
Japan Is Betting Big on the Future of Hydrogen Cars - Ultramanoid
https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=700877189
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basementcat
I've had the opportunity to drive a Hydrogen fuel cell car and here are a few
quick takes:

* 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.

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dTal
And where does the hydrogen come from? The h2o -> electrolysis -> hydrogen ->
fuel cell -> h2o round trip is only 50% efficient, and electrolysis is not
even currently the most cost effective way of making hydrogen. The most cost-
effective source is natural gas, and the process releases vast amounts of CO2.

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Analemma_
Surplus power from renewables when supply exceeds demand. Haven’t you seen all
these stories about how renewables will hit a wall because there’s not enough
energy storage? Japan thinks that hydrogen is the solution for that.

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kwhitefoot
Electric vehicles are the solution. When a country has roughly half as many
cars as people you have a tremendous buffer. Combine this with a grid
connection to another country that has peak demand at a different time of day
from your own and a lot of the problem goes away.

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
    

that is 47.5e6 kWh , also known as 47.5e3 MWh, or 47.5 GWh.

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 
    

that is about 2000 MWh, or 2 GWh. Something between one and two hours full
power for the whole country.

I hope I haven't got a power of ten wrong in there.

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Gibbon1
I think your numbers are good. Brings up a point I've seen about the
difference between renewable power systems and fossil fuel based ones.
Apologists for the latter will often try and impose the same reliability
standards on renewables as fossil fuel systems, the day storage requirement.
Then they declare renewable economically unworkable.

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.

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J_cst
Elon has been very dismissive about hydrogen at least a couple of times saying
that hydrogen is not a power source, that is horribly inefficient and fueling
cars with it is blatantly stupid. He also added that this will become evident
to everyone sometime in the future. I'm not educated enough to understand if
his statements are true or he's just defending the battery model because Tesla
went for it. I also can not figure out why - if hydrogen is so obviously a
fail - such a company as Toyota is betting on it. Is anyone available to
elaborate on that in order to help me to better understand Elon's dismissive
position on hydrogen as a fueling technology for cars? Genuine question, and
thank you to anyone willing to ELI 5.

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J_cst
Sorry I'm on my phone and can not edit my comment. That's an example of Elon's
position on the matter:

[https://youtu.be/yFPnT-DCBVs](https://youtu.be/yFPnT-DCBVs)

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woodandsteel
Toyota and VW are the world's two biggest auto makers. VW is going strong on
battery ev's, while Toyota is sticking with hydrogen. I think VW is going to
clobber Toyota very badly in the coming years.

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iamgopal
What secret they understand that rest of us don't ? Is it cyclic efficiency ?
Residual discharge loss ? Environmental cleanup cost ? Lithium sourcing ?
Chance of future tech progress ? Charging time ? What ?

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SllX
Toyota.

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.

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woodandsteel
>Ripping up the crust for Lithium isn’t much of an improvement over ripping it
up for hydrocarbons

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.

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SllX
Not advocating against electric cars so much as _for_ research into more than
_just_ electric cars.

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Ultramanoid
Drive testing the hydrogen fuel cell Hyundai NEXO. Joshua Vergara... :

[https://youtu.be/8cNhROauWrM](https://youtu.be/8cNhROauWrM)

... And Michael Fisher; same road trip :

[https://youtu.be/euUiIjXA-zc](https://youtu.be/euUiIjXA-zc)

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thorwasdfasdf
i'm a bit dissapointed that the article didn't mention anything about range.

