Alternative Fuels Discussion Thread

[Joey D]

...it's been merged. Carry on.

 

[homeforsummer]

Do you think that Hydrogen Powered cars, either through Hydrogen Fuel Cell or Hydrogen-Internal-Combustion-Engine, (HICE) will become the car of the future?

In a word? Ish.

In several more words:

There are a few elements to this, and to your questions. It's been covered at length before (probably even in this thread), but it keeps me on my toes, so I'll bite.

Honestly, I truly can. Electric cars powered by batteries that need to be charged don't seem like a good investment for a while, and certainly won't cut down on pollution very much considering that you get your electricity often times from a coal plant.

...is grey area number one.

Conveniently, some statistics recently came out on this very subject. It's complicated, so bear with me. Best place to start is reading my article on it, though you can also link through to my source via the article.

The first thing to consider is the "well-to-wheels" statistics for any power source. And it can get very complicated.

In most cases it's a virtually infinite chain backwards. Let's say you get your electricity from coal. It's dirty, yes. But then, if you're going to compare dirty coal-powered electricity with gasoline cars, you have to consider where the gasoline comes from. "The pump" is insufficient, as that's the point of use, like a plug. You'd have to consider how it got there, which means finding oil, building rigs, drilling for it, transporting it, refining it, transporting it again, and then powering gas stations around the clock so you can pump it. Ever so slightly energy-intensive, all that.

But then for this to be fair, you'd have to ask where the EV's coal came from, i.e. it was blown out of the ground, transported, etc. It gets stupid pretty quickly, so for layman discussion it makes more sense simply ignoring it (though do always remember that it exists - otherwise it can be used unfairly by pros and antis in these discussions).

The second point, and the reason the "electricity mostly comes from coal" argument is a bit lazy, is because this varies massively by country - see the link above. Or even better, look at this graph:

Nice and easy to understand. The US and UK are largely in the middle. The US, naturally, varies by state, or even by town. Some areas are pretty heavy on solar, or hydro, but if you live in NoDak, which I think is 100% coal, consider yourself nearer the India end of the scale.

Essentially, that's a top-to-bottom list of where you should and shouldn't drive an electric car, albeit largely based on CO2 (it's worth remembering that there are other emissions from power plants, and indeed internal combustion cars, and an EV will always be cleaner than a regular car if you're standing right next to it).

70 g/km of each of the above is from manufacturing (which reminds me of another myth - usage of cars accounts for far more pollution than manufacturing or transportation, even for that supposedly evil Prius being shipped from Japan).

Bottom line - Not all electricity comes from coal, and even when much of it does, the point at which electric cars are "dirtier" than regular ones is pretty high.

I feel people sometimes overplay the "Needs to be charged" aspect too. If you have a car with a large battery and charge at 120V, then it can take about 12 hours from absolutely empty, which is a bit of a bind. But then, most owners aren't charging from empty. Many can charge at work during the day (plugs: they're everywhere). Many commute a fraction of their car's range. Many have upgraded to 240V chargers, which cut whatever time it was previously taking in half. Naturally, it's not suitable for everyone, but then no car is suitable for everyone.

As for hydrogen...

Many manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon. Recently Ford, Daimler, and Nissan announced plans to create a Hydrogen Fuel Cell car.I have a feeling we will start to see many more stories like this pop up as gas prices rise higher and higher, and pollution levels increase. What do you think?

Again, there are a few things to note here.

The first is the deal - it's the second such plan in recent months - BMW and Toyota formed their own partnership for hydrogen not so long ago.

What this says to me is that the only way carmakers can make hydrogen fuel cells remotely viable is by pooling their resources. Fuel cell tech has been plodding along even more slowly than battery tech, because it's hugely more complicated and expensive. Without three or four carmakers all going in together, it's simply unviable. Even with these big tech-share agreements, I'm getting the impression they're being rather cautious.

The next: Hydrogen's flaws currently vastly outweigh its benefits.

"Hydrogen is abundant" is a popular one. Yes, it is - but rather inconveniently, it's usually either stuck to oxygen in water, which involves massive amounts of energy to split apart (why is this dumb? Using lots of electricity to generate hydrogen, whose fuel cells give you a little bit of electricity back - it's a massive waste of energy) or floating around in air. Harvesting hydrogen from the air is about as easy as eating soup with a fork.

Alternatively, you can extract it from fossil fuels. Easier, but not really a step forward from where we are at the moment. "Where does your hydrogen come from" - "Well, first we drill ten miles through the earth's crust, and extract some oil..."

It's also a bugger to store - high pressure is required, and even then you need a chuffing big tank somewhere in the car.

You'd also need to set up a network for it. Doing this for electric cars isn't that much of an issue - a charging post costs a few hundred bucks and just needs a wire somewhere nearby, to simplify it a bit. At a maximum, a few thousand bucks and a high-voltage supply nearby.

A hydrogen station requires you to build new, or modify existing filling stations (around 12,000, for it to be practical for use by most people) by installing new tanks and new pumps. And of course, you'd need a fleet of trucks to drive across the country day and night filling it all up - exactly like fossil fuels do at the moment.

How much does that cost? Well in the link above, it took GM two years and a million dollars to build a single station in New York. Not every station would cost that, but I suspect it'll be rather expensive to set up a network.

Will hydrogen power some cars in the future? Probably. As part of a wider energy mix. But it certainly isn't the one and only solution.

 

[niky]

From the convenience-of-use, point of view, hydrogen only comes second to liquid fuels. It's a better storage medium than air or batteries, by far.

That's why the automakers are so keen.

From an energy/money point of view, hydrogen is a disaster. By far the most inefficient and expensive means of storage we have available to us.

That's why I'm not.

 

[homeforsummer]

That's why the automakers are so keen.

I don't see these big technology mergers as keenness, though - I see them as evidence the carmakers see little commercial viability in it unless they absolutely minimise their development costs. And even then, they're all giving fairly tentative predictions of when their first vehicles might be, even though many have already got production EVs on their books.

Technologically they might wish to move to hydrogen for some cars, but financially I get the impression they can't think of anything worse.

The fact that BMW has happily churned out the MINI E and BMW ActiveE within the last five years or so, and jumped into making a dedicated electric car (i3) and plug-in hybrid (i8) both with apparently complicated and expensive carbon shells, yet still not seriously tackled a fuel cell car without joining Toyota, suggests to me that they're much happier making battery vehicles than fuel cell ones.

 

[Azuremen]

Do you think that Hydrogen Powered cars, either through Hydrogen Fuel Cell or Hydrogen-Internal-Combustion-Engine, (HICE) will become the car of the future? Honestly, I truly can. Electric cars powered by batteries that need to be charged don't seem like a good investment for a while, and certainly won't cut down on pollution very much considering that you get your electricity often times from a coal plant.

With this merger of threads, you can see my posts on these topics, but I will cover them very briefly in this post.

The Hydrogen Combustion Engine is one of the worst ideas that gear-heads seem to be stuck on. The Internal Combustion Engine is a relic and wildly inefficient, especially when compared to modern electric engines. You then consider this efficiency and that Hydrogen has to be produced using either electric power or petroleum products, and batteries aren't any worse than Hydrogen for the most part.

Keep in mind that the only real benefit to Fuel Cells is refuel rates and possible range, depending on storage pressures. Otherwise, the energy will ultimately come from the same place for Hydrogen or electric batteries.

 

[Beeblebrox237]

After reading the last few posts, most of which have mentioned that hydrogen is far more convenient than electricity because you can fill up quickly form a station. once the Supercharger network is complete, the Tesla Model S will be able to recharge quickly and easily. Admittedly, getting more cars like the Model S that have a long range and can battery swap or high spped charge is unlikely in the very near future, but it's possible.

 

[niky]

Only time will tell. Tesla's top-down push seems quite sensible... in hindsight. Make toys for the rich to fund development of luxury sedans for the not-so-rich, which will, eventually, fund development of commuters for the middle-class.

-

I'm not in favor of hydrogen at all, mind you.

 

[homeforsummer]

Only time will tell. Tesla's top-down push seems quite sensible... in hindsight. Make toys for the rich to fund development of luxury sedans for the not-so-rich, which will, eventually, fund development of commuters for the middle-class.

Yeah, they've rather hit that nail on the head. I must admit that even though I've been following Tesla since the relatively early days, their relative success so far has surprised me - it seems so unlikely that a startup can not only survive these days, but also sell cars in respectable numbers. Tesla is shifting numbers just shy of the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt at the moment, despite a more expensive, more esoteric product.

I'm not in favor of hydrogen at all, mind you.

Indeed. Thankfully we don't get commenters saying "HYDROGEN IS THE ANSWER" on our site any more, but virtually any electric car article elsewhere on the net has at least one comment saying it is.

I'm sure it'll eventually be part of the wider energy mix but it just seems like such a half-assed approach. Use electricity to produce a substance that can then be used to produce electricity. I don't know what the well-to-wheels efficiency of something like that is but I'd be surprised if it's more than the average diesel car. Yeah, cleaner at the tailpipe, but hydrogen seems to me like a way of ruining the good work done by an electric vehicle than it does a way of making them more appealing.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Personally, I'd go for electric. Come January a BMW i3 may well be on my short list. The thing is with electricity, we will always find ways of generating it. I've got about 60 electrical appliances in my house.. I don't worry about if the energy for them comes from a low carbon source, and I don't feel like I'm getting raped everytime I pay my bill.. Unlike when I go to the petrol station. Ignoring the green issues it makes a lot of sense to have a car that runs on electricity because it is abundant, and it's already piped directly to your home... The cars are now at a point where they are viable for a large percentage of people. To me the largest obstacle for electric cars to overcome is people's attitudes.

 

[niky]

The biggest obstacle is price.

Never mind the typical gearhead response: "Electric sucks, ICE forever!" doesn't matter, since those people aren't buying new, anyway.

What matters is whether people perceive the car's price as justified by its capabilities.

Electrics were once questionable, but they're getting there. Still a huge upfront investment, but they're getting there.

 

[Joey D]

Personally, I'd go for electric. Come January a BMW i3 may well be on my short list. The thing is with electricity, we will always find ways of generating it. I've got about 60 electrical appliances in my house.. I don't worry about if the energy for them comes from a low carbon source, and I don't feel like I'm getting raped everytime I pay my bill.. Unlike when I go to the petrol station. Ignoring the green issues it makes a lot of sense to have a car that runs on electricity because it is abundant, and it's already piped directly to your home... The cars are now at a point where they are viable for a large percentage of people. To me the largest obstacle for electric cars to overcome is people's attitudes.

You make quite a few good points, and like you with the i3, I'm ready to buy a Tesla once they become a $50,000 car instead of a $100,000 car. I used to be pro-hydrogen, but it seems like too many issues have arose with it and electric cars just make more sense and would be easier to implement with our current infrastructure.

And I believe you're right with the attitude comment. I don't understand why people are so anti-electric car. What I'm planning is to have an electric car as my daily activity vehicle and have something gas powered for the weekend or when I feel like having some good old ICE fun.

 

[RDF97]

The promising electric car at the moment has got to be the new Chevy/Holden Volt.

 

[Joey D]

The promising electric car at the moment has got to be the new Chevy/Holden Volt.

It's not an electric car though, it's more or less a plugin hybrid of sorts. I think the car is great and fills the gap between current cars and the future, but it's still not that much different that any other plugin hybrid on the makers currently.

 

[MatskiMonk]

The biggest obstacle is price.

Never mind the typical gearhead response: "Electric sucks, ICE forever!" doesn't matter, since those people aren't buying new, anyway.

What matters is whether people perceive the car's price as justified by its capabilities.

Electrics were once questionable, but they're getting there. Still a huge upfront investment, but they're getting there.

Price is obviously an issue. If I get an i3 it will be as a company car. I'm guessing it will be similarly priced to a 320 M-sport, which is my default choice. So to me it becomes a 3 series vs. an i3 argument. Which isn't as straight forward as you might think.

Once it's fully unveiled, and the finance options are available the picture will become clearer for sure.

 

[homeforsummer]

I don't understand why people are so anti-electric car.

Partly I think it's political. Unfortunately, governments aren't doing electric cars any favours as they're pushing them on the back of the global warming agenda.

As is fairly clear even on this forum, global warming is a bit of a hot topic (pun intended) and one where there's no real middle ground. Because it's used as a political tool, people see it as an excuse to take away their rights, and see electric cars as a physical embodiment of this issue because they're touted by government as "the solution". This also doesn't go down well with those who feel entitled to certain things or are scared of change.

Things like "range" and "lack of noise" and "lack of emotion" are all too often used as excuses to cover up for the above, I suspect. "Expense" is a legitimate criticism I think, as is the general lack of variety in the EV market at the moment.

By far and away the best way of getting people to buy electric cars isn't to tout them as being "green" or massively incentivising them, it's simply to erode peoples' preconceptions enough to get them behind the wheel. I know very, very few people who haven't been impressed with an EV after driving one.

A friend of mine used to hate the idea of electric cars. We'd talk about them in the pub five years ago and he couldn't see the point. Around four years ago, he had a go in a Smart Electric Drive and came away quite impressed. He now owns a VW Up, and told me the other day he almost certainly intends to replace it with the electric version - the e-Up - when it's time to replace the Up. He's a proper petrolhead, and he's been swayed simply by driving a single, fairly average electric car.

TL;DR - Bums on seats.

 

[daan]

the e-Up

Seriously? Are they making it in Barnsley?

 

[Blackbird.]

What I'm planning is to have an electric car as my daily activity vehicle and have something gas powered for the weekend or when I feel like having some good old ICE fun.

Thats what I would do as well. But I havent been behind the wheel of an electric car yet though.

 

[Joey D]

Partly I think it's political. Unfortunately, governments aren't doing electric cars any favours as they're pushing them on the back of the global warming agenda.

As is fairly clear even on this forum, global warming is a bit of a hot topic (pun intended) and one where there's no real middle ground. Because it's used as a political tool, people see it as an excuse to take away their rights, and see electric cars as a physical embodiment of this issue because they're touted by government as "the solution". This also doesn't go down well with those who feel entitled to certain things or are scared of change.

Whether you think ICE cars contribute to global warming or not, the fact does remain that burning fossil fuels isn't all that good for the environment. Personally, I'm pretty keen on cleaning up the air so I can breathe.

I mean all one has to do is look at a city like LA on a day where the smog is really thick to see that cars aren't exactly helping the environment:

So regardless of your political leaning, as a human who lives on Earth, you should be concerned with air quality to some degree.

Things like "range" and "lack of noise" and "lack of emotion" are all too often used as excuses to cover up for the above, I suspect. "Expense" is a legitimate criticism I think, as is the general lack of variety in the EV market at the moment.

The range makes sense to a degree for some people since there are people who do have to drive long distances fairly frequently, but I think for most of us it's a non-issue. The average distance someone puts on a car in the US is 12,000 miles per year, which works out to be about 33 miles per day.

The lack of noise makes no sense to me and the lack of emotion is just someone being daft. I'm sure at one point in time people thought all cars were emotionless and the only thing for "true people" was a horse.

Thats what I would do as well. But I havent been behind the wheel of an electric car yet though.

Someone at work has a Leaf and I rode in it the other day. If I didn't know it was electric already, I would have never known. It felt exactly like every other modern Japanese compact car I've been in, except the tire noise was a little louder since it had some funky tires eco-tires on it.

 

[Dennisch]

Driving an electric is strange, at best, for the first time. The lack of engine sound is something I got used to after a couple of miles. I drove an electric Renault Kangoo and if I had the money to buy an electric car, I'd do it right now. As said, most people don't drive long distances, and I am one of them. Only problem I see is the fact I don't have a driveway, so my charge station would be on the side of the road..

 

[homeforsummer]

Seriously? Are they making it in Barnsley?

SRSLY. I've been calling it the "Yorkshire edition" since it was announced

So regardless of your political leaning, as a human who lives on Earth, you should be concerned with air quality to some degree.

You and I know that and doubtless others too, but we both know how stubborn people can be as well.

The range makes sense to a degree for some people since there are people who do have to drive long distances fairly frequently, but I think for most of us it's a non-issue.

I should have been more clear with that, really. I didn't mean that a short range wasn't important, more than people already know whether it's a problem for them or not. I couldn't really even have an electric car myself, since when I do drive it's almost always 100+ miles, so I can understand that some people couldn't have one based on that reason.

I suppose I was saying more that people can't say EVs are useless since tens of thousands of people use them quite happily.

The lack of noise makes no sense to me and the lack of emotion is just someone being daft. I'm sure at one point in time people thought all cars were emotionless and the only thing for "true people" was a horse.

Indeed.

And I have to say, until a month or two ago, I could even sort of understand the "lack of character viewpoint". Then I drove Audi's R8 e-tron, and not once did I wish it was combustion powered. It was utterly brilliant and a whole heap of the experience was based on its drivetrain. I don't doubt that plenty more EVs will deliver a similarly unique experience in future.

Someone at work has a Leaf and I rode in it the other day. If I didn't know it was electric already, I would have never known. It felt exactly like every other modern Japanese compact car I've been in, except the tire noise was a little louder since it had some funky tires eco-tires on it.

Oddly, I've still not so much as sat in a Leaf*. My EV of the moment is the Renault Zoe. It's so much nicer for pottering around than the similarly-sized Renault Clio it's ridiculous. The new Clio is a nice car but that added element of the EV drivetrain makes the Zoe feel decades ahead.



* Well, I drove the Versa-based prototype, but not an actual production Leaf.

 

[niky]

I actually thought the iMiev was crackers fun. Like a turbodiesel, only without the shakes. Or the shifting. Or the noise. Or the smoke. Or...

an affordable price tag.

-

I've actually driven the cheapest hybrid in the world. Just about $1k. Unfortunately, I can't find the damn calling card so I can go back and score a real test drive for publishing.

It's a 5kW e-bike with a range-extender generator. A 30cc range extender. Supposed to do 20-25 km/l on gasoline, but obviously, that's just the back-up... it's much more efficient on pure electric.

 

[homeforsummer]

Yeah, you've beaten me there. Cheapest I've driven is a £15k Toyota Yaris Hybrid

Which, incidentally, is so much more pleasant to drive than the equivalent diesel supermini that it's not even funny. It's at this point I don't really understand the mainstream press and where I think they're often scoring something based on the wrong motives.

The typical small car is driven largely around town, with the odd run out. I can't even fathom why a magazine would recommend people go and buy diesels for such a thing, but they do. The Yaris Hybrid would not only be more economical around town (I got 76 mpg from it on the launch in Amsterdam - a friend struggled to dip below 55 mpg despite giving it death), but it wouldn't clog up its non-existent particulate filter either. Or vibrate. Or have throttle lag when accelerating from lower revs.

And even where the diesel might be better, out of town, the chances of it being better enough to completely offset the extra cost of diesel and the better economy in town are slim to none. In the past, you might have got away with the diesel costing less than the hybrid to buy, but the Yaris is priced the same as all the "eco" diesels too...

But, y'know, the Yaris isn't as "fun" as thrashing away in a small-engined diesel...

 

[Keef]

Who are these people still riding hydrogen? They keep saying hydrogen is more convenient than electricity because you can just fill up like a gas station. They don't spend much time talking about where they're going to get that hydrogen. They don't like to talk about that.

Basically, the process of making hydrogen for fuel is completely idiotic. Why the hell would I burn oil and natural gas to make hydrogen when I can already use oil and natural gas to glorious effect? Why on Earth would I devour electricity to make hydrogen when the electricity is already cheap, useful and effective for pretty much everything? The creation of hydrogen for anything more than boutique uses where it is actually required is nothing more than an extra step piled on a process that already works well. Basically you're using very useful fuels to create a much less useful fuel. In the interest of saving the environment we complicate the process and redirect resources where they don't necessarily need to go.

Here in the United States, we have coal. Lots of it. Hundreds of years worth of it, evening when factoring expanded future use. And it's good coal, not that crap quality stuff China has that lays an inch of soot everywhere. Plus, we've developed the cleanest coal-burning technologies in the world. Because coal is only useful in large quantities and for a specific purpose, we create electricity with it which is an infinitely more versatile and useful energy source. We use it for everything, so why not cars? There's only one real problem and that is recharge time.

Basically the same goes for natural gas too. We harvest methane from wherever we can find it, such as our own asses when we fart, and then we burn it. Sometimes we send it to buildings and houses to create heat, sometimes we bottle it, sometimes we burn it for electricity. It's much more versatile than coal but still less versatile than electricity. But it's still really cheap.

Right. Then we've got hydrogen. It's not very useful, it's not very versatile, and it's very expensive to make. It requires the use of perfectly useful and cheap fuels to make it, at heavy cost. This is all besides the fact that we have to make it because it's extremely rare naturally and unless you think the ISS is going to start pumping it to the surface then you're stuck making it. Then there's the fact that it explodes violently, a concept we generally have grasped, but it's still quite a bit more volatile than coal and even natural gas. Then there's the whole infrastructure thing. Coal infrastructure already exists. Natural gas infrastructure already exists. Electrical infrastructure already exists. Hydrogen infrastructure doesn't.

But maybe I'm just talking nonsense. Let's go ahead and make things way too complicated and expensive in the name of science.

 

[homeforsummer]

Hear hear. Now just try telling that to people brainwashed by Top Gear.

 

[niky]

The idea is that it's possible to come up with a method of cracking hydrogen from natural gas without releasing (much) CO2. Same can't be said of burning natural gas straight.

Possible, but expensive, energy-wasteful and complex, and still coming with the huge cost and complexity problems of hydrogen storage and fuel cells.

(my opinions on fuel cells and electric cars, as a dyed-in-the-wool fuel economy freak, in no way reflects the official stance of Top Gear or any of its subsidiary publications. Happily, they're running a hyper-miling article by me in the print rag next month.)

 

[Joey D]

Hear hear. Now just try telling that to people brainwashed by Top Gear.

It's because Top Gear has made the entire automotive world stupid. It's entertaining and occasionally makes a good point, but the people who think they are speaking the truth are just idiots.

 

[homeforsummer]

It's because Top Gear has made the entire automotive world stupid. It's entertaining and occasionally makes a good point, but the people who think they are speaking the truth are just idiots.

There's even often decent underlying information to some of it, but it's exaggerated hugely for comic effect and people treat the exaggerated stuff as the serious info.

Case in point: I used to subscribe to the TG magazine. This was a magazine that, at the time, rated the first-gen Toyota Prius reasonably highly. And the second-gen one. I even had a mag where Clarkson drove it and while not a fan, nor was it the devil's spawn like TG TV would have you believe either. I just seem to recall he recommended people buy a diesel VW Lupo instead.

Unfortunately, ever since that James May hydrogen segment on TG, anyone with no clue as to how anything in the world works has decreed hydrogen to be the answer.

This is despite hydrogen cars being largely identical to regular EVs in many of the things they typically moan about (lack of noise, perception of slowness etc), theoretically not much different in other things they moan at (wait and see what price hydrogen fuel gets to at the pumps if it takes off...), and worse than EVs at the things that actually matter, like well-to-wheels efficiency, or kerb weight, or expense.

 

[niky]

Hydrogen fuel cell cars will likely cost more to "fill up" than electrics, actually... so they have even more negatives than electric, with an up-front price that will make Teslas seem like a bargain.

 

[homeforsummer]

Hydrogen fuel cell cars will likely cost more to "fill up" than electrics, actually... so they have even more negatives than electric, with an up-front price that will make Teslas seem like a bargain.

That's what I mean. People already complain about the cost of fuel, yet (no doubt oil company controlled-) hydrogen is unlikely to change that.

They're just electric cars with a whole bunch of disadvantages added and a few pseudo-advantages thrown in.

 

[Keef]

So I'm reading this article in AOPA Pilot magazine about engines of the future. Apparently diesel development and application is beginning to boom, and will boom even louder in the next decade or so. They said until you get to engine size requirements of 400-500 horsepower, where turbines begin to offer the best power/weight ratios, the advantage leans drastically in favor of diesels over aviation gasoline.

Aviation diesel engines will burn Jet A fuel while the vast majority of gas engines burn 100 octane low-lead gasoline, with a few newer engines certified to burn 93 octane pump gas. The jet fuel is at least a dollar a gallon cheaper here, while fuel savings are typically 30-40% over gas counterparts.

For example, Diamond Aircraft recently introduced a DA42 powered by an in-house modified Mercedes turbodiesel, called an Austro AE300. At 12,000 feet and 168 knots each engine burns 6.5 gallons per hour. An old, crappy Cessna 152 has a 108 horsepower gas engine that burns 6 gallons per hour, goes 105 knots, and can barely make 12,000 feet at all.

I can't wait for the day when aviation gasoline is virtually phased out and everything is either turbodiesel piston or turbine and runs on Jet A fuel. I wouldn't mind seeing a diesel boom in cars, either. Last I heard, Mazda was working on a diesel version of their upcoming 1.6 liter rotary.