Tesla co-founder says hydrogen fuel cells are a ‘scam’

[anotherkiwi]

http://electrek.co/2016/05/23/tesla-founder-marc-tarpenning-hydrogen-fuel-cells-scam/

I agree with this. And the same goes for rapeseed oil replacing diesel when it is planted, harvested and transported by diesel fuelled vehicles to far off manufacturing plants powered by non renewable electricity...

 

[flecc]

I agree too. The only possibility for hydrogen is if we have an abundance of future nuclear power and produce the hydrogen by more direct methods. That's highly unlikely to happen though, and the costs of doing that are unproven.
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[trex]

I think Mark Tarpenning is not entirely correct.

There is a cost of convenience if you want to refuel quickly, may it be petrol, diesel or hydrogen.

 

[Croxden]

Running scared of Toyota, I don't they would opporate a scam.

What is these days everyone seems to be getting into a lather over anything, fuel cells, Brexit, fracking. No decent debating or truth telling, must be the end of the world is nigh.

 

[trex]

...
must be the end of the world is nigh.

that's the subject of the last in this series of Nick Campbell 'The Big Questions' BBC1 Sunday June 5th.

 

[flecc]

I think Mark Tarpenning is not entirely correct.

There is a cost of convenience if you want to refuel quickly, may it be petrol, diesel or hydrogen.

True, but there is an alternative, the automatic battery quick-change that Israel and Renault are running. Pull into a refuelling station and in a few moments the rear plug-in battery is swapped for a fully charged one.

It's a variation of the battery rental system for e-cars that Renault favours.
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[trex]

The progress on hydrogen storage is encouraging:

Look at the refuelling time: 2.5 minutes. It has to be better than Lithium battery.

 

[flecc]

The progress on hydrogen storage is encouraging:

Look at the refuelling time: 2.5 minutes. It has to be better than Lithium battery.

It certainly does have some advantages, only how to get the hydrogen being a problem. We've been running a very small fleet of single deck hydrogen fuel-cell buses on one route in London for some years. They've had teething troubles but seem ok now.

No prizes for guessing where the hydrogen cylinders are.

The battery swap system that I mentioned on this link is easily as quick to refuel though.
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[trex]

but look at the storage system weight, system cost and life expectancy. You can produce hydrogen in the Sahara or at sea and scale up hydrogen distribution probably more cheaply than building nuclear power station.

 

[flecc]

but look at the storage system weight, system cost and life expectancy. You can produce hydrogen in the Sahara or at sea and scale up hydrogen distribution probably more cheaply than building nuclear power station.

I broadly agree, I woudn't promote the nuclear method for hydrogen on present evidence.

Dont know about fuel cell life expectancy though, I've seen some negative reports. The best car lithium batteries are good for 8 years now.
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[Steve UKLSRA]

We're running two batteries containing the Boston Power cells (as used by Volvo) side-by-side with the ubiquitous Samsung 29's at the moment as an experiment...they come with a two year guarantee, as opposed to the one year on the Samsungs and in the course of time, I'll write up our findings.

I seem to remember from my Uni days that Hydrogen can be liberated by electrolysis cheaply and easily too, but I never got into that side as I'm a fossil fuel guy (they also told us that oil would be scarce by 2015)

California has a few H-celled powered motorcycles, but they don't seem to have caught on yet...

 

[anotherkiwi]

I seem to remember from my Uni days that Hydrogen can be liberated by electrolysis cheaply and easily too, but I never got into that side as I'm a fossil fuel guy (they also told us that oil would be scarce by 2015)

Then it has to be compressed and stored in a container that will survive an accident (heavy by nature) then it is used to produce electricity again with more losses. The losses over the cycle are they worth the "convenience" is the question.

Wouldn't it be more convenient to have more fast chargers or battery exchanges?

 

[trex]

we produce already 57 million tonnes of hydrogen a year, growth rate is 10% a year, so scaling up production and distribution is not difficult.
The key technology for EVs is energy storage. Everyone likes range, more KWh in the tank. The storage cost for hydrogen is about $2 per KWh. There is no way you can beat that with Lithium batteries, not in a million years.
Hydrogen PEM cells last for about 7000 hours. That beats Lithium batteries too.
The Toyota Mirai is the way forward in the short term. Tesla's investors should take notice.

 

[flecc]

The Toyota Mirai is the way forward in the short term. Tesla's investors should take notice.

Depends what we call short term. The Mirai is in isolation, at a crazy price and almost zero infrastructure for filling.

Tesla are now getting down to £30k, the Nissan Leaf price area, there are a large number of e-car choices now, some with i.c. range extenders, and the infrastructure is extensive.
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[trex]

Toyota know that demand for their Mirai is 10 times their current production because they sell them currently below costs, they can sit and wait for the performance of PEM cells to go up and price down sufficiently to make profit.
The stack of PEM cells on the Mirai currently produces 113KW with 370 cells, each weighs 102g (37kgs). They can easily fit a larger stack to beat the Tesla on performance if they so wish. The Mirai also has a huge scope to increase range any time without worrying about extra weight.
I wouldn't be surpised that large cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester will want to pay for hydrogen stations and even free hydrogen to reduce polution when the Mirai is produced by the hundreds of thousands.

 

[flecc]

Toyota know that demand for their Mirai is 10 times their current production because they sell them currently below costs, they can sit and wait for the performance of PEM cells to go up and price down sufficiently to make profit.
The stack of PEM cells on the Mirai currently produces 113KW with 370 cells, each weighs 102g (37kgs). They can easily fit a larger stack to beat the Tesla on performance if they so wish. The Mirai also has a huge scope to increase range any time without worrying about extra weight.
I wouldn't be surpised that large cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester will want to pay for hydrogen stations and even free hydrogen to reduce polution when the Mirai is produced by the hundreds of thousands.

I agree, just don't think it can all happen within ten years, so the lithium e-cars will hold sway for a long time yet in the EV field.

And of course the i.c. and hybrid cars will still dominate the car market for a long time yet, probably veering more and more towards hybrid to fend off pure EVs for as long as possible.
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