@yoatman:

I had not realised you were so keen on fuel cells!

As of 30th Jan this year:

https://hydrogen-central.com/bmw-says-goodbye-to-electric-cars-it-has-now-solved-the-problem-of-hydrogen-engines-mes/

' In the coming era of transportation, the focus will be on fast performance, quick refuelling, and eco-friendly options. Hydrogen engines are emerging as a potential game-changer in the automotive industry, aligning with these priorities.

Only a handful of manufacturers are actively developing this technology to lead the way in hydrogen-powered vehicles, and BMW is among them.'

UPS is using CNG for their semis, works real well. You can imagine a hybrid running CNG made with biomass and wind and solar hydrogen pretty good future.

@Roger:

It is not just batteries which are improving. Every iteration of fuel cells gets more compact, and the next generation of Toyotas is no exception.

I would support hybrid fuel cells for most folk who don't go on long journeys every day.
A battery pack of around 10KWh can cover day to day, then the hydrogen tank with its swift refills is waiting if you want to go far on a particular day,

Any issues of lower round trip efficiency for hydrogen is then finessed, and the excess weight of very large battery packs avoided.

@electric car insider:

What really 'simply does not work out' at least in the case of the UK, and likely although I have less knowledge of the precise details, in Europe and even in the US is the notion that transmission lines can be built to carry the hypothesised increase in electricity from where it is produced, mostly in the North sea, to where it needs to be used.

Scotland, where much of it would come ashore initially, simply is not going to allow so much of their country to be ploughed up to build them, and the opposition within England would be considerable.

Much of the UKs power is via natural gas, burnt very inefficiently in homes, offices etc to provide heat.

To some extent the need to replace it one for one is mitigated by things like residential rooftop solar, better insulation, heat pumps and whatever, but substantially the resource is in the North sea, and massive amounts of new power would have to come from it.

Even at sea, it takes several electric transmission cables to equal the output of one hydrogen pipe.

And to the extent where production is from floating turbines, which increasingly it will have to be, taking it off as hydrogen is the only practical solution. It is also intended to upgrade and hydrogen ready NG pipelines.

Once ashore, hydrogen can then be piped, largely through upgraded NG pipelines, to where it is needed.

So far from being an extra, lossy, step, much of the UK's output is likely to be in hydrogen.

It is also true that there are considerable difficulties in upgrading the US grid to shift renewables to where they are needed, but others are going to follow what is happening there much more closely, so I will leave it to others to give some assessment of the state of play there.

But in the case of the UK, and likely in Europe, there is no practical plan or even realistic possibility of building enough transmission lines to go to the largely electric economy envisaged, as it can't be moved from where it is produced to where it is needed.

Willing the end without the means is a nonsense, and we ain't desecrating our landscape by forcing through the enormous intrusive infrastructure needed.

Nor should we.

Either piped hydrogen or small nuclear is needed to get the power to where it needs to be for an electrified, low carbon economy.

Realistically relying on purely electric transmission lines is likely to result in ever increasing shortfalls, and missing decarbonisation targets.

The lines simply are not going to be forced through planning at anything like the rate needed.

That is one of the reasons why countries throughout Europe are planning on moving some substantial part of it around using hydrogen.

BTW Toyota not offering a plug in hybrid FCEV is certainly not due to any technical difficulty, as all FCEVs are hybrids in any case, with around a 1KWh battery on board.
So even taking into account packaging constraints, their RAV4 could be offered as a PHEV.

They don't do so because they were trying, so far unsuccessfully, to encourage the provision of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, and if folk are rarely topping up it would not help.

That is now changing with the emphasis on hydrogen for freight transport, and Stellantis is to offer a whole range of FCEV commercial vehicles, with firm plans and funding in place throughout Europe, China etc for an adequate hydrogen infrastructure.

They are plug ins:

https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/stellantis-hydrogen-fuel-cell-van-trio-roll-off-production-line

' All of these vans comprise of a fuel cell capable of holding up to 4.4kg of hydrogen, a 10.5kWh lithium-ion battery pack that can be charged through a plug, and an electric motor that produces 100kW of power and 260Nm of torque.

Peugeot, Citroen and Opel all claim their hydrogen tanks can be refuelled in three minutes and can provide a driving range of almost 350km using the WLTP test standard.

In certain conditions, these vans can be purely driven on all-electric power as a backup and can provide a driving range of up to 50km on the WLTP cycle.'

My view is that this configuration will be more useful in private vehicles than vans as commercially most will normally travel too far for the battery pack most days,.

Toyota could certainly build equivalents whenever it chooses, technically.

I agree, Davemart, that there are use cases for light duty H2 PHEV, only pointing out that Toyota has said they won’t produce them. Not a technical limitation, they see a product market fit problem, mostly that it devastates the financial case for H2 refueling infrastructure, which is already challenged.

Increased battery energy density, solving both BEV vehicle weight and cost disadvantages, and smart grids, where vehicle batteries are part of the grid solution technically and financially, will render gasoline and H2 obsolete.

When utilities will pay consumers a couple hundred dollars a month to leave their cars plugged in when not driving, the economics of EV ownership are changed completely, and nothing else will be able to compete.

If this sounds preposterous, talk to the folks developing V2G.

They tell me they will pay a couple hundred dollars per month. Tesla Powerwall owners are already getting payouts on the SF Bay Area. It’s not too far off.

@eci

I dunno if you happen to read French, unfortunately it does not seem that many English reporters do, as for instance the Guardian is claiming that the new charges in Paris for big and heavy vehicles will not apply to BEVs.

Here is what they are actually doing:

https://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/suv-a-paris-etes-vous-concerne-par-le-triplement-des-tarifs-de-stationnement-20240205

' La mesure de triplement de stationnement concernera «les propriétaires d'un véhicule thermique ou hybride rechargeable de 1,6 tonne ou plus» - soit le seuil auquel a été abaissé le malus au poids du gouvernement au 1er janvier 2024 - et «les propriétaires d'un véhicule électrique de 2 tonnes ou plus», précise la mairie de Paris. En ce qui concerne les amendes, les tarifs des forfaits post-stationnement (FPS), infligés pour absence ou insuffisance de paiement, elles vont aussi tripler.'

IOW there are limits for BEVs, but they are cut some slack relative to ICE and hybrids, which seems to me to be the right balance, as undoubtedly in many GHG and pollution aspects they are far preferable.

That should not be a free pass for being fat and heavy to an unlimited extent, although critics may claim that my moral position in those aspects is unself reflective! ;-)

eci said:

' Heavy duty trucking seems like a potential application, but fleets are among the most savvy fuel consumers, with the largest arbitraging fuel purchases.

Who thinks any of those guys are going to get on board a system which has no cheap green hydrogen available (compared to fungible cheap electrons) and whose lack of efficiency will always put it at a distinct disadvantage?'

The answer is: 'All of them' with the exceptions of the VW group who are as usual centrally directing things, and just as they did with 'clean diesel' regardless of the evidence, and Tesla, who are hopeful, not current, mass truck producers,

And something of the order of 1000 new hydrogen filling stations are going in in China,.

So if you really want to know the answer to your question, just about everyone who is responsible for professional heavy transport is going for the solution you apparently think you are in a position to definitively rule out.

Hi eci,

Well, without wishing to be unduly combative, I find your remarks about who is going to think that hydrogen is the right solution for long distance heavy trucking even stranger than I did initially in view of your contacts.

We are not talking about short haul and lighter loads, as universally they are moving to a battery solution there.

Nor are we talking about fleet managers as such, as they don't do the development, but they do work closely with the developers and producers, and are very, very emphatic in telling them what they will and will not accepts and their requirements,

So for long distance heavy transport the companies who work hand in glove with their customers and see hydrogen as the right solution include off the top of my head Kenworth, Daimler, Volvo, Toyota, Hyundai and the Chinese brands who build most of the heavy trucks in the world.

Simply dismissing the folk with the most expert opinion is, in view of your contacts, even more outre,.

Maybe they know something about heavy freight and building transport for it?

I have absolutely nothing against using better batteries as and when they become available, and the charging profile is an acceptable fit to low carbon electric output.

But simply ploking in batteries often at large subsidised cost where they are inadequate on the grounds that someday they will improve is not sensible.

And other technologies are not static, in fact fuel cells as earlier on the curve of production volume and development are improving faster than batteries.

Sure, solid state batteries may be got working, at good cost, and will greatly improve the performance envelope, and I welcome that.

But they are at a roughly ( very roughly! ) similar stage to HT PEM fuel cells, which would have an equally transformative effect on fuel cells, including not only land transport but aviation.

And even without that each generation of fuel cells is lighter and more compact than the previous.

I posted too hastily. I meant to remark that an increase in the volume held by the cylinders leads to a very much lower increase in weight, whilst for batteries not only do you have a straight line increase, but lugging that extra weight means still more, still heavier, batteries.