
Water Out of the Tailpipe: A New Class of Electric Car Gains Traction - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/automobiles/water-out-the-tailpipe-a-new-class-of-electric-car-gains-traction.html?hpw&rref=automobiles&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
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_ph_
The big piece left out of the discussion about hydrogen often is the energy
costs for producing hydrogen. It is either produced by extracting hydrogen
from natural gas which produces CO2, or by electrolysis from water. In both
cases, the hydrogen has to be compressed up to 700 bars for transportation. In
the hydrogen car, the fuel cell produces electricity to drive the car. The net
result is, that the hydrogen car has perhaps a 30% efficiency of the
electricity reaching the motor. A battery powered electrical car has about
90%.

The bottom line is, for the same amount of primary energy, a pure electrical
car gets 2-3x the range of a hydrogen car. And of course, that directly
translates into the costs of driving.

The article also gives some off number about electrical cars: they are not
limited to 200 miles of driving - a Tesla does up to 300, and recharging at a
supercharger station takes about 30-45 minutes. And, of course, in contrast to
a hydrogen car, an electrical car can be recharged over night at home, so most
trips do not require any recharging at all.

~~~
paganel
Recharging your car at home at night only works for suburban US (and some
parts of Europe), there are also lots of people like me who live on apartment
flats 8 or 10 storeys high who cannot use that. There's also the issue with
what happens to the battery, long-term, when you're driving your car at -15
Celsius in the winter and at +38 in the summer. I agree, though, for most of
the HN demographic (own their own suburban homes, live in CA) owning a Tesla
is feasible.

~~~
prostoalex
> there are also lots of people like me who live on apartment flats 8 or 10
> storeys high who cannot use that

Why is installing a few NEMA outlets in the parking garage not an option? My
HOA did just that, and while we still need to figure out the etiquette of
taking turns (there are more vehicles than available outlets), it's not an
architectural issue for most buildings.

End of the day, though, this is less about charging availability and more
about range after a single full charge - you don't expect your apartment
complex to host a gas station, for example, but you go out of your way to fill
up at one and then drive on a full tank. Gasoline vehicle's top-of-the-line
range looks to be 600 miles (Toyota Prius has a 12-gallon tank, so multiplying
that by 50 MPG), top-of-the-line Tesla Model S is 90D with rated 292 miles of
range, so I'd say things are getting pretty close to where one could drive to
a Tesla SuperCharger, spend exciting 20-25 minutes there, and then drive
charge-free for the next 4-5 days, with perhaps occasionally charge-up at the
office, train station, or the mall.

~~~
walrus01
A huge number of European apartment buildings have NO on site parking spaces
whatsoever. Look at most of the apartments in Berlin for example. It's all
street parking, or you have to rent a space in a parking garage somewhere.

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analog31
Have they solved the problem of where hydrogen comes from? Last time I looked
this up, the main process for making hydrogen is the shift reaction, which is
hardly carbon neutral.

~~~
ams6110
Just as electricity for EVs produced by coal or natural gas power plants is
not carbon neutral.

~~~
Terribledactyl
But with both cases, something clean is at least possible. Solar/wind/stuff
not invented yet, could be the source. Phase out the coal and you're done.
When petroleum-based combustion happens in the car, you probably wont ever get
carbon neutrality.

~~~
whatshisface
Well, if we are talking about not-yet-invented stuff, we might also someday
have feasible artificial hydrocarbons or corn-fuel farms run with electric
combines. Nether one of those would require a fundamental change in car
design.

~~~
Terribledactyl
All I meant there was that it can be changed and blended instantly,
electricity is electricity. Look how long it's taken to change sulphur, lead,
ethanol, etc in the us gas supply. And this still requires work for the
existing fleet of cars.

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IanDrake
I thought hydrogen had been debunked by now.

Tesla had a great 'well to wheel' efficiency analysis post on their blog a few
years back that killed any notion of a hydrogen economy.

~~~
protomyth
They quote Mr. Musk in the article, but it seems Toyota and Honda feel
differently.

~~~
rmason
Here in Michigan the Big 3 have promoted hydrogen for a long time. But other
than small level fleet tests its never been a real option.

The stories cycle back every couple of years. In fact it reminds me of PG's
old submarine essay:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

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samcheng
Once you start filling your electric car every night from a plug in your
garage, the idea of (weekly?) driving to one of a handful of special hydrogen
fueling stations is seriously unattractive. In fact, filling up the old
gasoline car becomes annoying.

This article definitely reads like a PR piece from an oil company (which is,
after all, where the hydrogen comes from). The New York Times has a history of
biased journalism against electric cars...

~~~
semi-extrinsic
As I've said before, going all-in on EVs are a non-starter in some areas (esp.
Japan) because they can't produce enough electricity locally, and they can't
import it from a trusted ally. Hydrogen, OTOH, can be shipped over long
distances.

~~~
samcheng
I've never seen a hydrogen tanker. Have you? At that point, you might as well
ship LNG or refined gasoline.

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JumpCrisscross
> _Battery electric vehicles are still limited to a maximum of about 200 miles
> of driving before a recharge is required, and charging up can take time —
> four hours or more in some cases. Batteries are also heavy, which presents
> challenges for powering larger vehicles like trucks or SUVs._

I had not considered the weight disadvantage of Li-on. Perhaps we'll have two
technologies side by side: batteries for smaller, more centrally-located
vehicles and hydrogen for larger and more remote ones.

The energy-intensity of enriching, packaging and distributing hydrogen looks
less daunting in a duck-curve [1] characterised solar future. One could simply
generate hydrogen when rates drop below a threshold.

[1]
[https://www.caiso.com/Documents/FlexibleResourcesHelpRenewab...](https://www.caiso.com/Documents/FlexibleResourcesHelpRenewables_FastFacts.pdf)

~~~
revelation
Weight is practically immaterial, the majority of energy required to drive is
in pushing air out of the way, drag.

~~~
kweinber
F =ma. The force you need depends on your acceleration requirements. Going
uphill, taking turns, slowing down etc all make mass/weight very material.

Edit: I know weight and mass aren't the same but we are all considering the
same gravitational pull so we can disregard the pedantic argument...

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dredmorbius
The two Achilles heels of fuel-cell automobiles have been the cost of the fuel
cell itself, and sourcing the hydrogen needed to fuel it.

Fuel cells typically use a lot of highly-expensive catalyst, with full costs
on the order of a million dollars each. Odds are good the sales price of these
vehicles (just under $60k) represents a small fraction of the manufactuer's
actual costs. This is a test pilot for real-world experience.

Hydrogen is the other problem, both in sourcing it and in distributing and
dispensing it. Hydrogen is an _energy carrier_ , not an _energy source_ [1],
but an _energy carrier_. You need some other source of energy to _provide_
hydrogen, usually via hydrolysis, or from some hydrogen feedstock, usually
natural gas.

In the case of hydrolysis, your problem is the energy cost of electrolysis,
which costs you about 40% of the input energy. The bad news is you get much
less hydrogen energy out than electrical energy in, the good news is that you
can store the hydrogen, while electricity doesn't bank well.

In the case of natural gas, you've got the sitation that your vehicle is still
ultimately consuming fossil fuels, though methane (CH4) emits far less CO2
than petrol (about a C8H18) -- roughly half as much. Since you're pre-
processing the methane into hydrogen, there's the option of sequestering the
carbon for other uses.

Hydrogen also has extensive problems with storage and handling -- it doesn't
like to be contained, will literally leak out between the atoms of containers,
embrittles metals, etc., etc.

Another alternative, one I'm interested in, though 50 years of serious
research[2] has yet to result in a working large-scale prototype, is Fischer-
Tropsch fuel synthesis. Effectively it creates hydrocarbon fuels using
electricity. The most promising model I'm aware of sources both hydrogen and
carbon from seawater, hence seawater-based Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis.
Penciling out the studies I'm aware of, it actually _could_ scale up to
current US and forseable global levels of production, without literally paving
the world with solar panels and/or synthesis plants[3]. E.g., not patentently
impossible. The fact that the research _hasn 't_ proceeded further makes me
question its ultimate practicality.

If, however, it is possible, then we end up with a fuel that is an exact
chemical analog of existing hydrocarbon fuels, is infinitely miscable with
them in the fuel processing, dispensing, and utilisation chain, and is carbon
neutral.

And if you're generating hydrogen, you're already about 90% of the way to
creating synthetic hydrocarbon fuels which avoid most or all of hydrogen's
storage, transport, dispensing, handling, embrittlement, and energy conversion
issues.

As I mentioned, I've looked into this in several posts, you might want to
start with the historical overview here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electrical_fuel_synthesis_from_seawater_older/)

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Technically, so are petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Though the source
energy was supplied hundreds of millions of years ago, on average, in the form
of sunlight converted to plant matter. Given this, at the rate of roughly 5
million years of ancient primary production per year of current consumption,
you could make a reasonable argument that the fully realised solar energy cost
(what's called "emergy") of petroleum is about 5 million per single unit of
energy delivered. At the very least, we're spending 5 million years of
accumulation per year. Something you might want to reflect on.

2\. Brookhaven National Lab, M.I.T., and the US Naval Research Lab. Generally
serious outfits.

3\. For a counterexample, see schemes for biofuels. At _best_ , present US
fuel consumption would require plausibility-stretching levels of development,
if not quite literally multiples of total US landmass. E.g., quite patently
and evidently batshit impossible.

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transfire
I have always hated parking meters and felt in most cases it was just another
way for cities to milk the tax payers for more money. But parking meters start
to make real sense in an EV world. Instead of just buying time, the meters
could have a plug so you can buy electricity and recharge the car too.

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zokier
One of the issues with hydrogen power that you can't use regenerative braking
as easily. Of course you could run a hydrogen/battery hybrid system, but its
not obvious that hydrogen would really be that beneficial in that
configuration.

~~~
greedo
Aren't most of the planned hydrogen vehicles hybrids? Combusting hydrogen
won't be a lot of fun...

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sdkjfwiluf
Hydrogen and hydrocarbon fuels are just sources of electrons. The beauty of a
real electric car is the efficiency of going directly from stored electrons to
power.

~~~
jerkstate
Refueling time and storage equipment seems like major differences between
hydrogen and battery. They both have slightly different use-cases that make
different bets on future technology. Maybe one will win out or maybe both will
play a role. I'm personally waiting for the Nucleon to come back.

~~~
sdkjfwiluf
and transportation. Hydrogen is a very inefficient way to transport electrons
compared to wires.

~~~
jerkstate
I'm not an expert at any of this stuff and this math could very easily be
wrong, but I just spent some time with Wolfram Alpha validating that claim. a
40,000 liter hydrogen truck can carry 425 gigajoules of liquid hydrogen; if it
drives 500 miles, a diesel tractor trailer getting 5mpg would burn 100 gallons
of diesel, that's 14 gigajoules of energy (now keep in mind that much hydrogen
only weighs 3000kg - a typical load for a tractor trailer is 10000-20000kg) -
if it was a fuel cell truck, it could be twice as efficient as an ICE so would
only need 7 gigajoules. 7 gigajoules is 1.6% of the transported 425 gigajoules
of energy. A state of the art HVDC transmission line loses 3.5% per 1000 km,
so it seems like a hydrogen truck might actually be more efficient than wires.

~~~
sdkjfwiluf
what about locally-produced electricity ? If an electric car recharges on
locally-produced electricity along its journey then we can eliminate
transmission losses

~~~
jerkstate
There are hundreds of what-ifs that influence which will be a better choice,
IMO it's not clear cut that one technology is better enough for all situations
that it'll crowd the other one out of the marketplace entirely.

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jessaustin
_Mr. Manning now has enough fueling options in Southern California to cover
his 45-mile commute to Playa Vista with little anxiety._

Wow!

