Are hydrogen tanks superior to batteries?

That was 204 units March 1-31, 2018. Fortunately, the market has a vote too.

Bob Wilson

 

ROTFLMAO!!

OMG, how many times did Martin have to exceed the limits of time, space, and physics to get there? Well, let's see:

1. H2 stations have to recompress the H2 between fills, to maintain the very high pressure, so Martin has handwaved away the time needed for that.

2. Compression takes a lot of energy. To dispense the volume he's talking about -- 10 kg every five minutes! -- would require a much, much greater supply of electricity to the station than he's admitting to. It would take the kind of high-density power that an ultra-fast-charge EV charging station would need -- the kind he keeps claiming is impossible!

3. Average filling time for a fool cell car is about 6 minutes, and that doesn't even count the time required to hook the dispensing hose up properly. Since it has to be very tightly sealed against the car's fill tube, it takes somewhat longer to hook up than just sticking the nozzle of a gas pump's hose into a gasmobile!

4. Fool cell fanboys always talk about "green", renewable H2, rather than "frackogen" H2 made by reforming natural gas. So where does the power come from to generate (6000 x 10 =) 60,000 kg of H2 per day by electrolysis? That's gonna take a lot more power than the "impossible" level of power needed to recharge BEVs in less than 10 minutes... a level of power which Martin claims is both impossible to handle safely and too expensive to be practical!

Reality check: A $3 million H2 fueling station can service about 36 fool cell cars per day, and that's only if everything's going right!

You mean the delusional thinking of fool cell fanboys? Yes, you've certainly demonstrated beyond any possible doubt that you delusions are growing exponentially!

We need to start a "Top 5" or "Top 10" list of Martin's Fool Cell Fanboy Beliefs:

1. Batteries have reached the practical limit of improvement. No more significant advances will be seen in that field.

2. In the future, it will be possible to transform compressed hydrogen gas into something with different physical properties; something which is actually practical as a fuel. (Perhaps using magic? )

3. There's no such thing as rocket science. It's all engineering.

4. Efficiency doesn't matter.

Yes, so it's good those are being built. They will certainly provide a lot of the electricity needed for the BEVs of tomorrow. But since the energy needed to supply H2 to a fool cell car, on a per-mile basis, is about 3-1/2 times that needed to power a BEV on a per-mile basis, it's obviously to anyone who's not a science-denying fool cell fanboy that it's going to be much more practical to provide enough power for future BEVs than it would be to fuel fool cell cars!

ROTFLAMO!! again.

Electricity doesn't require expensive, complex, high-pressure pumps, tanks, and seals to store. Storage is much, much less "tricky" than trying to work with pernicious high-pressure hydrogen gas!

Hmm, let's see... A Simple Fuel home H2 generating/ storage/ dispensing unit capable of dispensing 10 kg of H2 per day costs $300,000 (source). That would store 333 kWh of energy, but recovering that by "burning" it in a fuel cell wastes half the energy, so call it 166.5 kWh. A Tesla PowerWall 2 stationary storage battery unit costs $5900 and stores 13.5 kWh, and of course there would be no energy loss in using that energy directly from the PowerWall 2 unit, unlike "burning" H2 in a fuel cell. So the cost of the PowerWall 2 setup would be $76,700 to store 175.5 kWh.

So comparing the systems, the Simple Fuel H2 setup costs ~$1802 per kWh of recoverable energy storage capacity, and the PowerWall battery setup costs $437 per kWh of capacity.

Batteries win over H2 again! Of course, that should not be a surprise to anyone except fool cell fanboys.
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There were over 4,000 Bolt EVs sold in the first 3 months of this year. Between the Bolt and Volt, GM averages 3,000-4,000 plug-in sales every month. There were nearly 4,000 Model 3's sold in March alone. Honda sold nearly 10x as many Clarity Plug-In Hybrids last month as they did Clarity Fuel Cells.

In Japan, they're only being marketed because the Government there is pushing hard for them. In the US, Fuel Cells are only being marketed by automakers that have no major Battery Electric Vehicle on the market in California. Because of their long "range" they nab a significant number of ZEV credits for California.

But more importantly for Johnny-come-lately automakers like Toyota and Honda, the Travel Provision is sill in place for Fuel Cells in 2018. The travel provision for BEVs ended last year.

So any Fuel Cell sold in California in 2018 still nets Toyota and Honda ZEV credits in other CARB states. Toyota and Honda have been automakers that have historically purchased a lot of ZEV credits from other automakers like Tesla to meet ZEV compliance. But these credits only work for one ZEV-required state. But every Fuel Cell they sell in California earns them ZEV credits for all states.

This is the only reason they're being sold at all in California. Once battery prices are low enough for notoriously conservative automakers like Toyota, and once the travel provision expires for Fuel Cells, the passenger cars will die.

There is a case to be made for using the technology in military, industrial or long haul trucking applications. But there is no use case that makes a HFCV superior to buying: ICE, Hybrids, PHEVs or EVs for private vehicle ownership.

 

No, global EV sales hit 2% for the first time ever late last year.

US EV sales so far this year are tracking at about 1.5%. By the end of this year, US sales should hit 2% regularly thanks to the Bolt/Volt, Model 3, and Leaf in particular.

You won't need to wait long to see what happens.

 

Hydrogen filling stations can service 15-36 cars per day. Not 6,000 as claimed.

The stations in the LA basin (where almost ALL of the 18-20 stations are located) have been frequently out of service, or can only fill cars up to 5,000PSI - which cuts the range in half ...

 

Nope, that would be just you clutching at straws.

Of course fool cell cars work! So do steam-powered cars.

Neither is going to replace gasmobiles, and for the same reason.

Yup, and you continue to "suspect" this even after you've been shown hard data proving the opposite. But that's to be expected from a science denier, since you prefer wishful thinking to actual science, actual facts, and actual logic.
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Energy cost to compress H2 to 10,000 PSI obviously depends on the exact method used, but it's usually quoted as 15% of the energy contained in H2. Since that's 33.3 kWh per kg, that comes to almost exactly 5 kWh per kg, but of course that does not include the cost of re-compression at the dispensing station.

But hey, Martin, for once you used a figure that was actually not far from being true! For you, that qualifies as a real breakthrough!
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Hydrogen filling stations exist in only one state in the US, California. Because they put out a incentives that rewarded new infrastructure for “clean energy” vehicles. So both hydrogen and electric vehicles received the incentives. But electric vehicles have taken off far faster, selling thousands a month. There were about 30,000 EVs sold in the US in March and historically, 1/2 to 2/3 of those were in California. The market has spoken. Given equal support, EVs are dominating fuel cell cars.

 

The original header of this thread is “Are hydrogen tanks superior to batteries?”

Based on the discussion and presentation of facts, the clear answer is: No.

 

The Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell was released in 2013. We can call it the Volt/Leaf equivalent as the first major HFCV sold to consumers.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1098721_hyundai-tucson-fuel-cell-global-sales-below-target-company-admits

Although GM was leasing vehicles to customers between 2007 - 2009. They eventually took all the vehicles back and said they intended to upgrade them to the newest technologies and then release an updated Chevrolet Equinox FCV. But they never did that. Instead, over the next several years, they released the Chevy Volt, Spark EV and a series of 48v hybrids.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gm-convinced-the-future-is-in-fuel-cells/

But still, we can consider the Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell the first one intended to compete in the market. So Fuel Cell vehicles have been available for purchase in the US for approximately 5 years now. In that time less than 4,000 FCV have been sold cumulatively in the US.

If we consider the Volt/Leaf the first major consumer Plug-Ins, they have been around since December 2010. By the end of the first year, over 17,000 Plug-Ins were sold. After the first 5 years, 406,000 Plug-in vehicles had been sold.

Now, maybe you consider less than 4,000 to be a pretty good number of sales for Fuel Cell vehicles. But as I explained above, the only reason Honda and Toyota are selling these vehicles at all is to get the ZEV credits with the travel provision while they can. Once Hyundai started releasing enough BEVs to meet their credit requirements, they scaled back their Fuel Cell plans.

So do you deny that over a similar 5-year period over 100x more plug-ins were sold?

GM has been looking into Fuel Cells longer than pretty much any automaker. They've concluded that battery electrics, hybrids and plug-in hybrids are better solutions for consumer vehicles. They're focusing their Fuel Cell tech for products such as construction vehicles and military vehicles. Applications where the high price and limited infrastructure isn't as much of an issue.