Japan Is Betting Big on the Future of Hydrogen Cars
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* The carbon footprint is likely larger than a Tesla but smaller than a comparable gasoline vehicle.
* The cost of fuel is currently several times higher than gasoline (normalized for driving distance) which is why all the major hydrogen carmakers are giving away 3 years of fuel for free. This likely doesn't help the carbon footprint.
* It takes a little longer to refuel than a gasoline car (few minutes) but less time than an electric car.
* Range depends on environmental conditions and driving habits. As it is a hybrid, nonfreeway driving in stop/go traffic appears to be most efficient (this is where you get the 300+ mile range). Otherwise, in the freeway, in the mountains (uphill) and when the A/C or heater is on at full blast, be prepared to lose up to 30% of range.
* There aren't as many fuel stations yet so it is a good habit to check station status online and refuel before the tank gets too empty. Stations in the USA are currently open to the public in California and a few places in the Northeast.
* Some models have little trunk space as quite a bit of volume as been reallocated to the hydrogen tanks.
* Some jurisdictions may require periodic (~yearly) tank inspections.
* The vehicles generally handle like an electric (or hybrid in electric mode) vehicle.
A back of the envelope calculation might go something like this. Vehicles are idle 95% of the time on average, most countries have something like one vehicle for every two people, if all are electric and all have a 40 kWh battery (more than a original Leaf, a bit over half my Tesla S) that is on average 50% charged then in a country like Norway (roughly 5 million population) there is a storage buffer that can source or sink something like:
(5e6/2) cars * (40 * 0.5) kWh capacity * 0.95
With real time pricing and the ability to deliver current from the car as well as to it and you have pretty much solved the problem.
The total installed generating capacity in Norway is just over 30 GW. If we harnessed just the batteries in the cars we already have we would have a buffer of something like
200e3 cars times 20 kWhr * 0.5 battery capacity
I hope I haven't got a power of ten wrong in there.
The fallacy is fossil fuel systems are susceptible to supply disruptions. So they need to store 7 days worth of fuel to keep the thermal plants running. Less than that and they could potentially run out of fuel.
Renewable's never run low on fuel due to war, accidents, and hurricanes like oil and gas does. Capacity issues (dark and stormy) is solved by long distance interties not local storage.
They spent decades researching hydrogen fuel cells and finally brought a car to market with the technology. Their Mirai is essentially a fuel-cell hybrid, where the ICE component has been replaced with a fuel-cell equivalent and the only waste product from the hydrogen fuel is water. All told it is actually pretty cool, and it is nice to see an alternative to pure electric battery-driven drive trains. Ripping up the crust for Lithium isn’t much of an improvement over ripping it up for hydrocarbons, but it might be a century before we collectively agree.
“Mirai” by the way, means “future” in Japanese.
If everyone converted entirely to lithium-ion batteries, the crust would still be ripped up about one millionth as much it is at present for fossil fuels.
... And Michael Fisher; same road trip :