Hydrogen Discoveries company blog

(Note #1: This is Hydrogen Fact #9 from “Twelve Hydrogen Facts” which is part of the Hydrogen Manhattan Project.)

(Note #2: I am personally outraged with the lack of leadership and focus on solving the energy crisis despite all of the problems that are a result of our reliance on oil such as high fuel prices, wars, global warming, air pollution, etc.

My feeling is that it is time to stop expecting politicians and corporations to lead.  Instead, we should all become leaders and start a revolution of our own to solve this problem.  YOU must be a catalyst for positive change.

The Hydrogen Manhattan Project is “A movement led by individual Americans to support corporations and elected officials that work towards the goal of having every car on the road in the U.S. powered by hydrogen produced from clean sources of energy by the end of 2020.”  The first step to achieving this goal is to get the government to help build the initial hydrogen fueling stations that the car companies have been pleading for.

The problem is that very few people are even aware of all that is happening with hydrogen cars and how hydrogen can solve the problems we are now facing.  Therefore, I have started a grassroots campaign to spread the word about hydrogen.  If you would like to be added to the e-mail distribution list for the Hydrogen Manhattan Project grassroots campaign, please e-mail me at gblencoe@hydrogendiscoveries.com.)

Hydrogen Fact #9

The most vocal hydrogen critics are strong advocates of plug-in battery technology.  When hydrogen is brought up (especially in online discussions), they are there to criticize the technology as much as possible.  Apparently, this has been happening for a long time.

Here is an excerpt from a November 2006 AutoblogGreen post where Steve Ellis, Manager of Fuel Cell Marketing for Honda, addresses this issue:

“He says there is a group of ‘EV Zealots’ who are constantly criticizing all hydrogen related work based on flawed arguments and without examining all of the costs of a plug-in system.”

The typical argument plug-in battery advocates try to make is that batteries are much more efficient than hydrogen fuel cells at using electricity in cars.  Batteries are charged up with electricity.  On the other hand, electricity is used to produce hydrogen via electrolysis and then fuel cells convert the hydrogen back into electricity.

Plug-in battery advocates argue that it is an inefficient use of energy to use electricity to produce hydrogen and then convert that hydrogen back into electricity (where there will be conversion losses in both cases) when you could just charge up a battery with electricity in the first place.

As you might imagine, there is much more to the story.

The argument above makes the assumption that plug-in cars can meet customer requirements for driving range and fueling time.  Can plug-in cars provide a 300-mile driving range and a fueling time of a few minutes?  Absolutely not (see below).  Plug-in cars by themselves (i.e. without the car also being powered by gasoline, ethanol, or hydrogen) can only offer a very limited driving range along with a fueling time of HOURS.

Furthermore, let’s apply the efficiency argument described above to a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. that came from oil in Saudi Arabia.  Would gasoline pass the “efficiency” test?

In order to get oil out of the ground, drilling must be done in Saudi Arabia.  Once the oil has been brought to the surface, it must be transported from the oil field to an oil tanker.  The tanker travels halfway around the world to the U.S.  At that point, the oil is refined into gasoline.  Pipelines then take the gasoline to local distribution centers.  From there, gasoline tanker trucks distribute the gasoline to retail fueling stations.  And then the gasoline is used in a car with an internal combustion engine that is half as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell.

With all of the energy that is used in the process of getting a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. from oil in Saudi Arabia, the efficiency argument described above could be used to show that this is not viable.  And yet, we still use gasoline in our cars today that comes from oil in Saudi Arabia.

Here are nine problems with plug-in batteries in cars:

1.  Driving range - Customers expect their cars to have a 300-mile driving range.  In order to achieve this, plug-in battery technology must be used in a car that is also powered by gasoline or ethanol in an internal combustion engine or hydrogen in a fuel cell.  Here is some information from Toyota that will give you an idea of the range of plug-in battery technology when it is used in a Prius with an internal combustion engine.

Right now, Toyota has a Prius with plug-in technology, but it will only go seven miles on the nickel-metal hydride batteries that are currently used.  However, lithium-ion batteries will be used in the future to extend the range from seven miles to between 10-20 miles.

This quote comes from the following article from PowerPulse.net which is titled “Honda & Toyota Express Doubts Regarding GM’s Plug-in Hybrid Campaign”:

“The company [Toyota] thinks that it is more realistic to expect plug-in hybrids to run in electric-only mode for between 10 and 20 miles, rather than the GM 40-mile target.”

Furthermore, here is an excerpt from a February 15th Chicago Tribune blog post that includes a quote from Jaycie Chitwood of Toyota that was given at the recent Chicago Auto Show:

“Toyota plans to have a test fleet of plug-ins by 2010 using lithium-ion batteries that are more expensive than nickel-metal-hydrides and carry more safety and reliability risks.

‘We know it needs to be more than seven miles, but it won’t be 40,’ Jaycie Chitwood, senior planner for advanced technologies, said of Toyota’s target range.”

And here is another quote from Jaycie Chitwood of Toyota during an AutoblogGreen interview on February 17th:

“If you are talking about [a] battery sufficient to give you a range of 40 miles that is probably better to do as a dedicated EV that is a small city commuter car.  If you are talking about [a] plug-in hybrid we think that there is a difference in the application [than] one [that] is all electric.  Again, maybe more suited for a particular urban environment.  If you are talking about a car that needs to both handle short distance electric driving and high speed conditions, then a plug-in with smaller batteries with some level of EV range that is not 40, maybe it is in the 10 to 20 range, that is more viable for that application.”

Furthermore, even if plug-in batteries could provide a 20 to 40 mile range, most of the miles would still be travelled on the primary fuel (gasoline, ethanol, hydrogen, etc.).  The following article from Nikkei Business Publications says that:

“According to Toyota, if PHEVs that can drive 20 to 40 miles (32 to 64 km) per charge as electric vehicles replaced all current automobiles in the US, it would only reduce energy consumption by 20 to 30%, given the driving patterns in the US.  In other words, Toyota indicated its view that the maximum contribution that PHEVs can make in an effort to break dependence on fossil fuels or to halve CO2 emissions is a 20 to 30% reduction in energy.”

2.  Fueling time - Plug-in batteries in cars take several hours to recharge.  Can you imagine having a pure plug-in car without another fuel on-board and having to wait HOURS to refuel?  How long would it take to complete the 500-mile road trip to visit grandma or to go to the beach?

3.  Cost - Plug-in batteries cost extra on top of what is paid for a car with an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.  Plug-in advocates like to say that the fuel cost is equivalent to $0.75 or $1.00 per gallon of gasoline (untaxed).  The problem is that this does not include the extra cost of many, many thousands of dollars for the plug-in battery system.

In regard to the cost of plug-in battery systems, Jaycie Chitwood of Toyota recently said at the Chicago Auto show that:

“What people don’t realize is that those batteries don’t come free”

Furthermore, the following post from AutoblogGreen notes that:

“Speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California this week, GM CEO Rick Wagoner told the gathering that in order for electric cars to make a difference in global warming it will require large numbers of them to be deployed at prices that mainstream buyers can afford.  While a few hundred Tesla Roadsters or Fisker Karmas may make the owners feel better about themselves, in the U.S. vehicle fleet of 200 million vehicles they won’t make any real measurable difference in the grand scheme of things.  To make a significant impact on fuel consumption and emissions, millions of cars and trucks every year need to be more efficient.  However, that can only happen if those vehicles are affordable to average car buyers.

When Wagoner was asked why it’s taking as long as it is to bring the Volt to market he explained that it’s a lot harder to create a viable $20,000 electric car than one that costs $100,000.”

4.  Space they take up in a car - Here is a quote from the same PowerPulse.net article above regarding this issue:

“Toyota Motor Corp. also expressed skepticism regarding the GM plug-in hybrid plan.  Among the concerns given by company executives were…the practical feasibility of the concept of a car that can run on battery power for up to 40 miles (according to Toyota, a battery that powerful would take up the entire area of a vehicle’s trunk)”

Furthermore, since hydrogen tanks also take up a lot of space, plug-in battery technology will have even less potential with hydrogen cars.

5.  Durability - The batteries will need to last 150,000 miles.

6.  Safety - Any batteries used in cars must be safe.  The more energy that is stored on-board in batteries, the more of a concern this becomes.

7.  Weight - Batteries are quite heavy and will result in lower mileage for the primary fuel.

8.  Cold weather performance - Batteries must not have greatly reduced performance in cold weather.  The more space that is taken up with batteries, the more difficult this problem will be.

9.  Environment - In the U.S., 50% of the electricity comes from coal and around 20% comes from natural gas.  Therefore, plug-in cars would still be responsible for releasing an extremely large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and could even increase air pollution in some areas.

Here is a comment from Toyota on this issue from a recent USA Today article about the plug-in version of the Prius:

“Averaged across the USA, ‘There’s very little (emissions) benefit’ compared with a current Prius hybrid, says Jaycie Chitwood, senior planner at Toyota’s advanced technologies unit in the USA.”

This list of problems shows the limited potential of plug-in battery technology.

Plug-in battery advocates will often try to say that “major advancements” will be made with batteries.  But are you going to believe them?

Or are you going to believe Toyota who has sold the Prius (which is partly powered by batteries) for over ten years and, according to the following Bloomberg article, has “as many as 300 in-house engineers studying the chemistry of lithium batteries”?  (Note: The article also mentions that “GM has no in-house researchers for lithium chemistry, relying instead on suppliers, according to Joseph LoGrasso, GM’s engineering group manager for plug-ins.”)

Lots of venture capitalists, bloggers, global warming “experts”, and alternative energy “advocates” have all foolishly bought into the false promise of plug-in battery technology while ignoring the only solution to the energy crisis caused by our addiction to oil and ethanol which is hydrogen from clean sources of energy.  Much like the car companies that ignored the regenerative braking hybrid technology in the Toyota Prius and the advocates of biofuels over the past couple of years, history will judge them very harshly.

However, the car companies are very aware of all of the problems with plug-in battery technology.  As the excerpt from the following article shows, Honda knows the problems so well that they have completely rejected plug-in battery technology:

“Takeo Fukui, CEO of Honda Motor Co., recently told reporters that his company would not be pursuing the plug-in hybrid gasoline-electric vehicle market…”

And that is why Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, GM, BMW, Daimler, and others are aggressively pursuing hydrogen cars.