Toyota claims battery breakthrough in potential boost for electric cars
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The key word here is obviously *could*.
Add one more to the pile of claims and beliefs floating around that have yet to transform into viable products.
I have been a Toyota fan from way back. I have owned a number of their vehicles. But in my mind, they lost a lot of technical credibility when they tried to apply political influence in a short sighted attempt to steer the marketplace toward hydrogen.
This was really just a thinly veiled effort to prolong the marketplace viability of the internal combustion engine --- to the detriment of the global environment.
The domestic grid has no impact on most Toyota/Japanese cars which are exported or built elsewhere --- often using engines made in Japan.
This was about saving a large segment of the Japanese economy which is centered around the internal combustion engine and associated expertise and know how.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims...
It's almost like they released a bad car in an attempt to give EVs a bad name.
The infrastructure needed to fully support hydrogen would take decades to develop. Starting with some way to efficiently manufacture hydrogen without using even more fossil fuels.
It's the stall that they wanted --- to give them more time to milk ICE and adapt.
There is no corresponding infrastructure delay for EVs which are already being adopted.
Here is what they were spouting less than 2 years ago.
“By promoting further collaboration in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines, the five companies aim to provide customers with greater choice”.
That's an utter fantasy. We are nowhere near having enough infrastructure to do this.
Last time I looked there were less than 60 hydrogen refueling stations --- "pilot" projects in California put in place with government funding.
I rest my case. Like it or not, the decision has already been made by the marketplace --- the future is electric.
There's also no technological issue preventing the expansion of hydrogen stations. It's also worth noting that this directly replaces the gas station, both in number and location. This is not nearly as big of a challenge as you might think. Unlike charging stations, which must exist in much greater numbers and new locations.
Market research shows more than half of auto consumers will be looking at an EV when they need a new car.
Like it or not, hydrogen has already lost --- for a multitude of reasons. But keep flogging that dead pony.
What’s ironic is that BEV fans are just repeating the same anti-EV arguments used against BEVs. They’re not even aware that BEVs were at zero just a decade and a half ago. The fact is, FCEVs are needed by millions of people. As the world shifts to green energy, FCEVs will play a major role and likely one much bigger than what BEVs ever could’ve achieved. So the whole argument is just an act of shortsightedness.
There are 3 hydrogen vehicles currently offered for sale --- only in California. And nobody cares.
It should be obvious by now that the marketplace has already decided the future is electric. But keep flogging that dead pony.
Also, why is your understanding of the marketplace something straight out of a video game, as if there is a end-credits scene and nothing happens afterwards? There's nothing stopping advancement in new technology, regardless of how successful current technology is. Progress always marches on.
Not to mention that fuel cell cars are electric...
Better question --- What keeps hydrogen from being a commercially viable energy source?
Short answer: Economics. The same reason you don't (and probably won't) run your home from hydrogen --- because electricity is a much more universal form of energy that can be produced, safely distributed and utilized more easily/cheaply/efficiently.
Also, hydrogen is more ubiquitous than electricity. In fact, it is cheaper to distribute hydrogen than electricity, simply on account of how pipes work compared to wires.
In short, if your argument is economical in nature, then your conclusion is profoundly wrong. It is a matter of when, not if, the lower cost basis of hydrogen based vehicles will cause them to displace BEVs. Also, BEVs have major environmental and practical downsides. I suspect that once the hydrogen movement gets going, BEVs will not pose much of a fight. It will be discarded as just another transitional idea. After all, FCEVs are also EVs.
This will imply that electricity will be even cheaper.
Most of the practical schemes for breaking molecular bonds in order to release hydrogen uses electricity and lots of it.
Eventually some intelligent hydrogen fanboy will hit upon a bright idea --- let's forget all this hydrogen stuff and just use all the electricity we are generating directly --- cause it's easier, cheaper and more efficient.
The problem is that there is no way of utilizing that electricity. It is excess electricity generated by unpredictable renewable energy. You might as well use that free and useless electricity to make something actually useful.
Like charge a battery? A battery located anywhere on the grid?
Why add more complexity by electrolyzing water, storing the resultant hydrogen, building a vast distribution network to physically move that hydrogen, and keep vehicles dependent on a single form of chemical energy storage?
With an EV, my car can charge off the excess energy in the grid, or from the battery I have in my house, for from fossil fuel plants, or from nuclear, or whatever. I can trivially do this at home (rather than having to visit a refueling station). I can do this at work. Or at the grocery store.
Everyone I know who has an EV will never go back to fuel-powered cars.
I can see a use case for hydrogen in fleet vehicles, or in long-haul trucking scenarios. But for consumer automobiles, it has way too many downsides compared to the EVs that you just plug into a regular wall outlet.
In reality, electrolyzers and fuel cells are electrochemical systems. There is no more complexity in making hydrogen than it is to charge batteries.
This argument is pretty ridiculous. You are demanding we be dependent on finite battery supplies rather than practically infinite water. You can easily use grid energy and make hydrogen at home or anywhere to make hydrogen too. And FYI, a fuel cell car is an EV.
Your position is totally misinformed. The fundamental argument in favor of hydrogen cars is that they are EVs that are cheaper, lighter, simpler, less dependent on rare resources, and can refuel much faster than BEVs. Critics have effectively inverting reality on some of these points, or somehow deluded themselves in thinking they're still fighting ICE cars. In reality, you are attacking alternative forms of EVs.
For every success story you have 10 (or whatever) failures that nobody remembers.
> the cost will trend towards zero.
Why not just use batteries then? All processes that can be used to make hydrogen now are very inefficient, so unless energy literally costs zero hydrogen won’t still make much sense for cars.
Electrolyzer and fuel cells are electrochemical systems and are basically batteries themselves. There is no fundamental downside compared to choosing some other electrochemical system. People are just swallowing the FUD and marketing BS of li-ion battery companies. There simply isn't a big enough difference in efficiency for this to matter to begin with, and even then the gap will shrink away to nothing. For instance, for large installations it is already possible to do heat-recapture and use that heat to drive a turbine. We can see 85% efficiency and above pretty much right now. We are going to see more ideas like that and therefore there won't much of any real difference in efficiency.
The other point is that we are not here to just replace fossil fuels with something just as limited and problematic. The goal is to move all of society to something truly sustainable. In fact, if the goal is to replace every single vehicle on Earth with BEVs, then the goal is already a dead one. It would be both absurdly expensive and environmentally damaging to attempt that feat. As a result, we pretty much have to invest in hydrogen eventually anyways. So we might as well do so now, rather than keep spending everything on what is basically a transitional technology.
We might replace small/personal vehicles with BEV and larger ones with hydrogen.
It’s not a very good fuel source for small vehicles because of how unstable it is. You need significant amounts of energy to stop it from evaporating.
For large commercial vehicles that and distribution would be much easier.
> . We can see 85% efficiency and above pretty much right now
Multiply that by production efficiency and we’re just a bit above the level of ICE.
Hydrogen is not unstable for transportation purposes. It is safer than gasoline.
No. Wells to wheels efficiency, at least for large installations, would be not far off from what is possible with batteries. The fact that you even think that FCEVs are even close to ICE on efficiency shows that you've swallowed a lot of BEV propaganda. A fuel cell is 3x the efficiency of a conventional gasoline engine. BEVs simply are not that much efficient, and the gap continuously shrink.
Right. That’s my cue to stop.. arguing with people who say stuff like this is always pointless
> a. A fuel cell is 3x the efficiency of a conventional gasoline engine
If you include production efficiency, storage and transportation losses and fuel cell efficiency itself it’s only a bit higher than diesel if not on par.
Furthermore, given the needs of energy storage, in particular long duration energy storage, there are situations where you will be charging BEVs with hydrogen power. So it is not even a guaranteed that BEVs are more efficient than FCEVs, with the average case likely half-way between commonly claimed numbers. A gap that will shrink over time too, since efficiency of fuel cells can significantly improve.
The reason why I say "BEV propaganda" is because the arguments are totally ridiculous. Between the absurd fearmongering and claims of massive efficiency advantages, all while ignoring any and all limitations of li-ion batteries, it is clearly just a misinformation campaign. After all, since FCEVs are also EVs, why are there so many attacks on them from other EV enthusiasts? It is mostly a defensive strategy of misinformation and FUD. It is because more than anything else, FCEVs represent a disruptive threat to BEVs.
Hydrogen will probably never work unless someone comes up with a stable molecule that includes hydrogen, is large enough to not move through solid objects, and still retains enough chemical energy to be useful. Ammonium is one option, but it is highly toxic. Only really practical in cargo ships.
Hydrogen also can be useful for inherently expensive things like rockets and jet planes. But never cars.
It was never going to compete with electric. EVs have been slandered for so long that people just assumed we would come up with something better. But EVs are great. Driving an ICE car after being in a Tesla feels like playing a first-person shooter over dial-up.
> It was never going to compete with electric. EVs have been slandered for so long that people just assumed we would come up with something better.
Hydrogen cars are EVs. This is a deep misunderstanding of the issue.
How and why? I could say the same thing about batteries..
I assume hydrogen might be the best option for lorries and other heavy vehicles but what are its advantages for personal cars?
The Toyota Mirai is a hydrogen Fuel Cell car.
BMW tried to create a hydrogen ICE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7
And if by that you mean very badly and very impractically then you are correct.
> There are no fundamental challenges.
Except, you know building them cheap at volume. Just a small thing.
> This reads like one of those anti-BEV posts from a decade ago.
Except it also reads like anti-Hydrogen EV post from a decade ago and since then BEV have made utterly insane amount of progress and hydrogen vehicles are still in the utterly sorry and embracing state they were 10 years ago.
There is also the reality that certain company have taken a lot of money for a long time without producing many results. Specially if its fossil fuel companies that rubs people the wrong way. Just as giving money to Ford and GM wasn't the solution to get EV going. So its understandable that many people don't love the promotion of it.
I am as anti-hydrogen as anybody but I do believe it has a place. However, it should be limited and only used in places where you really need it. So instead of using it in transportation, using it in the chemical industry makes much more sense. Its simply not needed for the overwhelming majority of transportation applications. And even for the the stuff that is left over its often questionable if its worth developing the new infrastructure. Using it for personal vehicle and most cargo transport is utterly idiotic. Using it for most trains is idiotic. The list goes on.
Some people believe the massive steel CO2 use will be solved with hydrogen, but as with transport, there are better ways forward then that in my opinion. But again, hydrogen is getting the lions share of investment there too.
In general I am much more against they 'hydrogen economy' idea and concept, rather then hydrogen. Using energy to split water is reasonable, but most of the time hydrogen is just a short temporary state until it gets turned into something else. Very different from the hydrogen economy people in-visioned.
Another question is if electrolysis of access renewable production is really a great path forward.
And how can you have hydrogen for steel production without necessarily reducing the cost to the ballpark of coal or natural gas? If you can grasp that part, you should realize that it must be a cheap fuel in the future. Cheap enough that it can be easily affordable for transportation purposes. And for those who can't afford BEVs or don't have access to chargers, that is major motivation to pursue hydrogen cars.
Ultimately, you're left with many unsolvable problems if you try to tackle climate change without looking at hydrogen where it is applicable. You also need to think seriously about the downside of alternative ideas, and not pretend they are magically perfect. Batteries are heavy and expensive, nor are they environmental friendly to produce. If you see hydrogen as a far greener type of energy storage, then you will see there are upsides too. In other words, you are only looking at the cons, not the pros and the cons.
Steel and other metals can be made with direct Molten Oxide Electrolysis. That is a far better path forward then hydrogen.
> You also need to think seriously about the downside of alternative ideas, and not pretend they are magically perfect.
Given your absurd defense of hydrogen cars, I will just say, look in the mirror.
> Batteries are heavy and expensive, nor are they environmental friendly to produce. If you see hydrogen as a far greener type of energy storage, then you will see there are upsides too.
As a complete engineering solution end to end, batteries are far more environmentally friendly, far more efficient and far cheaper. Let alone if you also include infrastructure cost. Anybody who seriously investigates these things will come to the same conclusions.
MOE has not actually been invented yet, and there is no evidence it will be either cheap nor scalable. It's currently very expensive and requires plenty of exotic materials to work even as a concept.
No one is claiming hydrogen cars are perfect. But you are making highly delusional claims about batteries. Many of them are totally impossible.
It's pretty obvious that you have never thought about these problems. It's just a serious of assertions from the marketing department of BEV companies designed to shut down critical thinking. The fact is, a hydrogen infrastructure is cheaper than a battery infrastructure. That is simply due to the nature of pipelines versus wire. A pipe is hollow but a wire is not.
So it is 5-10x cheaper to make and move hydrogen around compared to electricity: https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-hydrogen-offshore-wind
Reality doesn't not favor batteries or excessive electrification.
> Cargo ships do not travel short routes
With short I mean not crossing major oceans. Battery powered ships can do a lot of routes.
> MOE has not actually been invented yet, and there is no evidence it will be either cheap nor scalable. It's currently very expensive and requires plenty of exotic materials to work even as a concept.
Both of these claims are just plain false.
> The fact is, a hydrogen infrastructure is cheaper than a battery infrastructure. That is simply due to the nature of pipelines versus wire.
That is such a terrible and utterly idiotic oversimplification.
The reality is, one of these exists and we can make realistic estimate, hydrogen infrastructure simply doesn't exist.
> So it is 5-10x cheaper to make and move hydrogen around compared to electricity: https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-hydrogen-offshore-wind
A bunch of small trial projects supported by governments, that make grand claims.
You like to talk about reality, in reality of the 100s of GW of wind turbines, basically non use hydrogen as an energy transport. And the waste majority of announced new wind projects do not plan to produce hydrogen in the future.
> Reality doesn't not favor batteries or excessive electrification.
And yet in actual reality, you know the one we actually live in, electrification is happening with ever increasing speed and the hydrogen industry barley exists and as far as it does it is almost completely driven by state investments.
Its pretty fucking rich to claim 'in reality' when actual reality is suggesting the exact opposite.
Then show me a working MOE system. I'd love to be enlightened about a working system that went beyond lab experiment.
You're the one ignoring actual expertise here. Here more people with expertise making the same claim: https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-fo...
> It is about 10 times cheaper to transport energy by a hydrogen pipeline than by an electric cable.
At some point you are simply rejecting evidence without any counterevidence of your own.
The reason why we turn use hydrogen to transport energy right now is because the technology wasn't available until recently. But that is changing: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2023/04/20230411-h2pipeline...
As the technology becomes available, economics will dictate more hydrogen infrastructure.
Your simply misinformed. Hydrogen investment is enormous in its totality: https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/news/hydrogen-projects-inve...
All you're doing is making wild assertions without evidence.
This is a bogus claim. Show us some hydrogen pipelines that are in operation which are thousands of kilometres in length.
And the cost is per energy. Which energy? Output energy when you get electricity at the other end? Or chemical potential energy in the H2, which is meaningless since we can’t get it all.
And 'people with credentials' also believed in hydrogen cars and wide deployment of synfuels for automotive. There are lots of claims made over the last 20 years by people with credentials. But I guess you still believe in hydrogen cars so its probably not worth having this debate.
Wind and solar are replacing fossil fuels (or in the rare case of Germany, nuclear). Hydorgen cars by the time they could finally come about would be replacing already carbon free battery cars.
Hilariously enough is not only are you holding on to a relic of the past, you are also defending a technology that is far less energy efficient and is not even green, and wont be for many decades.
You can't just declare something progress because it has always been progress. Its simply a technology that has already been overtaken by something far better before it was ever deployed. That is really progress. What you are doing is declaring something the future and then holding on to it forever and claiming that its the only possible progress.
So in reality you are the one not actually looking to progress, but defending historical idea of progress.
The fundamental problem with batteries is that they're heavy, highly resource dependent, and take a very long time to recharge. This is not going to change unless you take extreme measure like battery swapping. Furthermore, as the world shifts towards SUV sized BEVs, it becomes its own environmental and societal menace. This is a doomed idea in the long-run.
The thing about fuel cell cars is that they are also EVs. They are basically the same idea as BEVs, just without the giant batteries. This gives us far greater flexibility. You can even envision the idea of plug-in fuel cell cars, eliminate pretty much any real arguments against them as a general idea. Everything can be shifted towards zero emissions just like BEVs.
And because FCEVs do not have the huge batteries of BEVs, they are fundamentally more sustainable. And if you are aware that they are also EVs, then they should eventually close whatever efficiency gap you imagine them having. Ensuring that the long-term world will be one dominated by FCEVs.
These are all simple and straightforward bits of reasoning. It does not take much effort to see that FCEVs are the future, and the only question is when. BEV fanatics like you are just spamming FUD against them, many of which are total red herrings. These are terrible arguments and all it does is undermine the credibility of BEVs. In fact, these are signs of a technology that is running out of steam, not a technology on the rise. If you need to lie to defend your business, then you are headed down the path of Reddit and Twitter, just waiting until some disruptive event drives you out of business.
You have a source from where you heard about it, but if you open up the link the person simply states this as fact. They do not back up their claim with any facts or sources, they simply say it.
The onus is not on me to provide counter evidence for an unsubstantiated claim. The onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence backing it up.
No, that considered an appeal to authority.
As I said from the outset, you are free to present any counterevidence. Heck, even a person of similar expertise saying otherwise. Anything more than you denying it.
Aside from container shipping there is raw bulk material shipping, eg: Western Australia ships > 800 million tonnes of raw ores to China annually (not local, not light).
Looking at just container shipping and the major major routes; there is
* 42 million TEU's intra asia (within asia, 'local' but not necc. 'short')
* 42 million TEU's 'far east' to Europe + North America.
and then a long tail of lesser volume routes, many quite lengthy (asia -> south americas, north | south americas, etc.)
Point being by "vast majority" are you talking raw ship numbers (there are many small ships) or cargo volumes | weights?
There is a truly vast amount of heavy tonnages being moved long distances and these consume the majority of shipping energy.
If this is your line of argument then it deserves some refining to move past a handwave.
People underestimate how many routes can be done with battery powered ships.
> If this is your line of argument then it deserves some refining to move past a handwave.
My argument was not limited to that. I also said there are other solution that are not direct usage of hydrogen.
I'd still like to see you make better arguments and work on the real world details (if you can be bothered) which will take time if you apply yourself.
eg: batteries
Sure .. somewhere there is the future.
Right now, though, the largest installer of city scale battery parks in the world Neoen has yet to crack 10 GW installed:
As at 31 December 2021, the company's total capacity was 5.4 GW, made up of 50% solar, 38% wind and 12% battery storage. Neoen aims to attain 10 GW in operation and under construction by 2025.
That's total globally after successively installing the three successive "biggest battery parks in the world" each larger than the other.
For a comparison point, Germany (a single mid sized European country) has a lowest overnight baseload minimum draw of 40 GW (all night long .. an then it ramps up).
Realistically batteries must scale to being able to provide 40 GW for an hour (or more!) .. which is provision of power x length of time.
And from there to scale out by a 100 and more locations.
So, there's some way to go here.
As for hydrogen and steel .. before you wave that away it might be worth looking into the concrete plans by the largest raw material providers for the largest steel plants globally.
https://www.fmgl.com.au/in-the-news/media-releases/2021/06/0...
https://www.fmgl.com.au/in-the-news/media-releases/2023/06/1...
These are the concrete plans of those who are committed to climate action, have access to world class engineers, and already provide 100's of millions of tonnes of raw iron ore per year to steel production already.
You don't have to agree with them, but they are taking action with several billion in capital backing them, so it pays to understand what they intend.
That said, I am against using batteries, specifically lithium batteries for grid stabilization. I much rather not have grids that need that, sadly politically this is where we are going. To actually have grid stabilizing on a large scale with batteries, new battery technologies will have to come online. Things like 'Form Energy' and stuff like that. Neither batteries nor hydrogen currently are actually good solutions. Hydrogen has a bunch of issues in this application and if you look at totally deployed vs batteries its tiny. Again, reality doesn't seem to believe hydrogen is this great grid stability solution.
I rather have nuclear and not need anything other then maybe some Lithium for peak shaving and grid stabilization. But sadly we don't live in that reality, specially in Germany.
Germany has the delusional believe that they will get cheap hydrogen from Australia and Canada. Lots of plans and 'understanding' in reality Australia doesn't even have enough green electricity to make its own grid green, and they are way behind on things like electrification for cars, trains and trucks. Australia has a very, very, very long way to go, the idea that there will be some large cheap export of Green Hydrogen from Australia in my opinion is just fantasy pushed by some politically connected people in both countries who are selling a fantasy to get government money.
The claims from 2021 that by 2023 there will be all this green hydrogen from Australia, mmmhh we are in 2023 and I like to see some data on how much import there is from Australia right now. Again, lots of announcements, lots plans, lots of 'understanding' but tiny actual numbers.
Politically steel companies are under pressure to do something. They can mix hydrogen into their existing processes and make them slightly greener. Its kind of like Hybrid cars. It will make steel more expensive and many of the plans to really scale this relay on cheap green hydrogen to really be competitive. I'm not against it but I think moving to MOE is gone both cheaper and greener.
P.S:
> Germany, the country that is leading the fight against the global warming challenge in Europe
Pretty funny claims from the country with the dirtiest energy mix in Western Europe.
Good to hear - can you provide a link to back that up?
The company I linked above installed the Tesla battery parks that are the the three largest in the world and as their current total (including those) is under 10 GW I'd like to know about the others that make up your total.
> P.S: .. Germany ..
You haven't quoted me, that's not a claim I made.
I simply used Germany as an example of one Europeans's minimum overnight baseload - feel free to pick another.
Tesla is doing more and more pretty fast, they are up to 4GW per Quarter currently.
Its all in their official numbers:
https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure
About 10GW Q1 to Q1, but that number continue to go up pretty fast.
I can't name all the people they sold all this to. There are lots of individual projects from 100MW to 500MW and lots of individual batteries. I believe in California there is a 1GW project somewhere. There have announced a number of GW scale projects.
I don't have all the links to all the projects but you should track them down in various news articles.
Hydrogen won't ever make sense for personal transportation since the cost of batteries has come down way too far. Green hydrogen under perfect conditions has way too many efficiency penalties to compete with pure battery vehicles, so the cost per unit distance just won't ever make sense compared to the tiny losses for batteries.
I don't even care that much if companies like Toyota want to waste their development dollars on personal hydrogen transport that won't ever happen. I just want to make sure subsidy dollars are spent correctly. Use government money on decarbonizing farms and long distance heavy transport with hydrogen. Don't waste that money on cars that will always be too expensive to operate compared with BEVs.
People are stuck in an innovation trap with BEVs. It is pretty much what Clay Christensen wrote about in his book Innovator’s Dilemma. You cannot just linearly improve a single idea until it surpasses all other ideas, now and forever. Especially one that has many limits as BEVs. It is inevitable that there will be step functions in change, i.e. disruptive changes, coming to the market. Forward thinking companies will plan for that inevitability, not pretend BEVs are the final destination of personal transportation.
The world has already squandered billions of dollars on every kind of green technology. That could easily imply BEVs themselves. It is the biggest of double standards to not insist on hydrogen subsidies. If you truly oppose the idea, then oppose all subsidies for all green energy. If not, then accept hydrogen subsidies as a good idea.
I'm for hydrogen subsidies, just not for personal transport. Use the money for heavy transport, agriculture, and forestry. If that also happens to make fuel cells cheaper all around and changes the economics of fuel cell vehicles, that's fine, just don't subsidize hydrogen personal cars directly because it's deeply unlikely they will ever be more than a curiosity.
Thermodynamics means green hydrogen always has to pay the round trip conversion loss, so it will always be more expensive than raw electricity. I do agree there is opportunity to soak up excess renewable generation with hydrogen, but if you're right about hydrogen demand that won't ever affect the price more than a few %. Raw, direct electricity use will always be cheaper, so people will figure out ways to make that arbitrage work for them in ways other than hydrogen storage.
The lack of losses with batteries will mean there is a huge incentive to shoehorn them into anything where it possibly makes sense. That doesn't necessarily mean current lithium chemistry and that's where your innovation will come from.
Again, hydrogen cars can be as cheap as ICE cars to manufacture. Your argument here is pure shortsightedness and is insisting on a double standards. What was the cost of BEVs when they first came out? It took subsidies to drive cost down in the early days. Same is true for hydrogen cars. As mass production expands, hydrogen cars will get cheaper until they are cheaper than BEVs.
You do not understand the thermodynamics of the subject matter. Again, electrolyzers/fuel cells are an electrochemical systems. It basically doesn’t have “thermal-dynamics”. Theoretical efficiency is the same as li-ion batteries. A fuel cell car is effectively the equivalent of a battery car whose battery is made from water. Although there are practical issues to deal with in reality, so this isn’t totally the case, but it is much closer to being true than what you’re imagining.
If you can understand that electrolyzers/fuel cells are functionally the same thing as li-ion batteries, and are subject to the same basic physics, then the real conclusion is to replace li-ion batteries with hydrogen systems wherever possible. After all, if the long-term level of efficiency will be parity between the two, then why insist on the one that is much more resource dependent?
This also ignores the realities of renewable energy. The first thing to point out is that renewable energy is terribly inefficient. Solar panels are only 20% efficient and have terrible load factors. And even then, you'll lose most of it without energy storage. As it turns out, a hypothetical system with just renewable energy and li-ion batteries is actually wasting a lot of energy. These problems shrink dramatically with hydrogen since you now have a huge amount of available energy storage. In fact, you can't even reach 100% zero emissions without hydrogen, since long periods of low sunlight and wind occur fairly often, requiring a backup energy source.
Long story short, the efficiency argument is just FUD. People who promote it have no idea what the realities of energy production will actually look like. It's just something people say to block innovation or maintain the status quo.
Right now it takes ~53kWh to make 1 kg of h2, which stores ~34 kWh of energy. Right away a fuel cell vehicle operator needs to pay for an additional 20 kWh of energy for every kg of h2 before they can move an inch. Toyota Mirai consumes about 0.8 kg/100 km, so those 53 kWh of energy move the car about 125 km. That's 42 kWh/100km. My Model 3 SR+ recently consumed 35 kWh to travel 258 km or about 14 kWh/100km. The Mirai takes 3 times as much energy to move as I used on a recent trip. That efficiency gap is a gulf; no matter how cheap creating and distributing hydrogen gets it will always use a lot more power than just putting that power in a battery. I agree hydrogen has a place in the economy, but only where batteries are too large/heavy for the application or the grid is too far away.
Another thing is that you cannot just make up a number and say this is the only possible outcome. Electrolysis efficiency is a moving target, and depending on circumstances, can be dropped to as low as 39 kWh/kg for water electrolysis and even to 33 kWh for steam electrolysis. Note that there are electrothermal processes gives you effectively free steam (like solar thermal or nuclear), so the latter number is fully possible. In the long run, you have to assume that it will not be that inefficient.
Same is true of BEV efficiency. 14 kWh/100km is pretty low of a figure. Not realistic in normal driving for most people. Not to mention you are comparing a compact car to a much larger car. If people are buying SUV sized BEVs, you won't get those numbers. And no, it is not guaranteed that a BEV will always be more efficient. Fuel cells are continuously getting more efficient and if the goal is have big cars with long ranged batteries, battery weight becomes a real problem. There are scenarios where BEVs will lose in efficiency.
Also, a lot of the upside of hydrogen is that you avoid all of the cost associated with batteries. It take less money and resources to make a hydrogen car compared to a battery car. These need to be accounted for in some way. Finally, one major problem is the huge and unpredictable surplus production of renewable energy. There are reasons why we see zero and negatively priced electricity on the grid. There is no realistic way of capturing it all using batteries. But you can capture most of it via hydrogen. That effectively gives you free hydrogen, and is functionally a way to reduce waste.
Ultimately, hydrogen production just continues the logic of wind and solar economics. Neither wind nor solar are particularly efficient, but it doesn't matter because you are using effectively infinite resources. It cost nearly nothing to keep renewable energy farms going. And likewise, it will cost nearly nothing to use that power to drive water electrolysis. The costs will trend towards zero.
> it makes more sense to have a system that allows for rapid refueling all the time
I don't need that. That is a very rare need for me, and it's so infrequent that I'm ok with it taking a little longer than a gas pump.
"Time is money friend!"
Emergency services, law enforcement, delivery services, long-range transport services, etc... all require rapid refueling. Each and every one.
Your single use case does not a society make.
B58 is a truly great combustion engine, but the idea any turbocharged ICE can compete with an electric motor for input lag is ridiculous. B58's twin scroll turbos certainly reduce lag compared with more run-of-the-mill turbo engines, but even naturally aspirated race engines with light flywheels feel laggy after driving even low-end BEVs.
Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because:
[ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.
[ ] it will be too expensive for users.
[ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.
[ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.
[ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.
[ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable.
[ ] it has too short of a lifetime.
[ ] its charge rate is too slow.
[ ] its materials are too toxic.
[ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.
[ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.
[ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.
[ ] by the time it ships li-ion advances will match it.
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Does this one walk on water?
[0] does not hold charge
That's actually false. It originated from a literally made-up story by Bloomberg. In reality, NCA cells have existed since the late-2000s. Effective energy density was 250 Wh/kg. We have not significantly improved on this value since then.
FYI, high energy density li-ion batteries existed since 2009: https://news.panasonic.com/global/press/en091218-2
There is hard contradictory evidence to the claims of that DoE article.
I hope that batteries continue improving like this and other technologies. It is going to be like magic.
For that range I assume the battery holds 150 Wh/km * 1200 km = 180 kWh. Charging it in 10 minutes would require about 1.1 MW. That's a lot of Watts.
* Only available at the Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station
Extra $8K on a $50K car isn't too bad and can be hidden by cutting costs somewhere else. But on a <$20K car there's nothing left to cut, and the extra cost takes it out of the budget segment.
However, there regularly are press releases promising breakthroughs, but they either never reach production, or end up being one of the small incremental improvements, not a revolution.
https://electrek.co/2020/07/30/tesla-batteries-energy-densit...
The real, slow engineering stories have the best lessons