EV Discussion thread

Netexporter

Gren hydrogen should be reserved for industrial use. Using renewable electricity directly for transport is far more efficient.

1961Nick

JKenH said:

Something new which if it worked would upset the apple cart.

Chris Ellis: Beyond Tesla – ‘hydrogen batteries’

The next step, which Honda and others are already working on for space applications, will be the introduction of reversible fuel cells. Electricity fed into them will initially recharge the battery and then refill the host vehicle with hydrogen by electrolysing the water collected when the fuel cell system was powering the car’s motors. The diagram below shows the key powertrain features of what might be a 2026 Toyota Mirai or Hyundai NEXO. Or Honda Extra-Clarity?

 

A car with a unitized regenerative fuel cell system (URFC) will be even easier to use than a battery-only EV because it will be much quicker to refuel, rather than recharge, on a long trip, and still just as convenient to re-energise at home. It will also make financial sense to have enough onboard energy capacity to take full advantage of the increasing availability of low-priced off-peak electricity. Simply put, a big hydrogen tank will cost (and weigh) much less than a big battery, and a unitized stack will cost not much more than a single-function stack. Now imagine hydrogen tanks that don’t lose capacity as they get older, and last the life of the vehicle. Oh, they already exist…

So ‘hydrogen batteries’ may have replaced conventional batteries in most new large cars by 2030. Today’s hydrogen vehicles essentially ‘burn’ hydrogen in fuel cells to produce electricity and emit water vapour. A car fitted with a URFC will allow its drivers to minimise their visits to filling stations and radically reduce running costs because it could be refilled with hydrogen using cheap overnight electricity, which will make it much less expensive to run than a conventional car. And it will retain the ability to be refilled in less than five minutes with compressed hydrogen at a filling station during an occasional very long trip.

https://www.racetechmag.com/2023/10/chris-ellis-beyond-tesla-hydrogen-batteries/

Electrolysis to produce hydrogen is at best 70% efficient & a fuel cell to convert that back into electricity is 50% efficient... makes an overall round trip loss of 65%. 230v is probably much too high for electrolysis (?) so there would be some inverter losses as well. The only way to make this work would be to supplement the onboard generated hydrogen with pump hydrogen. Considering how difficult rolling out BEV chargers is proving to be, I really can't see hydrogen filling stations becoming common place to make this technology viable. I wonder how much hydrogen could be made in a 6 hour overnight off peak window & how far that would get you? My guess is not very far but I could be wrong.

ABrass

Yes, even more expensive to buy and run hydrogen fuel cell cars are exactly what the world has been waiting for.

JKenH

I doubt with what we know now that this new reversible fuel cell will be economically competitive with electric cars but the dialogue on here is very similar to that of ICE diehards towards  EVs twenty years ago. 

You will probably all prove to be right but we only make progress by trying. Technologies get cheaper and more technically efficient with time - look at solar panels and batteries. Inevitably some technology will come along and displace EVs given the rate at which technology progresses. One has to remember also that the EV’s rapid progress has not been purely because it was a cheaper or better technology than ICE. It has taken decades to get where it is now with much help from governments. There were many false EV starts with companies like GM trying really hard as recently as the 90s before abandoning the project. People laughed at the early efforts that would only do a few miles but who’s laughing now. We laughed at the bricks there were the first mobile phones. We just couldn’t conceive what mobile phones would be like today. It wouldn’t have been physically possible with the technology of the 1990s to make today’s smart phones. They would have been too big, too heavy, too expensive and of course there wasn’t the infrastructure in place to support them. 

All new technology has to start somewhere and usually it is from a point of little or no hope compared to incumbent technologies. It takes people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to see the possibilities and drive things forward. 

Often the more rapidly a new technology is adopted the quicker it is subsumed by an even more convenient one. Look at the investment we all made in digital cameras - nearly all of us bought one and where are they now?  Sitting in a drawer. More advanced mobile phones came along and made most compact digital cameras redundant. Similarly with cd players.

It may not be reversible fuel cells, but something will come along and there will always be the descendants of Ned Ludd ready to shoot it down. 

Edit:have a look at this article

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-great-ideas-were-originally-rejected-how-prevent-gijs-van-wulfen

1961Nick

The ICEV has had a remarkable run considering it has an inherent efficiency of around 20% - relatively, that's a wide open goal. The BEV has an efficiency of over 70% which will make it harder to displace although the gap between the two technologies is getting blurred because of hybrids enabling the ICEV to benefit from things like regenerative braking. I think the 'propulsion' arms race will now focus within the BEV sector with ever more exotic battery chemistry eventually leading to viable solid state batteries for vehicles.

I see the problem for hydrogen being the rapid improvement of batteries. By the time a technology like the 'hydrogen batteries' mentioned earlier gets to market, battery technology will have already surpassed it & rendered it obsolete. I can't see an opening for an alternative fuel being viable until battery technology plateaus & becomes a static target. By that time, the goal might be ultra fast charging & a range of 600 miles. 

JKenH

1961Nick said:

JKenH said:

Something new which if it worked would upset the apple cart.

Chris Ellis: Beyond Tesla – ‘hydrogen batteries’

The next step, which Honda and others are already working on for space applications, will be the introduction of reversible fuel cells. Electricity fed into them will initially recharge the battery and then refill the host vehicle with hydrogen by electrolysing the water collected when the fuel cell system was powering the car’s motors. The diagram below shows the key powertrain features of what might be a 2026 Toyota Mirai or Hyundai NEXO. Or Honda Extra-Clarity?

 

A car with a unitized regenerative fuel cell system (URFC) will be even easier to use than a battery-only EV because it will be much quicker to refuel, rather than recharge, on a long trip, and still just as convenient to re-energise at home. It will also make financial sense to have enough onboard energy capacity to take full advantage of the increasing availability of low-priced off-peak electricity. Simply put, a big hydrogen tank will cost (and weigh) much less than a big battery, and a unitized stack will cost not much more than a single-function stack. Now imagine hydrogen tanks that don’t lose capacity as they get older, and last the life of the vehicle. Oh, they already exist…

So ‘hydrogen batteries’ may have replaced conventional batteries in most new large cars by 2030. Today’s hydrogen vehicles essentially ‘burn’ hydrogen in fuel cells to produce electricity and emit water vapour. A car fitted with a URFC will allow its drivers to minimise their visits to filling stations and radically reduce running costs because it could be refilled with hydrogen using cheap overnight electricity, which will make it much less expensive to run than a conventional car. And it will retain the ability to be refilled in less than five minutes with compressed hydrogen at a filling station during an occasional very long trip.

https://www.racetechmag.com/2023/10/chris-ellis-beyond-tesla-hydrogen-batteries/

Electrolysis to produce hydrogen is at best 70% efficient & a fuel cell to convert that back into electricity is 50% efficient... makes an overall round trip loss of 65%. 230v is probably much too high for electrolysis (?) so there would be some inverter losses as well. The only way to make this work would be to supplement the onboard generated hydrogen with pump hydrogen. Considering how difficult rolling out BEV chargers is proving to be, I really can't see hydrogen filling stations becoming common place to make this technology viable. I wonder how much hydrogen could be made in a 6 hour overnight off peak window & how far that would get you? My guess is not very far but I could be wrong.

But IF it could be made commercially then perhaps there might be a market for those who want a decent range but don’t need it every day. (I doubt there would be an issue with keeping it topped up at 100% “just in case”).

You have to remember that we’re not all alike otherwise we would all own Teslas or iPhones, rather than the alternatives. (I can’t understand why anyone would buy a phone other than an iPhone, whereas some people wouldn’t have one if you paid them.) While it might be a hard sell to the committed EV community an alternative to an EV might appeal to some people on principle. Not everyone buys into the idea that we all must have EVs so an alternative that is sticking up two fingers at the EV missive might appeal to those. 

1961Nick

JKenH said:

1961Nick said:

JKenH said:

Something new which if it worked would upset the apple cart.

Chris Ellis: Beyond Tesla – ‘hydrogen batteries’

The next step, which Honda and others are already working on for space applications, will be the introduction of reversible fuel cells. Electricity fed into them will initially recharge the battery and then refill the host vehicle with hydrogen by electrolysing the water collected when the fuel cell system was powering the car’s motors. The diagram below shows the key powertrain features of what might be a 2026 Toyota Mirai or Hyundai NEXO. Or Honda Extra-Clarity?

 

A car with a unitized regenerative fuel cell system (URFC) will be even easier to use than a battery-only EV because it will be much quicker to refuel, rather than recharge, on a long trip, and still just as convenient to re-energise at home. It will also make financial sense to have enough onboard energy capacity to take full advantage of the increasing availability of low-priced off-peak electricity. Simply put, a big hydrogen tank will cost (and weigh) much less than a big battery, and a unitized stack will cost not much more than a single-function stack. Now imagine hydrogen tanks that don’t lose capacity as they get older, and last the life of the vehicle. Oh, they already exist…

So ‘hydrogen batteries’ may have replaced conventional batteries in most new large cars by 2030. Today’s hydrogen vehicles essentially ‘burn’ hydrogen in fuel cells to produce electricity and emit water vapour. A car fitted with a URFC will allow its drivers to minimise their visits to filling stations and radically reduce running costs because it could be refilled with hydrogen using cheap overnight electricity, which will make it much less expensive to run than a conventional car. And it will retain the ability to be refilled in less than five minutes with compressed hydrogen at a filling station during an occasional very long trip.

https://www.racetechmag.com/2023/10/chris-ellis-beyond-tesla-hydrogen-batteries/

Electrolysis to produce hydrogen is at best 70% efficient & a fuel cell to convert that back into electricity is 50% efficient... makes an overall round trip loss of 65%. 230v is probably much too high for electrolysis (?) so there would be some inverter losses as well. The only way to make this work would be to supplement the onboard generated hydrogen with pump hydrogen. Considering how difficult rolling out BEV chargers is proving to be, I really can't see hydrogen filling stations becoming common place to make this technology viable. I wonder how much hydrogen could be made in a 6 hour overnight off peak window & how far that would get you? My guess is not very far but I could be wrong.

But IF it could be made commercially then perhaps there might be a market for those who want a decent range but don’t need it every day. (I doubt there would be an issue with keeping it topped up at 100% “just in case”).

You have to remember that we’re not all alike otherwise we would all own Teslas or iPhones, rather than the alternatives. (I can’t understand why anyone would buy a phone other than an iPhone, whereas some people wouldn’t have one if you paid them.) While it might be a hard sell to the committed EV community an alternative to an EV might appeal to some people on principle. Not everyone buys into the idea that we all must have EVs so an alternative that is sticking up two fingers at the EV missive might appeal to those. 

This 'hydrogen battery vehicle is still an EV with the main difference being the energy density of hydrogen versus lithium. The point I was making earlier is that the energy density advantage of hydrogen is being eroded all the time & a point will come when BEVs will have enough range that further improvements aren't necessary. The holy grail of course is the solid state battery which would make this hydrogen battery obsolete overnight.

michaels

JKenH said:

1961Nick said:

JKenH said:

Something new which if it worked would upset the apple cart.

Chris Ellis: Beyond Tesla – ‘hydrogen batteries’

The next step, which Honda and others are already working on for space applications, will be the introduction of reversible fuel cells. Electricity fed into them will initially recharge the battery and then refill the host vehicle with hydrogen by electrolysing the water collected when the fuel cell system was powering the car’s motors. The diagram below shows the key powertrain features of what might be a 2026 Toyota Mirai or Hyundai NEXO. Or Honda Extra-Clarity?

 

A car with a unitized regenerative fuel cell system (URFC) will be even easier to use than a battery-only EV because it will be much quicker to refuel, rather than recharge, on a long trip, and still just as convenient to re-energise at home. It will also make financial sense to have enough onboard energy capacity to take full advantage of the increasing availability of low-priced off-peak electricity. Simply put, a big hydrogen tank will cost (and weigh) much less than a big battery, and a unitized stack will cost not much more than a single-function stack. Now imagine hydrogen tanks that don’t lose capacity as they get older, and last the life of the vehicle. Oh, they already exist…

So ‘hydrogen batteries’ may have replaced conventional batteries in most new large cars by 2030. Today’s hydrogen vehicles essentially ‘burn’ hydrogen in fuel cells to produce electricity and emit water vapour. A car fitted with a URFC will allow its drivers to minimise their visits to filling stations and radically reduce running costs because it could be refilled with hydrogen using cheap overnight electricity, which will make it much less expensive to run than a conventional car. And it will retain the ability to be refilled in less than five minutes with compressed hydrogen at a filling station during an occasional very long trip.

https://www.racetechmag.com/2023/10/chris-ellis-beyond-tesla-hydrogen-batteries/

Electrolysis to produce hydrogen is at best 70% efficient & a fuel cell to convert that back into electricity is 50% efficient... makes an overall round trip loss of 65%. 230v is probably much too high for electrolysis (?) so there would be some inverter losses as well. The only way to make this work would be to supplement the onboard generated hydrogen with pump hydrogen. Considering how difficult rolling out BEV chargers is proving to be, I really can't see hydrogen filling stations becoming common place to make this technology viable. I wonder how much hydrogen could be made in a 6 hour overnight off peak window & how far that would get you? My guess is not very far but I could be wrong.

But IF it could be made commercially then perhaps there might be a market for those who want a decent range but don’t need it every day. (I doubt there would be an issue with keeping it topped up at 100% “just in case”).

You have to remember that we’re not all alike otherwise we would all own Teslas or iPhones, rather than the alternatives. (I can’t understand why anyone would buy a phone other than an iPhone, whereas some people wouldn’t have one if you paid them.) While it might be a hard sell to the committed EV community an alternative to an EV might appeal to some people on principle. Not everyone buys into the idea that we all must have EVs so an alternative that is sticking up two fingers at the EV missive might appeal to those. 

Does Hydrogen Batteries achieve anything that Neo style battery swap doesn't?

ABrass

JKenH said:

I doubt with what we know now that this new reversible fuel cell will be economically competitive with electric cars but the dialogue on here is very similar to that of ICE diehards towards  EVs twenty years ago. 

You will probably all prove to be right but we only make progress by trying. Technologies get cheaper and more technically efficient with time - look at solar panels and batteries. Inevitably some technology will come along and displace EVs given the rate at which technology progresses. One has to remember also that the EV’s rapid progress has not been purely because it was a cheaper or better technology than ICE. It has taken decades to get where it is now with much help from governments. There were many false EV starts with companies like GM trying really hard as recently as the 90s before abandoning the project. People laughed at the early efforts that would only do a few miles but who’s laughing now. We laughed at the bricks there were the first mobile phones. We just couldn’t conceive what mobile phones would be like today. It wouldn’t have been physically possible with the technology of the 1990s to make today’s smart phones. They would have been too big, too heavy, too expensive and of course there wasn’t the infrastructure in place to support them. 

All new technology has to start somewhere and usually it is from a point of little or no hope compared to incumbent technologies. It takes people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to see the possibilities and drive things forward. 

Often the more rapidly a new technology is adopted the quicker it is subsumed by an even more convenient one. Look at the investment we all made in digital cameras - nearly all of us bought one and where are they now?  Sitting in a drawer. More advanced mobile phones came along and made most compact digital cameras redundant. Similarly with cd players.

It may not be reversible fuel cells, but something will come along and there will always be the descendants of Ned Ludd ready to shoot it down. 

Edit:have a look at this article

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-great-ideas-were-originally-rejected-how-prevent-gijs-van-wulfen

There was always a theoretical path for EVs to be cheaper than ICEs. Electric power was always cheaper, you 'just' needed to improve battery performance and cost. Now we're approaching the point where EVs will be the same purchase price as ICEs.

There is no pathway for Hydrogen can ever be a cheaper fuel than Petrol Electricity. And no realistic pathway for the infrastructure needed to support them.

And hydrogen has been around for as almost as long as EVs as an option, it just has failed in every one of its objectives. Why anyone would expect it to succeed now I do not know.

JKenH

Does BMW know something we don’t?

BMW will launch hydrogen cars by 2030 – but warns UK is lagging behind

BMW is planning to roll out a series of hydrogen-powered production cars by the end of the decade – but the UK risks lagging behind.

BMW has been working closely with Toyota on its hydrogen plans for the last decade and the firms said real hydrogen adoption will be driven by the commercial vehicle sector.

Experts from both car manufacturers are convinced that when HGVs and other commercial vehicles take up the technology with vigour, that demand will make hydrogen filling stations more profitable and in turn drive demand for the technology across the automotive industry.

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/bmw-will-launch-hydrogen-cars-by-2030-but-warns-uk-is-lagging-behind/291802