared up worse that the Marine 'gas hut' a year earlier at Camp Pendleton. I managed to complete the curve and find a place to park and wash my eyes with water. So I am fully onboard with the need for strict air quality controls. My goal is 'cheap operational' cost which happily tends to reduce emissions across the board.

    Bob Wilson
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2018
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  8. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    But you could have gotten a couple of 5-gallon jerrycans and carried them in the trunk or the back seat, to extend the range by ~100 miles. That's an advantage that a gasmobile has which neither a BEV nor an FCEV has.

    And that sort of thing is why, if I were ever to go on safari in Africa, I'd prefer to take a gasmobile even though I'm a strong advocate of the EV revolution.

    Heck, there are useful applications for fuel cells, too. Just not in powering ordincary passenger cars. They're quite useful in powering underwater unmanned drones, and have uses in spacecraft too.

     
  9. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    I'm OK with the experiment since I'm neither a sponsor nor subject. Sometimes folks have to run the experiment and share the lessons learned.

    Bob Wilson
     
  10. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    May I gently suggest, in what I hope is a civil fashion, that this probably isn't the best thread in which to relate or discuss personal experiences driving FCEV cars. If someone looks around the forum, they are far more likely to look for a thread with "FCEV" in the title, and certainly not a thread that's for discussion of the "hydrogen economy hoax".

    Teslainvestors said he created this thread:

    https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/clarity-fuel-cell.1156/

    So that would be a far more appropriate place for those reports and that discussion.

     
  11. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    We'll have to agree to disagree. If in two years our experimenters choose to continue, we need to understand in the future why. We may not have enough information today to understand their world view.

    Bob Wilson
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2018
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  13. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    I thought I had stated that clearly, but in case I didn't, let me try again. I'm not at all suggesting there be no discussion of the subject; I'm encouraging anyone who wants to discuss that subject to use a thread more appropriate to that discussion.

    Perhaps I need to state this more firmly, altho I certainly don't want to spoil a very civil discussion: This thread isn't the place for discussion of personal experiences with driving fuel cell cars. That's about as off-topic as you can get!

    Ignoring that just means the forum moderator will have to move those posts to another thread manually.

     
  14. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    I got a private response about this, so perhaps it's appropriate for me to explain my position on this more fully:

    This is about maintaining civility in discussions.
    Just because I'm strongly opposed to using resources to mass produce FCEVs, and strongly opposed to promoting such production, and strongly opposed to using taxpayer money (in any country, not just the USA) to support what I see as a hoax benefiting Big Oil, doesn't mean I think an EV forum should be discouraging discussion of driving FCEVs. After all, FCEVs are EVs, just as much as PHEVs and BEVs are.

    I think it's appropriate to create a "safe space" on this forum for those who want to talk about their FCEV driving experience.

    This thread is not that safe space! The purpose of this thread is the very antithesis of that.

    If someone starts a thread to talk about their personal experience in driving a FCEV, then it would be extremely inappropriate and at least rude -- if not downright antisocial and hostile -- for me or anyone else to start posting there about how the concept of using H2 to power everyday passengers cars is a hoax benefiting Big Oil, or how it's impossible for scientific, economic, and technical reasons for FCEVs to ever become commonplace. If there is discussion of the everyday driving experience for FCEV drivers, I'd certainly be interested in reading that, and I might comment on it so long as I could do so in a civil manner. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to use the term "fool cell" in such a thread, let alone start talking about how FCEV fanboys are engaging in wishful thinking or being science deniers. Doing so would be denying the experience of FCEV drivers, and denying someone's experience is IMHO just about the most hostile and antisocial thing anybody can do on a social media forum.

    This thread is for discussion of just why promotion of the "hydrogen economy" is a hoax, and why cars powered by H2 will forever be completely impractical. This thread is simply not the right place for a discussion of the everyday driving experience of cars powered by hydrogen, which includes all current production FCEVs.

    If you want to discuss the everyday driving experience of driving a hydrogen-powered FCEV, then I encourage you to start your own thread for that discussion, or use one of the existing threads which promote FCEVs.

     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2018
  15. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    Or perhaps a fuel cell friendly forum?
    http://www.fuelcellcars.com

    I'm OK with fuel cell advocates who pay the price of their choice being in this thread. They paid (and are paying) the price of their decision not that I think they'll persuade many here that it was a wise choice. But when someone commits thousand, even tens of thousands of dollars, to what I see as a technological dead end, well I'm not ready to 'toss them out' because they paid their dues.

    For them, there are two days of reckoning coming:
    1. End of lease day - in about two years, will they buy the car? Will the end-of-lease cars depreciate to the point of 'free'?
    2. End of hydrogen subsidy day - the true price, when the cost per mile will be about 3x the cost of an EV mile. Note, I am perfectly OK if a fuel cell vehicle owner treats it as a 'throw away' because they have such great incentives. I too could be tempted by $0.00/mile operational cost.
    The other thing for them to contemplate is every other car we discuss here has a J1772 connector but they don't. Look at the list of EVs reported each month, every one of them has a J1772. Would our fuel cell advocates also support bringing a hybrid or diesel owner to the forum?

    So I'll give a fuel cell owner a pass because I already know their future. But I won't be seeking a fuel cell thread in a J1772-centric forum.

    Bob Wilson
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2018
  16. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    Looking for something else, I found this carbonate (high temperature) fuel cell system:
    https://www.fuelcellenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Product-Spec-SureSource-1500.pdf
    • 1.4 megawatt
    • natural gas fueled, 10860/hr (181 scfm * 60)
    • 47% efficiency
    • ~700F (371C) exhaust
    • Heating or absorption cooling
    • Water, in 4.5 gpm with surge to 15 gpm, discharge 2.25 gpm
    • 107,000 lbs, largest skid 50,000 lbs
    Gas turbine generators that exhaust into a steam generator are achieving combined ~60% efficiency:
    Gas turbine - Wikipedia

    Gas turbines can be particularly efficient when waste heat from the turbine is recovered by a heat recovery steam generator to power a conventional steam turbine in a combined cycleconfiguration.[37] The 605 MW General Electric 9HA achieved a 62.22% efficiency rate with temperatures as high as 1,540 °C (2,800 °F).[38] For 2018, GE offers its 826 MW HA at over 64% efficiency in combined cycle due to advances in additive manufacturingand combustion breakthroughs, up from 63.7% in 2017 orders and on track to achieve 65% by the early 2020s.[39]

    The other problem with this fuel cell is the cost per kWh is higher than wind generated:

    • $3.32/1k cubic feet March (EIA)
    • $36.05 natural gas to generate 1.4 megawatts for one hour
    • $0.026/kWh (fuel cost after installation and does not include water and sulfur disposal/sale)
    • Wind power, <$0.01/kWh (marginal cost after installation)
    Bob Wilson
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2018
  17. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    There are lots of interesting things that have been done with fuel cells. Solid oxide fuel is one of the interesting ways to fuel a fuel cell.

    But these remain in the realm of what should be confined to science experiments. None of them point to anything practical enough to use for everyday transportation.

    At some point, a science experiment has yielded all the results it's ever going to, and the experiment should come to an end. Continuing it past that point is a waste of time, energy, and resources. That point was passed long ago for the type of fuel cells being used in FCEVs. There is nothing more to learn there. There may still be interesting variants on different types of fuel cells and different fuels for them, so there may be a rational reason to continue those experiments on a small scale.

    But to continue to throw away money on mass producing FCEVs, and on H2 fueling stations to fuel them, is quite literally insane. We know it's not practical, and we know it's never going to be. It's not merely that they should stop, it's that they never should have started. There was never any rational reason to start, and there is no rational reason to continue.

     
  18. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    I was aware of molten carbonate fuel cells that use methane directly. To find the commercial version is 47% efficient versus 60% combined-cycle, turbine-steam, was a real eye opener. In effect the additional 13% from combustion over a fuel cell is significant.

    IMHO, the hydrogen fool cell advocates have not acknowledged improvements in battery and engine technology. I don’t mind experiments and even scaling them up. Doubling the existing hydrogen station to 80-100 does not change the abysmal cost-per-mile.

    Bob Wilson
     
  19. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    Using EPA data, I chose the technology and then figured out the cost per mile:
    Code:
    Technology   $/mile Fuel   $ / unit   example unit
    battery EV        $0.025      $0.10   Ioniq EV
    regular gas       $0.049      $2.65   Prius Prime
    diesel            $0.086      $3.02   Cruze
    premium gas       $0.092      $3.23   BMW i3-REx
    fuel cell         $0.240     $16.00   Clarity FCV
    


    • 10x cost range - worst, fuel cell, best, battery EV
    • electric rate from Huntsville AL
    • petro fuel rates, Gulf Coast, USA Energy Information Administration
    • hydrogen retail rate from California
    Bob Wilson
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2018
  20. marshall

    marshall Well-Known Member

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  21. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web Well-Known Member Subscriber

    After reading the press release and using the hydrogen fuel station locator, it looks like they may be all in the Santa Monica area:
    • Santa Monica - 1819 Cloverfield Blvd
    • West LA - 11261 Santa Monica Blvd
    • Fairfax-LA - 7751 Beverly Blvd
    Anyone live near these stations?

    Bob Wilson
     
  22. TeslaInvestors

    TeslaInvestors Active Member

    Is True Zero part of Air Products? When I fill at San Jose True Zero station, the truck that comes to refill the station is from Air Products.
    But the cost at the pump is $16.66/kg. May be Air products sells at that price to TrueZero. Then TrueZero charges more for the rest of the steps (stocking, cooling, compressing to 10000 psi, maintaining the stations, rentng of the space).

    I wonder if Air Products meant this as end consumer price or wholesale price to stations.
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2018
    bwilson4web likes this.
  23. Pushmi-Pullyu

    Pushmi-Pullyu Well-Known Member

    What difference does it make? A price that low is obviously subsidized; you can find examples of subsidized prices lower than that. It's certainly no indication that someone has figured out a magic way to profitably dispense H2 into fool cell cars at a substantially lower price!

    And anyway, nobody driving a production fool cell car has to pay for the fuel; it's all paid for by the auto maker. So it's not like a subsidized price is going to help any individual FCEV owner.

     

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