Are hydrogen tanks superior to batteries?

[bwilson4web]

Over what period, Bob? Is this not a little out of date now?

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

Bob Wilson

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

I have shown that a single hydrogen dispenser can serve 1,000 cars given a 5 minute filling time and a 12 hour day. A $3 million filling station with 6 dispensers can therefore supply 6,000 cars.

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!

Once it takes off this sort of thing grows exponentially

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.

As regards having to build more windmills and solar panels, have you seen the growth rate of these things? They have completely displaced investment in any other form of power generation and even relatively newly built gas generation plant is being largely mothballed in Europe.

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!

The nice thing about hydrogen is that you can stockpile it in a tank. Electricity is a lot more tricky to store...

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.
-

 

[Martin Williams]

You just contradicted yourself, Mr. Fool Cell fanboy. If "several hundred a month" were being sold, then there would be far more than just a bit over 4000 on the roads here!

It's fun watching fool cell fanboys try to justify their claims. They even have to resort to warping and twisting basic math to support their claims!
-

I'm afraid not. The fact that several hundred a month are being sold now doesn't preclude the total being only 4,000. It is an indication of a very fast growth rate - as well as some dodgy mathematical assumptions on your part. Go and check the figures if you don't believe me. The Mirai has been growing at about 150% a year! The total of plug ins listed have been growing at about 30%

 

[Martin Williams]

For those of us playing "EV-Haters Bingo", Martin just used #2 from the classic "The EV-Hater's Guide to Hating Electric Cars":

Plugging them in will crash the grid. Forget that most electric car charging will occur during off-peak times. And forget that the EV charger on the Nissan LEAF draws a modest 3.3 kilowatts. Just for fun, make the grid-crashing claim while your 4.4-kilowatt clothes dryer is running.
​

That list was made in 2011, but fool cell fanboys are still using the same tired arguments!
-

Actually, nobody (but you) claimed that 'Plugging them in will crash the grid..."

My point was simply that if you are going to get all the energy currently used to transport 270 million cars from the grid, you will have to expand it by 50 to 100%. I suspect this will cost rather more than installing the necessary hydrogen infrastructure.

 

[WadeTyhon]

Over what period, Bob? Is this not a little out of date now?

FCVs are being sold at several hundred a month in the USA now. There are over 4,000 of them on the roads there.

My point was, however, was not about market dominance, but rather that these things seem to exist despite all the reasons exhibited by other posters why this is impossible! Given that the number of filling stations is miniscule, and exist only in one state, I think 4,000 plus sold so far, and a very healthy growth rate is quite a good indication of their ultimate popularity.

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.

 

[Martin Williams]

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.
-

You keep 'proving' that FCVs cannot possibly work. Fortunately, nobody is impressed and more and more FCVs are being sold and successfully driven about. Meanwhile plug-ins seem to be stuck at about 1% of the market after years of them being pushed. The public has not taken to them, and I am not surprised for reasons I've given elsewhere.

I am perfectly happy to wait and see what happens. I see the US now has two or three more hydrogen filling stations than it had a week or so ago - the total of retail stations now stands at a massive 33. Congratulations! I wonder how fast this total will grow as more and more FCVs enter the market?

 

[Martin Williams]

Incidentally, I looked up how much energy is needed to compress hydrogen to 10,000 PSI and it works out at about 4kWh a kg. Not outrageously high considering that a kg will take you 60 miles in a Mirai.

(I just thought it wise to quantify wild vague and unquantified claims about it taking 'a lot of' energy (woo-woo!) to compress hydrogen.)

 

[WadeTyhon]

You keep 'proving' that FCVs cannot possibly work. Fortunately, nobody is impressed and more and more FCVs are being sold and successfully driven about. Meanwhile plug-ins seem to be stuck at about 1% of the market after years of them being pushed. The public has not taken to them, and I am not surprised for reasons I've given elsewhere.

I am perfectly happy to wait and see what happens. I see the US now has two or three more hydrogen filling stations than it had a week or so ago - the total of retail stations now stands at a massive 33. Congratulations! I wonder how fast this total will grow as more and more FCVs enter the market?

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.

 

[NeilBlanchard]

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 ...

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

You keep 'proving' that FCVs cannot possibly work.

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.

My point was simply that if you are going to get all the energy currently used to transport 270 million cars from the grid, you will have to expand it by 50 to 100%. I suspect this will cost rather more than installing the necessary hydrogen infrastructure.

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.
-

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Incidentally, I looked up how much energy is needed to compress hydrogen to 10,000 PSI and it works out at about 4kWh a kg. Not outrageously high considering that a kg will take you 60 miles in a Mirai.

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!
-

 

[Martin Williams]

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 ...

Actually, I claimed 120 a day, per dispenser. Perhaps you are quoting figures for numbers they actually DO serve in a day?

But if LA ones are as slow and unreliable as you say, then it is high time they were upgraded until they manage a more reasonable number at 700 bar. I am quite sure that America can do it. It seems to be done in other countries. There is no good engineering reason for them not to manage the throughput I describe.

 

[Martin Williams]

I would make the point, also, that the energy needed to compress and pump hydrogen at the filling station need not be supplied by the grid at all. It can be produced locally using a fuel cell, or solar power of course.

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.

It has taken seven years and a choice of 43 plug-ins to reach under 1.5%. Sales -year on year are growing at about 25% At that rate in another five years you might hit 4.5%. Big deal! I suspect most people who want battery cars and can afford them now have them.

FCVs are doubling their sales every year and are selling between two and three hundred a month. in five years at the present rate, they will have increased their sales by 32 times and will be selling between six and ten thousand a month.

I agree that we shall not have long to wait before the trend becomes apparent.

 

[Cypress]

Over what period, Bob? Is this not a little out of date now?

FCVs are being sold at several hundred a month in the USA now. There are over 4,000 of them on the roads there.

My point was, however, was not about market dominance, but rather that these things seem to exist despite all the reasons exhibited by other posters why this is impossible! Given that the number of filling stations is miniscule, and exist only in one state, I think 4,000 plus sold so far, and a very healthy growth rate is quite a good indication of their ultimate popularity.

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.

 

[Martin Williams]

The market has indeed spoken.

It has told you that only a bit over 1% of annual sales are for plug-ins. After seven years of attempting to sell them I'd have thought this a pretty unequivocal verdict on their acceptability. I imagine it is only a matter of time before the industry gets the message.

In a bit over two years, FCVs are selling more than most of the 43 plug-ins listed, despite being saleable in only one state!

Too early to declare them winning (if indeed this is a race) but they are coming up fast. Personally, I can't really see why both should not be sold. The public are welcome to choose whatever suits their lifestyles and tastes.

 

[Cypress]

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.

 

[Martin Williams]

I am afraid that's opinion dressed as fact. I think the answer is clearly 'yes'.

From what I can make of reports of problems there, I think a lot of employees at the fabled 'gigafactory' agree with me too!

I see the cut-back target of 2,500 model 3s a week was missed due to these problems. You may recall the original target was 5,000 a week. They managed to scrape barely 2,000 off the production line.

 

[WadeTyhon]

The market has indeed spoken.

It has told you that only a bit over 1% of annual sales are for plug-ins. After seven years of attempting to sell them I'd have thought this a pretty unequivocal verdict on their acceptability. I imagine it is only a matter of time before the industry gets the message.

In a bit over two years, FCVs are selling more than most of the 43 plug-ins listed, despite being saleable in only one state!

Too early to declare them winning (if indeed this is a race) but they are coming up fast. Personally, I can't really see why both should not be sold. The public are welcome to choose whatever suits their lifestyles and tastes.

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/new...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.

 

[Martin Williams]

I don't deny that 100 times more plug-ins were sold last year, nor do I deny that 100 times more ICE cars were sold than plug-ins either. What I do say is the FCV sales are growing faster than the other two sectors. Much faster.

And I really don't care why Honda and Toyota were selling FCVs. The important thing is that they seem to have no difficulty selling them, despite the paucity of hydrogen filling stations.

Your claim of there being five years of uninterrupted sales of FCVs seems somewhat inaccurate. According to carsalesbase.com the Mirai started being sold in late 2015. It now has two full years of sales over which sales have grown strongly. Despite the usual ups and downs, the trend has been strongly upward. A serious competitor from Honda has taken some of its sales but looking at FCVs as a group, sales are still growing. They will be soon joined by the Nexo and a Merc FCV.

It seems to me that the market is taking off. As I say, though. It is not a competition. Manufacturers will happily make all three and sell what people want. Despite plenty of choice, the growth in BEV sales can best be described as 'modest' however. Hydrogen is growing fast, but one has to accept that the car buying public still seems to prefer the old ICE, with all its problems. They are used to the 100% availability it offers and are not going to lightly give it up and worry about keeping the car charged, looking for a charge point, and concern about their batteries etc. FCVs can match this level of convenience as well as the advantages of an electric car. Personally, I think it can't fail!

Getting back to the title of this thread though, I invite you to write down a list of all the desirable features of a perfect battery. High energy content, small size, low cost, fast charging indefinite life etc etc. My bet is that when you have finished you will have a pretty good feature list of a gas tank. Moreover, if you went through the list and put a tick or a cross against each one according to whether modern batteries provide it or not, you'd end up with very few ticks and LOTS of crosses.

 

[Martin Williams]

March 2018 sales:

     Group      |  Sales | %Group|%total
Total Hybrid    |   28518|  44.0%| 01.7%
Total BEV       |   14480|  22.4%| 00.9%
Total PHEV      |   10882|  16.8%| 00.7%
Total Diesel    |   10688|  16.5%| 00.6%
Total Fuel Cell |     204|  00.3%| 00.0%
Total Efficient |   64772| 100.0%| 03.9%
Total Auto Sales| 1646888|       |

Flying off the lot no less.

Bob Wilson

Something a bit odd here. Maybe it's me.

If these are the figures for March 2018 as you claim you are correct that 204 FCVs were sold. But this implies that about 55,000 hybrids, BEVs an PHEVs were sold in that month. The Inside EVs figure is about 26,000. Perhaps you can clarify things please?

I reckon FCVs are selling at about three-quarters of one percent of plug-ins.