Curious. The subject of a hydrogen fuel cell car like the Toyota Mirai has, like caravans or cyclists, a peculiar ability to create arguments where people are desperate to be *right*.
Common opinion has it that hydrogen is going nowhere. Battery-electric cars are more efficient: you don’t have to expend vast amounts of energy to produce a fuel and then freight it to a car, only to turn it into electricity again.
Why would you go to the expense, trouble and inefficiency once you’ve generated power in the first place? Just stick it in a battery.
“If you approach it from the point of sustainability,” one senior car industry exec told me, “battery-electric cars are better.” Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess said much the same last year, albeit at the launch of the ID 3 battery-electric car.
Besides, electric wires are everywhere, whereas hydrogen filling stations are not. Far from all hydrogen production is green, and we’re getting better at making battery-electric vehicles all the time. Batteries will even work for trucks, depending on the duty cycle.
But? Well, there are buts. There are industries for whom batteries don’t really work. The European Federation for Transport and Environment, which has no skin in any particular game other than a zero-emissions one, thinks that with aviation and shipping there is no carbon-free alternative to hydrogen.
For trucks or machinery that covers vast distances or enjoys precious little downtime, the extra expense and relative inefficiency may also be worth it, to keep a machine on the move.
China is investing in hydrogen deeply and domestic hydrogen trials, to replace natural gas boilers and cookers, will shortly begin in Scotland.
In other words, there is a groundswell of movement like there hasn’t been before. In July, the EU committed to scaling up renewables-based hydrogen for sectors where there are no alternatives.
“This is the right plan at the right time,” said the Federation for Transport and Environment. “Hydrogen is the missing link in Europe’s strategy to decarbonise planes and ships where electrification is not an option.”
For most of us, of course, electrification will be an option. We won’t drive far enough to expend batteries and our cars will spend long enough parked that there will be plenty of time to charge them.
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Dear Matt,
What's this, Hydrogen heating, power?, not seen or heard about that, can someone elaborate please.
Hi Peter
It was announced on local radio last week that there will be two trials, one in Cumbria and one in the North East, to test the viability of having Hydrogen powered domestic central heating systems replacing current gas boilers. The goal is for the current gas infrastructure to be switched to Hydrogen.
They can co-existI tend to agree with Matt on this, I think he has it covered in this opinion piece. The only thought I would add is that Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are also electric cars. They are driven down the road by electric motors and they also have fairly large batteries, at least compared to an ICE car. So it could be argued that development of both EVs and FCEVs actually benefits both. Unfortunately there are some misguided voices out there who try to argue one solution over the other. The latest one I heard was the boss of JCB, who made a right fool of himself on a BBC podcast, arguing against batteries with a load of codswollop that clearly came from a 'sock-puppet PR firm' funded by the fossil lobby, as the current terminology has it. Fuel Cells and EVs can both be solutions in different circumstances, as Matt says.
By that time the companies that have prioritised them over EVs might be out of business.
They will always cost at least three times as much as EVs to run as there is no way around the laws of physics.
"They will always cost at least three times as much as EVs to run as there is no way around the laws of physics"
LOL! Did you read that on the internet?
At the moment to produce green hydrogen for an FCEV to travel a certain range requires roughly 3 times the electricity needed for an EV for the same distance and the overall cost per mile it's even greater considering that the infrastructure needed for the hidrogen is way way more expensive . The hydrogen will be crucial in the future for the decarbonisation if the steel, ammonia (fertilizers etc) , concrete industry and heavy and ultra-heavy transportation but in my opinion it has little sense for the private, personal transportation even with the half lie/half-truth of the "5 minute refill".
Provide peer reviewed references please.
Unfortunately I don't have access to the report. I note, however, that it is from 2010, and is comparing fiscal costs. A lot has changed since 2010, and the impact of chemical batteries goes far beyond their fiscal cost. Hydrogen energy storage is far more sustainable - not just cheaper or more expensive - than any other option currently being discussed.
It is available on researchgate. The study being from 2010 does not affect the findings as the physics for the production of hydrogen has not changed and the cost stems from a common parameter, the cost of electricity. If you google "cars: battery electric most efficient by far" you can find a chart that compares the overall efficiency of EVs and FCEVs. At the very top they both start with an input of electricity, that is why it is easy to compare the cost. Storing hydrogen is not the issue, it is the production of electricity from hydrogen through Fuel Cells that adds the most cost and complexity.
The cost and impacts of electricity production are coming down all the time, and have reduced significantly since 2010. With cheap clean energy you have cheap clean hydrogen. Mining and processing metals will never be cheap or clean. Fuel cells aren't that complicated, they will only get cheaper, and they weigh next to nothing compared to a battery pack.
But it will still cost at least 3 times more to run FCEV than to run the EV.
FCEVs are actually electric cars (they have batteries, electric motors, inverters etc) its just that their batteries are much smaller. So, in general, the cost difference comes down to Large-Battery Vs (Fuel-Cell-Stack + Hydrogen-Storage-Tanks + Small-Battery).
EVs have seen a dramatic cost decline in the last few years with some options now around 25000 pounds while FCEVs hare remained in the 50000-60000 range. Prices of Fuel Cell Stacks and Hydrogen Storage Tanks are expected to drop, but so are battery prices as in the next 5 years they are expected to go down from about 100 dollars per kWh to 50-55dollars per kWh.
What won't drop, at least not foreseeably, is the environmental impact of producing and carrying aorund massive battery packs.
This isn't some theory about maybe hydrogen will be big in the future. We're working on two huge scale projects right now, and that's only my relatively small employer.
You're wrong about the cost of fuel cells and renewable elctricity, if you really want to talk about physics consider the energy density of hydrogen, the energy in H2 bonds. The reports you posted are compromised - a VW report, really? - oversimplified and biased. The reality is that commercially viable, industrial science and engineering considers more than pure physics or chemistry. Hydrogen is coming, we're already doing it, and it's changing the world for the better. You can pretend it's not, but what's the pint in that?
Compared to ICE cars, EVs have a fraction of the lifecycle emissions (source: "Factcheck: How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change" by carbonbrief org)
Are these green gydrogen projects or is the grey hydrogen produced through methane reform?
I agree with your argument that this is more than a pure physics or chemistry problem. Hydrogen may be more energy dence than batteries but storing extracting that energy results in vehicles that are less space efficient (as well as more complex, slower, expensive) than battery eletric ones.
Changing the world for the better means moving away from fossil fuels, so we should be clear that if we are going to use hydrogen (in vehicles or grid storage) it should be green hydrogen, not grey hydrogen which comes from fossil fuels and pollutes enormously.
Yes. Hydrogen from large scale solar and wind projects.
Mark 1 Mirai 60 thousand 6 years later mark 2 Mirai 60 thousand, such is hydrogen car progress, lol.
Electrek have a good breakdown from electricity to motive power at the wheels, summary is:
BEV = 73%
FCEV = 22%
The big differences are that DC power to battery storage is 95% efficient in both directions and electrolysers and fuel cells are each in the range 50-60% efficient. You also have the issue that to store the hydrogen you either have to compress it or liquefy it.
Compression and liquefaction may get cheaper in terms of reducing capital spend but they are constrained by physics in their efficiency. The same goes for fuel cells and electrolysers to a lesser extent though they still run into the issue that what is going on is a chemical reaction in a liquid/gas which you have to pump to the source of the reaction so there is plenty of space to loose energy in the form of heat.
There has to be a different solution for people like me and H2 is the answer! Their costs will come down, as EV's have! Their fuel cells will come down in cost as EV batteries have! H2 doesn't have to be produced off site! Surround a station with solar and wind and take the rest of the electricity from Octopus etc! Even if it is produced off site, transport it to the filling station by FCEV powered trucks!
I can't see many downsides, but you are correct when you say the future should have as many options as possible! Just don't leave us little house and flat dwellers out of the equation!
Dont expect the cost of green hydrogen to ever reach the cost of electricity, it takes 3 times more electricity to create the hydrogen to move a Fuel Cell car the same distance as an EV.
I know hydrogen has its detractors, but surely as the article states we need to look at everything and hydrogen may well prove useful for those that cannot charge from home as well as being necessary for shipping etc.
The inteded use of rapid chargers is long distance traveling, everyday charging should be done at a 'slow' rate at night. In order to facilitate people that don't have off-street parking for charging at home, one solution is to provide on-street charging (jojusolar for example offers such solutions).
Personal transportation account for about 50% of oil consumption, commercial/agriculture is about 9%, aviation 8% and marine 3.5% (source: Statista). So personal transportation is by far the biggest issue, that is why we need the solution to cater to that first and the other industries second.
Unfortunately hydrogen does not scale well for personal transportation.
I read it too, which is why the Mirai costs the equivalent of 30 mpg. Try researching hydrogen running costs jason