In the world of alternative fuel vehicles there is a vicious debate over hydrogen fuel cell vs battery electric vehicles. At times it seems no less heated than John McCain vs Barack Obama (here is a small example).
Who Cares?
I strongly believe that one or both of these technologies is nearing a tipping point—a point where the technology will spread like a virus through the entire automotive industry. It will be a boom that reshapes the automotive industry similarly to the way cell-phones reshaped telecommunication. I certainly think it is worth understanding the pros, cons, and potential of each technology.
The Debate Simplified
Hydrogen and battery electric vehicles each produce great driving, zero emissions, electric vehicles. There are many arguments for and against each, but it is necessary to filter out all of the brainless rhetoric to get to the bottom of the debate. I say brainless because there are a lot of stupid arguments about how one technology or the other is not affordable. Go figure! How many people could afford a cell-phone in 1989? Another argument that is far less stupid, but equally insignificant is that of infrastructure. Infrastructure ALWAYS follows successful products (notice how 3G technology is only available in select cities right now—if the technology proves successful, the infrastructure for it will quickly spread).
Once you get past all that, the debate is quite simple:
- Proponents of Hydrogen: Fuel cell vehicles have longer driving range, shorter refuel time, and require no major lifestyle changes when compared to today’s gasoline vehicles. Battery electrics, on the other hand, are more limited in range, not as quick to refuel, and are a bit different to own than today’s vehicles—mostly because you have to plan time to charge them.
- Proponents of Battery Electric: It is 3 times more efficient to produce electricity and store it in a battery than it is to convert the energy to hydrogen then back to electricity again to power the car.
Searching for the Holy Grail
Both technologies are desperately searching for ways to overcome their shortcomings: hydrogen needs to improve its efficiency (here) while batteries need to be faster charging and have longer ranges (here and here).
Can They Compliment Each Other?
Toyota and Mercedes both seem to be proving that hydrogen fuel cells are perfect compliments to batteries. In fact, they even seem to solve each other’s weaknesses. Maybe the whole debate is a mute point? More on that soon.
Can They Compliment Each Other?
Short answer is yes they can. I think it might take one or tow of the big car companies to fold in order for this to properly take off.
Long answer is more political. Who gains more from each one. And really think about it, you did say braindead rhetoric and where do we hear more rhetoric from than politics. If Pres. O’bama holds to his ‘no more politics as usual’ slogan, then we should see a rise in new thoughts about ‘new energy.’
But as usual, I won’t be holding my breath for any of it.
Great article. This article showing the advantage using of hydrogen fuel cell technology better than conventional battery. We will always support the new energy technology development.
[...] a couple of times about the debate between hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and battery electric (here and here). Proponents of each are busy slandering the other. Meanwhile, Toyota and Mercedes are [...]
It is 3 times more efficient to produce electricity and store it in a battery than it is to convert the energy to hydrogen then back to electricity again to power the car.
Not quite accurate. It is three times more efficient to take electricity that has ALREADY BEEN PRODUCED and load it into a battery and run a car than it is to use the same electricity to produce hydrogen and use it to run a fuel cell car.
This is an important distinction because over 70% of the energy to produce electricity comes from fossil fuels and this step is very inefficient. Hydrogen is actually produced from natural gas.
The real apples to apples comparison is:
natural gas -> hydrogen -> fuel cell -> wheel power
natural gas -> electricity -> battery -> wheel power
With a fossil fuel source like natural gas, hydrogen fuel cells are more efficient than batteries.
I would also add that batteries are much farther away from being cost effective than fuel cells and H2 can be used in an ICE as in the Mazda RE gas/H2 hybrids.
-Mercy
@Mercy,
Thanks for the clarification. Your “apples to apples” comparison, however, doesn’t seem accurate either. To my knowledge natural gas is rarely used to generate electricity. Am I wrong?
> To my knowledge natural gas is rarely used to generate electricity. Am I wrong?
Well, natural gas is about 20% of U.S. electricity production and coal is about 50%. Both have similar efficiency ratios, but coal isn’t generally used to
At the margin, natural gas is the most important source of electrical power in the U.S., so in calculating a +1 or -1 kwh of electricity consumption, natural gas is the appropriate reference.
If you prefer, we could state the comparison as follows:
natural gas -> hydrogen -> fuel cell -> wheel power
natural gas/coal -> electricity -> battery -> wheel power
So until the 70% of electricity generated by natural gas and coal changes substantially, adding 1 million H2 fuel cells cars to the country would decrease CO2 production more than adding 1 million EV’s.
-Mercy
If the growing energy needs of America are met with wind turbines and solar panels then hydrogen could be produced from those and still supply up to 50% of Americas energy to the grid.
And since it is renewable energy being used there’s no waste and no emissions at all as it can be used again and again.
Transporting hydrogen in tankers would be less dangerous than transporting oil or petrol and once enough people switch to hydrogen im sure the government wouldn’t object to underground hydrogen pipelines.
This doesn’t require a massive lifestyle change to switch to hydrogen, whereas now i can see people missing work to charge their car because they forgot to the night before or not having a place to charge (students, tower block residents, people without a garage etc)
@Mercy
While the well-to-station efficiencies of hydrogen derived from natural gas are indeed superior to that of producing electricity from it, the inefficiency of the fuel cell and fuel storage systems make the well-to-wheel comparison 3.6 times better in favour of an Electric Vehicle.
http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php
(I realize this source is Tesla, an EV manufacturer, but the sources are listed and you are free to confirm to their authenticity)
Having hydrogen vehicles still makes you prisoner to a resource that is slowly vanishing. EVs on the other hand take their power from whatever is on the grid, so any advance in power generation will lead to more efficient vehicles.
@Hydr09
Giving the electricity straight to the grid will save 50% of that energy for better use than performing electrolysis. I don’t believe anyone in the research industry (please correct me if I’m wrong) is seriously looking at electrolysis as a sustainable mean of hydrogen production. The waste is just too great.
Second point: You are considering the installation of an entire, cross-country hydrogen infrastructure (which still cannot be perfectly contained with today’s technology, as far as I know) and yet there are much more simple solutions that are already developed for the issues surrounding EVs that you have mentioned.
Induction charging (not my favourite because of how slow it is) and automatic charging (such as the Better Place charging system) would mean that it would be very hard to forget to charge your vehicle since it is done automatically. Charging stations can be much more easily put into place than a hydrogen infrastructure because an electric infrastructure already exists.
The comments on relative efficiency are interesting (and important), but can someone provide analysis of the environmental impacts of their respective (fuel cell vs battery) container vessels? We all know that lead-acid batteries are awful from an environmental standpoint, but how about the components for the newer lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells? Do either of them pose any problems for disposal?
“avro” “Having hydrogen vehicles still makes you prisoner to a resource that is slowly vanishing.”
what resource?
hydrogen?
the most common element in the universe?
“and yet there are much more simple solutions that are already developed for the issues surrounding EVs that you have mentioned.”
Like expanding the energy grid to cope with millions of cars charging at the same time?
“Poofypuppy” There is no way currently to dispose of batteries unless we count flytipping.
Fuel Cells i would imagine wouldn’t be bad for the environment depending on the type
They wouldn’t need to be disposed of unless you damaged it somehow, whereas batteries will not live as long as the car could.
Im hydr09, just usin my regular name
check out “http://hydrogendiscoveries.wordpress.com” it has tonnes of info and stuff from the car companies, its real interestin for the sake of argument
BTW, I forgot to include the big downside for batteries. To send the same amount of electricity to the motor as a 700 bar H2 fuel-cell, a lithium ion battery requires:
5 times the volume
200 times the weight
In addition, the cost of the battery is so high that gasoline would need to be $15/gallon to make a car with a 100 mile range feasible. Because li-ion batteries have mass produced for over a decade, the cost is mostly for raw materials.
So, to summarize:
+ FCV and BEV are a wash until there is a dramatic change in the power grids so that the marginal power is not produced by fossil fuels
+ FCV’s are far superior to BEV’s in terms of usability and BEV’s would need a 5-fold and 200-fold improvement to match the volume and weight characteristics of compressed H2 used in a FCV.
-Mercy
No one has discussed the issues with the storage and transportation of hydrogen. It’s a huge issue and something that needs some work. Liquid hydrogen is always a possibility but then that takes electricity to compress the gas to liquid form. And don’t forget leakage. The hydrogen molecule is so small that the storage tanks leak, the valves leak and the hoses leak. So don’t go on vacation and leave your car in the garage for a week because the tank will be empty when you come back.
And remember that power plants run continuously whether the power they produce is being used or not. I kinda like the fact that when my battery powered car is charging at night I am using power that may have otherwise been wasted.