The Tesla Model S

[cells]

I'm surprised you rail against hydrogen so much. You make obvious statements - hydrogen is crap compared to petrol / diesel. Well, yes, but then so are batteries. The relevant comparison is between hydrogen and batteries.

even vs batteries they are crap.

Production and storage of hydrogen is not a big technical challenge, and not a show stopper.

the cost of production is the show stopper, not the actual production. i can produce hydrogen in my garage, but not at sub 3p per kWh, more like 300p per kWh.

The big advantage of hydrogen is the instant fill up. The charge time for batteries in vehicles is a massive problem, and electric vehicles will have limited appeal until this is fixed.

it isnt a problem. most cars are in use for perhaps sub 2 hours a day. the other 22 hours they sit around and can be charged.

Someone said the average trip is 7 miles - referring to a work commute. If we did 7 miles twice, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year that gives 3,360 miles. The average mileage in a year in the UK is what - around 12,000 miles? That's over 8,000 miles missing somewhere. Guess what? Those extra miles are, for a large part, based on much longer trips - travelling to a big sporting event, going to visit relatives, going for a holiday. Like it or not, people make a lot of long trips and they don't want to have two cars to be able to do that quickly and conveniently. One up for hydrogen.

firstly hydrogen mileage is also somewhat limited.

you can get 600 miles out of a battery car, no problem, it just means carrying another 250 kg of batteries.

the same is true for hydrogen, to go 600 miles you need a big heavy tank.

range is not an advantage for hydrogen cars.

and i think your wrong about frequent long mileage trips.

how often do people do 150mile plus trips?

for those people they can rent a booster pack and get 600miles a charge. then hand it back. simple.

or of course do 150 miles, take a break for 45 mins and grab some food, then do 150 miles again. So unless your trip is more than 300 miles (which in highly unlikely in the UK) you will do fine with a battery pack of “only†200 miles.

Energy density is another important consideration. Again, hydrogen wins hand over fist in comparison to batteries. This is a second big weakness of batteries; and it prevents battery powered vehicles "scaling up" well. Whilst a small electric car is viable (e.g. Mitsubishi iMiEV), you aren't going to see a battery powered lorry any time soon.

where did you get your information??

hydrogen gas compressed at 700bar, which is quite a lot, has an energy density of 5.6MJ per litre (which excludes the volume of the tank holding the compressed gas). in comparison petrol has a density of 35MJ per litre.

so you need 7 times as much space as petrol to store hydrogen (not inc the tanks)

by comparison, batteries are just over 1MJ per litre (but taking the 90% efficiency vs 20% into account, batteries are the equivalent of 4.5MJ per KG)

so you have

petrol: 35MJ/L

hydrogen: 5.6MJ/L (not inc volume of tank)

Batteries: 4.5MJ/L

The downside of fuel cells is that they generate a large amount of water, and if the temperature drops below freezing, the membrane in the fuel cell gets damaged, and the membrane is toast. That's not good for somewhere with the climate we have here in the UK. This pretty much is a show stopper until someone fixes it.

not hard to keep it liquid. but will use some energy

[cells]

That isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. You've taken the energy content of the battery vs. the energy content of the fuel. The battery (much like hydrogen) is not an energy source, but a temporary store. You need to go to the source.

Your earlier example for a cc gas turbine (circa 50% efficient) plus transmission, charging losses etc, ended up with around 1/3rd of the energy, so we're closer to 30x for that example. Furthermore, if the energy comes from a coal power station, it will be significantly less efficient than the gas turbine (probably at the 1/3rd level for the generation alone), so the values will be worse.

The electric bicycle is still far more efficient than a car no matter how you look at it.

If you want to take it from source, its 50% efficient gas turbine, 10% lost in transmission, 10% in chagrining and 10% into the motor giving a full efficiency of 36.5%

So you are correct, it is roughly 30 times more efficient than a car, or an electric bike will consume some 3% of the energy of a car per mile. Still a massive saving.

[cells]

Cost of petrol: 3.5p per kWh (20% efficient engine equals effective cost of 17.5p per kWh for petrol)

Cost of electricity to charge batteries: 6p per kWh (can be 3p a night or more in the day but take an average of 6p). Effective charge and motor efficiency is 80% or the cost is effectively 7.5p per kWh. (if we use a figure of 10p for electricity. we get an effective 12.5p per kWh

Cost to produce hydrogen from non fossil fuels: (we will take best estimates).

6p for electricity. 80% efficient at water to hydrogen plus 50% gross margin for conversion plant equals 11p. then that hydrogen burnt in a motor at 20% efficient gives us a final cost of 56p per kWh.

So we have:

Electricity: 7.5p per kWh

Petrol: 17.5p per kWh

Hydrogen: 56p per kWh (optimistic).

And just for info

As a rule, hydrogen costs from natural gas are about two or three times the cost of the feedstock, thus $7.00 feedstock gas would result in the hydrogen costing between $18 to $20.00/MMBtu,

Turning natural gas into hydrogen triples the cost of the energy. So there is no way we would use hydrogen in cars until nearly all the natural gas is gone. If there were a way to make hydrogen cheaper than natural gas then that would be game changing. However there isn’t not even theoretically.

If we used the same rule of thumb, electricity at 6p would go to hydrogen at 18p would go to a hydrogen engine at 90p per kWh compaired to petrol at 3.5p per kWh.

So hydrogen has absolutely no change vs petrol. It would cost 30x as much to drive the same distance.

Absolutely no change hydrogen will work in cars for so many reasons. The simplest and easiest one is that hydrogen production is just far far far too costly and nothing out there will change it enough to reduce the cost to sub 3.5p per kWh

[cells]

Sorry, posting a lot.

But in summary

Hydrogen cars have no future: 100% guaranteed. The cost of producing hydrogen from non fossil fuels is magnitudes greater than the cost of petrol or electricity.

Electric cars do have a future because the cost of the energy per mile is cheaper or comparable. But that is not a big enough saving to warrant paying $10s of thousands of dollars more. So electric cars will do well if their price is comparable to the petrol cars.

Petrol/diesel cars: Almost perfect machines bar the fact that fossil fuels will one day run out (although that might take 50 years plus)

[OnionTerror]

Sorry, posting a lot.

But in summary

Hydrogen cars have no future: 100% guaranteed. The cost of producing hydrogen from non fossil fuels is magnitudes greater than the cost of petrol or electricity.

Electric cars do have a future because the cost of the energy per mile is cheaper or comparable. But that is not a big enough saving to warrant paying $10s of thousands of dollars more. So electric cars will do well if their price is comparable to the petrol cars.

Petrol/diesel cars: Almost perfect machines bar the fact that fossil fuels will one day run out (although that might take 50 years plus)

There are arguments on how long our oil reserves will last, but one day it will all run out.. I cant really see any other fuel technology taking over from fossil fuels until there is a viable alternative, and there is an incentive to use that fuel. For instance, when LPG first came out, it was half the price of Petrol. Although you need more of it to equal the same performance of Petrol (I think its and extra 1/3) it still made it cheaper to run than a Petrol car. To convert your car cost about 1500 quid, and you could get a government grant for about half the cost. The savings made (if you did decent mileage) were quite significant, and you would make your money back moderately quickly.

The government soon saw that LPG was getting too popular, and felt that they were missing out on extra revenue, so they raised the tax on it. Now with extra fuel efficient cars (and the MPG should improve further in the future) LPG isn't looking as good as it once was. Only a small amount of garages do it, you need directions from a satnav, just to find a garage that sells it.

Now if they found a way of making an a complete bio synthetic where they could make Petrol/Diesel using natural ingredients, now that would be interesting. In Brazil they have bio ethanol, but people point out that the crops used to make fuels mean that those crops aren't being put into the food chain, and it has been claimed that deforestation has been caused by the growth of crops used for bio ethanol.

I think Hydrogen will develop into a viable alternative. I'm not talking the next 20 or 30 years, but perhaps in the next 50. It will mature as a technology. If there is an incentive to find a solution, then one will be found. The infrastructure is partially there already - converting garages/pumps is a possibility.. It also depends on whether the green lobby get their way - I think they will determine our path.

[Mr C]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVq3Ixu_L9c...feature=channel

One very fast ebike

[cells]

I think Hydrogen will develop into a viable alternative. I'm not talking the next 20 or 30 years, but perhaps in the next 50. It will mature as a technology.

it won’t for the simple reason i stated. Hydrogen is a poor fuel compared to electricity. we will never convert electricity to hydrogen for general purpose energy requirements.

so that means we need to find a way to make hydrogen that doesn’t involve electrolysis and there is no way that comes even close to doing it economically.

we need to produce hydrogen at 2p per kWh or less for it to be successful in cars, 2p or less and we can use it to heat homes and produce electricity in hydrogen gas turbines.

the problem is that current hydrogen production, excluding from fossil fuels, costs in the region of 20p per kWh plus.

Never WILL WE HAvE A HYDROGEN ECONOMY. (well never say never but it is highly highly unlikely)

far more likely we will have an electricity economy with electricity produced by many different means.

If there is an incentive to find a solution, then one will be found.

yes but it isn’t enough to make an invention, it needs to be affordable and compete with alternatives and current technology.

sure hydrogen cars are feasible, but not cost efficient. that’s the point, hydrogen can never compete with battery cars or petrol cars.

It also depends on whether the green lobby get their way - I think they will determine our path.

well unless the green lobby have a favour or two to call in from god to change the laws of thermodynamics i don’t think any amount of lobbying will help!!

[Guest Steve Cook]

Sorry, posting a lot.

But in summary

Hydrogen cars have no future: 100% guaranteed. The cost of producing hydrogen from non fossil fuels is magnitudes greater than the cost of petrol or electricity.

Electric cars do have a future because the cost of the energy per mile is cheaper or comparable. But that is not a big enough saving to warrant paying $10s of thousands of dollars more. So electric cars will do well if their price is comparable to the petrol cars.

Petrol/diesel cars: Almost perfect machines bar the fact that fossil fuels will one day run out (although that might take 50 years plus)

You appear to be arguing that electric motors are more energetically efficient than IC mile for mile. OK, for argument's sake, I can buy that.

However, where is the energy coming from? I am assuming that, for arguments sake it is coming from primarily hydrocarbon based power plants (oil, gas, coal). that being the case, one would ordinarily make the perfectly reasonable assumption that transferring the energy from one form (hydrocarbons) to another form (electricity) must be less efficient that consuming the original energy source in the first place.

I am assuming you would reply to this by stating that when the hydrocarbons are burned at the power plant, they are not having to move a vehicle around and so most of their energy is not being lost in this way. This means that more of it can be directly turned to electricity. This electricity can then be used sufficiently more efficiently to move a vehicle around that this fact is able to offset the energy loss incurred in the conversion from hydrocarbons to electricity.

Is this what you are trying to suggest?

If it is, then you are merely suggesting a more efficient use of hydrocarbons. Fair enough (if true). but, it still doesn't deal with the elephant in the room. Namely that we are passing, or have already poassed the peak of production of light sweet crude.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to suggest that this electricity is going to be produced from other sources of primary energy, we get back to the old problem of what exactly this is going to be.

[Guest Steve Cook]

.

[Rapid Descent]

the cost of production is the show stopper, not the actual production. i can produce hydrogen in my garage, but not at sub 3p per kWh, more like 300p per kWh.

You keep telling us it is a show stopper yet ignoring the fact that the Californians are actively producing and distributing hydrogen, at rates quite competitively with petrol. Of course, it works okay in Ca because of the climate there. It wouldn't work in the UK, but not for the reasons you cite.

it isnt a problem. most cars are in use for perhaps sub 2 hours a day. the other 22 hours they sit around and can be charged.

You do not understand the economics of owning a car.

firstly hydrogen mileage is also somewhat limited.

you can get 600 miles out of a battery car, no problem, it just means carrying another 250 kg of batteries.

the same is true for hydrogen, to go 600 miles you need a big heavy tank.

range is not an advantage for hydrogen cars.

and i think your wrong about frequent long mileage trips.

how often do people do 150mile plus trips?

for those people they can rent a booster pack and get 600miles a charge. then hand it back. simple.

People do 150mile plus trips more often than you realise. It should be obvious that people aren't doing 2000 seven mile trips a year to make up the annual mileage figures. And once again, it is abundantly clear from what you say here that you just do not understand the economics of car driving. You are basically asking why do something simple, cheap and convenient (refill petrol/hydrogen car) when you can do something very inconvenient and expensive which compromises the car in many ways (hire an extra battery pack). Even the extra battery pack has limited range (fancy a driving trip to the Nurburgring from the UK? Oops not gonna happen in an electric car), adds considerable weight (which will wreck acceleration and handling) and likely uses up what little luggage space is left in the car (nobody would want luggage space on a long trip though, would they?).

Seriously, your suggestion of renting a battery pack as a credible alternative to refilling is cloud cuckoo land stuff.

where did you get your information??

hydrogen gas compressed at 700bar, which is quite a lot, has an energy density of 5.6MJ per litre (which excludes the volume of the tank holding the compressed gas). in comparison petrol has a density of 35MJ per litre.

so you need 7 times as much space as petrol to store hydrogen (not inc the tanks)

by comparison, batteries are just over 1MJ per litre (but taking the 90% efficiency vs 20% into account, batteries are the equivalent of 4.5MJ per KG)

so you have

petrol: 35MJ/L

hydrogen: 5.6MJ/L (not inc volume of tank)

Batteries: 4.5MJ/L

Where do you get your comprehension skills? I clearly said hydrogen was crap compared to petrol / diesel. So I talk about energy density... and you compare it to petrol. Duh. I was comparing it to batteries, and as you correctly confirm, hydrogen is better. What's more, a full tank of hydrogen in a honda FCX clarity - which gives a range of 280 miles, better than the Tesla S and now old tech - weighs a staggering 4.1 kg. How much does the battery weigh again?

The points are simple and clear cut. Hydrogen is a real option if the fuel cells can be made to work in cold climate. (You keep referring to "burning" hydrogen at 20% efficiency, fuel cells directly convert hydrogen to electricity with a higher efficiency than this - so your numbers are just wrong). Batteries need to solve the recharging problem. Until then, petrol/diesel (or LPG) will continue to be the only sensible choice.

Lack of heater / air con is still a major drawback of electric cars. Of course a petrol burner is always an option here :-)

[cells]

You appear to be arguing that electric motors are more energetically efficient than IC mile for mile. OK, for argument's sake, I can buy that.

However, where is the energy coming from? I am assuming that, for arguments sake it is coming from primarily hydrocarbon based power plants (oil, gas, coal). that being the case, one would ordinarily make the perfectly reasonable assumption that transferring the energy from one form (hydrocarbons) to another form (electricity) must be less efficient that consuming the original energy source in the first place.

I am assuming you would reply to this by stating that when the hydrocarbons are burned at the power plant, they are not having to move a vehicle around and so most of their energy is not being lost in this way. This means that more of it can be directly turned to electricity. This electricity can then be used sufficiently more efficiently to move a vehicle around that this fact is able to offset the energy loss incurred in the conversion from hydrocarbons to electricity.

Is this what you are trying to suggest?

If it is, then you are merely suggesting a more efficient use of hydrocarbons. Fair enough (if true). but, it still doesn't deal with the elephant in the room. Namely that we are passing, or have already poassed the peak of production of light sweet crude.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to suggest that this electricity is going to be produced from other sources of primary energy, we get back to the old problem of what exactly this is going to be.

You wrongly presume that the average person cares about peak oil. No we are far more concerned with the cost of energy.

Now, the simple fact is that an electric car costs less to drive per mile (or at lest the fuel costs less).

Simply put, petrol costs about 3.5p per kWh but only 20% of that is converted into useful energy so the equivalent price is 17.5p per kWh.

Electricity costs 6p per kWh (you can get it for 3p at night or 10p in the day, but say 6p average). 80% of that is converted into useful energy so the equivalent cost is 7.5p per kWh. Even if we take a worst case of 10p for electricity it still only costs 12.5p per kWh equivalent.

Thus, if there is an electric car, a petrol car, the maintenance costs are the same and the cars cost the same. Then you would choose the electric car because it is cheaper to drive per mile. Potentially half the price per mile in energy or less.

Now with the people that are concerned with peak oil.

Well electric cars would make it such that peak oil is irrelevant, much more important would be peak energy. Because we will be able to power our cars with coal or gas or nuclear or….

And for the people concerned with efficiency. A gas power plant is 49% efficient, transmission losses are less than 10%, charging losses are less than 10% and the motor is 90% efficient. Thus the fossil fuel to wheel efficiency is 36.5%.

In comparison a petrol/diesel engine is 20-25% efficient.

Thus efficiency wise converting all cars to electric would be equal to removing 40% of all the cars on the road. Which is a lot! If your more concerned by CO2 it is even better because gas produces less CO2 per unit of energy vs petrol. Plus a power station miles away is a lot less polluting than breathing in the exhaust of a diesel car.

And just FYI we would only need 7-10GW of nuclear to power all our personal car energy needs. That is just 4 nuclear plants. (in comparison we produce some 45-50GW of electricity already.) So adding 10GW of nuclear to have “green†electric cars would not be difficult.

[cells]

You keep telling us it is a show stopper yet ignoring the fact that the Californians are actively producing and distributing hydrogen, at rates quite competitively with petrol. Of course, it works okay in Ca because of the climate there. It wouldn't work in the UK, but not for the reasons you cite.

they likely produce it from natural gas which means it costs some 5p per kWh which is acceptable vs petrol 3.5p per kWh.

care to point to a source of hydrogen not from fossil fuels for sub 14p per kWh (which is 4x petrol)

You do not understand the economics of owning a car.

what part do you disagree on?

most of us don’t use our cars for 23 hours and 50 minutes a day to require a 10min recharge.

most of us sleep, for many hours, during which we can charge our cars.

plus the 45min is a full charge. if you need just say 40 miles that is sub 10mins charge

People do 150mile plus trips more often than you realise. It should be obvious that people aren't doing 2000 seven mile trips a year to make up the annual mileage figures. And once again, it is abundantly clear from what you say here that you just do not understand the economics of car driving. You are basically asking why do something simple, cheap and convenient (refill petrol/hydrogen car) when you can do something very inconvenient and expensive which compromises the car in many ways (hire an extra battery pack). Even the extra battery pack has limited range (fancy a driving trip to the Nurburgring from the UK? Oops not gonna happen in an electric car), adds considerable weight (which will wreck acceleration and handling) and likely uses up what little luggage space is left in the car (nobody would want luggage space on a long trip though, would they?).

Clearly petrol is better than batteries when it comes to long distance but hydrogen is no better than batteries.

hydrogen isn’t a liquid, you need to store it in big bulky heavy tanks under pressure.

i already showed you that hydrogen energy density is WORSE than batteries. So how is hydrogen more convenient for range?

plus you are still wrong, most people very rarely do more than 150 miles.

how often do you do nearly 200 miles??

i do it perhaps once or twice a year but that is because i live 250miles from my parents. the range still wouldn’t bother me much as i tend to stop off at a service anyhow

Seriously, your suggestion of renting a battery pack as a credible alternative to refilling is cloud cuckoo land stuff.

you don’t have to rent it, you can just purchase a model with a bigger battery if range is important to you. You can get 600 miles if you like but it will probably mean another 250kg or so.

for most people who do very very few long trips a year if any, we can choose to rent a booster pack for those times if required.

Where do you get your comprehension skills? I clearly said hydrogen was crap compared to petrol / diesel. So I talk about energy density... and you compare it to petrol. Duh. I was comparing it to batteries, and as you correctly confirm, hydrogen is better. What's more, a full tank of hydrogen in a honda FCX clarity - which gives a range of 280 miles, better than the Tesla S and now old tech - weighs a staggering 4.1 kg. How much does the battery weigh again?

they are coning you with propaganda.

i showed you the physical properties of hydrogen. its energy density is better than batteries IF YOU DO NOT INCLUDE THE WEIGHT OF THE BLOODY TANK HOLDING THE HYDROGEN. if you include that it is probably worse.

as for weight, sure the hydrogen may weigh 4.1kg to get 280 miles. that is great. but what about the 300kg bloody tank to hold the highly compressed hydrogen? or are you going to pry that the hydrogen stay in liquid form just by itself??

The points are simple and clear cut. Hydrogen is a real option if the fuel cells can be made to work in cold climate. (You keep referring to "burning" hydrogen at 20% efficiency, fuel cells directly convert hydrogen to electricity with a higher efficiency than this - so your numbers are just wrong). Batteries need to solve the recharging problem. Until then, petrol/diesel (or LPG) will continue to be the only sensible choice.

so your 4.1kg hydrogen sits in fuel cells which weight nothing?

and how do you introduce your 4.1kg of hydrogen into the fuel cell?

do you have a blimp sized balloon on roof to power the car?

or do you have a 300kg tank to hold the compressed gas?

plus all of it is irrelevant because we have no economical way to produce hydrogen apart from fossil fuels.

but if we have fossil fuels we will use it directly.

so please please please just go and find us a way to produce hydrogen at an economical cost. if you do you will indeed change the world.

however, the challenges are not small. You cannot use electricity due to cost. so your going to have to make it directly. how exactly are you going to do that for 2p per kWh??

we have nothing even close to that! In practise or in theory!

Lack of heater / air con is still a major drawback of electric cars. Of course a petrol burner is always an option here :-)

What makes you think an electric car would not have a heater or air con?

It would have both which would work off the batteries. Why is that difficult to understand?

[cells]

i love hydrogen

Seems there is a 300-mile model.

http://www.post1.net/lowem/entry/tesla_mod...0_60_mph_timing

But I guess your going to say it is useless for all those who like doing 900 mile trips to Rome in one 15 hour stint and that a very large portion of the population would want to do that trip.

[Rapid Descent]

they likely produce it from natural gas which means it costs some 5p per kWh which is acceptable vs petrol 3.5p per kWh.

care to point to a source of hydrogen not from fossil fuels for sub 14p per kWh (which is 4x petrol)

Utter rubbish. Electrolysis of water is 50%-80% efficient (depending on what you use for electrodes). Worst case (50% efficient) means it will only be a factor of 2x more than battery power. If use of exotic materials incurs no substantial cost when upscaling to industrial capacity (I honestly don't know whether it does or not) it will be only marginally less efficient than batteries.

what part do you disagree on?

Your understanding of how the bulk of people use their cars.

most of us don’t use our cars for 23 hours and 50 minutes a day to require a 10min recharge.

most of us sleep, for many hours, during which we can charge our cars.

The average mileage of a car in the UK is 12,000 miles. Do you really think that is made up with 5 trips a day at 7 miles? The vast majority of people regularly make long trips. Using your own travel as anecdotal evidence for what the rest of the UK does is idiotic. I sincerely hope the people developing electric cars have a better grasp of how cars are used than you have, or electricity is going nowhere fast.

Clearly petrol is better than batteries when it comes to long distance but hydrogen is no better than batteries.

Clearly petrol is better than batteries or hydrogen full stop. Your myopic focus on efficiency is quite ignorant. 99% efficiency is no use to anyone if it costs more than the world GDP to implement. Real world cost effectiveness is what counts, and neither battery or hydrogen suit that except for very narrow niche situations.

i already showed you that hydrogen energy density is WORSE than batteries. So how is hydrogen more convenient for range?

Sheesh it is obvious to all except you. Hydrogen has a marginally better density than batteries (as you demonstrated) and it is better for range because you just need a 2 minute fill up instead of the retarded idea of renting a second battery, doubling the weight of your car, wrecking the performance and handling (and braking), reducing carrying capacity and substantially increasing cost.

plus you are still wrong, most people very rarely do more than 150 miles.

how often do you do nearly 200 miles??

Often enough not to want to own two cars to do it or adopt any of your daft schemes. "Rare" does not mean "never". People want flexibility from their vehicles.

they are coning you with propaganda.

LOL

i showed you the physical properties of hydrogen. its energy density is better than batteries IF YOU DO NOT INCLUDE THE WEIGHT OF THE BLOODY TANK HOLDING THE HYDROGEN. if you include that it is probably worse.

as for weight, sure the hydrogen may weigh 4.1kg to get 280 miles. that is great. but what about the 300kg bloody tank to hold the highly compressed hydrogen? or are you going to pry that the hydrogen stay in liquid form just by itself??

The honda fcx weighs 1600kg - not much more than a modern diesel saloon. We'll wait and see for its release date how the Tesla manages.

however, the challenges are not small. You cannot use electricity due to cost. so your going to have to make it directly. how exactly are you going to do that for 2p per kWh??

we have nothing even close to that! In practise or in theory!

Firstly, your estimates for hydrogen production are way off. Secondly, the cost of the fuel is only one part of the equation - the rest of the equation is cheap for hydrogen, staggeringly expensive for batteries.

What makes you think an electric car would not have a heater or air con?

It would have both which would work off the batteries. Why is that difficult to understand?

LOL, which utterly destroys the range of the vehicle... fantastic... we'll see if those features make it.

As for inventing quotes for me "i love hydrogen", that sums it all up really - you come across like a 12 year old. I've made it clear I don't care for hydrogen or batteries today, and I'm not stupid enough to make pointless predictions about the future.

[OnionTerror]

Of course Hydrogen is going to cost a bit more at the moment, as it is a new technology - especially when its compared to other forms of fuel. Its like when the DVD player was initially brought out..a bog standard player was around 600 quid. As the technology matured, and more mass produced, its now possible to pick one up for around 15 quid. As Hydrogen technology is refined and improved, it will get cheaper, more robost and durable. Again, i'm talking about the next 30,40,50 years plus, not next week.

I think we're barking down the completely wrong route, if we think batteries are the way forward.

[cells]

Utter rubbish. Electrolysis of water is 50%-80% efficient (depending on what you use for electrodes). Worst case (50% efficient) means it will only be a factor of 2x more than battery power. If use of exotic materials incurs no substantial cost when upscaling to industrial capacity (I honestly don't know whether it does or not) it will be only marginally less efficient than batteries.

and what about the cost of the plant, the wages of the workers, the maintenance costs? the taxes?

6p electricity will go to 12p hydrogen

then your probably looking at doubling that again to 24p for all the other real costs.

then your looking at burning hydrogen which increases it to over 100p

if you use a fuel cell your looking at the 50p range.

Electricity is sub 10p, petrol is sub 20p.

The average mileage of a car in the UK is 12,000 miles. Do you really think that is made up with 5 trips a day at 7 miles? The vast majority of people regularly make long trips. Using your own travel as anecdotal evidence for what the rest of the UK does is idiotic. I sincerely hope the people developing electric cars have a better grasp of how cars are used than you have, or electricity is going nowhere fast.

Do you care to tell us how often you drive >200 miles in a single trip?

Is it a real concern if 99% of people don’t drive > 200 miles 99% of the time?

Clearly petrol is better than batteries or hydrogen full stop. Your myopic focus on efficiency is quite ignorant. 99% efficiency is no use to anyone if it costs more than the world GDP to implement. Real world cost effectiveness is what counts, and neither battery or hydrogen suit that except for very narrow niche situations.

Electricity does work as a fuel for transport. Hydrogen doesn’t, never will.

if you can make a decent electric car at sub £15k then you will sell millions.

if you can make a decent hydrogen car you will sell very few as the cost of the fuel will be at least 10x more than petrol.

Sheesh it is obvious to all except you. Hydrogen has a marginally better density than batteries (as you demonstrated) and it is better for range because you just need a 2 minute fill up instead of the retarded idea of renting a second battery, doubling the weight of your car, wrecking the performance and handling (and braking), reducing carrying capacity and substantially increasing cost.

what is the weight to energy ratio of compressed hydrogen?

this site is suggesting 35 to 1 ratio using very very expensive composite materials. http://www.planetforlife.com/h2/h2swiss.html

that would give an energy density of 0.45kWh per kg, compared to 0.50kWh per kg for batteries.

so you would need a 200kg tank to give you the same range as a 200kg battery pack.

Plus you exclude the weight of the fuel cells, which will be a lot. Take your fuel cells into account and your probably looking at hydrogen being 50% or more in weight for the same amount of energy.

Firstly, your estimates for hydrogen production are way off. Secondly, the cost of the fuel is only one part of the equation - the rest of the equation is cheap for hydrogen, staggeringly expensive for batteries

no my estimates are fine, your estimate for hydrogen production seems to be about 12p but your magically producing the hydrogen with no staff to pay, no building to build, no maintenance to do. in reality it will probably be > 25p and that is before you take into account inefficiencies in the fuel cell or ICE.

care to tell us the "rest of the equation" that is cheap for hydrogen?

is it the big heavy fuel cells?

is it the big heavy tanks to store the hydrogen in?

is it the pipeline infrastructure you would need to build to deliver hydrogen to stations?

is it the new power stations needed to power the new hydrogen plants which are cheap?

LOL, which utterly destroys the range of the vehicle... fantastic... we'll see if those features make it.

it will lower the range but not considerably.

your looking at 500 watts , 1kw max to heat the inside of the car. the battery pack is about 50kWh which means you could heat it for 50-100 hours. or the heater would take 0.5KW of about 5KW power when running the car. or mileage would be impacted by 10%.

so in those times you want heating, your range will go from 200 miles to 180 miles.

Big deal

As for inventing quotes for me "i love hydrogen", that sums it all up really - you come across like a 12 year old. I've made it clear I don't care for hydrogen or batteries today, and I'm not stupid enough to make pointless predictions about the future.

well your wrong about hydrogen, and you did make pointless predictions about the future, how hydrogen would be the fuel to save us.

[cells]

Of course Hydrogen is going to cost a bit more at the moment, as it is a new technology - especially when its compared to other forms of fuel. Its like when the DVD player was initially brought out..a bog standard player was around 600 quid. As the technology matured, and more mass produced, its now possible to pick one up for around 15 quid. As Hydrogen technology is refined and improved, it will get cheaper, more robost and durable. Again, i'm talking about the next 30,40,50 years plus, not next week.

I think we're barking down the completely wrong route, if we think batteries are the way forward.

That is the thing; hydrogen production will never be cheaper than petrol or electricity in batteries.

The simple fact is that using electricity at 6p, there is no way you can make hydrogen cheaper than 6p. And that is if it was 100% efficient and there were no bills to pay.

In reality your looking at 12p to take efficiency into account, then double that to take into account that you need to build plants and pay wages etc.

So you have 24p.

Then take into account burning it in an ICE and your up to nearly £1 per kWh.

There is nothing you can do about any of those things. You cannot mass manufacture away the laws of physics. The only part you may be able to improve is the cost of the plant plus wages etc and the efficiency.

Even if we get it to 100% efficient and reduce the cost of wages/plants etc to 50% that gives 9p for hydrogen. Then 45p after the ICE.

Well compare that to petrol at 17.5p or electric cars at 10p.

Hydrogen will never ever be used in cars on mass.

And if you could produce hydrogen for 10p at the ICE (ie 2p per kWh) then we would not be using it for cars. We would be using it for other things, such as producing electricity in turbines instead of using natural gas etc.

[Rare Bear]

Of course Hydrogen is going to cost a bit more at the moment, as it is a new technology - especially when its compared to other forms of fuel. Its like when the DVD player was initially brought out..a bog standard player was around 600 quid. As the technology matured, and more mass produced, its now possible to pick one up for around 15 quid. As Hydrogen technology is refined and improved, it will get cheaper, more robost and durable. Again, i'm talking about the next 30,40,50 years plus, not next week.

I think we're barking down the completely wrong route, if we think batteries are the way forward.

The fact is that in order to produce free hydrogen for fuel you have to seperate it from something to which it is chemicly bonded. For example water is H2O, the product you get by burning hydrogen in oxygen. The burning releases energy, in your case the energy to drive your car. To relese the hydrogen you have to supply energy to break the bond between the oxygen and the hydrogen. If the process were 100% efficient you would have to supply the same abount of energy from somewhere as you would get by burning the hydrogen. People here quote about 50% efficiency for electrolysis so yoy have to input twice as much energay to the process as you get out as there is hydrogen energy.

You may of course know a way to get better than 100% efficiency, in which case you have just invented the perpetual motion machine.

Next you have to compress or compress and liquify the hydrogen to fit it into you fuel tank and that takes energy too, thing of a sort of suber scuba tank compresser plus a super fridge cooling system. Lots of energy.

Then you have to contain and transport the stuff.

Haveing got all this expensive hydrogen energy you then burn it in an internal combustion engine at the same sort of efficiency as a current petrol engine.

Overall not really sensible, the fundamentals sre just against it.

Batteries or supercapaciters on the other hand probably will prove practical or at least there does not appear to be any basic reason why they cannot contimue to be developed. They are never going to be 100% efficient but instead of turning their stored energy into mechanical energy in an internal combustion engine at 20-30% efficiency the electrical energy is turned into mechanical energy at efficencies > 90% plus you have the advantage of usefull regerative brakeing if the batteries can be recharged fast.

Of course you still have to get the energy from somewhere in the first place.

[cells]

The fact is that in order to produce free hydrogen for fuel you have to seperate it from something to which it is chemicly bonded. For example water is H2O, the product you get by burning hydrogen in oxygen. The burning releases energy, in your case the energy to drive your car. To relese the hydrogen you have to supply energy to break the bond between the oxygen and the hydrogen. If the process were 100% efficient you would have to supply the same abount of energy from somewhere as you would get by burning the hydrogen. People here quote about 50% efficiency for electrolysis so yoy have to input twice as much energay to the process as you get out as there is hydrogen energy.

You may of course know a way to get better than 100% efficiency, in which case you have just invented the perpetual motion machine.

Next you have to compress or compress and liquify the hydrogen to fit it into you fuel tank and that takes energy too, thing of a sort of suber scuba tank compresser plus a super fridge cooling system. Lots of energy.

Then you have to contain and transport the stuff.

Haveing got all this expensive hydrogen energy you then burn it in an internal combustion engine at the same sort of efficiency as a current petrol engine.

Overall not really sensible, the fundamentals sre just against it.

Batteries or supercapaciters on the other hand probably will prove practical or at least there does not appear to be any basic reason why they cannot contimue to be developed. They are never going to be 100% efficient but instead of turning their stored energy into mechanical energy in an internal combustion engine at 20-30% efficiency the electrical energy is turned into mechanical energy at efficencies > 90% plus you have the advantage of usefull regerative brakeing if the batteries can be recharged fast.

Of course you still have to get the energy from somewhere in the first place.

Yep the economics say no before you even consider the science which says highly unlikely.

If there was no “global warming†induced scare of CO2 and we found somewhere somehow a huge deposit of hydrogen which was effectively free. The first thing engineers would be looking at is combining this free hydrogen with coal to form synthetic petrol/diesel.

Hydrogen has no future for so many fundamental reasons.

BTW the energy required for the UK car fleet is about 30 gigawatts of petrol/diesel.

If you convert that to electricity it would require only about 8 gigawatts of electricity.

That is equivalent to 4 nuclear power plants so we could easily build the 4 nuclear plants required to go from petrol/diesel to non fossil fuels. By comparison we currently produce about 50GW of electricity so adding another 8GW is not a big challenge.

[Rapid Descent]

and what about the cost of the plant, the wages of the workers, the maintenance costs? the taxes?

6p electricity will go to 12p hydrogen

then your probably looking at doubling that again to 24p for all the other real costs.

then your looking at burning hydrogen which increases it to over 100p

if you use a fuel cell your looking at the 50p range.

Electricity is sub 10p, petrol is sub 20p.

Who is talking about burning hydrogen? Why do you keep introducing that red herring into the debate?

Then spread the massive capital cost of the battery and you find that electricity is well over £1. Plus it has the slow charge inconvenience which the other two don't have; this has some value as well (difficult to put a price on). So we get back to the conclusion that battery or hydrogen are equally crap and petrol is the only sensible option.

Do you care to tell us how often you drive >200 miles in a single trip?

Is it a real concern if 99% of people don’t drive > 200 miles 99% of the time?

Again, you make a fundamental mistake. People only need to make a few long journeys a year for the electric car to be a complete pain in the neck. Curiously, I didn't respond to this yesterday because rather than spend my evening dicking about on the net I went to meet a friend at a pub. Round trip was 150 miles (should have been 140 miles, but on the way home they closed a motorway junction, didn't sign it, and a lorry had crashed at the next junction which meant sitting in a traffic jam for half an hour). 150 miles is a long trip for an evening, so I don't want to travel at a snails pace. Luckily part of the route between us is private test track so I could sit at 100mph or so for those sections. If I was in an electric car with 200 mile range, I would have needed to park the car up with somewhere to charge it (given we were at a pub in the middle of nowhere, fairly unlikely) or I would have been forced to double my journey time (because lets face it, the 200 mile spec range doesn't happen when your driving style includes "making progress" as the IAM like to say). I simply don't think the journey I just made last night would be particularly viable in an electric car. Hydrogen - probably, because I could just fuel up in the same way as a normal car if I had run out of juice.

Electricity does work as a fuel for transport. Hydrogen doesn’t, never will.

if you can make a decent electric car at sub £15k then you will sell millions.

if you can make a decent hydrogen car you will sell very few as the cost of the fuel will be at least 10x more than petrol.

You're making a distinction without a difference; hydrogen is just a means to use electricity, nothing else.

so you would need a 200kg tank to give you the same range as a 200kg battery pack.

Plus you exclude the weight of the fuel cells, which will be a lot. Take your fuel cells into account and your probably looking at hydrogen being 50% or more in weight for the same amount of energy.

I admit to knowing nothing about storing hydrogen, and couldn't find a weight for the clarity's fuel tank. So I did a bit of digging on the internet (sorry but I'm not going to take your word for it). Apparently a type IV polymer CGH2 tank (the only one that can really safely manage 700bar pressure) that carries 145 litres weighs about 45kg. The clarity has a 170 litre tank, so this is a fair comparison. (The clarity tank may be heavier, but the figure quoted here is achievable).

The Tesla roadster battery pack weighs in at 409kg for 53kWh. Ouch. Your "200kg to 200kg" comparison is way out, even if you include the extra weight incurred by the fuel cell (which, for the clarity, provides approx 100kW from a cell weighing less than 100kg).

no my estimates are fine, your estimate for hydrogen production seems to be about 12p but your magically producing the hydrogen with no staff to pay, no building to build, no maintenance to do. in reality it will probably be > 25p and that is before you take into account inefficiencies in the fuel cell or ICE.

We already pay similar for petrol, so I don't see that as a show stopper. H2 would cost more than petrol since it requires 3x the number of tankers to transport the same amount of energy. But you forget the massive capital cost of the infrastructure to make your battery-based transport work. Charging points everywhere.

care to tell us the "rest of the equation" that is cheap for hydrogen?

is it the big heavy fuel cells?

is it the big heavy tanks to store the hydrogen in?

is it the pipeline infrastructure you would need to build to deliver hydrogen to stations?

is it the new power stations needed to power the new hydrogen plants which are cheap?

The "big heavy" fuel cells and tanks are, as noted, lighter than batteries. H2 would most likely be delivered by tanker. Both batteries and hydrogen would require new power plants. So... no real credible advantage to batteries over hydrogen here. And just to make it clear, I still think batteries AND hydrogen suck in equal measure.

it will lower the range but not considerably.

your looking at 500 watts , 1kw max to heat the inside of the car. the battery pack is about 50kWh which means you could heat it for 50-100 hours. or the heater would take 0.5KW of about 5KW power when running the car. or mileage would be impacted by 10%.

so in those times you want heating, your range will go from 200 miles to 180 miles.

Big deal

There are so many things that reduce the range though. They add up. Battery 4 years / 50k miles old? Range reduced by 30%. Air con on? Range reduced by 20% (air con needs more power than heaters). Lights, wipers and radio on in a traffic jam? Knock a few more percent off. In a hurry and driving "enthusiastically"? Range reduced by 40%. It doesn't take much to drop your 200 miles to below 100 miles.

well your wrong about hydrogen, and you did make pointless predictions about the future, how hydrogen would be the fuel to save us.

Where, exactly, did I say any such thing? I said from the outset that hydrogen was crap, just like batteries are. They are crap for different reasons. The advocacy that you think I have for hydrogen doesn't exist, and it appears that way to you only because you have such a huge blind spot for the fundamental problems with battery powered cars. There are key problems with both that need solving - batteries need to get the weight down, and improve charge time. Hydrogen needs to solve the cold weather problem with fuel cells. I'm not going to second guess the breakthroughs that may or may not happen to solve these.

Back on topic, apparently Tesla have already backed off on the claimed 300 miles for the S, it's now down to 225 miles as reality gets in the way. As I said, I don't like predicting the future, and it will be interesting to see what Tesla achieves. I'm not holding my breath for it, though.

[cells]

Where, exactly, did I say any such thing? I said from the outset that hydrogen was crap, just like batteries are. They are crap for different reasons. The advocacy that you think I have for hydrogen doesn't exist, and it appears that way to you only because you have such a huge blind spot for the fundamental problems with battery powered cars. There are key problems with both that need solving - batteries need to get the weight down, and improve charge time. Hydrogen needs to solve the cold weather problem with fuel cells. I'm not going to second guess the breakthroughs that may or may not happen to solve these.

I agree with you that they are both crap in comparison to petrol. However if electric cars can be made for a similar price to petrol cars then they will be competitive. You also need to look at the price advantage of the fuel for an electric car. Charge your car at night and you get your fuel for 3p, to wheel that is 3.7p per kWh vs 17.5p for petrol. So you fuel costs goes down 80%.

If you happen to do 50 miles to work and 50miles back everyday you will value 80% off your fuel cost. The only downside for now is range and charge time, but that wouldn't be a problem for most people.

If hydrogen cars were the same price. People still would not purchase them because the price to wheel will be >50p per kWh (in fuel cells). That is 10 times electric and more than double petrol.

Anyway, I will make this prediction for you.

By 2020 we will have at least 20 million full electric or series hybrid electric cars (ie 90% of the lives of those cars will be electric, other 10% will be petrol) on the roads worldwide.

There will be no significant number of hydrogen cars.

By 2030 we will have 100 million electric or series hybrid electric cars on the road.

There will still be no significant number of hydrogen cars on the road.

[Rapid Descent]

Anyway, I will make this prediction for you.

By 2020 we will have at least 20 million full electric or series hybrid electric cars (ie 90% of the lives of those cars will be electric, other 10% will be petrol) on the roads worldwide.

LOL, not really sticking your neck out there. Hybrids are, by definition, petrol engined cars with very small battery packs which get around all the disadvantages of an electric car by basically being a petrol car with some added gimmicks. I appreciate they do manage some small advantages (e.g. regenerative braking) which can aid fuel economy around town (but not so much on the motorway). I'm unconvinced they offer better value for money than an ordinary car, but then they aren't much worse either and the green crowd like to drive them as a badge of honour.

Anyway, there are already 1.2 million Toyota Prius' being sold. They sell not because they are an electric car, but because they're a petrol car. So you're basically predicting 20 million petrol cars (with gimmicks) over the next 11 years. Not a particularly staggering prediction, to be honest.

[cells]

LOL, not really sticking your neck out there. Hybrids are, by definition, petrol engined cars with very small battery packs which get around all the disadvantages of an electric car by basically being a petrol car with some added gimmicks. I appreciate they do manage some small advantages (e.g. regenerative braking) which can aid fuel economy around town (but not so much on the motorway). I'm unconvinced they offer better value for money than an ordinary car, but then they aren't much worse either and the green crowd like to drive them as a badge of honour.

Anyway, there are already 1.2 million Toyota Prius' being sold. They sell not because they are an electric car, but because they're a petrol car. So you're basically predicting 20 million petrol cars (with gimmicks) over the next 11 years. Not a particularly staggering prediction, to be honest.

as far as i know there are no series hybrids out yet.

the Toyota prius is a parallel hybrid which means it has both batteries and a petrol engine directly connected to the transmission.

a series hybrid would be a pure electric car but with a generator, not an engine, to directly power the electric motor and or the batteries. the advantage to a series hybrid would be that most of its life it would not use the petrol engine. so for example if it had a 50 mile range on the batteries before the generator kicked in, then for most people most of the time it would be pure electric. if i had one, it would be pure electric apart from one or two trips a year where i do > 50 miles in a day.

The benefits of a series hybrid are all of the ones of an electric car. no need for gears, high torque at all RPM, 90% plus efficient electric motor, almost no energy consumption when in a traffic jam, a electric motor will last far longer and require far less maintenance, regenerative breaking, very low tailpipe emissions most of the time.

when it exceed its battery pack range, the small petrol/diesel/LPG generator kicks in. it only needs to be small because it is providing a constant RPM efficient energy. normal car engines need to be large and inefficient because they need to work at many RPM and need lots of power to accelerate while a generator would only need to produce an average power and the batteries buffer acceleration etc.

the generator could also be a lot more efficient than a typical cars engine which is about 20% efficient. the most efficient fixed diesel engine in the world slightly exceeds 50% but it is huge. If normal fixed diesel engines are somewhere in between current car diesel engines and the most efficient, it would mean about 37.5 % efficient. take generator losses and charging losses into account and you have about 32% efficiency vs the current 20-25%. Thus even when using fuel the MPG should be about 40% better. Hence 60mpg on the motorway turns to 85mpg on the motorway.

Presumably it would be a lot better in city driving when a normal car engine efficiency is worse than 20% while the generator would be the same efficiency all the time.

[cells]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crower_six_stroke

The engine cold starts on the Otto cycle, coasting through the fifth and sixth strokes for a short period. After the combustion chamber temperature reaches approximately 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 °C), a mechanical operation phases in the fifth and sixth strokes. Just before the fifth stroke, water is injected directly into the hot combustion chamber via the engine's fuel injector pump, creating steam and another power stroke. The phase change from liquid to steam removes the excess heat of the combustion stroke forcing the piston down (a second power stroke). As a substantial portion of engine heat now leaves the cylinder in the form of steam, no cooling system radiator is required. Energy that is dissipated in conventional arrangements by the radiation cooling system has been converted into additional power strokes.

Seems cleaver. They claim it will improve efficiency by 60%. So an engine will go from 20-25% efficient to 33-40% efficient.

That is a good improvement if it is accurate. Should take a car at 60mpg to nearly 100mpg.

However just imagining the water going into the hot engine, I don’t think the water will evaporate quickly enough into steam to provide power. Perhaps if the water is preheated at some pressure it might work.

[blankster]

I posted a link to the Lotus-derived Tesla on another thread about electric cars on HPC. It's very impressive.

Even more impressive is the Japanese battery powered 8-wheel Eliica, which has reached 230 mph. That is just a research car though, not intended for production. The reason the car has 8 wheels is because it has 8 hub-mounted electric motors of 80 bhp each. These were the most powerful hub motors they could produce, and the car needed over 600 bhp, so 8 motors - 8 wheels!

Of more relevance to every day use was an experimental car described in Autocar this week, based on a Ford S-Max. It is a range-extender electric car, with a gas-turbine powered auxiliary generator. The car works primarily as a battery electric charged by plugging into the mains, and partially topped up by regenerative braking. After about 40 miles, the batteries start to run low and the generator starts up to recharge them. The principle is the same as the Chevrolet Volt, except that insead of the generator being powered by a petrol reciprocating engine, it's powered by s small industrial gas turbine that would normally burn diesel fuel but could be adapted to burn petrol of LPG.

Gas turbines were tried in cars and trucks in the 1950's and 60's but ther were not really suitable for harnessing to a mechanical drivetrain because of the constant need to vary their operating speed. They were not economical. But in a different set-up, where the small gas-turbine operates a generator at a constant speed and load, intermitently, the maker claims it is clean and economical. Although a gas-turbine (i.e. jet engine) needs to be made to very precise engineering tolerances, the one used in the converted S-Max only has one moving part, the turbine/impeller/shaft unit.

Re. the 6-stroke combined diesel/steam engine - I read about one of these - don't know if it's the same one - it was supposed to have worked well, but with some shorcomings, like the lubricating oil being degraded very rapidly and, more obviously, loads of steam coming out of the exhaust!

BMW have been experimenting with a 'Turbosteamer' system. This is a small boiler heated by the engine's exhaust exhaust, that generates steam to drive small steam turbine, which in turn drives a small generator. The current generated is fed to an electric motor geared to the engine flywheel (I think). The turbosteamer is a closed steam circuit, with a steam condenser, so the car doesn't make clouds of steam.