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Comment by galangalalgol | Hacker News Reader

Propane fuel cells already exist, and are in use for remote power. The problem with using them for cars is that they operate at high temperature, so you spend a lot of battery warming the cell for steady state, but most trips are short so you would be there before it got to temp. Might make sense as a phev sort of thing where you punch in a trip and it decides to warm it up or not. You'd always leave enough battery to warm the cell while driving so you never get stuck.

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Several tesla superchargers near where I live have fuel cell setups, presumably to shave peak loads for the rare cases that the charging stations are all in use and all charging at peak rates.

I suspect they have batteries rather than fuel cells?

Tesla is known to colocate them for exactly the reasons you say - also to shift load to cheaper hours of the day and to get paid by the grid for balancing services.

I think the current ones don't use generators, but that one time they used a gas generator to charge Teslas, called it a "battery swap station", and got a bunch of money from California that was supposed to go to zero-emissions car projects. I doubt they'll ever live that down.

Live what down? California paid for a research and demonstration project. Tesla did that but decide for a whole number of reasons that it wasn't worth doing.

sorry for the late reply -- definitely fuel cell setups.

Orleans MA and Hyannis MA supercharger stations. The one in Hyannis is right next to the superchargers, the other is 2 minutes walk away.

I believe one or both have "bloom energy" branding.

I can't find a good picture on the internet.

High temperature isn't a problem for cars. It's simple enough to have a small fuel cell which can be heated up quickly, which in turn can provide the energy required to heat up a larger cell if needed. A small battery can drive you a few miles while that process is happening. The small fuel cell could then recharge the battery while parked if most journeys are only a couple of miles, avoiding the energy cost of heating the large cell except for extended journeys.

Not sure why no one has done it? Not carbon neutral I guess, but paired with this and solar power it would be. Batteries are already so good is probably part of it too. But adding about 25% travel time on long drives is annoying.

Up until this point I'd imagine there was no significant advantage to creating propane vehicles unless they could be made significantly more efficient than petrol or diesel (which I'm guessing is not known to be the case)

by comparison, this discovery could make it a green-vs-brown fuel debate, at which point it would be much more valuable to invest in for vehicles

Propane combustion vehicles are common, and I'd guess a fuel cell would extract roughly 30% extra energy from the same fuel. They typically have battery efficiencies.

This is massively more complex then you make it sound. And if it doesnt work at least as well as current ICE its not going be used. There is a reason this simply isnt done.

If you want to use that fuel, just burn it.

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