This guy underestimates what current battery-electric cars can do. There have already been several cars produced with 100 mile range, yet he says they only have a 30 or 40 mile range. That sounds more like the crudest homebuilt EV powered by not-very-many lead-acid batteries.

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Keep in mind that the driver for hydrogen isn't reduced CO2 emissions, it's zero (tailpipe) emissions from cars - CARB's holy grail. Californians don't really care about environmental degradation, as long as it occurs somewhere far from their property.

The oil & gas plus nuclear industries love hydrogen because it would sustain or increase demand for their products while greenwashing them at the same time. This is why they have made sure Congress lavishes taxpayer money on the development of fuel cells, on-board tanks and a distribution infrastructure. Big oil is not about to let global warming get in the way of its huge profits.

Nuclear would benefit from PHEVs and BEVs as well, but oil & gas would suffer. It's telling that when GM decided to abandon the EV1 project, the company they sold their NiMH battery subsidiary (Ovonics) to is Chevron.

Btw, nuclear power is neither clean nor a renewable source of electricity. Its waste can be reprocessed but that just implies separating the plutonium waste so the remaining ~95% of the fuel rod's mass can be used to make new fuel rods. Demand for primary uranium can be sharply reduced this way, but you end up stuck with a small volume of even more radioactive material that terrorists and potentates would like to get their hands on. Security overheads for the logistics alone are very high. Until and unless there is an operational permanent repository for the radioactive waste, nuclear power deserves to remain a dead-end technology IMHO.

Geothermal is renewable, strictly speaking, but sites may take many decades to recover after their heat is harvested. Unfortunately, exploiting low-grade heat requires expensive equipment above ground (e.g. Kalina cycle), so geothermal has historically only been viable in a few locations in the world. Solar, wind and hydro are all true renewables but also far too expensive to support switching the whole vehicle fleet to electric propulsion any time soon.

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OK, I'll bite:

Greg asks: Why are all these car companies putting so much effort into fuel cell vehicles if they don't expect them to be viable?

Answer: Because federal research grants are paying for almost all of that work. If those companies had to gamble with their own money I doubt there'd be much going on.

Greg says: Plug-in technology is totally consistent with fuel cells, so why would plug-ins be a "fuel cell killer".

Answer: Because once people commute with plug power and only buy gas once every other month there's no more impetus to be an early adopter of consumption-lowering technology.

Greg says: Hydrogen won't be any more expensive than gas is now. It takes 50kWh of electricity to make 1kg and a GE windmill can produce electricity for 3.5 cents/kWh.

Answer: That's the production cost of electricity. The retail cost will still be more like 10 cents/kWh. Those same 50kWh could power a small EV 200 miles or more.

Greg says: Fuel cells will be able to be mass produced for a cost similar to ICEs.

Answer: Chicken and the egg. Find 1,000,000 people to buy them and they won't cost $1,000,000. But when hybrids first came on the market how many people bought them? How do those economies of scale look at 2000 units/year? Who's going to be the early adopter without H2 filling stations near their houses? Who's going to build an H2 station unless there are H2 cars on the road?

The whole thing could only be mandated from the top down, but Americans don't tend to respond well to that kind of thing.

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GM is obviously not "betting the farm" on hydrogen if they're pumping out E85-compatible vehicles by the thousands and revisiting electric cars (via the Volt).

Hydrogen is smallest atom in the universe, thus it's naturally hard to contain, especially since it's gaseous at room temperature. Even if you can get it cheaply and renewably, expensive equipment is required to store and transport it. This infrastructure cost cannot be solved by any quantity of vehicle production.

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His main justification for hydrogen seems to be: "All the big car makers are betting on this, therefore it must make sense!"

So, my questions would be: Do we know the true motivations of these companies? Are the big car makers really betting their futures on hydrogen, or are they just saying that for PR reasons? Are they slow to realize -- or slow to admit publicly -- that they were wrong about the potential for fuel cells? Are they feeding at the public trough because hydrogen research programs are popular with politicians, rather than because they truly believe hydrogen has genuine technical advantages?

His analysis of PHEVs is also flawed. A PHEV is based on the theory that most of your everyday driving will be done on grid power, and the "range extender" will only be required for the occasional long trip. So. . . If you move everyone to hydrogen fuel-cell PHEVs, then you have to build the entire expensive hydrogen fueling infrastructure, but it serves only to fuel cars for their occasional long trips. The infrastructure cost is just as high as it would be for hydrogen-only cars, while the benefit is much reduced. By comparison, gasoline (or flex-fuel) PHEVs would use already existing infrastructure, so the cost-versus-benefit of infrastructure is a non-issue for them.

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"Myth #5 - Making hydrogen for use in cars is not a good use of renewable energy

Reality - There is more than enough renewable energy to produce both electricity for homes and businesses and hydrogen for cars"

Notice here that he doesn't metion how much electricity is used to make hydrogen. And sure, we have so many wind turbines and solar panels that we're just prancing around in electricity.

"Myth #6 - The high cost of building a hydrogen infrastructure means hydrogen should not be pursued

Reality - The cost of building a hydrogen infrastructure will be high, but far less expensive than the costs that will have to be paid if the current path is maintained"

If hydrogen was the only way to get off oil, then the cost a hydrogen infrastructure would be fine, since it would have to be done. However, we have options like EVs. EVs essentially have their infrastructure in place, the only "infrastructure" needed is a charger. Every home has a plug, and some plugs might need to be installed for those living in apartments/condos. Installing plugs isn't a big deal, and is much easier than a hydrogen infrastructure.

"Myth #2 -Hybrid vehicles are as efficient as fuel cell vehicles"

"since fuel cell vehicles can have hybrid technology, what is the point of comparing hybrid vehicles with fuel cell vehicles?"

Wow, he didn't even answer the question. And there is a point in comparing the two because a gas-electric hybrid is totally different from a fuelcell-electric car. And, from EPA testing, fuel cell cars get only a few more mpg than a hybrid, or about the same. You can go to fueleconomy.gov to see for your self.

"Reality - Fuel cells are twice as efficient as internal combustion engines"

Yes, they are twice as efficient. But this is peak efficiency. The peak efficiency must be drastically lower than the overall efficiency b/c those EPA testing ratings do not show them as twice as fuel-efficient as a hybrid. (granted you're comparing a FCX, arguably the best fuel cell car yet, to a similarly sized prius or civic hybrid)

" “Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States.” "

This is from a document from the gov't on the potential for wind power. Potential, not actual. 6% of the US cannot be covered by wind turbines. If you did that, you'd take up space equivilant to a whole state.

He also lists a bunch of different manufacturers who are making FCVs in handfuls (50 or less to up to 100) mostly for fleets, and Honda who will be leasing a couple to the public also. Making a couple prototypes in the hands of very few people, does't mean fuel-cells are anywhere close to production. This was done with EVs 15-20 years ago, and they weren't ready for mass market back then. I could say more, but this is enough writing for one day. In the end, the market will choose.

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I want to thank all the skeptics from chiming in above. Good work. We need to work on battery technology above all else. Here's a big Fuel Cell scientist at the EFCF not only admitting that H2 Fuel Cells can never compete with electric, but pushes to end research on it now.
http://www.efcf.com/reports/E17.pdf

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Stop the government subsidies and see what happens to hydrogen-powered fuel cell development.

The reason the 2007 (15 mpg city) Chevy Suburban our business just bought has a yellow E85 cap is so GM avoids CAFE penalties.

(I'd have to drive 6 hours to be able to buy E85)

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The latest battery technology shows that recharge times of ten minutes are possible. The Tesla has a EPA certified range of 245 miles per charge. So the batteries are very, very close to being ready for widespread acceptance. Electricty is available just about everywhere, hydrogen almost nowhere.

It had a good run, but now it's the end of the line for hydrogen.

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pkuhl and Blackbird are right.

It's time to admit Hydrogen is DEAD.

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give it up hydrogen, your government subsidizes are over!

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I WOULD LOVE to get into a Hydrogen Discussion. I think Hydrogen is a waste of a time. A con and BAD for america. IT will not save us money and in the long run will cost us EVEN MORE than gas cars cost us now. It has NO advantages over an EV and a LOT of disadvantages.

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Blencoe gives a laundry list of why he "will never back down", but the real reason is that if the H2 hype dies, so does his company and his CEO job. The threat to his income explains the belligerence. Sorry, but his efforts to counter what he considers "myths" are not very convincing, especially when he replies with his own myths or misdirections.

He claims H2FC vehicles will be competitive with gasoline ICE vehicles when mass produced, and that mass produced fuel cells will be price competitive with IC engines. The problem is that most of the fuel cell cost comes from the expensive catalysts and special membranes used. The construction is a simple stack job, the only difficult part is getting it properly sealed - if air leaks into the H2 side or vice versa, the result would be disasterous. Thus even mass production won't reduce the price much, and as it drives up demand for rare catalysts the price could go up! Plus, Blencoe conveniently ignores the high cost of H2 storage, as high pressure carbon fiber tanks or large vacuum dewar tanks cost alomost as much as the fuel cells, and metal hydride storage costs even more. Again, the high material costs means that even if mass produced, the H2 storage cost would be too expensive for most consumers to consider.

He counters the claim that hybrids are as efficient as fuel cell vehicles by stating that fuel cells are twice as efficient as IC engines. That may be true under ideal conditions in the lab, but in real life on the road testing, the results are disappointing. The Honda FCX got 45 miles per Kg of H2 (1 Kg of H2 is the energy equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline), and the recent GM Sequel publicity drive got much less. We have been seeing H2FC cars getting from 25 to 55 miles per Kg, equivalent to a variety of hybrid vehicles. Claims that hybrid technology could be added to H2FC cars doesn't help, as all H2FC vehicles on the road have batteries or ultracaps to deal with slow fuel cell startup and handle peak power demands - they are already hybridized! It is ironic that the 1st gen. Honda FCX has the equivalent fuel milage efficiency to the 2001-2003 Prius, yet has much less performance (20 sec. 0-60, vs. 11 sec.) and a much shorter per tank range.

That real H2FC hybrid cars have equivalent milage to gas/electric hybrids damages his argument that the future H2 costs of $4 to $6 per Kg would be the equivalent of $2 to $3 per gallon gasoline. Even worse, the current cost of mass produced H2 is much higher than that, around $8 to $10 per Kg from steam reformed natural gas, and H2 from electrolysis costs much more. The only way for H2 to be cost competitive to fossil fuels is if gas taxes were raised substantially and H2 remains tax free. H2 will never be cost competitive to electricity.

He is correect in pointing out that "plug-in hybrid" technology could be used in H2FC cars, and indeed, both GM and Ford are testing it. What he skips over is the reason why we would want to do most of our driving on electricity. Driving electric has a per mile cost 1/4th to 1/5 the cost of driving on gasoline, and H2 currently costs much more than gasoline. Even the most wildly optomistic H2 predictions concede that driving electric will always be less than 1/3 the cost of driving on H2.

He argues against the high cost of building the H2 infrastructure is by claiming the "current path" would be more expensive. His argument assumes a false dichotomy, that the only two choices are "H2" or "Business as usual", ignoring all of the other alternatives - battery electrics, plug-in hybrids, biofuels, PRT, and electric dualmode guideways. Note that all of those alternatives could be less expensive to build, and much less expensive to operate. Electric transport is, of course, much more efficient than any H2 powered vehicle.

When it is pointed out that the inefficiency of electrolysis means that it is a poor use for our limited supply of expensive renewable energy, he counters by pointing out all the potential for renewables, and ignoring both efficiency and cost. The fact is, renewables are still oly a small fraction of our energy supplies, and until enough renewable energy comes online to replace burning coal and oil, we cannot afford to waste it by making H2. Especially if we are concerned about CO2 emissions.

All the announcements from the automakers about H2 cars coming in a few years means little when we look at the long history of broken promises. Since 1969, H2 cars have always been "just a few years away" but never actually produced for sale. Why should we expect 2010, 2012, 2015. 2020 or 2030 to be any different?

There are already more freeway capable battery electric cars on the road than H2 cars. By the end of 2008, Tesla Motors by themselves will have produced more electric cars than the entire fleet of H2 cars from all manufacturers. By 2010 there will be more plug-ins sold each month than the entire H2 car fleet, sold or leased. The future is electric.

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