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Why fuel cell cars don't work

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Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#151

Post by thrownaway2424 »

lotu wrote: post #147
cpprototypes wrote: post #144

Most discussions of FC and BEV miss the most important factor that will determine which one succeeds in the marketplace. Comparing engine efficiency, pollution, none of that matters compared to this single factor. And that factor is infrastructure. BEV supporters often assume that everyone lives in a nice suburban home with a garage. But the reality is far from this. Millions live in apartments/condos with parking st…

Why would presume that owners would not want to install electric car chargers in their garages if there was demand for it? Presumably in such a situation you would be expected to pay for the electricity in the same way you pay for your gas, so installing chargers would actually make money. The building owners would have to hate money to not want to install electric car chargers in their buildings. Also, for many urba…

These things aren't free. An apartment with a parking garage space with an electric car charger will certainly cost more than one without a charger, and WAY more than one without the parking space at all. If this doesn't translate directly into higher rents then the building owners won't want to do it.

Making sure a shared car is charged sounds like a nightmare. The whole point of car sharing is the cars get more use and spend less time parked. Considering how long it takes to charge some of these rigs, I'm surprised that the sharing companies have adopted them. My car share offers three models of battery-electric vehicle, one of them is the ridiculous Scion that only goes 35 miles between charges. Personally I don't understand how the economics works on that.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#152

Post by tim333 »

cpprototypes wrote: post #144

Most discussions of FC and BEV miss the most important factor that will determine which one succeeds in the marketplace. Comparing engine efficiency, pollution, none of that matters compared to this single factor. And that factor is infrastructure. BEV supporters often assume that everyone lives in a nice suburban home with a garage. But the reality is far from this. Millions live in apartments/condos with parking st…

> assume that everyone lives in a nice suburban home with a garage

Well, at the moment they can sell to the people who do live like that. If adoption takes off they could then build more infrastructure.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#153

Post by tim333 »

swombat wrote: post #125
maxxxxx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true for some people but a lot of people I know buy a car when the old one falls apart.

For what it's worth, my dad's diesel Nissan Patrol is about 20 years old now and still running fine. I mean, it's a bit clunky, but it does the job - and the 4wd has got me through some snowy roads, too. Good car. Beyond fuel economy, I don't see why that car needs to be decommissioned any time soon. So today's cars already last for "decades".

Also though we have not had decent electric cars for long we've had electric golf carts for a while and googling the recommended life for accounting purposes it is 5 or 10 years. Just because a vehicle is electric doesn't mean it will last for ever.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#154

Post by greglindahl »

vacri wrote: post #146
greglindahl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people who have yet to own an electric car think like you do. People who've tried it and have home chargers discover: 1) It's really nice that your car is fully charged every morning... sure beats having to visit gas stations on a regular basis. 4 hours is not a big deal if you're asleep. 2) If you want to go long distance, a network like Tesla's supercharger does the trick. (Tesla owners drive SF-LA by stopp…

and have home chargers This is an incredibly significant point that continuously gets glossed over in these pro v con lists. I park my car on the street, and that's not particularly uncommon. Should I run an extension cable over the footpath? What if I have to park further away than my cable reaches?

It's not glossed over: That's why I mentioned it. You are not in the sweet spot for this generation of electric cars. If you look around Hacker News, you will find a bunch of people like you complaining that it doesn't work for people like you. Sorry. Electric cars can grow a lot without buyers like you. If they grow to the point that you're a big problem, they'll be pretty common.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#155

Post by greglindahl »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #151
lotu wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would presume that owners would not want to install electric car chargers in their garages if there was demand for it? Presumably in such a situation you would be expected to pay for the electricity in the same way you pay for your gas, so installing chargers would actually make money. The building owners would have to hate money to not want to install electric car chargers in their buildings. Also, for many urba…

These things aren't free. An apartment with a parking garage space with an electric car charger will certainly cost more than one without a charger, and WAY more than one without the parking space at all. If this doesn't translate directly into higher rents then the building owners won't want to do it. Making sure a shared car is charged sounds like a nightmare. The whole point of car sharing is the cars get more use…

These things nearly are free if they'll last (and are used) for 20 years.

These things are pretty inexpensive if you already have conduit and room on a power panel.

That's why my local city requires new construction, from single-family up to big apartment buildings, to pre-install conduit etc. such that it's not bad to subsequently add chargers to garages and parking areas. It's pretty cheap to do that at construction time; for retrofitting, the argument revolves around how to amortize the (admittedly larger) cost over the lifetime of the asset.

My city even has street parking and public garages with chargers.

These are not hard problems to solve. The main unknown is whether chargers are going to be actively used for a long time or not.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#156

Post by kylebrown »

schiffern wrote: post #132
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…

Here's the dirty little secret of the "hydrogen economy": it's a fossil fuel bait-and-switch. Renewable hydrogen from water is 2-3x as expensive as making it from natural gas†. It simply can't compete at the pump. People won't pay $9/gal equivalent when $3/gal is available right across the street (or across town, for that matter). † releasing just as much CO2 and fugitive methane, and still being wholly unsustainable

The question isn't, "what's the cheapest fuel at the moment?" The question is what's the cheapest carbon-neutral power source that could scale up to meet future global demand?

Daniel Nocera has been arguing for years that using solar energy to split water into hydrogen (ie. the "artifical leaf") is the best strategy. Not even nuclear can scale to meet global demand[1]. But solar devices can be mass manufactured and distributed to the point-of-use (leap-frogging the need for massive infrastructure investment).[2]

1. http://web.mit.edu/professional/pdf/DGN_Daedalus.pdf > "Delivering this TW-value with nuclear energy would take the construction of eight thousand new nuclear-power plants. In other words, over the next forty-five years, we would have to construct one new nuclear-power plant every two days."

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12VPW-wS8yc

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#157

Post by demallien »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #151
lotu wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would presume that owners would not want to install electric car chargers in their garages if there was demand for it? Presumably in such a situation you would be expected to pay for the electricity in the same way you pay for your gas, so installing chargers would actually make money. The building owners would have to hate money to not want to install electric car chargers in their buildings. Also, for many urba…

These things aren't free. An apartment with a parking garage space with an electric car charger will certainly cost more than one without a charger, and WAY more than one without the parking space at all. If this doesn't translate directly into higher rents then the building owners won't want to do it. Making sure a shared car is charged sounds like a nightmare. The whole point of car sharing is the cars get more use…

Paris already has a very successful shared electric car device called Autolib. I use it at least once a week, and it's brilliant. The scheme works because the battery has a range of about 150km, but the typical trip is only 5-10km. The systemight not work as well in less dense cities.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#158

Post by addicted44 »

zwiteof wrote: post #101

I'm surprised he didn't mention the volumetric efficiency of compressed hydrogen compared to gasoline when comparing the specific energy density of the two fuels. Yes, you have more than 3x the energy per unit mass, but you have more than 5.5x less energy per unit volume. So instead of a simple 12 gallon gas tank, you need a 66+ gallon pressure vessel adding plenty of weight and taking up volume that would otherwise…

It's the first part in a series of articles. I'm sure he will mention this, especially considering he hints at the densoty issues right at the beginning.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#159

Post by greglindahl »

demallien wrote: post #157
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things aren't free. An apartment with a parking garage space with an electric car charger will certainly cost more than one without a charger, and WAY more than one without the parking space at all. If this doesn't translate directly into higher rents then the building owners won't want to do it. Making sure a shared car is charged sounds like a nightmare. The whole point of car sharing is the cars get more use…

Paris already has a very successful shared electric car device called Autolib. I use it at least once a week, and it's brilliant. The scheme works because the battery has a range of about 150km, but the typical trip is only 5-10km. The systemight not work as well in less dense cities.

Wow, this is interesting: they use a car that I haven't seen mentioned before. It has a range a bit longer than the Leaf. In low-speed urban driving it's good for 250km range, or 150km on the highway. Given that it's mostly used for short trips in cities, that's enough that it will probably last an entire day, and then charge fully overnight.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#160

Post by greglindahl »

Gravityloss wrote: post #107
dTal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>immobile storage of hydrogen is very cheap Where did you get this idea? You have to keep liquid hydrogen extremely chilled, under extreme pressure, and it inevitably leaks out. Compare to pumped water energy storage, which is at ambient temperature and pressure and has similar efficiency to the electrolysis -> fuel-cell cycle.

Stored in any way, it's cheap compared to batteries. Also many places don't have reservoirs and mountains for pumped storage. I'm not a big believer in the hydrogen economy, but at least incorrect notions should be corrected ("no source of hydrogen besides natural gas to be seen").

That's not what the guy you responded to said.
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