How reliable are fuel cells? Who is the best in making fuel cells? Who is the best in making electric motors?

Thanks.

Look, i’m not saying that batteries are a bad idea. I LOVE the Chevy Volt concept. But there are still areas that a battery will have to evercome. And just like most situations, there will be tradeoffs in using one over another.

I agree about electrolysis. In the end you are using a whole lot of energy and some of it is wasted. When using cryogenic cooling for liquid H2, you are going to have boil off. Not when using a high pressure H2 vessel though. Tanks nowadwys can hold 30k psi before rupture. Yes, it takes more energy to fill that up, but how many other ways of actually STORING energy are there?

Wheel to wheel, the H2 loses on efficiencies, but I do believe it wins in practicality. You can make unlimited amount of H2 and store it. Not the case with electricity.

You are right about batteries though, they too are a good idea!! (BTW, fuel cells have actually been around since the 1850s)

I know that big oil/gas are already getting their hands into hydrogen reformation from fossil fuels, but isnt the point here not to be paying ridiculous prices for transportion etc… As long as fossil fuels arent used, this can be a CO2 free process. BTW, how many coal burning power plants feed into the electricity that we would be using to power our batteries?

Right now energy generation isnt efficient or healthy. People are scared of nuclear power for no good reason. This ones a whole different discussion though.

Regarding batteries, I’m not behind on my reading, although i wish it werent so… We are not talking about small notebook Li-ion batteries that plagued Dell. We are talking about batteries that would help with 300 miles of travel on one charge. Big batteries or arrays of smaller ones batteries. There is definetely still a problem with how dangerous these big batteries can be. Explosions and overheating are still an issue. Check out lithium polymer?

Electricity will be produced purely for these EV vehicles. During the night, people will charge them, and then drive them away come work time. How many people charging their vehicles does it take before we start overloading the power grid? You say the infrastructure is there, but its still going to take a hell of a lot of work to make sure EVERYONE can get power off of the grid without brown and black outs. Also, temperature cyclicing, life expectancy, internal resistance and overtemp to name a few random problems.

Why hasn’t Toyota come out with a pure EV, or GM for that matter? Personally, I think its a battery issue…What happens when you forget to charge your vehicle for 5 hours? Looks like youre not going to work juuust yet

Lets see, H2 storage… I wrote a journal article for school about a year ago, so hopefully im still up to date. When using multi layer high pressure H2 tanks, you must understand, its not going to blow up. Its not like having a bomb on board, no more than a tank of gasoline or a Lithium-Ion battery. People are scared because they dont know… I would dare someone to do research to find out what kind of tests these tanks go through before approved for proper H2 storage. Quantum does bonfire tests, bullet peircing tests, compression tests, environmental cycling tests, drop tests. You cant even imagine what 4 or 5 layers of kevlar, carbon fiber/epoxy and high molecular weight polymer can protect you from…

This surely sounds like a stretch right now, but I am in the industry and I really can see things moving forward. Believe me, when I was an undergrad, I had nothing but doubt, even after working for a fuel cell company and taking classes. One of my teachers almost convinced me that making H2 a reality was not even possible.
Im not saying that believing in batteries are wrong, I just think H2 is the better option.

P.S. Seriously though, use the platinum argument in your arsenal. Most people overlook it as there are more than just PEM fuel cells and not every on uses platinum. Platinum is rare, expensive as hell, and I believe most of it has African ownership… We need a non platinum catalyst!!!!!!!

The problem with H2 production from electrolysis of H2O is that you are already wasting energy right fromt he start… the H2 produced only has 70% of the energy that it took to produce it. And because H2 is a gas (the lightest element) you need to highly compress it right away… that takes more energy (which you don’t get back when you use the H2)… and then you need to to transport it (more energy). Even once you have it stored inside a tank in a vehicle you lose H2 as it warms (boils) and needs to be vented (pressure release valve). And finally you are using the H2 as input to a fuel cell to turn back into electricity (more loss due to inefficiency of the FC) to drive the electric motor.

Compare that to using the same electricity you’d use for electrolysis to produce H2 and instead feeding it into the power grid, transporting it efficiently over transmission lines, charging batteries, which is then used directly to drive the same electric motor above (in the FC vehicle).

Well-to-wheel hydrogen is going to lose. Maybe in 20 years they will have solved enough pieces of the puzzle to improve it, but that’s what they said 20 years ago. And battery (or other electrical energy storage devices like supercapacitors) technology isn’t going to stagnate either.

More important, battery EV technology is here today (well it’s been here for over 100 years but that’s another story). The infrastructure is already here for fueling (charging) at home, and extending that for charging along the “highway” is relatively easy and very inexpensive to build (especially compared to what a hydrogen fueling station would cost). And in the mean time onboard range extending generators work for longer trips… and those generators could be more energy efficient diesel, natural gas, etc (even when gasoline it’s more energy efficient than a full blown ICE).

That’s not to say hydrogen doesn’t have it’s uses such as for backup power supplies, but for general transportation, it’s been a great delay tactic for big oil and big auto (the promise of it is what helped kill CA’s ZEV mandate), and big oil/gas still becomes the predominate source of hydrogen if it ever does work (much easier and cheaper than from water), still producing plenty of CO2 as a byproduct.

Oh yea… regarding batteries overheating/exploading… you are behind on your reading in that area… the notebook and cell phone batteries you’ve heard about in the news are a different Li-ion battery chemistry than what will be used in EV’s. And I’d rather be driving around with a battery than with a tank full of very highly explosive hydrogen (if you really want to scare folks, think space shuttle).

“I think most people have a basic misunderstanding about hydrogen”
-Couldnt agree with you more.

Its not a “fuel carrier”, its an energy carrier. Imagine a bung of protons floating around in a tank.

98% of TODAYS H2 is produced from fossil fuels. With help from new nuclear reactors and coming steam reforming techniques of H20 into H2 along with electrolysis possibly being powered by wind,hydro, solar etc… This number will change rapidly. Especially if there is a dependance on H2.

I dont know if youve actually done the calculations yourself or if youre just trusting an unknown source you found on the internet, but a FCV is more like 40-50% efficient, where ICEs are much lower. A battery may be said to be 70% efficient, but at what temperatures? what about degradation? what about battery life? What about overheating and exploding? We are talking about high storage lithium ion batteries here.

Natural Gas is a great idea!

Fuel cells are used to power buildings, spacecrafts, and satellites. Why not autos? Be a little open minded here. If a huge change is needed in the infrastructure, whats wrong with that? That means jobs for everyone!! Adam Smith would have been proud!

I could talk about this all day, but alas, back to work.

One thing though to fuel the fire for all of the haters out there: Platinum. Read about it. I really do think thats going to be the hardest problem to solve with FCV.

You may have noticed big oil and gas are all for the so called “hydrogen economy/highway”… as Dave hints at, hydrogen can come from water (using electricity to break the bonds in H2O) or natural gas (CH4)… the latter is more economical (relatively speaking) source for producing hydrogen, with the byproduct CO2 (the often talked about greenhouse gas). Keeps big oil/gas part of the so called future economy, and keeps you the consumer tied to an inefficient distribution model (filling stations, be it gasoline, diesel, or hydrogen). But the real big benefit to big oil/gas of promoting hydrogen, which is part of the argument used to kill California’s ZEV mandate that gave us EV’s in the 1990′s and very early 2000′s, is that it’s a great delay tactic (good not only for big oil/gas, but also big auto, auto dealerships, OEM’s, and 3rd parties making parts for ICE based vehicles that needs lots of maint. and parts).

Hydrogen has been a big boondoggle wasting away lots of your taxpayer dollars on research that would have been better spent.

There are a few niche places where hydrogen does make sense, but transportation is not one of them.