Where were BEVs just 15 years ago? These things do not happen all at once. Most arguments against fuel cell cars are outdated and from people stuck in the past.
I read my first story about the coming fuel cell cars in 1996, and they were less than a decade from production then, but they never came.
Toyota, the builder of some of the best cars ever made, has spent decades and billions trying to make fuel cells work for cars. If a company with the engineering excellence of Toyota is struggling for so long…
BEVs are not on the road because they are better than fuel cells. If fuel cells could be practically made, they would beat BEVs in every aspect. Range, refuelling, environmental impact
But they don’t.
BEVs are not better than fuel cells but they actually work for cars.
BEVs are over 100 years old. In fact, they’re older than ICE cars. No one seems to notice that this is the longest development process of any technology in the industry.
Meanwhile, fuel cells are just coming into their own. Most of your arguments are just totally outdated and stuck in the past. You seem oblivious to the fact that FCEVs already exist and are being sold to the public right now. They’re already a developed technology, just one that hasn’t become popular yet. It is likely dismissing solar and wind energy just as they were taking off. It is just being closed-minded and short-sighted to say these things.
Meanwhile, fuel cells are just coming into their own.
Fuel cells were invented in 1839. What are you talking about? Fuel cells are also widely used in backup generation, and on-site power generation for large consumers of electricity. I’ve even visited an EV charging station powered by natural gas fuel cells.
The first real device we’d call a battery was from 1800. So a 38 year head start. The technology of fuel cells isn’t the issue with them, it’s the fuel part. Well, that and the catalyst plates. But that’s not exactly rocket science to rebuild a fuel cell when the catalysts need refurbishment.
Part of the advancement in fuel cell is our ability to produce hydrogen at a low cost.
That’s the only part, in fact, that needs advancement. And it’s in no way mirroring PV cells development path or cost decreases. Our most efficient, lowest cost form of abundant hydrogen is cracking it out of methane / natural gas. And that method will always be more expensive than just generating electricity from the methane because you need to generate high temperature steam as part of the process by burning some of the methane. The only other source of less expensive but not abundant enough hydrogen is as an industrial process byproduct. And that’s not even close to producing enough to meet current demands if we could magically capture it and had no refining costs to scrub out other wastes.
Then you are painfully stuck in the past. Your rhetoric is not just a repeat of anti-wind and anti-solar, it is purely climate doomerism. The same argument climate change deniers have continuously made. It’s entirely based on the idea that nothing can replace fossil fuels. In reality, this is an infinite resource for all practical purposes. It’s long-term cost will be approximately zero, not whatever number you wish it to be.
the biggest hindrance to hydrogen is the cost to build a hydrogen station vs out in ev chargers. why would anyone build a hydrogen station when they could install many ev chargers for the same price. maybe trucking and busses, like greyhound not metro or school, could be a usecase for hydrogen going forward.
It’s cheaper to install hydrogen stations than it is to build charging stations. That’s because it cost 10x less to move hydrogen around compared to electricity.
Across all 111 planned new hydrogen fueling stations, an average hydrogen station has capacity of 1,240
kg/day (median capacity of 1,500 kg/day) and requires approximately $1.9 million in capital (median
capital cost of $1.9 million).
Most commercial enterprises look to install level two charging stations, which run on 240-volt power and provide a compromise between power and cost. A level two electric vehicle charging station costs around $2,500 for a non public facing and $5,500 for a public facing dual-port station—it can charge two cars simultaneously in eight to 10 hours.
As more drivers purchase plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), there is a growing need for a network of electric
vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) to provide power to those vehicles. PEV drivers will primarily charge
their vehicles using residential EVSE, but there is also a need for non-residential EVSE in workplace, public,
and fleet settings. This report provides information about the costs associated with purchasing, installing,
and owning non-residential EVSE. Cost information is compiled from various studies around the country, as
well as input from EVSE owners, manufacturers, installers, and utilities. The cost of a single port EVSE unit
ranges from $300-$1,500 for Level 1, $400-$6,500 for Level 2, and $10,000-$40,000 for DC fast charging.
Installation costs vary greatly from site to site with a ballpark cost range of $0-$3,000 for Level 1, $600-
$12,700 for Level 2, and $4,000-$51,000 for DC fast charging.
More stations more greater economies of scale. At some point this will be no more expensive than a gas station. Also, you have a much greater capacity per station compared to a charging station. It will pencil out to being cheaper than building the much greater number of charging stations. Not to mention maintenance. The cost of maintaining millions of charging stations will be a major challenge.
im no business major but even i can see its a no brainer to go with an 38 ev chargers vs 1 hydrogen station. and the same economies of scale will make it cheaper to build more ev stations cheaper. hydrogen may have a place, trucking and busses like greyhound might make sense for hydrogen but currently it makes no sense to build a hydrogen station for normal passenger vehicles.
Until you realize that 1 hydrogen station can refuel hundreds of cars per day. Economies of scale are in hydrogen’s favor. BEV advocates are simply lying about the facts.
At 38x time the land area and far greater power consumption. And it does not scale very well either. Double the number of stations and everything doubles in cost. Nor are you getting a full 400 miles if you are assuming fast charging. You’re looking at only a 80% max charge in that situation. Meanwhile, with hydrogen, you just need bigger tanks to support multiple stations. Everyone is fully refueled after 5 minutes consistently. It is the same idea as natural gas refueling stations. Once costs drop due to increases production and economies of scale, the hydrogen stations easily wins this argument in a walk.
Again, BEV advocates are simply lying. They are just trying to defend their car purchase. It is completely at odds with economics and physics.
it cost 10x less to move hydrogen around compared to electricity.
Moving electricity around only requires aluminum wire and transformers. Incredibly cheap. Moving hydrogen around requires either roads and trucks (already more expensive than high voltage AC transmission) or a pipeline that won’t leak hydrogen plus training for emergency response (also more expensive than high voltage AC).
But it isn’t just steel pipe. It’s steel pipe precision welded and leak checked, buried under ground, with lots of continual maintenance, pump stations to increase pressure, control systems, etc. More expensive even than natural gas piping, which is already difficult to get installed with municipalities frequently rejecting it for safety reasons.
We’ve been back and forth on this countless times over the years, you and I, but you keep coming back to these same points. None of which are correct. BEVs use existing infrastructure, and while they are NOT the best solution, they are the best solution people are going to choose. You’re flat out not going to get someone to pay more for hydrogen than they would for any any other fuel, producing the hydrogen isn’t as energy efficient as charging a battery, and installing an H2 station is significantly more expensive than installing even a DCFC station with four or six stalls and all the complimentary transformers necessary.
And yet that’s the same idea as natural gas pipes. It is not any more expensive than natural gas pipes. In fact, natural gas pipelines are 10x cheaper than wires. This whole line of reasoning is just BEV propaganda. Wires are not magic and have huge costs associated with them.
In the end, an FCEV will be cheaper to own and by a huge margin. Hydrogen will be nearly free since it can be made from excess and unused electricity. The infrastructure will be cheaper by a huge margin too. People are just stuck in the past and are refusing to accept change. It is the same rhetoric as anti-wind and anti-solar. It is a doomed argument and its ridiculous to keep on repeating it.
It is not any more expensive than natural gas pipes.
It is, because hydrogen will leak more easily than methane.
In fact, natural gas pipelines are 10x cheaper than wires.
Well now I damand you cite your sources, because natural gas pipelines are 5x the price per installed mile compared to high voltage transmission lines. I mean, the amount of material alone should be sounding alarms in your head. And that’s from EIA. Even PG&E is citing $2M per mile to bury their high voltage transmission lines in California of all markets. Several markets in the US have absurdly low costs of under $300k per mile installed. So, yeah, I’m going to need to see a source that isn’t hydrogenhype.org or something.
In the end, an FCEV will be cheaper to own and by a huge margin.
My guess is in 20 years time, the cost of buying an FCEV and a BEV will be equivalent. The cost of fueling the two vehicles will still strongly favor BEVs, and the only advantage that FCEV will have is refuel time (5 instead of 30 minutes) and range per kg. Batteries are going to be heavy no matter what the futurism weirdos claim and hydrogen gas is more energy dense per kg no matter what we do.
You are simply regurgitating BEV propaganda by denying this. It’s just all made-up bullshit from those people. Pipelines are radically cheaper than wires and that is undeniable.
Hell, if wires were really cheaper, why do natural gas pipelines exist at all? Just run gas turbines at a centralized locations and send the electricity to where it needs to go.
In the long-run, BEVs will end up being too expensive to be competitive. In fact, they’re not competitive at all even now, and rely entirely on subsidies to be viable. The pathway to zero emissions will reveal these inconvenient facts and likely drive BEVs to a marginal niche. And if the future is not FCEVs, then it will be something like synfuel powered cars.
I have a photo of GM’s fuel cell test vehicle driving on the highway from 2009, some 14 years ago. Most of the arguments against fuel cells are the cost and complexity of hydrogen, and the logistics of getting it around any given country. Those are not outdated, they are absolutely as true today as they were 15 years ago.
GM made a BEV back in the 1990s. They did a lot of things long before they were ready. The point you are missing is that cost is rapidly coming down. An FCEV will be no more expensive than an ICE car to make. People who continue to repeat the “high-cost” argument are just stuck in the past. A total repeat of what people said of BEVs too.
Let’s grant your point about prices coming down, and let’s say that a fuel cell, a small battery, and the fuel tank(s) is the same price or even cheaper than a BEV. Let’s just take that as completely granted.
How about the cost of energy per kWh? Hydrogen is much more expensive than just buying the electricity. In Norway, right now, price of H2 is 195 NOK/kg or about $19.13 USD per kg. 1kg of H2 is 33.33 kWh, meaning it’s about $0.574 USD per kWh for hydrogen. Even the most expensive DCFC don’t sell for that price. Here in the US, the production costs alone, as reported by NREL, are well above the cost of traditional fuel and electricity based on using methane cracking with steam assuming we can make that commercially viable. Cracking the methane is much more expensive than just burning it to produce electricity, and that doesn’t account for increasing nuclear or renewable energy sources on the grid.
On a per-kWh basis, a hydrogen fueled car will necessarily be more expensive to refuel than a BEV, while battery costs continue to decrease just as fuel cell costs have.
Where were BEVs just 15 years ago? These things do not happen all at once. Most arguments against fuel cell cars are outdated and from people stuck in the past.
Where are fuel cells today?
I read my first story about the coming fuel cell cars in 1996, and they were less than a decade from production then, but they never came.
Toyota, the builder of some of the best cars ever made, has spent decades and billions trying to make fuel cells work for cars. If a company with the engineering excellence of Toyota is struggling for so long…
BEVs are not on the road because they are better than fuel cells. If fuel cells could be practically made, they would beat BEVs in every aspect. Range, refuelling, environmental impact
But they don’t.
BEVs are not better than fuel cells but they actually work for cars.
BEVs are over 100 years old. In fact, they’re older than ICE cars. No one seems to notice that this is the longest development process of any technology in the industry.
Meanwhile, fuel cells are just coming into their own. Most of your arguments are just totally outdated and stuck in the past. You seem oblivious to the fact that FCEVs already exist and are being sold to the public right now. They’re already a developed technology, just one that hasn’t become popular yet. It is likely dismissing solar and wind energy just as they were taking off. It is just being closed-minded and short-sighted to say these things.
Fuel cells were invented in 1839. What are you talking about? Fuel cells are also widely used in backup generation, and on-site power generation for large consumers of electricity. I’ve even visited an EV charging station powered by natural gas fuel cells.
Batteries are an even older idea. As a technology that can power vehicles, fuel cells are coming in their own now.
The first real device we’d call a battery was from 1800. So a 38 year head start. The technology of fuel cells isn’t the issue with them, it’s the fuel part. Well, that and the catalyst plates. But that’s not exactly rocket science to rebuild a fuel cell when the catalysts need refurbishment.
The first time we had a fuel cell powered car of any kind was in the 1960s. It is a much more recent technology.
Part of the advancement in fuel cell is our ability to produce hydrogen at a low cost. It is mirroring the progress that photovoltaics went through.
That’s the only part, in fact, that needs advancement. And it’s in no way mirroring PV cells development path or cost decreases. Our most efficient, lowest cost form of abundant hydrogen is cracking it out of methane / natural gas. And that method will always be more expensive than just generating electricity from the methane because you need to generate high temperature steam as part of the process by burning some of the methane. The only other source of less expensive but not abundant enough hydrogen is as an industrial process byproduct. And that’s not even close to producing enough to meet current demands if we could magically capture it and had no refining costs to scrub out other wastes.
Then you are painfully stuck in the past. Your rhetoric is not just a repeat of anti-wind and anti-solar, it is purely climate doomerism. The same argument climate change deniers have continuously made. It’s entirely based on the idea that nothing can replace fossil fuels. In reality, this is an infinite resource for all practical purposes. It’s long-term cost will be approximately zero, not whatever number you wish it to be.
the biggest hindrance to hydrogen is the cost to build a hydrogen station vs out in ev chargers. why would anyone build a hydrogen station when they could install many ev chargers for the same price. maybe trucking and busses, like greyhound not metro or school, could be a usecase for hydrogen going forward.
It’s cheaper to install hydrogen stations than it is to build charging stations. That’s because it cost 10x less to move hydrogen around compared to electricity.
https://www.brinknews.com/could-hydrogen-replace-the-need-for-an-electric-grid/
https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/21002-hydrogen-fueling-station-cost.pdf
https://futureenergy.com/ev-charging/how-much-do-ev-charging-stations-cost/
https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/evse_cost_report_2015.pdf
or its cheaper to install ev chargers.
More stations more greater economies of scale. At some point this will be no more expensive than a gas station. Also, you have a much greater capacity per station compared to a charging station. It will pencil out to being cheaper than building the much greater number of charging stations. Not to mention maintenance. The cost of maintaining millions of charging stations will be a major challenge.
im no business major but even i can see its a no brainer to go with an 38 ev chargers vs 1 hydrogen station. and the same economies of scale will make it cheaper to build more ev stations cheaper. hydrogen may have a place, trucking and busses like greyhound might make sense for hydrogen but currently it makes no sense to build a hydrogen station for normal passenger vehicles.
Until you realize that 1 hydrogen station can refuel hundreds of cars per day. Economies of scale are in hydrogen’s favor. BEV advocates are simply lying about the facts.
and so can 38 ev charging stations.
At 38x time the land area and far greater power consumption. And it does not scale very well either. Double the number of stations and everything doubles in cost. Nor are you getting a full 400 miles if you are assuming fast charging. You’re looking at only a 80% max charge in that situation. Meanwhile, with hydrogen, you just need bigger tanks to support multiple stations. Everyone is fully refueled after 5 minutes consistently. It is the same idea as natural gas refueling stations. Once costs drop due to increases production and economies of scale, the hydrogen stations easily wins this argument in a walk.
Again, BEV advocates are simply lying. They are just trying to defend their car purchase. It is completely at odds with economics and physics.
Moving electricity around only requires aluminum wire and transformers. Incredibly cheap. Moving hydrogen around requires either roads and trucks (already more expensive than high voltage AC transmission) or a pipeline that won’t leak hydrogen plus training for emergency response (also more expensive than high voltage AC).
Steel pipes are even cheaper. You are just regurgitating pro-BEV talking points. It is much cheaper to move hydrogen around than electricity.
But it isn’t just steel pipe. It’s steel pipe precision welded and leak checked, buried under ground, with lots of continual maintenance, pump stations to increase pressure, control systems, etc. More expensive even than natural gas piping, which is already difficult to get installed with municipalities frequently rejecting it for safety reasons.
We’ve been back and forth on this countless times over the years, you and I, but you keep coming back to these same points. None of which are correct. BEVs use existing infrastructure, and while they are NOT the best solution, they are the best solution people are going to choose. You’re flat out not going to get someone to pay more for hydrogen than they would for any any other fuel, producing the hydrogen isn’t as energy efficient as charging a battery, and installing an H2 station is significantly more expensive than installing even a DCFC station with four or six stalls and all the complimentary transformers necessary.
And yet that’s the same idea as natural gas pipes. It is not any more expensive than natural gas pipes. In fact, natural gas pipelines are 10x cheaper than wires. This whole line of reasoning is just BEV propaganda. Wires are not magic and have huge costs associated with them.
In the end, an FCEV will be cheaper to own and by a huge margin. Hydrogen will be nearly free since it can be made from excess and unused electricity. The infrastructure will be cheaper by a huge margin too. People are just stuck in the past and are refusing to accept change. It is the same rhetoric as anti-wind and anti-solar. It is a doomed argument and its ridiculous to keep on repeating it.
It is, because hydrogen will leak more easily than methane.
Well now I damand you cite your sources, because natural gas pipelines are 5x the price per installed mile compared to high voltage transmission lines. I mean, the amount of material alone should be sounding alarms in your head. And that’s from EIA. Even PG&E is citing $2M per mile to bury their high voltage transmission lines in California of all markets. Several markets in the US have absurdly low costs of under $300k per mile installed. So, yeah, I’m going to need to see a source that isn’t hydrogenhype.org or something.
My guess is in 20 years time, the cost of buying an FCEV and a BEV will be equivalent. The cost of fueling the two vehicles will still strongly favor BEVs, and the only advantage that FCEV will have is refuel time (5 instead of 30 minutes) and range per kg. Batteries are going to be heavy no matter what the futurism weirdos claim and hydrogen gas is more energy dense per kg no matter what we do.
Here is the source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004221014668
You are simply regurgitating BEV propaganda by denying this. It’s just all made-up bullshit from those people. Pipelines are radically cheaper than wires and that is undeniable.
Hell, if wires were really cheaper, why do natural gas pipelines exist at all? Just run gas turbines at a centralized locations and send the electricity to where it needs to go.
In the long-run, BEVs will end up being too expensive to be competitive. In fact, they’re not competitive at all even now, and rely entirely on subsidies to be viable. The pathway to zero emissions will reveal these inconvenient facts and likely drive BEVs to a marginal niche. And if the future is not FCEVs, then it will be something like synfuel powered cars.
I have a photo of GM’s fuel cell test vehicle driving on the highway from 2009, some 14 years ago. Most of the arguments against fuel cells are the cost and complexity of hydrogen, and the logistics of getting it around any given country. Those are not outdated, they are absolutely as true today as they were 15 years ago.
GM made a BEV back in the 1990s. They did a lot of things long before they were ready. The point you are missing is that cost is rapidly coming down. An FCEV will be no more expensive than an ICE car to make. People who continue to repeat the “high-cost” argument are just stuck in the past. A total repeat of what people said of BEVs too.
Let’s grant your point about prices coming down, and let’s say that a fuel cell, a small battery, and the fuel tank(s) is the same price or even cheaper than a BEV. Let’s just take that as completely granted.
How about the cost of energy per kWh? Hydrogen is much more expensive than just buying the electricity. In Norway, right now, price of H2 is 195 NOK/kg or about $19.13 USD per kg. 1kg of H2 is 33.33 kWh, meaning it’s about $0.574 USD per kWh for hydrogen. Even the most expensive DCFC don’t sell for that price. Here in the US, the production costs alone, as reported by NREL, are well above the cost of traditional fuel and electricity based on using methane cracking with steam assuming we can make that commercially viable. Cracking the methane is much more expensive than just burning it to produce electricity, and that doesn’t account for increasing nuclear or renewable energy sources on the grid.
On a per-kWh basis, a hydrogen fueled car will necessarily be more expensive to refuel than a BEV, while battery costs continue to decrease just as fuel cell costs have.