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Why fuel cell cars don't work

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Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#91

Post by JetSpiegel »

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…

Speed Racer a documentary, wow.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#92

Post by adventured »

threeseed wrote: post #72
wumpus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GM was once the world's largest automaker, by far.

Two generations of leadership bankrupted the company by making irrational choices. Remind me how being the world's largest automaker means anything in relation to ensuring rationality.

And Toyota? You mean the one that just got done going through years of terrible quality control issues that saw their annual sales drop, their profit plunge off a cliff, and their market cap get chopped in half shedding some $100 billion in value. Clearly a company impervious to irrational decisions.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#93

Post by Retric »

aetherson wrote: post #6
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…

This is an extraordinary claim and I'd like to see some evidence that it's anything like possible.

Edit: A direct example of what I am suggesting http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-mode_bus

I don't see what you think is extraordinary about this. Note the tires on most of these pictures: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

Electrified trolies in mixed use roads are old tech. Some already use hybrid battery backup systems so they don't need constant contact with the power supply. For safety overhead wires are often used, but ground level power supplies that are only on under the vehicle are also safe. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply)

Clearly there would be large adoption and scaling issues, but what about this seemed impossible to you?

PS: There are also plenty of examples of trains using overhead power at far above highway speeds.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#94

Post by dTal »

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)

You don't have to cryogenically store batteries under pressure.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#95

Post by abruzzi »

maxxxxx wrote: post #81
threeseed wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

I suspect the vast majority of people who drive cars until they fall apart are not buying the car when new, so aside from propping up resale, those users are not terribly relevant to manufacturers.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#96

Post by jessaustin »

mhurron wrote: post #38
Htsthbjig wrote: post #33

I believe fuel cells will work when they can use methane, butane or propane cheaply. I already use an NGV(natural gas) car. Using fuel cells means you can get 60%-70% efficiency instead of 40% of thermal engines because you don't have Carnot't limit. Also, with natural gas lots of people will be able to charge on their home. Lots of people have natural gas pipelines in their houses in Europe. Today you can use this f…

Isn't using any hydrocarbon going to give you the issue with pollution that gasoline does? You're not really solving any problems simply changing what hydrocarbon you choose to burn.

Hydrocarbons are not a monolith. Each different process using each different fuel produces a different mix of exhaust. This is why some (not all!) global warming aficionados prefer natural gas to coal, as they allege the former produces less warming than the latter. (I think we can stipulate that it produces less particulate pollution and smog.)

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#97

Post by ajuc »

threeseed wrote: post #72
wumpus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The world largest cellphone maker did.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#98

Post by dTal »

Gravityloss wrote: post #64
sandstrom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that with current technology it's more efficient to store that energy in a battery than in the form of hydrogen (hydrogen is just a storage mechanism). But it's a storage mechanism with the huge downside of being available from natural gas, so with widespread use of hydrogen we be equivalent to widespread continuous pumping of huge amounts of CO2 into oceans and the atmosphere. Something which most people con…

Of course it's more efficient to use batteries, these are all entry level arguments. Perhaps I misread the audience. The infrastructure cost is totally different. Electrolysis and immobile storage of hydrogen is very cheap. We don't have a lot of places where for a significant portion of time when there is excess power from renewables, but we will, in the future. Edit: To clarify: if you want to produce say 40% of yo…

>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.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#99

Post by taeric »

greglindahl wrote: post #69
taeric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think it is more with leveraging existing infrastructure. It isn't so much that these companies are "in league" with big oil. More that a large portion of the infrastructure they have right now benefits from not needing to be retooled. Consider the costs that companies such as (solely as) Tesla are having to front to get a refueling infrastructure in place to make their cars considerable.

Almost all Tesla car charging occurs in owners' garages, where Tesla doesn't have to front anything. Tesla's supercharger network is funded by a $2,000 addition to each luxury car that they sell. Both kinds of chargers use a lot of pre-existing electricity infrastructure.

Right... And they are trying to get things placed in locations such as shopping malls and eating locations so that for trips one could step inside while it charges.

This is a large portion of why families can't really get one of these vehicles. If I can't take this thing on a family trip, there is no point in even trying to get one.

Re: Why fuel cell cars don't work

#100

Post by semi-extrinsic »

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #89
allemagne wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting idea, but I'd be curious to know what kinds of innovations in car functionality are possible. Also, assuming that you're referring to a kind of planned obsolescence, how can a company convince you to replace the entire vehicle if the moving parts are working fine? If the computer is broken, replace the computer. Update the self-driving software over the internet. Why would you need to replace t…

If only it were so simple. You're assuming discrete components. And you're assuming consumer sanity. "Every protocol the car uses is proprietary and protected under DCMA / etc. There are chips in every component that don't allow the car to start if any component isn't a first-party part." We're already seeing this sort of thing. Look at the Tesla. Or the Lightning connector from Apple.

Cars have been like this for years. This forum post [1] from 2004 discusses VIN specific coding, so that phenomenon is at least ten years old.

[1]http://forum.roadfly.com/archive/index.php/t-8237302.html?s=...

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