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Hydrogen fuel cell cars could one day challenge electric cars in the race for pollution-free roads—but only if more stations are built to fuel them.
Honda, Toyota and Hyundai have leased a few hundred fuel cell vehicles over the past three years, and expect to lease well over 1,000 this year. But for now, those leases are limited to California, which is home to most of the 34 public hydrogen fueling stations in the U.S.
Undaunted, automakers are investing heavily in the technology. General Motors recently supplied the U.S. Army with a fuel cell pickup, and GM and Honda are collaborating on a fuel cell system due out by 2020. Hyundai will introduce a longer-range fuel cell SUV next year.
"We've clearly left the science project stage and the technology is viable," said Charles Freese, who heads GM's fuel cell business.
Like pure electric cars, fuel cell cars run quietly and emission-free. But they have some big advantages. Fuel cell cars can be refueled as quickly as gasoline-powered cars. By contrast, it takes nine hours to fully recharge an all-electric Chevrolet Bolt using a 240-volt home charger. Fuel cells cars can also travel further between fill-ups.
Would you rather trade in your gas-guzzler for a hydrogen fuel cell car, or an electric car?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by WalksOnDirt on Sunday April 16 2017, @04:51PM (3 children)
1. Energy density depends on the pressure. At the pressure currently in use I believe hydrogen is better than current batteries. The specific energy of hydrogen (which some people wrongly refer to as energy density) is much better than batteries.
2. Pressurized hydrogen has been chosen by the industry but it's not the only possible method.
3. With modern tanks hydrogen leaks very slowly. It doesn't appear to be a problem.
4. Maybe rocks are a hazard. It's hard to be sure.
5. What rare earths are you talking about? I'm not aware of any used in fuel cells. Platinum is expensive but it's not a rare earth.
6. The suppliers claim the tanks will last ten years.
1. Hydrogen burns with a wider variation in fuel/air proportion than gasoline or diesel.
Hydrogen look like a really stupid choice for cars but you need to work on your reasons. Others here have much better reasons to avoid it.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:11PM
> Pressurized hydrogen has been chosen by the industry but it's not the only possible method.
The U.S. government evaluated several methods. On page 6 of their report, they show cryogenic storage of hydrogen, or adsorption on the metal-organic framework MOF-177 as having greater capacity than pressurised storage at 700 atm. MOF-177 adsorbs the most hydrogen when it's cold and when significant pressure is applied. From pages 33 and 34 of their report I see that they studied it at 100 K and 250 atm.
https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review10/st001_ahluwalia_2010_o_web.pdf [energy.gov]
I found the link to the report in Wikipedia's article about hydrogen storage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage#Automotive_Onboard_hydrogen_storage [wikipedia.org]
More about MOF-177:
http://www.ijee.ieefoundation.org/vol4/issue1/IJEE_11_v4n1.pdf [ieefoundation.org]
(Score: 1) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Monday April 17 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)
Most catalysts used are Pd. Some research is going into using Scandium. Neither Pd or Sc are plentiful enough to be used for widespread hydrogen cars.
That alone makes this whole hydrogen fuel-cell adventure nonsensical.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Monday April 17 2017, @01:21AM
Of course, that's also not a rare earth.
I hadn't heard of that before. From googling, I see it is used in solid oxide fuel cells. Interesting, but not currently used in the car market.
Palladium is rare but scandium isn't. It's about as common as lithium in the Earth's crust. Deposits are spread out and it's difficult to refine, though, so it's not as cheap to produce. Most of the current cost is from it being an immature market. The cost would likely eventually go way down if usage went up.