Electric, Nope, Fuel Cells Is The Future

[johnsnownw]

The fact is, even in California these companies have to heavily discount their FCEVs, and provide $15k in free fuel to get people to purchase their vehicles...and even so there are hundreds of FCEVs sitting on dealer lots...when only a few thousand are made.

Hyundai, for instance, is only producing around 4,000 of their Nexo vehicles globally.

There are robust hydrogen networks in Japan and Europe, and to a lesser extent California...but no one is buying FCEVs...because they're slow, expensive (even with incentives), the fuel costs more than gasoline, and the stations are unreliable.

That's just reality.

 

[Coss]

Well I guess we'll have to add a little note to your profile "knows everything about Hydrogen and anything with 4 wheels that doesn't use gas" so that none of the rest of us makes the mistake of forming an opinion.

 

[Made in USA]

Here's a good hydrogen development:

DoE achieves breakthrough in artificial photosynthesis
New chemical combination from researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory creates building blocks for hydrogen fuel.

https://www.designnews.com/material...rough-artificial-photosynthesis/1956166461997

 

[johnsnownw]

Well I guess we'll have to add a little note to your profile "knows everything about Hydrogen and anything with 4 wheels that doesn't use gas" so that none of the rest of us makes the mistake of forming an opinion.

"Yes, I do know quite a bit about BEVs and FCEVs. I didn't realize that was an issue."

 

[RSchneider]

Here in our area we have the worlds largest supplier of Hydrogen (Air Products). A few years ago i drove their Hydrogen powered Equinox. It was a fuel cell that powered an electric motor. It pumped out steam. They even had a Ford E450 people mover van but it just had the 4.6 3 valve motor that ran on hydrogen. It had a huge amount of space designated to 10K psi H2 tanks which got knocked down to 3K psi tanks then knocked down to 50 psi tanks that fed the injectors. They even had a Hydrogen fueling station at their headquarters. My neighbor told me they got out of that market and sold the Hydrogen pumping business to someone else. I don't hear about that program any more.

 

[FC]

So no one thinks a carbon neutral liquid fuel that would involve not changing the present infrastructure including the cars already on the road be a thing? The companies making fuel, transporting it to gas stations, and selling it at gas stations might want to stay in business. Would think they are working on a plan B.

https://www.bosch.com/stories/synthetic-fuels/

 

[RSchneider]

So no one thinks a carbon neutral liquid fuel that would involve not changing the present infrastructure including the cars already on the road be a thing? The companies making fuel, transporting it to gas stations, and selling it at gas stations might want to stay in business. Would think they are working on a plan B.

https://www.bosch.com/stories/synthetic-fuels/

From talking to my neighbor about synthetic fuel (the one that works at Air Products), the main problem which Bosch glosses over is the amount of energy it takes to do this. So it could happen in Europe where they are much more friendly when it comes to wind and solar as opposed to what we do here in the US. We fight solar and wind farms. Plus in the US, we have boatloads of natural gas as that’s where hydrogen comes from today as it’s cheap to process and we are sitting down on tons of it. For here, doing it with water is not economical today.

 

[Coss]

Come out west if you want to see wind farms, we have them all over the place.

 

[Made in USA]

A few more developments:

Lamborghini and MIT double the energy density in super capacitors
Lamborghini's exotic supercars will rely on capacitors for a jolt of electric boost, rather than moving to turbochargers.

https://www.designnews.com/batterye...nergy-density-super-capacitors/69392949962014


Hydrails are the future of rail transportation
Hydrails, hydrogen-fueld locomotives and railcars, could be the alternative to a prohibitively expensive electrified infrastructure, and the way forward for the hydrogen economy.

https://www.designnews.com/automati...re-future-rail-transportation/144639067362025

 

[W. WIllie]

MIght as well have equal time for debate:

Tesla Engineer: Hydrogen Fuel Cells Can’t Cut It | Design News