Automakers take fresh look at hydrogen fuel cells

[ALS]

Automakers have been finding ways to cut fuel-cell costs and to make longer-range hydrogen tanks, and as they have, along came another unexpected boost: America's huge supply of natural gas.

Chris Woodyard - USATODAY - October 3, 2012

Just when it looked like the "hydrogen highway" had taken a permanent detour, automakers are once again feeling lighter than air about prospects for the fuel.

Nissan became the latest last week to say it is ready to mass-produce cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Honda, Toyota and Hyundai say they will have fuel-cell cars — which create electricity on board to power the car — ready to go on sale by 2015.

It marks a big turnabout for a fuel that got pushed aside after lots of hubbub last decade — despite being so non-polluting that tailpipes emit only water vapor. After touting new fuel-cell powered cars at auto shows, automakers stopped talking about hydrogen as they focused instead on plug-in electric cars. ... [Read More]

[ksstathead]

Nevermind that we could just run the cars on natural gas directly...

[CRT1]

Do the car-makers get super-charged CAFE credits for putting these cars on the road even in small numbers? Wondering why they go to the trouble of these pie-in-the-sky cars, yet drag there feet on other initiatives that could have real and immediate impact fleet-wide.

[WriConsult]

Which is more inefficient -- compressing natural gas and burning it in a piston engine (then put the power down through a transmission), or cracking the hydrogen out, compressing that, running it through a fuel cell and using that to drive an electric motor? I honestly have no idea.

[Right Lane Cruiser]

I still have the same issues I've always had with both sources.

NG is a finite resource and can be used way more efficiently (for energy output we want) in its most widespread application: heating. I'd much rather get 97+% energy conversion heating my home than under 30% in a combustion engine.

The concept of hydrogen is great... but ROEI is terrible and it is difficult to contain. HOWEVER, if we as a country just decided that was the way we were going to get ourselves off of a finite resource we don't have much of (relatively speaking) locally and we'd just live with the extra expenses that incurs, I'd be all for it. Let's build a set of modern nuclear plants which are much more efficient and use fuel way past the "spent" state our current ones reject, then dedicate part of their output to electrolysis for transportation uses. Ramp up production of solar cells and use them in as many places as we can for isolated (low traffic) filling stations (like the pictures of ones I've seen put up by Honda) and gear our transportation sector toward PFCV (Plugin-Fuel Cell Vehicles) so that the "range extender" is a fuel cell stack on top of a large battery. Use the grid for most local travel but tank up with hydrogen if you need to go further.

Those are my 2 cents at any rate.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are essentially EV's with hydrogen range extenders. Fuel cells cost a LOT, they don't last very long, and they don't have any better range than a battery pack of equivalent size.

The Honda FCX Clarity goes about 240 miles on a 4kWh pack and 4kg's of hydrogen. The Tesla Model S goes farther and costs a lot less to boot.