“Hydrogen beats batteries, biofuel and all other vehicle power solutions:

A. Hydrogen can be made at home and requires NO NEW INFRASTRUCTURE. Anybody who says it can’t be made at home or work is either a shill or completely out of touch with reality and technology. You can make it for free, at home, all day long and all night long. The production can be powered by solar, wind, microbes and other free sources. The volume of H2 produced “IS” enough to charge solid state H2 containers. The metrics quoted by the anti-hydrogen crowd are just lies to protect their competing business interests.

B. It now costs less to make hydrogen from water than any known way to make gasoline and it continues to get cheaper every month: The GE Noryl system, The R4 processor and over a hundred different systems can do this NOW; with many more expected next year. The “battery shill” spin has worn thin and has been supplanted by facts. Hydrogen is made from WATER via solar energy, wind energy, microbes, radio waves, sunlight and salt, and other FREE sources of energy. Hydrogen can also be made from any organic garbage, waste, plants or ANYTHING organic via lasers, plasma beams or dozens of other powered exotics which can be run off of EITHER the grid or the free hydrogen made from solar energy, wind energy, microbes, radio waves, sunlight and salt, and other FREE sources of energy OR the grid. There is no oil that needs to be involved anywhere in the production of hydrogen. These systems trickle charge hydrogen into storage containers, either tanks or solid state cassettes, 24/7.

C. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent by battery companies like A123, Cobasys, AltairNano, etc. in order to discredit hydrogen because hydrogen works better than batteries. A large number of “pundits” who act as “writers”, “bloggers”, “authors” and “non-profit evangelist group founders” are actually supported by financial gain from battery companies who are terrified of hydrogen displacing their revenue streams. They include:

Ulf Bossel of the European Fuel Cell Forum,

Alec Brooks

James Woolsey

EV World

Sam Thurber

Cal Cars

Felix Kramer

Lets go over the battery and bio-fuel shills lies:

Lie # 1:

“But critics say the process of producing hydrogen requires three to four times more energy than the hydrogen later generates in the fuel cell.”

RESPONSE: This is data from the 60’s. It is now more efficient to make hydrogen than it is to make gasoline, build or use batteries or process bio-fuel. The technology has beat everything else.

Lie # 2:

“the cars are too expensive.”

RESPONSE: The production of hydrogen cars is at an early stage while battery cars have been around for almost a hundred years and the battery cars are still expensive for what you get. The Moore’s law on hydrogen cars shows a clear price decline to low cost in market volume. A Fuel Cell car that goes 500 miles without a charge costs half as much TODAY as a battery car that goes 500 miles without a charge.

Lie #3:

“ hydrogen molecules can’t be contained easily without energy-consuming compressors or maintaining them in liquid form at extremely low temperatures , and it’s extremely difficult to store,”

RESPONSE: This data is also from the 60’s. Hydrogen is stored in chemical powders and muds that easily contain vast amounts of hydrogen. Pressure and liquid tanks to store hydrogen are old school archaic technologies. Hydrogen can be easily stored in over 2800 different solid state compounds.

Lie #4:

“The infrastructure isn’t there”

RESPONSE: Solid state hydrogen can be shipped by UPS, Common Carrier and uses all existing infrastructure. DOPT has already licensed and approved such solid state delivery via common EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE. This method can reavch every person on earth TODAY! This requires almost NO NEW INFRASTRUCTURE. NO INFRASTRUCTURE IS NEEDED!!! This is the biggest lie of all. A large number of start-ups have solid state hydrogen solutions that entirely use existing infrastructure.

Lie #5:

“the hydrogen is too expensive”

RESPONSE: Hydrogen can be made at home or office in numerous ways powered by solar or wind or microbes or any number of free power sources. It is always being made by such devices and constantly trickle charged into solid state storage systems all day and night FOR FREE without grid power. Hydrogen processors now make hydrogen with 91% efficiency.

Lie #6:

“Hydrogen is too dangerous”

RESPONSE: If the gasoline in your car blows up it will do a VAST AMOUNT more death and damage than H2 ever will. You are driving a MOLOTOV COCKTAIL. H2 on fire rapidly dissipates up an into the air. Gasoline flows all over people, cars and streets and covers all of the above with flaming death you can’t easily extinguish. In 2030 oil is GONE and there is NO OTHER OPTION that can be delivered world-wide in time but H2! Biofuel only solves 2% of the problem. Batteries have failed. Nuclear is too dangerous.

Lie #7:

“We have enough gasoline to last forever”

RESPONSE: Gasoline/petroleum/petrochemicals have now been shown to be the number one cause of cancer, and maybe the primary cause of cancer, in the world. Besides causing global warming, lung disease and all of the other bad things that it does; the oil industry itself knows that affordable oil is gone around the year 2030. Even if it wasn’t, do you really want the ROOT CAUSE OF CANCER around one day longer than it needs to be? (See the EPA report “EPA/600/S-6-87/001 Sept. 1987” as one of over 16,000 studies validating this.)

A “fuel cell car” and an “electric car” ARE THE SAME THING. The shills want you to think otherwise. The only difference is where the electricity is stored. You can pull the batteries out of every Zenn, Tesla, Zap, EV1, Venture Vehicle, etc. and pop a fuel cell/hydrogen pack in the same hole and go further, more efficiently in EVERY SINGLE CASE.

A modern fuel cell and hydrogen system beats batteries on every front including

FIRE- Batteries catch on fire constantly and have been the result of massively more fires and explosions than hydrogen.

Life Span- Hydrogen power systems run massively longer and provide massively greater range per charge than batteries.

Run Time – The run time of batteries constantly shortens while hydrogen does not.

Memory Effect- This effect is not present in hydrogen systems

Recharge Time- modern hydrogen systems are instant recharge.

Charge life- Modern hydrogen systems can recharge massively longer than batteries before end of life.

Nano powder batteries have cancer causing powder that falls into the pores of the Chinese factory workers skin and gives them potentially fatal diseases

Cost- The cost per 300 mile range for a hydrogen car system is massively lower than a battery system. A hydrogen powered car TODAY that will drive 300 miles without a refill is 50% of the price of a battery car that will drive 300 miles without a refill.

Energy from “sour-grid”- A modern hydrogen system can be charged from a completely clean home energy system.

Can’t make energy at home- Hydrogen can be made at home. Batteries cannot.

Storage Density – Modern hydrogen technology has a massively higher storage density than batteries.

Bulky Size- Hydrogen systems are dramatically less bulky than batteries.

High Weight- The weight of batteries is so great ir reduces the reange of travel of a vehicle which causes the use of wasteful energy just to haul the batteries along with the car. Hydrogen energy systems weigh far less.

Environmental soundness- The disposal of batteries after use presents a deadly environmental issue.

Self Discharge issues- Hydrogen does not self discharge like batteries.

Batteries cause a greater carbon footprint than hydrogen

Battery shills are mostly paid for by military contractors.

The charge-keeping capability of a typical lithium-ion battery degrades steadily over time and with use. After only one or two years of use, the runtime of a laptop or cell phone battery is reduced to the point where the user experience is significantly impacted. For example, the runtime of a typical 4-hour laptop battery drops to only about 2.5 hours after 3,000 hours of use. By contrast, the latest fuel cells continue to deliver nearly their original levels of runtime well past the 2,000 and 3,000 hour marks and are still going strong at 5,000+ hours

The electrical capacity of batteries has not kept up with the increasing power consumption of electronic devices. Features such as W-LAN, higher CPU speed, “always-on”, large and bright displays and many others are important for the user but severely limited by today`s battery life. Lithium ion batteries, and lithium-polymer batteries have almost reached fundamental limits. A laptop playing a DVD today has a runtime of just above one hour on one battery pack, which is clearly not acceptable.

Batteries require coal be burned to charge them. One pound of coal has roughly 14,000 Btu of chemical energy in it. Any reference textbook says that. When that pound is burned in an electric powerplant, steam is made, which drives turbines at high speed, alternators are turned, and electricity is made. When everything operates well, all that turns out to be generally around 30% efficient, meaning that 30% of the chemical energy that started out in the coal has become actual electricity.

More important, though, is this push for battery powered vehicles. Batteries don’t last forever. Batteries are toxic. Batteries give false readings halfway through their life cycle. Doesn’t anyone out their have any experience with leaving home with a fully charge cellphone only to have it register half-full by mid day? I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the replacement for the battery in the Tesla Roadster and Wrightspeed X1 is going to be $50K. Now don’t get me wrong. I love the Tesla Roadster. I’d love to see these vehicles powered buy induction (VW’s factory in Germany uses it. We run powercables all over the place already anyway. How about under the roads in our cities for starters?

So basically you are agreeing with me and the sole advantage of the FCV is that it meets current customer expectations. This is at the expense of efficiency and complexity.

“If I read it correctly, Tesla says that their car (which is quite small) will now be able to get a little over 200 miles of driving range and will take 3 ½ hours to fully charge.”

If you look a little deeper the Tesla uses the previous generation of Lithium batteries not the ones from AltairNano and A123. These batteries will charge in minutes. They are also much safer that the present generation of batteries.

“And those batteries will only drive the Prius a very short distance – not 200 miles! I’m sure the battery advocates will say other batteries are better. If that is true, why isn’t Toyota using them in the Prius?)”

I don’t know but GM is using them in the Volt.

“Do you really think customers will accept this? Is somebody who takes a 400 mile trip going to accept waiting for 3 ½ hours to finish the last half? Furthermore, what would the driving range and charging time be for an SUV totally run on batteries?”

Quite apart from the sad fact that 85% of car journeys are under 100km to avoid the problems that we find ourselves in I am afraid that yes we do need to change. The main problem that I have with FCVs is that it is a desperate attempt to preserve the status-quo when it is obvious to anyone that changes need to be made. We are pandering to people who drive huge SUVs in West Perth (an expensive city suburb) when the reality is that there are very few to see in Kalgoorlie (an ouback gold mining town).

A future electric car with AltairNano batteries will be able to have at least a 500km range and recharge this within 10 to 30 minutes. Now a 10 or 30 minute stop every 500km is exactly what most authorities recommend as sensible to avoid driver fatique. Driving an electric car could be safer.

“On the other hand, the Honda FCX has gotten a 270 mile range with 5000 psi hydrogen and the Toyota FCHV has gotten 480 miles of driving range with 10,000 psi hydrogen. Both will improve as fuel cells become more efficient. Please note that these vehicles are much larger than the Tesla.”

However it is quite likely that such long range cars will have range extenders. Right now PHEVs with IC engines could easily be getting this range and ease of use. BEVs will have a niche as short range commuters that will easily do the 85% of driving that most people do. When fuel cells are ready they can take the place of the IC engines in PHEVs.

What you are proposing is not to make any changes just try to substitute a car that matches current cars even thought it has much lower efficiency.

“And the fueling time is in minutes for hydrogen. Assuming customers accept them as safe enough (there are obviously varying opinions on what is safe), hydrogen meets all three requirements.”

As do the new batteries. It is not a given how long a FCV will take to take to refuel. If you want quick refuelling then the filling station will have to keep 10000 psi tanks ready to fuel. Compressing the gas on the fly will take quite a long time and not be much quicker than the charging the new batteries.

“On another note, you are saying that car companies want to keep the current method of fueling so customers aren’t uncomfortable with something new. If that is true, why are Honda and GM developing home hydrogen fueling stations? Do you have a response to this?

And how much do they cost? And what do they use – natural gas perhaps? If it is home hydrolysers then they will be using 3 times the amount of energy to produce hydrogen and fuel the car that it would be if they were just charging batteries. This will put an even greater load on the electricity grid than BEVs would. I expect home hydrogen fuelling stations to be an expensive option that few people will take up and will quickly die. Whereas most electric cars have built in battery chargers. I would be more impressed if Honda and GM were offering FCVs with built in refuelling stations. Somehow I don’t think that will happen.

The conclusion to all this is that you are promoting a future transport system that is less efficient, require an admitted huge infrastructure investment and is more complex against the current trend to solid state simply to preserve a flawed customer experience that you also have admitted.

The present IC car is only possible because of the huge EROI of fossil fuels. To attempt to replace this with a system that has a much lower EROI with no changes is an invitation to disaster. The system is stretched enough without having to fuel FCVs that the sole reason for their existence is our expectations that we should be able to drive any car, anywhere we want, anytime, and damn the environment.

If I read it correctly, Tesla says that their car (which is quite small) will now be able to get a little over 200 miles of driving range and will take 3 ½ hours to fully charge. And there are serious safety concerns with these vehicles (though I know battery proponents will say this isn’t an issue).

(Keep in mind that Toyota has delayed their next generation Prius by one or two years because of safety issues with the batteries. See this Wall Street Journal article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118659859395791929.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

And those batteries will only drive the Prius a very short distance – not 200 miles! I’m sure the battery advocates will say other batteries are better. If that is true, why isn’t Toyota using them in the Prius?)

Do you really think customers will accept this? Is somebody who takes a 400 mile trip going to accept waiting for 3 ½ hours to finish the last half? Furthermore, what would the driving range and charging time be for an SUV totally run on batteries?

On the other hand, the Honda FCX has gotten a 270 mile range with 5000 psi hydrogen and the Toyota FCHV has gotten 480 miles of driving range with 10,000 psi hydrogen. Both will improve as fuel cells become more efficient. Please note that these vehicles are much larger than the Tesla.

And the fueling time is in minutes for hydrogen. Assuming customers accept them as safe enough (there are obviously varying opinions on what is safe), hydrogen meets all three requirements.

On another note, you are saying that car companies want to keep the current method of fueling so customers aren’t uncomfortable with something new. If that is true, why are Honda and GM developing home hydrogen fueling stations? Do you have a response to this?

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2006-09-24-gm-hydrogen-usat_x.htm

On the contrary I do not think that there is any conspiracy at all. It is simply corporations choosing paths that ensure their own existence. The fact that it is against the more efficient and faster path is irrelevant.

“If cars could run solely on batteries, they could sell them right now, make lots of money off of them, and cut out the oil companies.”

Cars can run solely off batteries – have you not heard of the Tesla? So you think huge corporations that have setup a core business of oil can suddenly and easily switch to something else in an eyeblink. One of the commonest causes of corporation failure is when they move outside their knowledge base.

“I can’t believe you are using the argument that battery cars are “different” and fuel cell cars aren’t. Give me a break! Fuel cell cars will require a HUGE infrastructure investment. And most people have no idea what a fuel cell is.”

Which is EXACTLY my point. Joe Public has no idea what a fuel cell car is or a BEV. However one he fills up at the fuel station down the road just like the car he used to own and one he plugs in at home to an electricity outlet. For the average consumer the car that he fills up will be far more familiar and easier to sell. It is exactly this ignorance that car companies are selling to.

“Furthermore, nearly every person I tell about hydrogen cars who knows nothing about them first asks about their safety.”

Yes because hydrogen equals Hindenburg. And everybody knows you recharge a battery from the wall socket so this is not a surprise. Everyone I talk to equates electric cars with golf buggies and gets a shock when I show them the Tesla and the tzero.

“How many people have ever fueled a hydrogen car?”

Virtually no-body however, everyone has fuelled an IC car and thousands of people have fuelled an LPG car. The experience of filling a fuel cell car will be made to exactly mimic an LPG car which thousands of people here in Australia do every day.

“Fuel cell cars will require a HUGE infrastructure investment”

Yes all the more reason not to do it and use the one already in place. You still have not given one reason that we should make this huge investment of taxpayers money.

I really would like you to list in a single post the advantages of FCVs that you feel justify making this investment. It should not be hard as the reasons must be overwhelming.

So can you do that or repost where you have said because I cannot find it.

(I’m going to dump a lot of information on you, but please bear with me.)

I have never said that you will have wind power delivered to your home or business for 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour. My calculations have always separated out the distribution costs. I’ll say it again: This figure only covers the cost to produce the hydrogen and nothing else.

The cost of electricity (assuming gaseous hydrogen at 5000 or 10,000 psi and NOT including compression costs) is on Myth #4 of “The Hype Against Hydrogen” which as I mentioned before can be found at:

http://hydrogendiscoveries.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/the-hype-against-hydrogen-setting-the-record-straight-on-six-hydrogen-myths-perpetuated-by-joseph-romm/

In the third paragraph, it says:

“GE Wind says on their website that electricity generated from wind power costs “approximately 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour and declining.” Therefore, the energy needed to produce one kilogram of hydrogen with wind power would cost about $1.75 to $2.00.”

Here is the cost breakdown for a solid form of hydrogen called magnesium hydride (as mentioned below, please note that solid hydrogen is a little more expensive than gaseous hydrogen at 5000 or 10,000 psi, mostly due to the electricity requirements going from 50 to 85 kilowatt hours).

Here is a breakdown of all of the costs:

Electricity (85 kilowatt hours) – $2.98

Magnesium hydride recycling plants – $0.43

Transporting the fuel and spent fuel – $0.47 (Mjtimber – THIS AND THE COST OF THE RETAIL FUELING STATIONS BELOW IS THE DISTRIBUTION COST)

Retail fueling stations – $0.37

Initial inventory of magnesium – $0.14

5% loss of hydrogen fuel – $0.28

Taxes – $0.91 (Note that this is double the average of what we pay now in taxes in order to make up for the efficiency of fuel cells so the cost per-mile is the same)

Total – $5.58 per kilogram of hydrogen

Please note that the economics of solid hydrogen and high-pressure hydrogen are different. You will notice that the number of kilowatt hours for solid hydrogen is 85 instead of 50. It takes more energy to recycle the solid hydrogen than it does to produce one kilogram of hydrogen from electrolysis.

Therefore, the extra 35 kilowatt hours translate to $1.23 more at 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Moreover, the amount to transport the fuel and spent fuel by rail and truck that is listed above for solid hydrogen would obviously be a lot higher than transporting gaseous hydrogen through pipelines. And the 5% loss of hydrogen fuel would not apply to gaseous hydrogen.

On the other hand, the compression costs would offset some of these savings. But 5000 and even 10,000 psi hydrogen would still be less expensive than magnesium hydride. Therefore, to be very general, it is best to say that a kilogram of hydrogen would cost $4 to $6 depending on how it is stored and how close the retail fueling station is to the source of the electricity.

I know I’ve thrown a lot of information out there and it is probably confusing, so let me know if you have any questions.

You’re right that fuel cells won’t be built by individuals. And I honestly hope you end up building your own electric car. I think it’s a great idea.

It will be interesting to see if the new battery technology turns out to be as good as advertised. But as I mentioned before, any of the major car companies could attempt to buy up any of these companies if they wanted. As far as I know, that hasn’t happened. And I seriously doubt they would all continue to invest in an inferior technology instead of buying a better technology just because they had more money invested in the inferior technology. That would be a horrible business move and I’ve never seen Toyota make one of those.

One question: What is the charging time claimed to be on the new batteries? I saw that you mentioned that you aren’t holding out much for the EEStor technology. How do these other batteries compare? I think I saw on Tesla’s website that it the full charging time for 250 (or 200?) miles of driving range is 3 1/2 hours. Are the new batteries supposed to be about the same as this? Or better?

I got an error message when I clicked on this link a couple of times. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or if there is a problem with the link. But I’ll go to the Tesla website and see if I can find the paper.

Greg

Now, you didn’t really go through my explanation point by point, so I’m assuming you didn’t examine it too closely. Fine. I was using your numbers on the amount of electricity but disputing your cost analysis (wind will not, on the market, cost 3.5-4 cents per kWh). Please dispute these numbers. I’m willing to admit if I’m wrong, but I say your electricity cost is 1/2 what it should be. This calculation was for compressed, not solid, hydrogen, and I’m probably off if the 50 kWh includes energy used to compress hydrogen, though only by about 70 cents.

As for the batteries, I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, these are very new technologies. The fuel cells have advanced very little in the past ten years, while the past 1 1/2 – 2 years have seen rapid change in battery technology. The car companies also have ~1000 fuel cell engineers on staff, and ~0 battery engineers. Consequently, these new technologies don’t buy them much, as all the profit will go elsewhere (A123, Altair Nano, Firefly, etc.). I wouldn’t want to start over on a $1 billion dollar investment either, especially with battery technology that is fairly new and unproven. It’s just that the end game for battery technology is so much higher. By the way, if you read the most recent EEStor post, I don’t hold out much hope for this, either.

In all honesty, I have difficulty understanding Toyota and Honda’s skepticism: a 40 mile range is only about 10 kWh of batteries, which is ~220 lbs with current technology at 100 Wh/kg taking up about 2 cubic feet. Not really an earth shattering amount of weight or volume. When/if Firefly is released (and if it meets projections), I will likely build my own electric car if the auto companies don’t provide what I’m looking for. Try doing that with a fuel cell.

Ok, sorry: http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectricCar.pdf

Regards,

Emil M

In all fairness, I’ve written a tremendous amount of material during this debate and it’s much more than “Toyota and Honda are doing it.”

I think where we see things differently is the extent to which batteries are viable. I think they are more in the 10-40 mile range. It seems like you think that they are in the several hundred mile range.

As I mentioned, you are right about the efficiency argument if batteries can realistically power vehicles as much as you think they can. If not, the argument turns to fuel cell vehicles with hydrogen versus ICEs with gasoline and/or ethanol. The reason is that plug-in technology can be used in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles which cancels out the efficiency issue during those miles travelled.

The bottom line is that we disagree on the extent to which batteries are going to be viable. Only time will tell who turns out to be right.