This is such a one sided comparison. I mean, really, an FCX compared to a Cube? A fairer comparison would be an FCX and, oh say, the Tesla Roadster. But wait, the Tesla would be cheaper, it would be able to travel farther, it would be faster off the line. Oh, and it's available to the general public for about $875,000 less. Did I mention it costs less to fill up? Yes, Hydrogen is a little faster to refuel (by not much), but otherwise there's no difference. DId I mention it's available right now? Ok, I'm done.

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"Hydrogen, produced from Natural Gas, Does Nothing to cut the Global Warming Tax"

How do you propose to generate electricity at night to recharge your EV car and not generate greenhouse gases? By putting some unicorns on a treadmill? EV cars will be recharged at night from either coal power, natural gas or nuclear power plants. How is that different from using coal, natural gas or nuclear power to create hydrogen? Please think before posting stupidities.

Unlike electricity, hydrogen is conveniently storable. If the wind blows more one night you can use electrolysis to create excess hydrogen and store it for when you need it. You can create hydrogen in the winter months and use it in the summer months when people go on vacation. It is very difficult if not impossible to store electricity in large amounts for use months later.

Please think.

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augustus, you can't just shut off most power plants at night. They keep running, that's when EVs charge and at a discounted rate due to low demand. By comparison, natural gas -> hydrogen has more greenhouse emissions on top of status quo, and electrolysis is just lowering overall efficiency.

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>> How do you propose to generate electricity at night to recharge your EV car and not generate greenhouse gases?

Um ever heard of a wind turbine or hydroelectric dam or geothermal power or wave power? If that is too clean for you then you could try nuclear power.

I buy wind power for my home for an extra 1 cent per kWh, it costs me about $5 extra per month.

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Augustus,

I think one of the issues with Hydrogen is the fact that it is not particularly convenient to store. If it were, the rest of the pipeline is pretty much there. Burning it or running it through a fuel cell is pretty much figured out.

Storing electricity in a battery is also not ideal, but it appears to be a more solvable problem, not to mention the infrastructure to distribute the electricity is already there.

Ultimately, it is all just a bet, but I think battery technology seems like the better one at the moment, especially if we are looking to have a turn around time of 2-5 years vs. 15 years.

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Greg Blencoe is an attention whore! if Auto Blog Green continues to promote this man, I will go get my green auto news from some other place.

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And you can't use those same energy sources to produce hydrogen?

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Yes, Noz, those renewable energy sources could be used to make H2. But storing that energy in batteries is 3x more efficient than storing the energy in H2. That means either 3x more spending for expensive solar cells and windmills, or less renewable energy left to displace fossil fuel use elsewhere.

If your goal is to reduce CO2 emissions with renewable energy sources, the best option is plug-ins, not the less efficient H2 option.

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Powering cars is not the only use for hydrogen. If you could only get that through wonderfully open mind, you could actually have a revelation. Looing beyond your own arm's length can be enlightening.

The fact is, being clean is expensive....for now. If you want to use a fuel that is not carbon based, the choice is limited.

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Of course, Noz. H2 is used for many industrial purposes, including increasing the yield of gasoline and diesel from a barrel of oil. But the low density and difficult to store nature of H2 puts severe limits on its usefulness as a transportation fuel. Currently, the main use of H2 fuel is for really big rockets, where its high energy density overrides the problems of bulkiness, difficult storage, and high cost.

H2 isn't a practical fuel for commercial ships as it takes up too much space - ships need room for passengers and cargo. H2 might be used on military and surveillance aircraft where cost is no objection and H2 tanks can take up most of the fuselage. H2 is simply too bulky to provide all the power for commercial jetliners, though H2 fuel cells might find a minor role as an electrical power supply for jets - assuming that prices can be brought down to reasonable levels.

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1- the green argument is bogus, you burn coal/natural gas to power your EV.
2- you don't need to replace 20k gas stations to cover the US, yes this is an issue but so is overloading the power grid if everyone has an ev and plugs it in at the same time- there aren't enough lines to move the power and there aren't enough power plants to supply the power. Electric supply and conveyance are not very flexible when dealing with multiple GW. Copper cable only carries so much and the rest of the system (e.g. your computer) is sensitive to power spikes.
3- Volt's battery costs $16k, they aren't keeping the price low
4- I can lease a FCX 5 from a honda dealer 5 miles away from my home

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Greg *always* ignores these issues (price, 3x environmental impact, safety, etc), and posts grossly misleading stuff on his site (hey, Greg: the 100 miles is an EPA combined cycle estimate while the FCHV is Japanese, about 30-40% more lax). He always picks and chooses the worst EVs to compare to the best FCVs. He outright lies when talking about modern battery longevities and completely skips over the far worse fuel cell longevities. And on and on and on.

Why on earth are we dignifying him with not only a spot in the comments section, but in article headers? This is his *job*. He's writing this stuff to *lobby* for fuel cells so he can *make money*. If you're going to post his ads, charge him.

FYI: The lease on the FCHV is $7,700 a month:

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/09/02/toyota-to-start-leasing-fuel-cell-vehicle-in-japan/#comments

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"1- the green argument is bogus, you burn coal/natural gas to power your EV."

Red herring. If you're getting your hydrogen from electricity, you can't credit it with cleaner electricity than you credit EVs for charging from. Except that whatever the electricity source, EVs will use about 1/3rd as much of it and fuel far cheaper from it.

And FYI, only half our grid is coal. The rest is almost entirely nuclear (near-zero carbon), natural gas (low carbon), and hydro (near-zero carbon). Wind is the fastest growing part of our grid -- 42% of new power capacity added last year was wind (most of the rest being natural gas).

"2- you don't need to replace 20k gas stations to cover the US"

You're right. The real number for FCVs is over 200k. FCVs are worse than gasoline cars in that respect because, unlike EVs, which primarily charge at home, FCVs require filling stations like gas cars. But, unlike gas cars, they take much longer to fill (the Fuel Cell Equinox, for example, takes about 25 minutes -- much longer than many upcoming EVs at rapid charging stations). EVs only need rapid chargers (which are, per unit, cheaper than hydrogen stations per pump) for long trips. There are rapid fill hydrogen systems, but they're ridiculously expensive and involve keeping the hydrogen in massively pressurized tanks that I wouldn't want to live within five miles of.

"yes this is an issue but so is overloading the power grid if everyone has an ev and plugs it in at the same time- there aren't enough lines to move the power and there aren't enough power plants to supply the power."

The DOE disagrees with you. Hmm, who to listen to, the DOE or user "augustus"? And furthermore, hydrogen cars require *three times as much* electricity.

"Electric supply and conveyance are not very flexible when dealing with multiple GW."

As noted by the DOE (and many utilities), EVs are a dream load. They're stable, predictable, readily adaptable to smart charging, and primarily off peak.

"Copper cable only carries so much and the rest of the system (e.g. your computer) is sensitive to power spikes."

You can't even get that right. Most of the grid is aluminum, not copper.

"3- Volt's battery costs $16k, they aren't keeping the price low"

According to GM, it's "thousands less" than the $10k figure erroneously reported in one article. I.e., probably $7-8k. Which matches what other companies are paying for similar batteries (about $0.50/Wh)

"4- I can lease a FCX 5 from a honda dealer 5 miles away from my home"

Good for you. You can lease a $300-400k car for dirt cheap because the company is using it as a PR stunt to push tech that they're heavily invested in. Way to change the world.

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augustus your digressing from the real arguments on every point.
1- Yes EVs get power from dirty sources, but are more efficient about it than Hydrogen cars. Natural Gas derived H2 doesn't help the greenhouse gases, at least EVs pull from existing power plants. And electrolysis only further ramps up inefficiency. (As an FYI if we're doing geographical happiness, my home's power is derived largely from nuclear and hydroelectric, yay TVA)
2- One, while you wont have to replace every station you can't just have them in So Cal and DC. Also EVs do have the ability to smart charge, but even if they didn't I point you to an AEAI study noting even an overly optimistic uptake of EVs would put minimal stress on the grid.
3- Last time I checked $16k(for Volt or the predicted $35k+ for Model S) is a lot less than the several hundred thousand a single fuel cell costs right now. So relatively speaking for new technology EV battery tech is cheap.
4- One, could you really if you wanted to? I highly doubt that given the low production volumes (200 units). Again you digress, I said *BUY*. The grand whopping 200 FCX Clarities are only being *leased* in So Cal. As of now I have several options to purchase EV cars and bikes from.

This isn't to say Hydrogen cars are bad, simply put they don't as of now need to have large sums of money invested in their development when we are in such tough financial time and a clearly better alternative is technologically AND economically feasible.

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The only reason it takes 25 minutes to refill the Equinox is because they are filling it at the GM facility which has a severely undersized compressor. The car can be refueled at any proper station in 3-5 minutes easy. As per rapid charging, I've also yet to see a definitive, peer reviewed study that rapid charging does not significantly reduce battery life.

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"The car can be refueled at any proper station in 3-5 minutes easy"

Not at "any proper station". The hydrogen has to be stored at something like 10,000 PSI (~680 atmospheres) if you want to fill it that fast. Do you have any clue how much pressure that is? How expensive and dangerous hydrogen-safe storage tanks at those pressures are?

"As per rapid charging, I've also yet to see a definitive, peer reviewed study that rapid charging does not significantly reduce battery life."

It does generally reduce battery life. But you only need to do it so rarely (i.e., long trips), it's insigificant. Rapid charging of EVs has already found significant use in some industries -- for example, warehousing, where rapid-charge forklifts provide better turnaround, lower cost, and lower incidence of worker injuries than the traditional approach of battery swapping. It does shorten their lifespans, but not enough to make it not worth it.

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That is incorrect. No public 10,000 PSI (700 bar) station stores hydrogen at this pressure and does not have to be to dispense 700 bar. A compressor takes a intermediate pressure (as low as 40-70 bar) and pumps it up to the final pressure. The size of the compressor largely determines station capacity and dispenser throughput.

As to your danger comment, there is a lot less energy in stored hydrogen (even at pressure) compared to a typical gasoline station that stores 5,000-10,000 gallons of gasoline. Hydrogen has been around a long time and companies know how to handle it. Large established companies with high reputations would not put above ground storage without significant protection if the vessels were so dangerous.

The peer reviewed studies I have read on fast charging shows that with 10 intermediate cycles of quick charging (40-60 min) decreases battery life up to 30%. As a consumer, this would be unacceptable to me. I am for plug-in and EV but I am not sold on the rapid charging idea yet.

Quick research yielded forklifts that can fast recharge in 1-2 hours. However, forklifts are a different story because the application. This is actually one area where fuel cells have a business case.

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That is incorrect. If you want the 3-5 minute fills that you talked about (and that the Clarity supports), you have to store it at near the vehicle's tank pressure. Otherwise, it takes about half an hour to compress it (unless it's LH, but that has its own set of huge problems).

"As to your danger comment, there is a lot less energy in stored hydrogen (even at pressure) compared to a typical gasoline station that stores 5,000-10,000 gallons of gasoline."

The difference per vehicle mile is minimal. But the problem is not the amount of energy stored but the form. Storing highly compressed gasses that burn in almost any fuel-air mixture, have tiny ignition energies, and readily undergo deflagration to detonition transitions even at atmospheric pressure, at many thousands of PSI, is incredibly dangerous. Way, way, way more dangerous than having unpressurized liquid gasoline on hand. What you're describing is like saying a pine tree has more energy in it than a 50 pound box of dynamite. While true, which one would you rather be standing next to when it caught on fire?

"Hydrogen has been around a long time and companies know how to handle it."

Indeed it has, and indeed they do. But have you ever looked at *how* they handle it? Read NASA's hydrogen handling guidelines some time. It'll be enlightening. They go through all sorts of ridiculous measures to try and keep the stuff from killing them all, and they *still* have the occasional accident. I got to tour an oil refinery a couple times when I was younger, and despite all of that oil and natural gas there, the feedstock that worried them the most, that caused the most problems, and that they took the most extreme measures over was the hydrogen used for the cat crackers.

"The peer reviewed studies I have read on fast charging shows that with 10 intermediate cycles of quick charging (40-60 min) decreases battery life up to 30%. "

Um, no -- Ref please. Not even close. A123 cells, for example, can do around 1,000 6-8C (~7.5-10 minute) discharges and 3-4C (15-20 minute) charges before capacity drops to 80% of its initial state. While that's nothing compared to the ~7,000 cycles at 1C, for something done as rarely as cross-country road trips, it's not a problem.

"Quick research yielded forklifts that can fast recharge in 1-2 hours."

Huh? Where are you getting that from? The Enersys, Norvick, and Aerovironment chargers deliver hundreds of amps to each forklift. The standard approach for their usage is that they're fast charged from about 30% to about 80% during the workers' (15 minute) breaks, and hence the forklifts can run nonstop. If it took 1-2 hours, there'd be no point to them, as they're designed to *prevent* downtime on the lifts (which occurs during the other approach, battery swapping).

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