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Why fuel cell cars don't work

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Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#111

Post by sandstrom »

bobbles wrote: post #85
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly all car trips are way under 300 miles. I believe the P95 trip distance (in the USA) is 30 miles each way. Most people can use an affordable pure-electric car such as the Leaf, e-Golf, or Fiat 500e for most trips. From a system optimization perspective, it's OK if some people (like you) always need the range of an internal combustion engine and everyone else switches to electric.

yeah 90% of my trips might be short, but i'm not going to go and rent a separate car when I do need a long trip

That's a valid point. But perhaps you'd be willing to paus for ~20 minutes every 3 hours or so? (especially if you make long trips infrequently)

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#112

Post by Brakenshire »

ars wrote: post #22

Hydrogen is a complete dead end. It's too hard to make, ship, store, or use. But methane is not. Can fuel cells work with methane? I think so, and if they don't work well, then that's where the research should be directed.

As far as I understand the alternative candidate is Methanol, which can be produced from Hydrogen, which has a relatively high energy density, is liquid at room temperature, and works well with fuel cells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_economy

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#113

Post by sandstrom »

luchs wrote: post #44

There are actually two buses in operation at my university which run on fuel cells: http://www.kit.edu/downloads/Flyer_Wasserstoffbus_EN.pdf They have been in operation since 2013, so they seem to work pretty well.

Here is an example of electric busses (eight or so in use in Stockholm):

http://www.volvogroup.com/group/global/en-gb/newsmedia/_layo...

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#114

Post by wernercd »

krschultz wrote: post #35
soperj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't picture a bunch of oil tycoons with monocles sitting in back rooms smoking cigars with Ford execs laughing about how they are going to crush Tesla. It's much more subtle than that. I grew up around cars. My dad races them as his hobby. We restored a few, and spent plenty of time wrenching on a car together. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. It's still one of the things we often talk about when we se…

I can't imagine growing up with cars.

When I think back... I think back to sitting on top of a horse, as we make a journey together. The feel of his hair in your hands as you lean forward. The fun of sitting back while he eats grass. So relaxing and with a sense of bonding.

I mean... who would replace a living breathing horse, who is part of the family, with a smelly machine that breaks?

There is real nostalgia around horses. And phone booths. and Sony Walkman. and CRTs. And... and... and... .. .

People hate change. Just because "cars = gas/diesel" to YOU doesn't mean that a new generation of kids won't break their teeth, and learn to be engineers, with electric or hydrogen or whatever....

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#115

Post by SilasX »

api wrote: post #74
soperj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

IIUIC, the GP was objecting that car companies have conflicting interests with oil companies on this matter, not that such large conspiracies can't happen given the stakes.

That is, car companies would love to be able to sell cars that don't need oil, and so would not (by themselves) hinder such technologies.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#116

Post by cicero »

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.

Also, for phones, size and weight are very important, making modularity more difficult. Similarly, more people build their own desktop PCs than laptops.

It's hard for me to see how the car industry will go. Even today, there are people who keep cars running longer by replacing engines, etc., but most people want to replace the whole care before the drive-train gives out. My wife is ready to replace her 10-year old Honda Accord, not because of any drive-train problems, but because the upholstery is worn out, the AC sometimes blows hot air (I think it's some intermittent problem with the blend door, but it's hard to replicate the problem), it has some little dents and scratches, it makes funny sounds, and she's ready for something new. I can't think how any of those things will change with an electric drive-train.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#117

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #14
Retric wrote: post #3

On solution to the long distance car storage is simply not to. There are less than 50,000 miles of interstate highways in the US. If we added a 3rd rail or similar system for powering cars as they traveled range and efficiency quickly become a non issue. Granted, the interstate highway system would just be the start eventually you would want to cover just about every road. Not to mention safety concerns etc, but it's…

Unlike Europe, most of the urban infrastructure of the United states centers around the automobile. I'm not referring to roads vs train tracks. I'm referring to density Of the population. Our suburban cul De sacs make most forms of rail based public transportation prohibitely expensive to build. Only in a high density city like nyc would this make sense. To address the problem we need to dramitcally change our cities…

> To address the problem we need to dramitcally change our cities.

I am continually amazed at the angst it causes many people when you suggest that the current American way of life will have to change. When you say that in 20 years people won't be driving everywhere a lot of folks really freak out.

The arithmetic plainly indicates we simply will not all be driving or riding in cars regularly in the future. Hydrogen vs. lithium batteries vs. gasoline doesn't even enter into it. There simply won't be the joules for everyone to get about that way. People will be walking, bicycling, and riding boring old 19th century speed trains. Peak Oil is now-ish and nothing else is set to provide the joules necessary to power personal vehicles on the current scale, regardless of vehicle power plants.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#118

Post by 1123581321 »

wernercd wrote: post #114
krschultz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't picture a bunch of oil tycoons with monocles sitting in back rooms smoking cigars with Ford execs laughing about how they are going to crush Tesla. It's much more subtle than that. I grew up around cars. My dad races them as his hobby. We restored a few, and spent plenty of time wrenching on a car together. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. It's still one of the things we often talk about when we se…

I can't imagine growing up with cars. When I think back... I think back to sitting on top of a horse, as we make a journey together. The feel of his hair in your hands as you lean forward. The fun of sitting back while he eats grass. So relaxing and with a sense of bonding. I mean... who would replace a living breathing horse, who is part of the family, with a smelly machine that breaks? There is real nostalgia aroun…

You may have intended this to be a rebuttal, but you actually made the same argument as the person you were replying to. Once the nostalgia/sensation surrounding horses were gone, the companies providing transportation had no more incumbent advantage over auto manufacturers.

Likewise, once incumbent car manufacturers can't promote some of the things that people fondly associate with cars, new alternative car companies are better able to put them out of business.

The best point in your comment is that alternative car companies may be able to generate some of that nostalgia early enough to use it against incumbents - I think this is possible and that for some people, they will be happy to trade petroleum good feelings for electric good feelings while petroleum-based cars are still a sizeable part of the market.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#119

Post by joenathan »

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…

People replace smart phones mainly because they are slow or have become slow, or they want some new feature that isn't available on their current model. As smart phone mature this becomes less common, the technology will get to good enough level, speed, battery life, camera, and people will not feel compelled to replace their smart phones every year.

Hell I bought my Nexus 5 on release and don't feel the need to replace it yet.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#120

Post by redthrow »

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…

Elon Musk famously calls them "fool cells":

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-25/toyota-to-...

“As people probably know, I’m not the biggest fan of fuel cells -- I usually call them ‘‘fool cells,’” Musk said this month at Palo Alto, California-based Tesla’s annual meeting. In a speech to employees and enthusiasts at a service center in Germany last year, he called fuel cells “a load of rubbish.”

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