Electric cars/hybrids - a dead end?
Discussion
So the national press are reporting that the UK will need 20 new Nuclear Power stations in the coming years if there is a wholesale switch to electric power. Yes, finally people are realising that electric power isn't without its problems......
Then there are hybrids with the costs involved in producing the batteries and the environmental consequences of these.....meanwhile if you drive a diesel you may as well walk along in front of it ringing a big bell shouting "I am a leper".
...it seems everywhere we turn, our need for personal mobility creates an environmental problem. I've never understood why Hydrogen hasn't been investigated/developed more thoroughly...couldn't this be an answer to our need for emissions free power both at the tailpipe and the power source?
Am I the only one thinking that the electric car isn't necessarily our saviour from ecological disaster?!
greenarrow said:
...it seems everywhere we turn, our need for personal mobility creates an environmental problem. I've never understood why Hydrogen hasn't been investigated/developed more thoroughly...couldn't this be an answer to our need for emissions free power both at the tailpipe and the power source?
How does that work, exactly?Hydrogen fuel cells are, much like electric cars, a way to move the power generation to the grid, rather than in-vehicle. Even if you overcame the pretty harsh difficulties with hydrogen storage and transport, you've still got the grid energy problem.
Clean grid energy would require a serious investment in renewables, which are often too transient, and therefore need to be bolstered by nuclear generation.
That is, unless someone wants to plough enough money into researching practical fusion, which will (hopefully) be the biggest epoch of the 3rd millennium.
If you read the article again there are some basic flaws in the arithmetic. It's basically utter rubbish and hasn't even been proof read.
"At the maximum level of uptake in the city green cars would demand between seven and eight gigawatt-hours per year" and "Experts said this was equivalent to the output of more than two nuclear power stations similar to that being built at Hinkley Point in Somerset".
Hinkley C will have an output of 3.2 gigawatts, meaning that in one hour, two such power stations would produce 6.4 gigawatt-hours. Clearly 8 gigawatt-hours in a year is not going to be much of an issue, unless they plan on leaving the power station turned off for 364 days of the year.
Most electric cars do 4 miles per kilowatt-hour. Average annual mileage is only 8000 miles per year so that means 2,000 kWh (2 megawatt-hours) per car per year. Thus the 8 gigawatt-hours equates to only 4,000 cars' worth of electricity in a year. Basic arithmetic again.
Demand on the National Grid varies from around 30 gigawatts at night to 50 gigawatts peak during winter, less during summer. With the average annual mileage of commuter cars etc. of 22 miles per day that's 6 kilowatt-hours per car, per day. Charging overnight at home would require a massive 1 kilowatt (or about 4 amps, about the same as a chunky computer and big TV). So without lifting a finger, during the Economy 7 night period, 20 million cars can recharge before electricity demand reaches the same as the daytime peak - i.e. more efficient use of resources as no need to idle power stations. If all 31 million cars in the UK were electric, peak overnight demand (including all the non-car use we currently have) would be approximately 62 gigawatts - the National Grid currently has a total generating capacity of 75 gigawatts and a further 3 gigawatts of foreign inter-connects.
So ... no new capacity is needed to replace every single car with an electric one.
Which we clearly wouldn't do anyway since the high-mileage users (trucks, sales reps, George111 and his 60,000 miles per year mates
) will all be on diesel for the foreseeable future.
We could all go with Hydrogen of course - and then we really would need 20 new power stations to provided all the extra electricity needed to to make the Hydrogen in the first place (what, you thought we pumped it out the ground like oil?), compress and chill it, transport it, decompress and pump it into filling stations, recompress and rechill, pump it into cars and then inefficiently "burn" it in fuel cells (about 50% efficient if you're lucky, versus 90% efficient converting battery to motor to movement).
Hydrogen is the real dead end. I'll repeat - we don't need any extra generation capacity to make every car electric, but we definitely do if you want to make Hydrogen.
"At the maximum level of uptake in the city green cars would demand between seven and eight gigawatt-hours per year" and "Experts said this was equivalent to the output of more than two nuclear power stations similar to that being built at Hinkley Point in Somerset".
Hinkley C will have an output of 3.2 gigawatts, meaning that in one hour, two such power stations would produce 6.4 gigawatt-hours. Clearly 8 gigawatt-hours in a year is not going to be much of an issue, unless they plan on leaving the power station turned off for 364 days of the year.
Most electric cars do 4 miles per kilowatt-hour. Average annual mileage is only 8000 miles per year so that means 2,000 kWh (2 megawatt-hours) per car per year. Thus the 8 gigawatt-hours equates to only 4,000 cars' worth of electricity in a year. Basic arithmetic again.
Demand on the National Grid varies from around 30 gigawatts at night to 50 gigawatts peak during winter, less during summer. With the average annual mileage of commuter cars etc. of 22 miles per day that's 6 kilowatt-hours per car, per day. Charging overnight at home would require a massive 1 kilowatt (or about 4 amps, about the same as a chunky computer and big TV). So without lifting a finger, during the Economy 7 night period, 20 million cars can recharge before electricity demand reaches the same as the daytime peak - i.e. more efficient use of resources as no need to idle power stations. If all 31 million cars in the UK were electric, peak overnight demand (including all the non-car use we currently have) would be approximately 62 gigawatts - the National Grid currently has a total generating capacity of 75 gigawatts and a further 3 gigawatts of foreign inter-connects.
So ... no new capacity is needed to replace every single car with an electric one.
Which we clearly wouldn't do anyway since the high-mileage users (trucks, sales reps, George111 and his 60,000 miles per year mates
) will all be on diesel for the foreseeable future.We could all go with Hydrogen of course - and then we really would need 20 new power stations to provided all the extra electricity needed to to make the Hydrogen in the first place (what, you thought we pumped it out the ground like oil?), compress and chill it, transport it, decompress and pump it into filling stations, recompress and rechill, pump it into cars and then inefficiently "burn" it in fuel cells (about 50% efficient if you're lucky, versus 90% efficient converting battery to motor to movement).
Hydrogen is the real dead end. I'll repeat - we don't need any extra generation capacity to make every car electric, but we definitely do if you want to make Hydrogen.
greenarrow said:
I've never understood why Hydrogen hasn't been investigated/developed more thoroughly...couldn't this be an answer to our need for emissions free power both at the tailpipe and the power source?
How on earth are you going to create hydrogen "emissions free"? It's a monumentally inefficient process. To add to what Flooble has said, the article is just utterly wrong, even within the bounds of the numbers it proposes it is inconsistent.
The point Flooble makes is that they confuse Power (kW, MW, GW, etc.) with Energy (kWh, MWh, GWh, Joules etc.) which is a very common mistake and causes a lot of hassle.
They also start with the premise that we are already using up all our generation capacity (Power) and will need to build new to cover any extra loads, which is also COMPLETELY wrong. Our grid is scaled to give enough power to run our worst case (Winter evening load when everyone is heating their houses), which leaves loads of spare power capacity for charging cars when its not peak time (overnight for example, or ... all day and night during the summer).
Yes we will need to work on our grid infrastructure to accommodate electric cars, but its more likely to be in the area of making it a bit smarter (electricity prices react to demand for example) rather than just bigger and more. Not to say we wont need more generation capacity, but to suggest its 20 Hinkleys (which would nearly DOUBLE our existing capacity) is frankly ridiculous.
Its such a shame that these "alternative facts" will get read and believed by millions of people ...
The point Flooble makes is that they confuse Power (kW, MW, GW, etc.) with Energy (kWh, MWh, GWh, Joules etc.) which is a very common mistake and causes a lot of hassle.
They also start with the premise that we are already using up all our generation capacity (Power) and will need to build new to cover any extra loads, which is also COMPLETELY wrong. Our grid is scaled to give enough power to run our worst case (Winter evening load when everyone is heating their houses), which leaves loads of spare power capacity for charging cars when its not peak time (overnight for example, or ... all day and night during the summer).
Yes we will need to work on our grid infrastructure to accommodate electric cars, but its more likely to be in the area of making it a bit smarter (electricity prices react to demand for example) rather than just bigger and more. Not to say we wont need more generation capacity, but to suggest its 20 Hinkleys (which would nearly DOUBLE our existing capacity) is frankly ridiculous.
Its such a shame that these "alternative facts" will get read and believed by millions of people ...
kambites said:
greenarrow said:
I've never understood why Hydrogen hasn't been investigated/developed more thoroughly...couldn't this be an answer to our need for emissions free power both at the tailpipe and the power source?
How on earth are you going to create hydrogen "emissions free"? It's a monumentally inefficient process. The kit to produce hydrogen is no bigger than a small shipping container and it does so on demand. A 3 second fill will take an average car around 500 miles.
There's a lot of money going into hydrogen right now.
Trabi601 said:
There's an on-site generating hydrogen plant opening at Cobham services very soon (may be open already, I forget the exact dates).
Yes, via electrolysis which required five to ten times as much energy to to put in as you finally get out at the wheels; which doesn't compare particularly well to the ~80-90% efficiency of a battery electric vehicle. kambites said:
Yes, via electrolysis which required five to ten times as much energy to to put in as you finally get out at the wheels; which doesn't compare particularly well to the ~80-90% efficiency of a battery electric vehicle.
Also worth questioning how long it'll take to generate enough hydrogen for the next car? Or how many cars can fill up before it needs to produce more hydrogen?Hydrogen doesn't reduce the need for electricity; you produce hydrogen by splitting water using an electric current. Hydrogen is just another temporary store of energy, exactly like a battery.
Generating more electricity is no big deal. We know how to do it and we've got time to put the infrastructure in place.
The sticking point with EVs has always been the battery technology. The advances in that field have been staggering over the last 20 years and we've new got to the point where the batteries make EVs just about practical, unlocking the benefits of electric motors over ICEs, making fuel stations obsolete etc.
If battery technology hadn't advanced, we could have adopted hydrogen (maybe with solar powered electrolysis and cyrogenic storeage near the equator, then distribute in a similar way to oil). But battery technology has made that approach unnecessary.
Generating more electricity is no big deal. We know how to do it and we've got time to put the infrastructure in place.
The sticking point with EVs has always been the battery technology. The advances in that field have been staggering over the last 20 years and we've new got to the point where the batteries make EVs just about practical, unlocking the benefits of electric motors over ICEs, making fuel stations obsolete etc.
If battery technology hadn't advanced, we could have adopted hydrogen (maybe with solar powered electrolysis and cyrogenic storeage near the equator, then distribute in a similar way to oil). But battery technology has made that approach unnecessary.
kambites said:
Trabi601 said:
There's an on-site generating hydrogen plant opening at Cobham services very soon (may be open already, I forget the exact dates).
Yes, via electrolysis which required five to ten times as much energy to to put in as you finally get out at the wheels; which doesn't compare particularly well to the ~80-90% efficiency of a battery electric vehicle. Even if hydrogen is 25% less efficient than pure EV, the convenience of being able to fill up in seconds and not have any kind of range anxiety more than makes up for it for many people.
There are a further 3-4 hydrogen plants being installed this year, too - with 15 car manufacturers getting involved with the pilots. For me, hydrogen makes a lot more sense than pure EV. We just need to work on efficiency - but but by 2030, hydrogen fuel cell should be within the same ball park as EV.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells are going nowhere. All car manufacturers will give up on them within the next year or two. They make no sense. This is why...
...it's simply a terribly inefficient method to "deliver electricity"...that also requires a completely new delivery infrastructure to be built at a cost of trillions of dollars.
As soon as fast charging batteries can be done (as battery that fills to capacity in the same time it takes to fill a petrol tank), Hydrogen looses it's only advantage over straight Battery EV's. And this will happen in the next 5-10 years. When it does, it's not only goodbye hydrogen, it's goodbye IC engines too.
HFC's are Betamax in a world going VHS (for those that remember)
...it's simply a terribly inefficient method to "deliver electricity"...that also requires a completely new delivery infrastructure to be built at a cost of trillions of dollars.
As soon as fast charging batteries can be done (as battery that fills to capacity in the same time it takes to fill a petrol tank), Hydrogen looses it's only advantage over straight Battery EV's. And this will happen in the next 5-10 years. When it does, it's not only goodbye hydrogen, it's goodbye IC engines too.
HFC's are Betamax in a world going VHS (for those that remember)
Edited by RBH58 on Monday 13th February 11:49
Trabi601 said:
Most figures say a pure EV is 3 times more efficient than fuel cell. However, these assumptions include transportation losses - if you're producing on-site, on demand, the efficiency gets much closer.
Even if hydrogen is 25% less efficient than pure EV, the convenience of being able to fill up in seconds and not have any kind of range anxiety more than makes up for it for many people.
There are a further 3-4 hydrogen plants being installed this year, too - with 15 car manufacturers getting involved with the pilots. For me, hydrogen makes a lot more sense than pure EV. We just need to work on efficiency - but but by 2030, hydrogen fuel cell should be within the same ball park as EV.
You can produce on site, but not on demand.Even if hydrogen is 25% less efficient than pure EV, the convenience of being able to fill up in seconds and not have any kind of range anxiety more than makes up for it for many people.
There are a further 3-4 hydrogen plants being installed this year, too - with 15 car manufacturers getting involved with the pilots. For me, hydrogen makes a lot more sense than pure EV. We just need to work on efficiency - but but by 2030, hydrogen fuel cell should be within the same ball park as EV.
Think of it this way, lets assume your hydrogen tank contains 60kWh of energy (I picked this at random, its roughly twice a modern EV). Then to fill in 3s you need to produce your hydrogen fast enough to do 60kWh in 3s, or 72000kWh per hour, or 72000kW, or 72MW (ive gone through that slowly as its really easy to confuse power with energy not just to be annoying). So you need 72MW of electricity onsite, that isnt coming through the grid at that rate, so you need to do some intermediate storage. You can store on-site but if you think a single car has a bigish tank, then the hydrogen station that fuels a bunch of them everyday will need a huge tank. A huge tank of hydrogen onsite ... cannot see that going wrong, ever. Before anyone says "but they store loads of petrol", Hydrogen is a gas unless heavily pressurised...storing that is WAY harder than storing a nice liquid like petrol.
So yeah, as said above, Hydrogen is going nowhere, battery EVs have got it covered and that ship has sailed.
This story is absolute nonsense. Totally fails to understand how and when EV drivers recharge but more embarrasingly it makes schoolboy errors in the maths. I have sent the following letter to the Times.
Sir,
Your 11th February article "Electric cars mean UK could need 20 new nuclear plants" by Graham Paton shows both a lack of understanding of charging patterns of electric vehicle drivers and a failing of basic arithmetic.
Ninety per cent of all electric vehicle charging is done at home (source: OLEV) and of this the vast majority is done at night. Like many EV drivers, I programme mine to charge during the Economy 7 period to take advantage of cheap electricity rates of 8p per unit (kilowatt-hour). That charge is enough to cover my typical daily needs. Nationally, 73% of all vehicles are garaged or parked on private property overnight and even in urban areas the majority of cars are parked on private property (source: RAC Foundation), so there is scope for much of the fleet to be charged at off peak times today, even in cities.
Your article states that "At the maximum level of uptake in the city green cars would demand between seven and eight gigawatt-hours per year" and "Experts said this was equivalent to the output of more than two nuclear power stations similar to that being built at Hinkley Point in Somerset". Hinkley C will have an output of 3.2 gigawatts, meaning that in one hour, two such power stations would produce 6.4 gigawatt-hours. Clearly 8 gigawatt-hours in a year is not going to trouble such a facility, but in fact your total is very wide of the mark.
An electric vehicle like mine typically drives 4 miles with one kilowatt-hour. Therefore, taking average annual mileage of 7,900 miles per year (source: RAC Foundation), annual usage is just under 2,000 kWh or 2 megawatt-hours per car. Thus the 8 gigawatt-hours quoted in your article equates to only 4,000 cars' worth of electricity in a year. This is clearly incorrect, as London already has more electric vehicles on the road than that. Furthermore, it is 0.8% of the just over 1 Terawatt-hour (1,000 Gigawatt-hours) Transport for London states London Underground uses in one year (source: TfL).
More importantly, the article also completely misses the point that demand on the National Grid is not constant, but during the winter period varies from approximately 30 gigawatts at night to 50 gigawatts in the daytime peak (source: National Grid Demand). It is even less during the summer. Average annual mileage is under 22 miles per day, equating to a demand of under 6 kilowatt-hours per car, per day. If everyone recharged 90% of their needs during the seven hour Economy 7 period, each car would require under 1 kilowatt (or about 4 amps, less than a single electric heater). So today, during the Economy 7 period, 20 million cars can recharge before electricity demand reaches the same as the daytime peak. If all 31 million cars in the UK were electric, peak overnight demand (including existing demand) would be approximately 62 gigawatts - which was the peak demand in 2007 before LED lights and A+ appliances were commonplace. The other 10% of "away from home" daytime charging, which the government's proposed new initiative is aiming to meet by rolling out new fast chargers, will also comfortably remain within this historical threshold.
As the National Grid currently has a total generating capacity of 75 gigawatts and a further 3 gigawatts of foreign interconnectors (source: National Grid Winter Outlook Report 2016/17), it is therefore apparent that no new capacity is needed for a mass uptake of battery electric vehicles (note this is not true of electrolysed hydrogen, also mentioned in your article, which requires over three times as much electricity per mile to manufacture). In fact, a mass uptake of electric vehicles benefits the grid by allowing assets that would be idled overnight to continue to operate at full capacity. An electric vehicle fleet is complementary to existing National Grid domestic and industrial demand, not a burden to it.
What is needed is demand management - the so-called "Smart Grid" - to ensure that 31 million drivers do not arrive home and immediately recharge during the evening peak. To an extent this is done today through tariffs like Economy 7, but overnight charging should be the default option rather than merely encouraged (of course, like with a heater, this would not preclude an immediate boost if essential). As many domestic charging stations already include remote management via cellular links, by comparison this is relatively easy to implement and certainly not comparable to the expense and complication of an unnecessary build of 20 new nuclear power stations.
Yours faithfully...
OLEV: Drive an EV and you may never have to visit a petrol station again - Electric cars, low emission motoring - Go Ultra Low
RAC Foundation: Mobility
TfL: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/london-underground-carbo...
National Grid Demand: G. B. National Grid status
National Grid Winter Outlook Report: http://www2.nationalgrid.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsse...
Sir,
Your 11th February article "Electric cars mean UK could need 20 new nuclear plants" by Graham Paton shows both a lack of understanding of charging patterns of electric vehicle drivers and a failing of basic arithmetic.
Ninety per cent of all electric vehicle charging is done at home (source: OLEV) and of this the vast majority is done at night. Like many EV drivers, I programme mine to charge during the Economy 7 period to take advantage of cheap electricity rates of 8p per unit (kilowatt-hour). That charge is enough to cover my typical daily needs. Nationally, 73% of all vehicles are garaged or parked on private property overnight and even in urban areas the majority of cars are parked on private property (source: RAC Foundation), so there is scope for much of the fleet to be charged at off peak times today, even in cities.
Your article states that "At the maximum level of uptake in the city green cars would demand between seven and eight gigawatt-hours per year" and "Experts said this was equivalent to the output of more than two nuclear power stations similar to that being built at Hinkley Point in Somerset". Hinkley C will have an output of 3.2 gigawatts, meaning that in one hour, two such power stations would produce 6.4 gigawatt-hours. Clearly 8 gigawatt-hours in a year is not going to trouble such a facility, but in fact your total is very wide of the mark.
An electric vehicle like mine typically drives 4 miles with one kilowatt-hour. Therefore, taking average annual mileage of 7,900 miles per year (source: RAC Foundation), annual usage is just under 2,000 kWh or 2 megawatt-hours per car. Thus the 8 gigawatt-hours quoted in your article equates to only 4,000 cars' worth of electricity in a year. This is clearly incorrect, as London already has more electric vehicles on the road than that. Furthermore, it is 0.8% of the just over 1 Terawatt-hour (1,000 Gigawatt-hours) Transport for London states London Underground uses in one year (source: TfL).
More importantly, the article also completely misses the point that demand on the National Grid is not constant, but during the winter period varies from approximately 30 gigawatts at night to 50 gigawatts in the daytime peak (source: National Grid Demand). It is even less during the summer. Average annual mileage is under 22 miles per day, equating to a demand of under 6 kilowatt-hours per car, per day. If everyone recharged 90% of their needs during the seven hour Economy 7 period, each car would require under 1 kilowatt (or about 4 amps, less than a single electric heater). So today, during the Economy 7 period, 20 million cars can recharge before electricity demand reaches the same as the daytime peak. If all 31 million cars in the UK were electric, peak overnight demand (including existing demand) would be approximately 62 gigawatts - which was the peak demand in 2007 before LED lights and A+ appliances were commonplace. The other 10% of "away from home" daytime charging, which the government's proposed new initiative is aiming to meet by rolling out new fast chargers, will also comfortably remain within this historical threshold.
As the National Grid currently has a total generating capacity of 75 gigawatts and a further 3 gigawatts of foreign interconnectors (source: National Grid Winter Outlook Report 2016/17), it is therefore apparent that no new capacity is needed for a mass uptake of battery electric vehicles (note this is not true of electrolysed hydrogen, also mentioned in your article, which requires over three times as much electricity per mile to manufacture). In fact, a mass uptake of electric vehicles benefits the grid by allowing assets that would be idled overnight to continue to operate at full capacity. An electric vehicle fleet is complementary to existing National Grid domestic and industrial demand, not a burden to it.
What is needed is demand management - the so-called "Smart Grid" - to ensure that 31 million drivers do not arrive home and immediately recharge during the evening peak. To an extent this is done today through tariffs like Economy 7, but overnight charging should be the default option rather than merely encouraged (of course, like with a heater, this would not preclude an immediate boost if essential). As many domestic charging stations already include remote management via cellular links, by comparison this is relatively easy to implement and certainly not comparable to the expense and complication of an unnecessary build of 20 new nuclear power stations.
Yours faithfully...
OLEV: Drive an EV and you may never have to visit a petrol station again - Electric cars, low emission motoring - Go Ultra Low
RAC Foundation: Mobility
TfL: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/london-underground-carbo...
National Grid Demand: G. B. National Grid status
National Grid Winter Outlook Report: http://www2.nationalgrid.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsse...
essayer said:
Interesting chart! Is there any equivalent for the overall efficiency of the petrol/diesel refining and delivery process?
It's probably pretty inefficient too.....but the infrastructure to deliver it evolved over a 100 years. To deliver Hydrogen, we'd have to just about start from scratch. It's never going to happen. It makes no sense.RBH58 said:
essayer said:
Interesting chart! Is there any equivalent for the overall efficiency of the petrol/diesel refining and delivery process?
It's probably pretty inefficient too.....but the infrastructure to deliver it evolved over a 100 years. To deliver Hydrogen, we'd have to just about start from scratch. It's never going to happen. It makes no sense.On site production is the way forward - and whilst, as pointed out above, it's not quite 'on demand', it's on site with minimal storage requirements. (I'd misunderstood some of the presentation I had a couple of weeks ago)
An emerging and developing technology which isn't quite where it needs to be yet - filling currently is similar to LPG - but all predictions and future tech., is pointing to true on-demand production with fill times in seconds.
Regarding zero emissions hydrogen - it's a complete non-starter.
If you take the amount of hydrogen to fill up a Toyota Mirai of 5 kilogrammes, then:
- The hydrogen station at Rotherham with an on-site wind turbine produces an average of 3.5 cars' worth per day.
- The hydrogen station by the A13 in East London with the massive 115 kW solar array makes an average of 0.9 cars' worth per day over the year.
- If you wanted to replace an average supermarket petrol filling station with 100% wind powered hydrogen, you would need at least 11 of the biggest onshore wind turbines available (Enercon E-126 at 4.2 Megawatts each).
The maths just doesn't work. If you then accept that it has to be connected to the grid, then it wastes so much electricity that the upstream emissions work out at >130 g/km. A normal Prius is 70 g/km.
It should also be noted that they are selling the hydrogen produced at these stations at £10 per kilogramme to fleets, so to fill up the Mirai is costing the fleet operators £50 a tank.
Rotherham Wind Powered Filling Station
CEME 115 kWp Solar Array
If you take the amount of hydrogen to fill up a Toyota Mirai of 5 kilogrammes, then:
- The hydrogen station at Rotherham with an on-site wind turbine produces an average of 3.5 cars' worth per day.
- The hydrogen station by the A13 in East London with the massive 115 kW solar array makes an average of 0.9 cars' worth per day over the year.
- If you wanted to replace an average supermarket petrol filling station with 100% wind powered hydrogen, you would need at least 11 of the biggest onshore wind turbines available (Enercon E-126 at 4.2 Megawatts each).
The maths just doesn't work. If you then accept that it has to be connected to the grid, then it wastes so much electricity that the upstream emissions work out at >130 g/km. A normal Prius is 70 g/km.
It should also be noted that they are selling the hydrogen produced at these stations at £10 per kilogramme to fleets, so to fill up the Mirai is costing the fleet operators £50 a tank.
Rotherham Wind Powered Filling Station
CEME 115 kWp Solar Array
Edited by dpeilow on Monday 13th February 12:32
Ultimately Hydrogen has a bunch of hurdles to overcome in order that we can all maintain our habit of fuelling cars instantly. We still end up with a lower round trip efficiency and a bunch of storage and handling issues within the car, and potential storage and handling issues at the station or delivery issues. Hydrogen can get better efficiency, but it can never be as good as battery as there will always be extra conversion stages.
Or we could adjust our habits slightly and use battery vehicles and use a whole lot less energy all round . Battery charging will get quicker, but it'll never be as quick as filling up with petrol (most likely). In the mean time, batteries have overcome a bunch of their hurdles to becoming practical and the main remaining ones are perception (not helped by this article) and vehicle design (the sooner we stop trying to electrify old designs and start with a blank sheet like the i3 the sooner they get good).
I know which I would pick.
Or we could adjust our habits slightly and use battery vehicles and use a whole lot less energy all round . Battery charging will get quicker, but it'll never be as quick as filling up with petrol (most likely). In the mean time, batteries have overcome a bunch of their hurdles to becoming practical and the main remaining ones are perception (not helped by this article) and vehicle design (the sooner we stop trying to electrify old designs and start with a blank sheet like the i3 the sooner they get good).
I know which I would pick.
Trabi601 said:
RBH58 said:
essayer said:
Interesting chart! Is there any equivalent for the overall efficiency of the petrol/diesel refining and delivery process?
It's probably pretty inefficient too.....but the infrastructure to deliver it evolved over a 100 years. To deliver Hydrogen, we'd have to just about start from scratch. It's never going to happen. It makes no sense.On site production is the way forward - and whilst, as pointed out above, it's not quite 'on demand', it's on site with minimal storage requirements. (I'd misunderstood some of the presentation I had a couple of weeks ago)
An emerging and developing technology which isn't quite where it needs to be yet - filling currently is similar to LPG - but all predictions and future tech., is pointing to true on-demand production with fill times in seconds.
Why do you keep repeating "fill times in seconds"? It's minutes, tens of minutes even if a car has been there before you and the on-site tank needs to re-pressurise.
You can't have it both ways - on site generation "on demand" and high speed fill times. You cannot change the laws of physics - if a car needs 100kWh to "fill" and you don't want to store that 100kWh in a local energy storage medium, then you need to generate it. But 100kWh is, as implied by the units, 100kW for an entire hour. To fill that in a minute (i.e. 1/60th of an hour) means a power rate of 6000kW, or 6MW. I.e. the output from a good sized nuclear power station.
So which is it to be - local storage of the Hydrogen, or a nuclear power plant to produce it on-demand?
And don't forget that figure is for one pump, build a nuclear station per pump is not practical for a normal sized filling station for these (which you will need for Hydrogen cars, since they can't fill up at home overnight, unlike battery ones).
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