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Why fuel cell cars don't work

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Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#71

Post by shk »

astrocat wrote: post #63
sandworm wrote: post #57

The threat to the car companies is that all-electric cars could dramatically decrease demand. They hope the complexity of fuel cells will keep demand going a few more decades. An all-electric car could have as few as a hundred moving parts. A few motors and connecting rods, some suspension componants, fans and a couple manual controls. You just don't need the thousands of tiny metal bits necessary to keep a gas/diese…

I doubt this is the case. If anything, the reasons you give boil down to: "the core of the car - the moving vehicle bit - will become commodity" and when this happens, cars will become "cars" like phones are now "phones," as in, they're not so much phones anymore as tiny computers that can also make calls. And this will definitely NOT increase their lifetime. If anything, it will decrease it... just like we replace o…

Bear in mind though the phones are 100x cheaper than cars. If the car prices don't come down drastically, they can certainly not become commoditized like that.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#72

Post by threeseed »

wumpus wrote: post #52
hansjorg wrote: post #19

Toyota, which is the largest car manufacturer by volume, have stated repeatedly that they are betting on hydrogen fuel cells rather than batteries. Given their track record with hybrids, one would think that they know their battery technology. None of the anti-hydrogen fuel cell articles that have popped up here lately have mentioned this. It would be interesting to see an analysis of the Toyota strategy from this po…

He was too nice to go there: Toyota's announced fuel cell car is expensive and has very poor performance. The fundamental problem is that high power fuel cells are very expensive, linear power with cost. And that expense doesn't seem to be changing quickly. I'd like to believe that Toyota is making rational choices based on their experience with hybrids. But I'm having a hard time believing that.

The world's largest car maker isn't going to bet their entire future on irrational choices.

Clearly they have either something in the R&D pipeline or have consumer research which suggests that EV isn't the future. We can all disagree with their bet but you would be frankly a complete idiot to ever dismiss Toyota's decisions lightly.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#73

Post by learc83 »

astrocat wrote: post #63
sandworm wrote: post #57

The threat to the car companies is that all-electric cars could dramatically decrease demand. They hope the complexity of fuel cells will keep demand going a few more decades. An all-electric car could have as few as a hundred moving parts. A few motors and connecting rods, some suspension componants, fans and a couple manual controls. You just don't need the thousands of tiny metal bits necessary to keep a gas/diese…

I doubt this is the case. If anything, the reasons you give boil down to: "the core of the car - the moving vehicle bit - will become commodity" and when this happens, cars will become "cars" like phones are now "phones," as in, they're not so much phones anymore as tiny computers that can also make calls. And this will definitely NOT increase their lifetime. If anything, it will decrease it... just like we replace o…

This only happens with phones because of rapidly increasing performance.

The same thing happened with desktop computers, but eventually the performance increases leveled off and people stopped purchasing a new computer ever 2 years.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#74

Post by api »

soperj wrote: post #9
r00fus wrote: post #5

The article deftly steps around the real issue: Fuel Cells are entirely an petroleum industry promotion. The goal is to provide a seemingly credible (but in reality completely unworkable) clean alternative so politicians, car companies and oil companies together can work "towards a clean future" while deep down knowing that it's a stalling tactic to keep the petroleum infrastructure in place. Any fuel cell funding su…

I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil. What on earth do the car companies have to get out of it? The big name in the 90s, Ballard, had buy in from a couple of car companies and no oil companies.

"I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil."

Yeah, nobody would ever "conspire" when trillions upon trillions of dollars in economic activity, millions of entrenched (and often unionized) jobs, hundreds of billions of dollars of sunk cost in infrastructure, the economies of entire nations and regions of nations, and generations of established thinking are at stake. That never happens. The parent poster is just one of those conspiracy nuts.

Sorry for the combative tone, but I'm a bit tired of seeing this kind of naivete. Of course people will conspire and engage in stalling and other underhanded political tactics to stop things that are a threat to huge industries and entrenched ways of doing things. They'll do that and more. They will lie, cheat, kill, undermine democracy and foster political corruption, start wars, you name it.

A lawyer friend of mine explained it to me this way (we were discussing shady behavior in the startup world): "There are people who will beat you up or kill you for a smart phone or the contents of your wallet. What will people do for a million bucks?" I sort of got it. Answer is that people will do everything they'll do for your cell phone or wallet and then some, but they'll do it with far more sophistication and cunning. The higher the stakes the more cunning and otherwise sophisticated the crimes.

BTW, the mention of unionized jobs above highlights that it's not just oil companies and car companies we're talking about here. We are also talking about a massive infrastructure for making, selling, and servicing oil-burner cars that employs minimally tens of millions of people in the US alone. All of that is threatened by simpler, more reliable, grid-connected battery EVs. EVs are downright apocalyptic for entire sectors of the economy. Hundreds of thousands of businesses will die, and millions will find their entire skill sets completely obsolete.

It'd be like if suddenly there were computers faster and cheaper in every way than silicon-based ones but that are programmable through some utterly alien abstraction that has almost nothing in common with present-day programming languages. All your skills are now obsolete. Google is done. Microsoft is done. Etc...

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#75

Post by embro »

Shivetya wrote: post #37

Get back to me when a practical, affordable, and go over 300 mile on a charge, battery powered car is here. Currently batteries are not a practical replacement. Currently if you want to hit near 300, you don't quite get there, your in the eighty thousand plus range if that low after common options for your only real choice. Home charging is still a four hour plus affair with the best chargers. Odd he claims that a hu…

Currently technology is OK.

Your reference to 300 miles is probably based on your most extreme situation when you go on a long trip. If the charging network (DC fast charging, in under 30 mins) is there, 300 miles isn't a problem.

I have a Nissan Leaf with 160 km range and it has never been a problem yet. Home charging is perfectly fine, every morning my car is full. I will never need a faster charger at home. Fast chargers are useful on the roads near highway exits for when you do long trips, much like with gas stations.

95% of the time, my travel distance is under 120 km per day so for only 5% of the time I need to plan a recharge or swap car with my parents, sisters or friends or rent a car for very long trips.

For people with a Chevrolet Volt, they don't even have this issue, when they go on long trips, they simply charge when they can and run on gas for most of the trip.

Personally, I am fine with current technology.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#76

Post by threeseed »

sandworm wrote: post #57

The threat to the car companies is that all-electric cars could dramatically decrease demand. They hope the complexity of fuel cells will keep demand going a few more decades. An all-electric car could have as few as a hundred moving parts. A few motors and connecting rods, some suspension componants, fans and a couple manual controls. You just don't need the thousands of tiny metal bits necessary to keep a gas/diese…

> THAT's what the car companies really fear.

No it's not. Cars today are all basically the same and have been for decades. People aren't buying new cars because the components are failing. Generally it's for a new interior, new technologies e.g. support their new iPhone and lifestyle changes.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#77

Post by c-slice »

astrocat wrote: post #63
sandworm wrote: post #57

The threat to the car companies is that all-electric cars could dramatically decrease demand. They hope the complexity of fuel cells will keep demand going a few more decades. An all-electric car could have as few as a hundred moving parts. A few motors and connecting rods, some suspension componants, fans and a couple manual controls. You just don't need the thousands of tiny metal bits necessary to keep a gas/diese…

I doubt this is the case. If anything, the reasons you give boil down to: "the core of the car - the moving vehicle bit - will become commodity" and when this happens, cars will become "cars" like phones are now "phones," as in, they're not so much phones anymore as tiny computers that can also make calls. And this will definitely NOT increase their lifetime. If anything, it will decrease it... just like we replace o…

Most car parts are already commodities anyway though. Example: Toyota and Lexus share almost every single part of the power train, its only the finishings that are different. And most car parts are made by a small number of OEM providers who sell to all the major car companies. Bosch, Denso, and Magna make most of the parts in your car.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#78

Post by astrocat »

learc83 wrote: post #73
astrocat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt this is the case. If anything, the reasons you give boil down to: "the core of the car - the moving vehicle bit - will become commodity" and when this happens, cars will become "cars" like phones are now "phones," as in, they're not so much phones anymore as tiny computers that can also make calls. And this will definitely NOT increase their lifetime. If anything, it will decrease it... just like we replace o…

This only happens with phones because of rapidly increasing performance. The same thing happened with desktop computers, but eventually the performance increases leveled off and people stopped purchasing a new computer ever 2 years.

While that's certainly part of the dynamic, the overall picture is more nuanced. New tech became available - smartphones and tablets as well as much more performant laptops - that replaced desktop purchases. Every two years a new laptop/tablet/smartphone is purchased, if not less.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#80

Post by vonklaus »

sliverstorm wrote: post #56
Animats wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota's interest is surprising. I saw that recently, and was amazed. I thought everyone had given up on hydrogen as an auto fuel, now that batteries were good enough for electric cars. Hydrogen is not itself a source of energy. It has to be made from something. Electrolysis of water is more wasteful of energy than putting the same electricity into a battery. Hydrogen from natural gas is possible, but why not just ru…

Hydrogen is not itself a source of energy. (The same can be said of both electricity and batteries)

While electricity is "not a source of energy", it does have the two fold benefit of being continuously generated, ans having widely available infrastructure. Hydrogen, while being 91% present in the universe, has only trace amount naturally occuring on earth. So to get it we can chop is off methane (a fossil fuel and already great energy store in it's own right), blast h20 with electricity (which could be fed directly into batteries with minimal loss) or biomass fermentation. http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_production.html

When you couple the lack of availability, lack of infrastructure, and inefficiency of production, you are left with a tiny element that is difficult to store and extremely combustable.

It just doesn't make sense vs electricity and batteries.

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