The reality of fuel cells drives hybrid vehicles
There is an interesting AutomotiveNews article, Honda continues work on cold start, range issues with its fuel-cell vehicles, that demonstrates the great importance of hybrid cars.
"If all goes well, Honda hopes to sell 50,000 fuel cell vehicles a year in the United States by 2020. Toyota wants to sell 12,000 fuel cell vehicles annually in the United States in the early 2010s," the article states.
Why so few vehicles?
One of the biggest problems, aside from extreme cost, is that fuel cell vehicles cannot operate in cold weather. While significant gains are being made, the necessary gains are at least a decade or two away.
Quite simply, fuel cell vehicles will not take over the automotive market for at least two decades. Can America continue its SUV love affair amidst foreign oil dependency and global warming for another two decades?
Not with current technology.
Imagine a Toyota Prius that is significantly more powerful and twice as efficient as today's model. Such a vehicle is possible within a decade or less, and that technology will also be available for SUVs, such as the Ford Escape hybrid, or the Toyota Highlander hybrid.
Hybrid technology is simply the best automotive investment any American can make if you don't believe in supporting foreign oil dependency, high gas prices, or destroying the environment.
Demand nothing less than hybrid vehicle efficiency.
Labels: electric cars, Escape hybrid, Ford, Ford Escape hybrid, Foreign Oil Dependency, fuel cells, fuel efficiency, global warming, Highlander hybrid, Honda, Hybrid Vehicles, prius, toyota
posted by Dahcredyns at
10:27 AM
6 Comments:
What about the reality of the actual mileage that hybrid vehicles get. I have been reading (i.e. Consumer Reports, Car and Drivers, etc.) that the actual miles per gallon that testers got from hybrid vehicles was often one third to one half less than epa estimates. Yes, these vehicles still got higher mileage than their non-hybrid versions, but usually not significantly. Also, the emissions were usually only very insignificantly better than the non-hybrid versions. Don't get me wrong; I still drive and support hybrid vehicles, but let's be real about the statistics. It can be a lot to pay (three to five thousand more than the non-hybrid version on the average) for a hybrid with often minor benefit. Compare the statistics of a Toyota Echo with a Toyota hybrid. And, now, with diesel technology improving to the point that will eventually capture emissions as impressively as gas engines, and their better than gas mileage on the average, hybrid technology is beginning not look as that much greater than touted. Just keeping it real here. Remember, the ideal is to find the highest mileage, lowest polluting vehicle, and hybrid still stand out in that respect; just not as much as some people like to believe. Lucas.
It isn't just hybrids that fail to meet EPA numbers. According to Consumer Reports, conventional vehicles can miss their EPA estimates by as much as 50 percent, especially in urban driving.
In city driving, for example, the Toyota Prius still achieves 45 mpg. The Ford Focus achieves just 17 mpg.
For two similarly sized vehicles, that is a vast difference, and a much better comparison than the Echo.
As for diesel. In city driving, diesels peform horribly. According to CR the Jeep Liberty Diesel is rated to achieve 22 mpg in the city, but only achieves 11 mpg.
In terms of city driving there is no comparison to the Prius, other than, possibly, the Insight.
In terms of pollution in city driving there is no comparison to the Prius, except for the Insight.
Most important, hybrids are an emerging technology. How long has diesel been around? So, 100+ years of research can almost match an emerging technology?
New Lithium battery technology could easily create hybrids that are twice as efficient - and twice as powerful - in just the next few years. There is no way that diesel has that sort of potential, unless it merges with hybrid technology.
Already, plug in hybrids can achieve 80 to 100 mpg. Other experimental hybrids achieve 250 mpg.
Is that real enough for you?
Right now hybrids are not a mainstream solution, but if not for the Prius, neither Ford nor GM would be pushing their hybrid investments.
If you believe Toyota, hybrid technology prices will be halved within the decade. When this is combined with more powerful technology, there is question as to whether hybrids are real or not.
Hydrogen cars are really the future of the automobile industry, while still a long way from becoming the norm. They release no greenhouse gases or pollutants as emissions, only water, but significant breakthroughs in hydrogen storage, fuel infrastructure, and an overall cost reduction are needed first.
Cold starting is also a problem, because freezing water can results in punctured proton-exchange membranes (PEM's) which is the design at the forefront of fuel cell development because these convert up to 55% of the fuel energy into work output (IC engines are about 30%). However, when the water is kept in a vapor state, the stacks are undamaged.
The main problem with cost is the fuel cells themselves. The membranes in PEM fuel cells represent about 35% of the cost of the entire vehicle. Current technology requires a platinum catalyst to make the hydrogen-oxygen reaction feasible. The big problem: platinum is not cheap! Another problem - the current fluorocarbon-based PEMs are very vulnerable to damage from hydrogen impurities and undesired byproducts, like hydrogen peroxide. A new membrane needs to be discovered before the cost of a vehicle can be reduced.
Hydrogen storage is another problem. Hydrogen has such a low density that very little fuel can be stored in a large volume. Even when it is pumped into tanks with 5000 psi, a vehicle cannot store the fuel required for a 400 mile trip in a reasonable volume. Liquid hydrogen (-253 degrees C) can be stored in a small volume, but most of the fuel's energy is used to keep it this cold. Moreover, hydrogen atoms are so small, evaporation through seals robs a tank by 5% each day. I like the plan with the concept SUV Revolution. This vehicle uses a carbon-composite chassis, which cuts the weight of the SUV in half, while still remaining crash-test safe. The reduced weight solves the storage problem, only 3.4 kilograms of hydrogen are needed instead of 7 in order to get 400 miles. The drawback, it's even more expensive until the carbon-composite chassis can be made cheaper by 5-fold.
The infrastructure problem is the classic chicken-and-egg dilema: Nobody wants to buy hydrogen cars because there are no stations with which to fuel them, and nobody wants to invest in hydrogen stations with no cars to fuel. I have a solution for this problem. Another genre of fuel cell is the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). Instead of a PEM, this uses a ceramic membrane instead of a fluorocarbon. The big attraction with SOFC's is that they can use a huge variety of fuels. Pure hydrogen is the most energy efficient, but this cell would run on gasoline, diesel, even gases made from coal (using the dirtier fuels does release pollution, however). The cell can use this wide variety of fuels because of the high temperature at which it operates (1000 degrees C). The high temperature is the stumbling block, however, because this would always have a slow startup and the parts would need high temperature durability to be cost-efficient (who wants to replace the parts so often?). Another problem is that much thermal shielding must be utilized to keep personnel safe. However, these characteristics make SOFC's the transition between the IC engine and the ideal PEM fuel cell. Trains, Semis, and buses could be the first commercially popular candidates for fuel cells because they can usually wait for the startup and afford the space required to protect the driver from the fuel cell's heat. These vehicles could get on the highways and use the standard hydrocarbon fuels and inspire fuel stations to offer hydrogen. Once hydrogen stations are available across the country, more personal PEM fuel cell automobiles will be on the market. Fossil fuels will fade away, and so will their pollutants, diminishing supply, and political conflicts.
Ben,
Thanks for the detailed analysis.
Two points I'd to brink up:
1.) I also believe in the hydrogen economy. Still, I believe that America should do everything that it can to strive for, minimally, foreign oil independence. The costs of hybrid technology are still far cheaper than foreign oil dependence. Additionally, for passenger vehicles, hybrid technological breakthroughs could lead to better hydrogen and/or fuel cell vehicles - I think that is the path that Toyota is currently taking.
2.) While it is believed that water emissions are pollution free, is that necessarily true?
I've read statements from some scientists tha claim such emissions, coming from 100's of millions of cars might be more damaging, environmentally, than believed.
While I know nothing more about this other than just a few statements, this concern does come from legitimate scientists.
Just some food for thought.
its nice that you want to make car bodies out of carbon composites. So does that estimable gentleman Mr. Lovins.
It should cause you concern (but it does not bother his astral reminations), that these auto bodies cannot be recycled with any known technology other than burning them, and creating PCBs, Dioxins, and CO2.
Lovins may be a phony but you don't appear to be one. Please propose how to improve rather than create a new pollution problem.
We can't even recycle scrap tires, never mind these additional carbon composites. Steel can be easily remelted and is often done.
As I didn't mention carbon composites, I don't have a complete answer to carbon composite frames. Still, without an overall analysis comparing carbon burning to the release of carbon from steel vehicle emissions, it's hard to talk about pollution.
Still, I've read several reports on carbon composite recycling, such as building carbon composite automobiles from recycled plastic. There is also the belief by some that the right kind of fiber blend for for composites could allow old carbon fiber cars to largely be recycled into new carbon fiber cars.
Now I know you're going to mention phenol-rich hydrocarbon stream waste from these recycled cars, but there are companies currently working on an extraction process to even further recycle this waste.
Still, I'm not expert on carbon fiber and we might realize that carbon fiber isn't worth the cost. Nonetheless, we might find that we can recycle large amounts of carbon fiber and that with the huge savings in fuel economy and CO2 emission reductions, that any left-over waste is still less than not using carbon fiber.
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