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Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

nytimes.com

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Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#31

Post by cLeEOGPw »

Electric car with battery pros:

* Can deliver full power instantly

* Does not produce CO2 at time of energy release (clean cities)

* Lesser moving parts

Electric car with battery cons:

* Range too small with current designs

* No charging stations (infrastructure problem)

* Battery needs to be replaced every several years

* Requires lithium, which reserves are very limited on earth

* Carbon tube based battery doesn't seem to be reality any time soon

Hydrogen on the other hand doesn't require any rare elements and also doesn't pollute environment at the time of energy release.

Only downsides are it is more difficult to store as of now? How is it different from liquid natural gas tanks that are already widely used? I've never heard of any car exploding because of gas. What is the problem with hydrogen then?

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#32

Post by cgh »

_Adam wrote: post #10

This is really surprising. What are they thinking? Hydrogen fuel cells STILL have not been proven to be a viable power source for cars. Electricity has been validated time and time again - even before Tesla, there was the EV1. And now the technology is really starting to scale in production volume and performance, along with the infrastructure. Even if they can make a hydrogen vehicle with equal, or even slightly gre…

Forgive me if I misread your post, but hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles as discussed in the article run on electricity. So when you say "electricity has been validated", you really mean batteries as used in Teslas have been validated, correct? Or are you referring to hydrogen internal combustion engines? I don't think those are in development at Toyota but maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#33

Post by stonemetal »

eshvk wrote: post #13
dublinben wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel cell vehicles have never made any sense. It's still being turned into electricity anyway, so it's still an electric vehicle. There happens to already be a distribution infrastructure for electricity almost everywhere. The same can't be said for hydrogen. According to the US Department of Energy, there are eleven public hydrogen stations in the US, almost all in Los Angeles. There are more compressed natural gas…

> Fuel cell vehicles have never made any sense. The only reason for me to get an Electric Vehicle is the green factor. If instead of my car polluting the environment, there is an increase in say coal factories, not sure how that helps the environment. So there is a need for fuel cells.

>According to the 2010 California Low Carbon Fuel Standard Final Regulation Order, fuel-cell cars have an average lifetime greenhouse gas emissions rate of 61.83 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule. This is for hydrogen produced through the popular natural gas reforming process.

Electricity, on the other hand, was determined to have average lifetime greenhouse gas emissions of 41.37g/mj.

http://ecomento.com/guide/hydrogen-fuel-cell-vs-battery-elec...

Currently fuel cell backed EVs produce ~50% more greenhouse gas emissions than battery backed EVs. If you are going for green factor take the batteries.

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#34

Post by jgon »

wil421 wrote: post #22

Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid. My question has always been: Does shifting from gas to depending on the electrical grid actually help? Or are we just smoking cigars (or e-cigs) instead of cigarettes? Also, what is the downside to coll…

Electric cars are actually a great idea to get off fossil fuels. Electricity is inherently "fungible" if you will. You can generate it anywhere you can rotate a commutator. Internal combustion engines rely on fossil fuels full stop.

If we switch over to electric vehicles, yes in the short term we are still generating that electricity with fossil fuels, but we don't have to. And in fact because the generation is currently centralized, each plant we switch over has a huge knock-on effect. Switch to hydropower and boom, 500,000 cars on the road just became carbon neutral (excluding production outputs of course). Even better, because electricity is so easy to generate it opens up the possibilities for decentralized generation! It would be impossible for everyone to have their own oil well, but in a decade or 2, everyone affording their own solar panel or wind turbine could be pretty feasible. Boom, now you've not just moved to carbon neutral generation, but decentralized generation!

In practical terms, moving as much as we can to using electricity instead of combustion gives us way, way more flexibility in terms of future directions. Solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, etc, etc. All of these can be a power source for electric cars, but we only have one method of getting gas. Moving to electric cars would be a huge boon.

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#35

Post by Oculus »

wil421 wrote: post #22

Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid. My question has always been: Does shifting from gas to depending on the electrical grid actually help? Or are we just smoking cigars (or e-cigs) instead of cigarettes? Also, what is the downside to coll…

In an interview at Ted with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk was asked the same question:

CA: Most of American electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. How can an electric car that plugs into that electricity help?

EM: Right. There's two elements to that answer. One is that, even if you take the same source fuel and produce power at the power plant and use it to charge electric cars, you're still better off. So if you take, say, natural gas, which is the most prevalent hydrocarbon source fuel, if you burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you'll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency. And the reason is, in the stationary power plant, you can afford to have something that weighs a lot more, is voluminous, and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine and generate a secondary power source. So in effect, even after you've taken transmission loss into account and everything, even using the same source fuel, you're at least twice as better off charging an electric car, then burning it at the power plant.

Url: http://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_spa...

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#36

Post by outworlder »

eshvk wrote: post #11
outworlder wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used a vehicle powered by natural gas? I have. For safety reasons, in many places you have to get out of the vehicle while it is being refuelled (the cylinder gets really hot!). And that is a change from your 50+ years driving habit. It also takes longer than a comparable gas pump (even if it is measured in single digit minutes). The gas gauge also reads differently (my guess is due to pressure decreases as…

> Have you used a vehicle powered by natural gas? I have. For safety reasons, in many places you have to get out of the vehicle while it is being refuelled (the cylinder gets really hot!). And that is a change from your 50+ years driving habit. It also takes longer than a comparable gas pump (even if it is measured in single digit minutes). The gas gauge also reads differently (my guess is due to pressure decreases a…

In Brazil as well, which is where I am coming from.

I did not notice a real decrease in refuelling stops, compared to a gas vehicle. But that is subjective, I haven't measured. That might also be explained by the size of the tanks: most 'converted' vehicles retain their ability to be powered by gasoline by flicking a switch, so the tank cannot be too big and has to go in the trunk.

Almost all conversions are done to decrease costs, most frequently by taxi drivers. As you are required to do annual inspections, it drives up the costs and it is only worth it if you drive long distances in one year.

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#37

Post by bryanlarsen »

outworlder wrote: post #28
wil421 wrote: post #22

Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid. My question has always been: Does shifting from gas to depending on the electrical grid actually help? Or are we just smoking cigars (or e-cigs) instead of cigarettes? Also, what is the downside to coll…

> Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid. Yes, because the whole world has the same reliance on fossil fuels as the US. Homework: what's quicker to replace? A few power stations, or the whole vehicle fleet? Also notice that electric engines a…

"Homework: what's quicker to replace? A few power stations, or the whole vehicle fleet?"

average vehicle age in the US is 11.4 years.[1]

average power plant age in the US is over 30 years.[2]

1: http://www.autonews.com/article/20130806/RETAIL/130809922/av...

2: http://qz.com/61423/coal-fired-power-plants-near-retirement/

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#38

Post by xionon »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #31

Electric car with battery pros: * Can deliver full power instantly * Does not produce CO2 at time of energy release (clean cities) * Lesser moving parts Electric car with battery cons: * Range too small with current designs * No charging stations (infrastructure problem) * Battery needs to be replaced every several years * Requires lithium, which reserves are very limited on earth * Carbon tube based battery doesn't…

Gasoline is not actually explosive - the fumes are flammable, but not the liquid itself. Hydrogen is much more flammable, and will ignite from a much smaller spark than gasoline will.

Cars catch fire in accidents all the time, it's not that hart to imagine that the problem might get worse if we switched to an even more flammable fuel.

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#39

Post by stonemetal »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
eshvk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fuel cell vehicles have never made any sense. The only reason for me to get an Electric Vehicle is the green factor. If instead of my car polluting the environment, there is an increase in say coal factories, not sure how that helps the environment. So there is a need for fuel cells.

Electric vehicles are more efficient well to wheel than gas engines, even if powered by coal plants. Do you want to manage the emissions from one generation source? Or 100K? Also, as the electrical grid becomes more clean, EVs become cleaner. Not so with ICE vehicles.

Actually a study from 2012 shows battery backed EVs getting 34 mpg "on the nation’s dirtiest grid". A good diesel can do much better than that. It isn't so cut and dried as you make it sound.

Re: Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

#40

Post by IanDrake »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #31

Electric car with battery pros: * Can deliver full power instantly * Does not produce CO2 at time of energy release (clean cities) * Lesser moving parts Electric car with battery cons: * Range too small with current designs * No charging stations (infrastructure problem) * Battery needs to be replaced every several years * Requires lithium, which reserves are very limited on earth * Carbon tube based battery doesn't…

>Hydrogen on the other hand doesn't require any rare elements

Don't fuel cells need platinum?

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