Green Car Advisor (Edmunds): Hydrogen is do-able but not ready for mainstream....

[Deutsch]

yet.

Hydrogen Future Still On Far Horizon?

Fuel Cell Highlander successfully logged 2,300 miles on Alcan Highway, but even if Toyota built retail version, there's little hydrogen fuel available.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The conference is about early commercialization of hydrogen fueling and fuel cell products and services, but the buzz words still are "research" and "study," not "build" and "sell."

Granted, the National Hydrogen Association conference has just begun and there are, literally, scores of papers being delivered. Some do talk about things with real market potential – things like Plug Power's hydrogen fuel-cell electric fork lift and Air Products' on-site hydrogen fuel stations for commercial and government fleets. But most still deal with what could be, after a lot more research and development and testing gets done.

A hydrogen economy that relieves our dependency on foreign oil may be in our future, but it hasn't yet arrived.

That's particularly true in the automotive arena. A number of fuel cell vehicles dot the showroom floor at the Hydrogen Expo that's running concurrent with the industry association's annual confab here this week.

But they're all prototypes and test vehicles: Volkswagen's HyMotion; Daimler's F-Cell; Toyota's Highlander Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicle, or FCEV; BMW's Hydrogen 7 (not a fuel cell car, it burns hydrogen instead of gasoline in an internal combustion engine) and Honda's FXC Clarity.

Honda likes to call the snazzy Clarity a limited production model, but production is limited because each car is pretty much hand-built.

Nor has Honda decided yet just how many to build for the three-year leasing program that was announced at the Los Angeles Auto Show earlier this year and is slated to begin this summer (sorry, only Southern Californians living near one of the region's three public hydrogen stations need apply).

Still, the number of hydrogen vehicles that have been produced – and there are several that weren't on display, including the Chevrolet Equinox FCEV that General Motors has just begun testing with real-world drivers – and the high level of fit and finish most offer would seem to indicate that the auto industry has a pretty good handle on what needs to be done on that side of the equation.

The fuel infrastructure? That's another story.

"The challenge is on the supply side," says Scott Tolbert, a research manager with the University of North Dakota's National Center for Hydrogen Technology.

Tolbert has advised student teams that have built several fuel cell vehicles, and now works on methods of producing hydrogen from everything from ethanol to coal. He says that the hardware, and fuel management software, needed to do build a competitive hydrogen-powered vehicle is well-advanced.

"The auto industry has pretty well established," he said, "that any one of the automakers can build a fuel cell car. The questions now are where do you get the hydrogen from, how cost-effective it is and what's its carbon footprint?"

Developing a fuel infrastructure to make those cars into something more than trailer queens "has been slow, because nobody wants to be the first, to make a huge investment and then have a catastrophic failure."

One paper to be delivered this week estimates it would take a minimum of 5,500 hydrogen fueling stations to provide just adequate coverage for the nation's 439 major urban areas – enough to put a station within reach of about two-thirds of the population. For excellent coverage, with hydrogen pumps plentiful enough that most trips didn't have to be planned around them, the total would jump to 55,000.

At $1 million per station, a figure often used in hydrogen circles, that means a minimum capital investment of $5.5 billion, and perhaps as much as $55 billion.

So it seems that Ford, and GM and Toyota and the others all are waiting on fuel companies like Shell Hydrogen and Air Products (you don’t have to be an oil giant to make hydrogen) before going into production with fuel-cell electric vehicles for the mainstream.

And fuel companies all are waiting for automakers to get off the stick and start producing cars before they'll commit to the massive expense of building a national infrastructure.

Meantime, the rest of the world is waiting as well.

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[bmer]

The US & Japanese government and the EU should support the oil (and other) companies to build the infrastructure. Otherwise the status quo will remain.

[dr Dunkel]

Well, this just shows that when we run out of oil there is a solution waiting.

[Centurion]

Like I've said before Hydrogen and other alternatives will never catch momentum until there is an infrastructure. Don't count on the oil companies, they will never engage since they want us to use petrol.

By the time oil has run out in half a century or so, electric cars will have become mainstream leaving any form type of alternative fuel in the dust.

[coolraoul]

I agree.
Electric is the future. Not hydrogen. Not even fuel-cell, I think. You'll have efficient electric cars with great autonomy, plug-it in where you park, or at home. Fuel-cell or hydogen needs hydrogen or ethanol supply, and don't count on Total and co for that.

The recent improvements on battery tech will be decisive. Electrical cars are coming back very strong.

[Deutsch]

^ I'm sorry, but do either of you work in R&D or engineering for any major car manufacture? Hunh, I thought so (). Infrastructure is necessary to make sense of a hydrogen based fueling economy and as long as they've been working on it I don't believe they're just going to throw up their hands and stop (amount of time and money invested, no way). There is NO silver bullet solution the energy problem, it's going to take a variety of solutions to ween the world of it's dependence on oil, and with there only being so much of it left I don't think oil companies are going to sit idly and let private firms come in and steal their pie. Big oil will invest in "new oil".

[coolraoul]

Yep. You're right.

But electric cars seems to improve faster than other technologies.
Mercedes announced it will present a new kind of electrical upper-class car, with a kind of dynamo on it to recharge the batteries while the car is driving, the Li-Ion is coming, charging can become very fast and the capacity of a battery is improving big time. An electrical motor is very small and light and coulr induce a revolution in the design of the car, because a bonnet is no more needed.

While fuel-cell still is extremely costly to produce, and hydrogen has problems of storage and safety.

So, the electric solution was dead but it is now coming back very fast. Furthermore, imagine never going to a station, but charging your car when it's parked... The problem is investition of course, and the production of this electricity (polluting..).

The future promises to be very interesting.

[Deutsch]

EXCELLENT video on Hydrogen 7 as found on JayLenosGarage.com

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[Deutsch]

Originally Posted by coolraoul

Yep. You're right.

But electric cars seems to improve faster than other technologies.
Mercedes announced it will present a new kind of electrical upper-class car, with a kind of dynamo on it to recharge the batteries while the car is driving, the Li-Ion is coming, charging can become very fast and the capacity of a battery is improving big time. An electrical motor is very small and light and coulr induce a revolution in the design of the car, because a bonnet is no more needed.

While fuel-cell still is extremely costly to produce, and hydrogen has problems of storage and safety.

So, the electric solution was dead but it is now coming back very fast. Furthermore, imagine never going to a station, but charging your car when it's parked... The problem is investition of course, and the production of this electricity (polluting..).

The future promises to be very interesting.

Batteries are popular now because of they're cost and use in mild hybird cars. Even with full hybrids (plug-in's) you still have to do just that, plug in, which consumes time and local energy supply, and beyond that no one can guarantee the longevity of these battery packs. If everyone plugs in @5pm after they get home from work massive rolling black-outs will be everywhere because of the overwhelming electricity consumption at peak hours. Electricity is not THE solution, it is apart of it.

[Deutsch]

GM's message is emblazoned on slide accompanying GM executive's speech chastizing hydrogen industry.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Crusty corporate vice chairman Bob Lutz usually is cast as General Motor's hitman when there's a hard-nosed message to be delivered. But the automaker this week is calling on soft-spoken strategist Larry Burns to blast the hydrogen industry for not working hard enough to realize what should be a common goal.

The world needs fuel-cell electric vehicles, but the hydrogen industry is not stepping up to do its part, Burns will tell hundreds of industry insiders in a speech at the National Hydrogen Association's annual conference here this morning.

"There does not appear to be a sense of urgency" by hydrogen suppliers to build the refining, delivery and refueling infrastructure now needed to support the fuel cell cars that automakers including GM are ready to start producing, he said in a pre-speech interview with Green Car Advisor.

"We need to build more of these cars, but why do it if there are no fuel stations out there?"

Now, Or Never?

Fuel cell vehicles have gone beyond the lab, said Burns, GM's vice president for research and development and strategic planning. Recent models such as Honda's FXC Clarity (right) and GM's Equinox Fuel Cell SUV show that "the cars are real now," he said.

"The need is real, too. Oil is $100 a barrel and the dollars flowing out of this economy to buy it is astronomical."

Fuel cell vehicles, which run on electrical power produced on-bard in an electro-chemical reactor that converts hydrogen and oxygen to electricity and water vapor, can relieve the country of a significant chunk of its oil dependency and help combat global warming by reducing automotive greenhouse gasses, he said.

They need hydrogen fuel to do so, however; to stop being test and research dummies and to become vehicles that ordinary people can use for everyday transportation needs.

The actions "right now" of the energy industry and various government agencies charged with promoting alternative fuels and clean vehicles "will determine whether, and how soon, our world realizes" the benefits of automotive fuel cell technology, Burns says in his speech. GM provided advance copies to the media.

Urgency Stressed

"It is past time for the necessary infrastructure initiatives to accelerate," he says. "What is urgently needed is sufficient investment by energy providers, and the cooperation of government, to assure auto companies that the required hydrogen infrastructure will be in place when we deploy our next generation of fuel cell-electric vehicles."

Major automakers have done all the internal testing and research they can do to advance fuel cell vehicle development, Burns said in the interview.

"Now we need to get successive generations of these vehicles out there so we can really learn from how people use them."

GM has "had eight generations of hardware in 12 years of On-Star, and that's why we're ready to make it standard in all of our cars, because we know it works," he said of GM's in-car telematics system.

Burns, with fuel-cell Exqinox at Detroit Auto Show, says hydrogen need is urgent.

"Now we need to get generations one, and two and three of our fuel cell cars out there to do the same kind of commercial cycle development."

Need Aggressive Policies

Citing California's recent decision to require automakers to produce 7,500 fuel cell vehicles for sale in the state between 2012 and 2014, Burns calls in his speech for "more aggressive policies" from government to guarantee that fueling stations are up and running "prior to the arrival of the next wave of vehicles."

He acknowledged in the interview that he was not aware that the state's air board last week asked its staff to look at the situation and come up with a plan to do just that.

GM, he said, is willing to concentrate its next batch of fuel cell vehicles in one region of California in order to make it easier for fuel suppliers to build filling stations that could serve all of the drivers.

To place one hydrogen station within 3.6 miles of almost all of the 16 million residents of greater Los Angeles and Orange County would require only 30 strategically placed facilities, he said.

If the stations cost as much as $4 million each, the total investment would be $120 million. Add 120 more stations to cover routes to popular regional destinations such as Palm Springs, Las Vegas and Santa Barbara, and the cost climbs to $160 million.

Growth Opportunity

"That's $10 per person, or about 3 gallons of gas or two lattes. It's not that expensive and it means that the infrastructure is viable and doable" if the energy suppliers can be made to see the need, Burns said.

"This is not a gamble, it's a business growth opportunity."

But the need to act is now, he says in his speech.

"Either we solve it now, or it becomes a problem that we will hand off to our children."

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