Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/business/energy-environment/seeing-future-in-fuel-cells-toyota-ends-tesla-deal.html?hpw&rref=automobiles&_r=0

by jbae29 • 12 years ago

24 70 12 years ago

nytimes.com

hnnewguy• 12 years ago

First we got to hear the ICE proponents spreading FUD about Electric Vehicles, now we'll get to hear Electric Vehicle proponents spreading FUD about fuel cells.

dublinben6• 12 years ago

Fuel cell vehicles have never made any sense. It's still being turned into electricity anyway, so it's still an electric vehicle. There happens to already be a distribution infrastructure for electricity almost everywhere. The same can't be said for hydrogen.

According to the US Department of Energy, there are eleven public hydrogen stations in the US, almost all in Los Angeles. There are more compressed natural gas stations in my state alone.

jimmyjazz14• 12 years ago

I think the real question to me is about how much energy can be stored in a fuel cell vs the current available batteries.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

"Fuel cell vehicles have never made any sense."

They have in the sense that I go to a station and fill up then leave in a reasonable amount of time. I don't have to alter my driving habits from the last 50+ years.

eshvk2• 12 years ago

Fuel cell vehicles have never made any sense.

The only reason for me to get an Electric Vehicle is the green factor. If instead of my car polluting the environment, there is an increase in say coal factories, not sure how that helps the environment. So there is a need for fuel cells.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

You can even put a small natural gas compressor in your garage (of course it only makes sense if gas is available).

http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles/refueling/Pages/refueling-at-...

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

You can have on-site production at the gas station though, which you can't currently do with natural gas or petrol, so rolling out pipes may be unnecessary.

threeseed3• 12 years ago

There happens to already be a distribution infrastructure for electricity almost everywhere.

Of course "everywhere" means just the US.

Some people really need to wake up and realise that there are nearly 200 countries in the world. Most of which Toyota sells in and Tesla doesn't. It really isn't appropriate to judge the success of a technology based on the available infrastructure for quite a while yet.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

I would love to hear what the tipping point was for fuel cells. I suspect Toyota doesn't believe that battery technology will get the point that recharging gets close to normal gas station stops where hydrogen might.

Last I heard Hydrogen was still problematic in winter cold just like batteries.

revelation2• 12 years ago

The RAV4 ev is a pure compliance car. It's only sold in California, it's a 3rd party drivetrain and battery bolted onto the frame for a gas guzzler SUV.

So of course it's a terrible product. The only thing it excels at is getting Toyota enough ZEV credits. They recently changed the credit scheme, so now Toyota is switching to that:

http://insideevs.com/carb-zev-program-changes-tesla-takes-la...

makomk• 12 years ago

Interesting - if I'm reading that correctly, Tesla's battery-swap technology substantially boosted the amount of ZEV credits they obtained and could resell by allowing them to claim "fast recharging", despite the facilities to actually swap batteries never actually being available to customers.

toomuchtodo3• 12 years ago

Correct. The vehicle only needs to be able to swap, without the need to deploy the expensive ($~500K/each) battery swap stations.

revelation2• 12 years ago

Yes, but to get the extra credits they only had to demonstrate battery swap with a bunch of technicians. The large automated demo they did later on wasn't for the ZEV credits.

sliverstorm2• 12 years ago

the frame for a gas guzzler SUV

31mpg highway is what counts for gas guzzler these days?

_Adam• 12 years ago

This is really surprising. What are they thinking? Hydrogen fuel cells STILL have not been proven to be a viable power source for cars. Electricity has been validated time and time again - even before Tesla, there was the EV1. And now the technology is really starting to scale in production volume and performance, along with the infrastructure.

Even if they can make a hydrogen vehicle with equal, or even slightly greater performance than an electric of the same cost, then they still need to solve the problem of the hydrogen infrastructure. That's really hard. You can generate it on site, but the equipment to do so is expensive and complex.

I think Toyota just doesn't want to compete with Tesla.

threeseed3• 12 years ago

I think Toyota just doesn't want to compete with Tesla.

Yes. I am sure Toyota is just terrified by a company that is haemorrhaging money and only sells in a few countries.

outworlder8• 12 years ago

Is it? Source?

cgh• 12 years ago

Forgive me if I misread your post, but hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles as discussed in the article run on electricity. So when you say "electricity has been validated", you really mean batteries as used in Teslas have been validated, correct? Or are you referring to hydrogen internal combustion engines? I don't think those are in development at Toyota but maybe I'm wrong.

NorthGuy1• 12 years ago

Honda has been saying the same thing for years and has yet to produce a product. It's cool tech but right now it's just vapourware.

wil4213• 12 years ago

Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid.

My question has always been: Does shifting from gas to depending on the electrical grid actually help? Or are we just smoking cigars (or e-cigs) instead of cigarettes?

Also, what is the downside to collecting Hydrogen?

hueyp• 12 years ago

Hydrogen is no different then what you spell out as downsides for electric vehicles. The best source of hydrogen is natural gas. In order to get hydrogen from non-fossil fuel sources you need cheap non-fossil fuel electricity. If you have that ... whats the problem with electric cars again?

outworlder8• 12 years ago

Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid.

Yes, because the whole world has the same reliance on fossil fuels as the US. Homework: what's quicker to replace? A few power stations, or the whole vehicle fleet? Also notice that electric engines are way more efficient than gas engines.

My question has always been: Does shifting from gas to depending on the electrical grid actually help? Or are we just smoking cigars (or e-cigs) instead of cigarettes?

Long or short term? Electrical vehicles do not care where the power comes from. If you are that worried, power your EV yourself at home with solar/wind/whatever power.

Also, what is the downside to collecting Hydrogen?

If it is from fossil fuels, it is kinda obvious. It is apparently possible to sequester CO2 from the process of extracting hydrogen from natural gas, but I have no idea if it is even required by regulations, or economically viable.

If it is from water electrolysis, then you'll be using the same fossil fuel power plants to split water.

Do not forget that electric cars have WAY less parts (the simplest conceptual car is a battery and engine) and require much less environmentally unfriendly stuff, such as lubricants, additives, etc.

bryanlarsen• 12 years ago

"Homework: what's quicker to replace? A few power stations, or the whole vehicle fleet?"

average vehicle age in the US is 11.4 years.[1]

average power plant age in the US is over 30 years.[2]

1: http://www.autonews.com/article/20130806/RETAIL/130809922/av...

2: http://qz.com/61423/coal-fired-power-plants-near-retirement/

wil4213• 12 years ago

Yes, because the whole world has the same reliance on fossil fuels as the US.

Notice how I said US instead of World. That was done on purpose.

Long or short term? Electrical vehicles do not care where the power comes from.

Long term: if the state I lived in switched to 50% usage of EVs overnight. How much more Green House emissions would be generated by the power plants? Would it be an overall decrease of GH gasses for my state? I doubt the hydro power is going to help that much.

http://www.georgiapower.com/about-us/media-resources/plant-b...

If it is from fossil fuels, it is kinda obvious. It is apparently possible to sequester CO2 from the process of extracting hydrogen from natural gas, but I have no idea if it is even required by regulations, or economically viable.

Interesting I didnt realize we had to use natural gasses to get H. Wow even Helium is produced from Natural gas.

jgon• 12 years ago

Electric cars are actually a great idea to get off fossil fuels. Electricity is inherently "fungible" if you will. You can generate it anywhere you can rotate a commutator. Internal combustion engines rely on fossil fuels full stop.

If we switch over to electric vehicles, yes in the short term we are still generating that electricity with fossil fuels, but we don't have to. And in fact because the generation is currently centralized, each plant we switch over has a huge knock-on effect. Switch to hydropower and boom, 500,000 cars on the road just became carbon neutral (excluding production outputs of course). Even better, because electricity is so easy to generate it opens up the possibilities for decentralized generation! It would be impossible for everyone to have their own oil well, but in a decade or 2, everyone affording their own solar panel or wind turbine could be pretty feasible. Boom, now you've not just moved to carbon neutral generation, but decentralized generation!

In practical terms, moving as much as we can to using electricity instead of combustion gives us way, way more flexibility in terms of future directions. Solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, etc, etc. All of these can be a power source for electric cars, but we only have one method of getting gas. Moving to electric cars would be a huge boon.

Oculus• 12 years ago

In an interview at Ted with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk was asked the same question:

CA: Most of American electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. How can an electric car that plugs into that electricity help?

EM: Right. There's two elements to that answer. One is that, even if you take the same source fuel and produce power at the power plant and use it to charge electric cars, you're still better off. So if you take, say, natural gas, which is the most prevalent hydrocarbon source fuel, if you burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you'll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency. And the reason is, in the stationary power plant, you can afford to have something that weighs a lot more, is voluminous, and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine and generate a secondary power source. So in effect, even after you've taken transmission loss into account and everything, even using the same source fuel, you're at least twice as better off charging an electric car, then burning it at the power plant.

Url: http://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_spa...

wil4213• 12 years ago

Thanks! Great to hear it from the Horse's Mouth. I am going to watch that Ted talk.

outworlder8• 12 years ago

So, instead of using the ubiquitous power grid, we'll need:

- Hydrogen "manufacturing". Guess where most of it come from? Fossil fuels. If you use water, you require a lot of energy input. Actually, in either case you need energy input, so hydrogen is more like a battery, not an energy source.

- Hydrogen distribution/storage. At the refinery, between that and the 'gas' stations, etc. Not all containers are suitable for that (hydrogen is quite difficult to store) and no matter if liquid or gas, the tanks need to be much bigger than a comparable gasoline tank (by energy).

- Actually using the hydrogen. You are using fuel cells to generate electricity, which will power electric engines. Why not skip the middle man? You are using a much more complicated battery, really.

And that just to make the 'charging' faster? How long would it take to cover a country the size of the US with hydrogen stations? I'd put all that infrastructure money on battery research.

This is just Toyota giving up on EVs completely. They just don't want to say it outright. Green companies and all that.

sliverstorm2• 12 years ago

What about range? Hydrogen might be less energy dense than gasoline, but what about compared to batteries?

Range is the #1 crippling factor for EVs to most people I talk to.

dublinben6• 12 years ago

Most hydrogen vehicles (of which there aren't really any you can buy) have the same 200-250 mile range of a Model S.

outworlder8• 12 years ago

Range is a valid concern, but hydrogen has poor energy density per volume (if compressed).

If you want compact hydrogen, hydrocarbons are your best bet.

fleitz• 12 years ago

Umm... batteries are also like... batteries... how surprising... and like hydrogen are chemical forms of energy storage.

As for how long, probably about 6-24 months... it's actually more a question of capital... if you have the capital i can't imagine it's that difficult to scale up the building of hydrogen storage tanks.

Yes, charging faster is important to people... aren't we having a whole net neutrality debate because being able to download a 2 hr movie in 2 hrs and 30 minutes is no where near as good as being able to download a 2 hr movie in 1h 50m.

I'm pretty sure if you could fly some hydrogen from Berlin to New York in the 20s we can figure out how to make bags for hydrogen. (Yes, some may leak... but who cares, it's not like it doesn't just float away when it gets to the top of the atmosphere...?)

wcfields• 12 years ago

I was flipping through the channels last night an NHK World had a special dedicated to showing off Hydrogen Fuel Cells. They had mocked up a small town, had a fleet of vehicles/forklifts, and had a lot of "label to camera" shots for Toshiba.

It all looked nice and tidy, but effectively they had to duplicate the natural gas infrastructure and then have /several/* fuel-cell objects behind houses that were about the size of a large refrigerator.

* If I remember right, one was merely to remove the odoring agent for leak detection.

the_real_bto• 12 years ago

I think you are a bit harsh on Toyota here. I can't resist playing devil's advocate. Some googling turned up Toyota has fleets of fuel cell vehicles already [1], this includes some buses. [2] Seen any battery powered buses lately?

2. Batteries suck. They are heavy and don't hold much energy. Advancements seem to come very slowly despite the fact that everyone wants them to be better!

3. Complexity isn't always bad. Hybrids are much more complex than a traditional drivetrain, yet they manage to deliver improvements in fuel economy.

/devil's advocate off

I do love Tesla, and wish them all the success in the world. Their cars are really heavy though, that is a pretty serious drawback to overcome.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_FCHV

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell_bus

greglindahl3• 12 years ago

There are a couple of vendors of battery-powered buses. One is a Kleiner Perkins backed startup (http://proterra.com/) that sells buses and overhead fast-charging stations.

BTW the Model S is of a similar weight to other large sedans -- BMW 7-series cars weigh between 4,310 and 5,100 pounds.

cLeEOGPw• 12 years ago

Electric car with battery pros:

* Can deliver full power instantly

* Does not produce CO2 at time of energy release (clean cities)

* Lesser moving parts

Electric car with battery cons:

* Range too small with current designs

* No charging stations (infrastructure problem)

* Battery needs to be replaced every several years

* Requires lithium, which reserves are very limited on earth

* Carbon tube based battery doesn't seem to be reality any time soon

Hydrogen on the other hand doesn't require any rare elements and also doesn't pollute environment at the time of energy release.

Only downsides are it is more difficult to store as of now? How is it different from liquid natural gas tanks that are already widely used? I've never heard of any car exploding because of gas. What is the problem with hydrogen then?

xionon• 12 years ago

Gasoline is not actually explosive - the fumes are flammable, but not the liquid itself. Hydrogen is much more flammable, and will ignite from a much smaller spark than gasoline will.

Cars catch fire in accidents all the time, it's not that hart to imagine that the problem might get worse if we switched to an even more flammable fuel.

dublinben6• 12 years ago

Compressed hydrogen would diffuse so quickly that the chance of a dangerous explosion is quite low. Fuel cell vehicles would actually be much safer than gasoline vehicles in this regard. As soon as you were in a catastrophic accident, all your hydrogen would vanish.

IanDrake• 12 years ago

Hydrogen on the other hand doesn't require any rare elements

Don't fuel cells need platinum?

outworlder8• 12 years ago

Currently they do, they might not in the future. The best commercially available battery tech requires lithium, it might not in the future.

neon_electro• 12 years ago

* No charging stations (infrastructure problem)

Pardon me if I don't understand your point there, but you can't really say there aren't charging stations available, can you? I can agree that bringing electric car charging infrastructure to par with gas refueling infrastructure is still a challenge.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

The downsides of hydrogen are that it's less efficient than batteries, it's considerably more expensive than electricity (because it's less efficient, and because you have to pay for additional infrastructure to produce, distribute, and store it), and it's generally not available for purchase.

Give me a Tesla and I can charge it anywhere there's electricity. If there's no dedicated charging station, then I can still charge it from a regular wall socket, albeit slowly. There are also a ton of charging stations around here.

Give me a fuel cell vehicle and I can't refuel it anywhere near here. According to the Department of Energy, there are 11 public hydrogen filling stations in the US:

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html

You list "no charging stations" as a con for batteries, but it's really not bad at all, and the hydrogen situation is vastly worse, and I don't see it getting better with any kind of speed.

mikestew• 12 years ago

I've never heard of any car exploding because of gas.

Ford Pinto isn't ringing any bells? I mean, it's not as common as TV and movies would have you believe, but yeesh, you've never heard of this happening?

EDIT: forgot this one... > No charging stations (infrastructure problem)

There are infinitely more electric car charging stations between my house and work than there are hydrogen stations. I understand that it's different in other parts of the country, but in the Seattle area you'd have to really put in some effort to run out before you find a charging station. My only complaint is that aren't enough fast charging stations.

yetihehe• 12 years ago

Hydrogen on the other hand doesn't require any rare elements Only when you think that platinum is more commong than lithium. Platinum is used as a catalyst in fuel cells. Lithium is a rather abundand element (comparing to platinum) and much cheaper.
How is it different from liquid natural gas tanks Storing hydrogen is MUCH harder. It requires much lower temperatures (-162C for LNG, -253C for H). LPG can be stored liquefied at room temperature. Natural gas cars use CNG (compressed, not liquefied gas).

tbrownaw2• 12 years ago

Does not produce CO2 at time of energy release (clean cities)

1. Hydrogen (as opposed to (L|C)NG / gasoline / other hydrocarbons) wouldn't either.

2. I don't think the where matters for CO2? Sure it's supposed to melt the ice caps and put us all underwater, but I don't think there are any local effects?

greglindahl3• 12 years ago

The reason California has all these ZEV (zero emission vehicle) regulations is because of smog. It's better to burn stuff at a power plant than on a highway in the middle of LA or the Bay Area. (And you're right, CO2 isn't the issue, it's the other stuff.)

In this respect, batteries and fuel cells are similar.

mrfusion2• 12 years ago

Just curious. Instead of having to build a hydrogen infrastructure couldn't we use electricity to run the fuel cells in reverse to turn water into h20?

I saw it at a science fair once.

mfwarren• 12 years ago

Right, so you can use electricity to make h2 at less than 100% efficiency then lay pipes all around the city to move the h2 to the stations, or build giant trucks that can transport the h2 on the roads (and pay drivers). On the other hand you can transport the electricity directly into the car using copper wires that are already in place

mrfusion2• 12 years ago

No, I mean connect your fuel cell car to a hose, and an electrical outlet at the end of the day, and run the fuel cell in reverse to regenerate the H2.

I saw it in a science fair, they could switch directions of the fuel cell to go either way.

Seeing Future in Fuel Cells, Toyota Ends Tesla Deal

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