In an almost touching display of "follow me over this cliff" pathos, GM is urging industries and governments to sink money into the hydrogen infrastructure. Speaking at the National Hydrogen Association's annual conference in Sacramento, CA, GM R&D VP Larry Burns told the Truth As He Sees It ™ to what is probably the only crowd in the country that wouldn't laugh him off the stage. "It's no longer a question of 'can it be done?' or 'should it be done?'" said Burns. "We not only should do it. We must do it. It's now a question of collective will. Do we have the collective resolve to work together to solve the challenges we face rather than handing them off to future generations?" What does this "collective resolve" trope really mean? Cash money dollars yo, and lots of it. "We have reached a stage where we cannot continue to make significant progress on our own," opines Burns. "Our customers must have safe and convenient access to affordable hydrogen. This means the energy industry and governments must join the auto industry in our journey to produce and sell fuel cell-electric vehicles in volume numbers." Added Burns, "We have not discovered anything yet to suggest mass volume cannot ultimately be attained." Oh. Dear. God.
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GM talks so much about all these technologies which I have no faith we will ever see from them in the next decade or two.
GM – concentrate on delivering some of the technologies that you can deliver now.
How about a 37 mpg compact?
Hydrogen is dead.
Batteries are more efficient. Gasoline has a better infrastructure. Hydrogen doesn’t have any advantage.
I think this is a GM attempt to shift blame. As in: “We were ready to do Hydrogen, but the government and the fuel industry let us down…”
GM seems to like supporting boondoggles for some reason. They are one of the biggest backers of Ethanol (boondoggle 1.0) and now they are pushing hydrogen (boondoggle 2.0).
The is not just about alternate energy, but also about energy efficiency (last I checked we didn’t have unlimited energy).
So do we:
Spend tens (hundreds?) of billions on hydrogen creation/distribution infrastructure that finally delivers into cars costing over $100000 at a grid to wheels efficiency of maybe 25%?
OR
Build BEVs for $50000 or less, using an infrastructure that already exists everywhere and has a Grid to wheels efficiency of around 80%?
I am having a hard time seeing why a rational person would pick hydrogen.
Hydrogen’s disadvantages are legion, but it does have at least three advantages: it can be extracted from water, it burns clean and it offers comparable range to diesel/gasoline. If the storage and delivery problems are solved, it may well become a viable auto fuel – for the extremely wealthy.
I’m working on building a car that runs on hot air. With guys like this around, I’m gonna be a billionaire.
it can be extracted from water, it burns clean and it offers comparable range to diesel/gasoline.
Gasoline can be made from CO2 in the atmosphere and releases the same amount of CO2 when consumed. It’s a bit less efficient than electrolyzing water into hydrogen, but the storage/transportation/sales issues are all solved.
Hydrogen is not an energy source, period. It’s an energy storage medium. As are batteries. Battery tchnology is improving quickly, and doesn’t require a complete new infrastructure.
Gasoline can be made from CO2 in the atmosphere and releases the same amount of CO2 when consumed. It’s a bit less efficient than electrolyzing water into hydrogen, but the storage/transportation/sales issues are all solved.
More than a bit. As I recall the guys behind this idea want an expensive dedicated plant, and a dedicated nuke to power the plant. Whereas in Iceland they make hydrogen with geothermal energy.
Hydrogen is not an energy source, period. It’s an energy storage medium.
But hydrogen is a much lighter energy storage medium than even lithium-ion batteries.
http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/toyota-fchv-hydrogen-vehicle.htm
Well I’ll be damned! Toyota is interested in hydrogen too!!
There are 2 camps on hydrogen powered cars – those like the BMW 7 series hydrogen cars that use a ICE to burn hydrogen as a fuel and those like the Honda FCX Clarity that have a true fuel cell stack and use hydrogen in the stack to produce electricity in an all electric vehicle.
But hydrogen is a much lighter energy storage medium than even lithium-ion batteries.
That’s why it’s used as a rocket fuel. But if it is such a neat light-weight fuel, how come we don’t have aeroplanes running on hydrogen. For air travel the high energy to mass ratio actually means something, unlike for surface travel, where it is a minor factor.
So until we see hydrogen fueled airlines, I doubt it will make much of an impression on surface travel.
Donal: But hydrogen is a much lighter energy storage medium than even lithium-ion batteries.
That’s a liability, not an asset. Do you know that the BMW 7-series’ hydrogen tank loses 1/9th of its hydrogen to “boiling-off” every day? How would you like to lose 1/9th of your gas every day to evaporation. No long-term parking at the airport.
I understand the problems with hydrogen, and if it were just GM promoting it, I’d dismiss it as a boondoggle as well. But Honda? Toyota? Honda in particular seems to have a keen interest in hydrogen, and Honda isn’t known for recklessly leaping into technological fads. They must believe there’s some legs to the “hydrogen economy.”
It’s not necessarily a “boondoggle”. Hydrogen has its pros and cons. Right now, the cons outweigh the pros (debatable, but the sentiment seems to have shifted that way since the big hydrogen hype of eight years ago).
But it makes sense for all the manufacturers to keep an oar in the hydrogen waters. But if li-ion battery technology really comes to fruition, it may be a more cost-effective energy storage medium than hydrogen. We’ll see.
“Gasoline can be made from CO2 in the atmosphere and releases the same amount of CO2 when consumed. It’s a bit less efficient than electrolyzing water into hydrogen, but the storage/transportation/sales issues are all solved.”
You have to crack hydrogen from water as well as the CO2…Not very efficient but using nuclear power would help…Still very expensive especially compare to just mining hydrocarbon.
A better source for CO2 mining is the ocean floor. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is very small.
Larry Burns is greenwashing and is shifting blame and he wants to feed at the taxpayer tit…I mean, who doesn’t?
It’d be far smarter to simply skip the “hydrogen economy” and go straight to the “electron economy” especially since the infrastructure is already present.
I could also be my usual cynical self and say that if GM thinks it’s a brilliant idea, it must suck.
Kind of like
-Mass production wankel engines in the early 1970’s that GM wasted God-only-know-how-much-money-on.
-Chevrolet Corvair
-Chevrolet Vega
-Oldsmobile V8 diesels based on gas V8’s
-Cadillac V8-6-4
-GM X-cars (X = unknown – GM’s unknown was whether they could figure out how to build a decent front drive compact – answer was – they could not)
-Ethanol idiocy (as already mentioned)
Stage 1 (immediately available): Diesels and improved hybrids–little to no change in delivery infrastructure needed, only shifts in production and consumer choice
Stage 2: Better electric cars and a cleaner power infrastructure (nuclear?). Again, little change in delivery infrastructure.
Menno: “I could also be my usual cynical self and say that if GM thinks it’s a brilliant idea, it must suck.”
GM is simply green washing IMHO. They propose some big sci-fi next generation technology and then never deliver on it. Mission accomplished.
Consumer thinks GM is really making big strides in technology and we are supposed to support them by consuming high profit thristy SUVs.
If GM gets criticized for it they declare that the American consumer doesn’t want small cars or doesn’t want hybrids or we don’t want really good cars. Back to building SUVs and 6.0L trucks.
GM still gets that nice green glow that puts them in the same camp as the Prius owners while they hybridize a 6,000 SUV with a half-baked battery powered system (read alternator/motor driving a fan belt).
Of course making a hybrid out of a small car where the efficiency would be noticed most is out of the question.
Prob because they make no money on the run of the mill version and they’d loose big money on a hybrid or deluxe version.
This indicates to me that their business model is hugely (permanently?) flawed thanks to high labor, high management and high production costs. Until the high costs get fixed they aren’t ever going to be able to compete in the small car or well equipped small car markets (see VW, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, or Mazda – or the European divisions of Ford and GM).
Do you know that the BMW 7-series’ hydrogen tank loses 1/9th of its hydrogen to “boiling-off” every day? Yes, which is why I stipulated that if storage and delivery problems were solved, hydrogen might be viable – for the very rich.
I suspect that long range cars will soon be a luxury few can afford. They may run on hydrogen, ethanol or swapped-out batteries, but they won’t be cheap.
More than a bit. As I recall the guys behind this idea want an expensive dedicated plant, and a dedicated nuke to power the plant. Whereas in Iceland they make hydrogen with geothermal energy.
That’s scale, not efficiency.
The electricity-to-gasoline scheme costs about $5 a gallon (which sounds bad at present, but it assures us that gas prices won’t double from here). It has the incredible advantage that what it produces is easy to ship and use, right now. We don’t need new engines, we don’t need new pumps, we don’t need new storage tanks, we don’t need new infrastructure technology or the billions that it would cost to replace it.
Using electricity to make hydrogen is about 10% more efficient, going from electricity source to wheels. How many billions (trillions?) of dollars would it take to put in place a hydrogen infrastructure?
In the long term they’ll both lose to batteries. Maybe after the gasoline infrastructure atrophies and becomes 1% of the size it is today, perhaps it’ll be worth it to scrap the thing and replace it with a hydrogen infrastructure.
That presumes we don’t find something even better in the meantime.
Check out Craig Venter – he thinks he can make methane out of air, using bacteriae. He’ll have to engineer those organisms, but thinks it’s more than viable.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/227
“Hydrogen is not an energy source, period. It’s an energy storage medium. As are batteries. Battery tchnology is improving quickly, and doesn’t require a complete new infrastructure.”
But it does expire. And then it takes up space somewhere. Toxic space. And there is the replacment cost. Replacement cost of batteries is the one item you NEVER hear or see in print by the “Pious” type crowd. Excuse me! “Prius.”
It’s THEIR Achilles heal.
Hydrogen does work. Well? Maybe not. But then neither did the Model T until some development $$$ went into it. Yeah it was all Ford’s $$. But the Gov did pave the roads to make their product viable.
So we can give Exxon another $18 BILLION or stick that in energy independance by creating another viable resource.
All in favor of the status quo, keep sitting on your ass…
Diesel is our short term solution – its bio fuels are much less expensive compared to ethanol which uses food for livestock and people – it has 30% more energy in a gallon than gasoline and 50% more than Ethanol – its not caustic meaning it can travel standard pipelines and station storage tanks built for gasoline, it has a lower flash point so it is less of a fire hazard, it is already in production at refineries all across the US and its emissions have come down substantially since we have a lower sulfur diesel fuel and technology has caught up…plus it only costs $1k to outfit a gas car with a diesel engine versus $2-$3k for a gasoline hybrid – plus think of mileage a diesel hybrid gets versus a gasoline one…we are talking realistic 70mpg versus 50mpg for the gas versions.
How many billions (trillions?) of dollars would it take to put in place a hydrogen infrastructure?
Depends on how many cars you’re serving. I don’t see anything that will fuel the millions of cars fueled by gasoline and diesel. Ethanol EVs, fuel cells are all niche products.
Prius batteries were worth about $300 just in raw materials a year ago. Probably even more today.
They won’t find their way into landfills. It will be worth the time for scrapyard dealers to make sure they are recycled. Attach a simple deposit program to it (say, $100) and we don’t have to worry about rogue scrappers.
The cost to the driver to replace worn-out batteries may be an issue, but they’re typically warrantied for 100,000 miles. If we’re talking about a $20,000 car, 100K miles is plenty of time to amortize the purchase cost.
Stein: that kind of stuff scares the crap out of me. With a couple minutes of research on the interwebs I could probably find ten examples where introducing non-native species of flora and fauna have had devastating results on local ecologies. I don’t think we can even contemplate the possible negative consequences if a large-scale, CO2-eating, methane farting genetically-engineered-bacteria plant is built.
Donal: as Kunstler (whom you no doubt read, given what I’ve read from you) is fond of saying, there is no alternative fuel that will sustain the Happy Motoring ideal of a car (or two) for everyone. In combination, all the alternatives will ensure that cars are around for a long time, but they will be more expensive (prohibitively so for many) and much more limited in capabilities.
Consider where he was speaking– at the National Hydrogen Association’s conference. What was he supposed to do, get up and say “hydrogen sucks”
and “if you want to power cars on hydrogen build your own damn plants”? This was just another prime example of a big corporation sucking up to a special interest group by telling them what they wanted to hear. If he’d been speaking at a diesel producers association conference, we’d hear that GM is thinking about putting a diesel engine in everything they sell and want federal subsidies to plant more soybeans to make biodiesel.
gawdodirt : “Replacement cost of batteries is the one item you NEVER hear or see in print by the “Pious” type crowd. Excuse me! “Prius.” It’s THEIR Achilles heal.”
They do talk about them. Apparently somewhere north of 250K miles the batteries have a problem. Looks like the after market has a $1K solution with batteries from wrecked cars for a bit less ($300-$800). My info is as of 2004.
http://www.priusonline.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1842&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=6ab3a7eda5a58745665fd0120f59d81a&start=30
Frankly I’d be proud of any car and any battery that lasts 250K miles. My Hondas and VWs last major miles but only one Accord lasted that long. Non were hybrids.
“But it does expire. And then it takes up space somewhere. Toxic space.”
Lithium is the future battery of choice and lithium is not considered toxic. Also I seriously doubt automotive battery packs will end up in landfills, recycling programs will probably be handled by all manufacturers on their packs (like Tesla is doing).
We probably have much more concern with people throwing out household batteries than people running off to the landfill with their 400 lb BEV packs.
IMO the BEV is the eventual winner. Nanosafe batteries are already close enough to an ideal battery that we should have an affordable, robust powercell for BEVs within 10 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altairnano
Not to mention that you can charge Nanosafes in minutes which partially solves the range issue.
Kunstler (whom you no doubt read, given what I’ve read from you)
Actually I just finished his novel, World Made By Hand. My review, and two much better ones, are on Amazon.
If GM is serious about this, they should get a small commercial fleet going.
How about striking a deal with UPS, Fedex and the Postal Service? Maybe a bunch of transit districts? The New York taxi cabs?
If that goes well, maybe they can get others interested.
There is a major problem with hydrogen and that is the “well to wheel” efficiency. Hydrogen production, whether its from reforming gasoline, or using electricity, is so fraught with inefficiency that we gain nothing over using our existing infrastructure and conventional fuels. Not great on emissions either because even if the electricity comes from nukes, uranium enrichment uses lots of conventional fuel, as does keeping spent fuel rods cool for the next god knows how many years…
An amazing lack of imagination going on here… Has anyone heard of solar power? Since all you need to create H2 is water and electricity, (actually that’s just one of many methods and not necessarily the best) how many solar panels would it take to create enough H2 for your vehicle? Anyone checked that out? Anyone have any idea just how much solar power is hitting the earth EVERY SECOND? Has anyone heard of the solar cells that generate H2 directly? Has anyone looked into the 15,000 PSI storage tanks that allow you to store virtually the same amount of H2 energy in the same space as gasoline? Has anyone read how few modifications are needed on our current engines to make them run on H2?
Apparently not. As for the absolutely ignorant statement that H2 is “just an energy carrier”, ALL FUELS (AND BATTERIES) ARE JUST ENERGY CARRIERS!!! Read up on your physics. “Energy can not be CREATED nor DESTROYED, it merely changes forms”.
Finaly Edward, I’ve got to challenge your statement that the H2 BMW loses 1/9th of it’s fuel load each night. In fact, the last thing I read was that it could sit for over a week without venting ANY H2. Could you tell me the source of your info? Thanx
@dean
Scares me, too. Question number one: how does Venter switch off the CO2 munching bacteriae once they get going? Hate to give the antiGW lobby ammunition, but we would like to retain some CO2 in the atmosphere!
:-)
@Busbodger
GM still gets that nice green glow that puts them in the same camp as the Prius owners while they hybridize a 6,000 SUV with a half-baked battery powered system (read alternator/motor driving a fan belt).
Do your research! The Tahoe/Yukon get the Two Mode System, not the BAS “mild” hybrid. The Two Mode is a real split-parallel hybrid. The BAS is a beefed up alternator with regen capability available in some sedans and the Vue.
And tell me why its a bad idea to hybridize the thirstiest vehicles first? True, it would be nice to have a Prius type vehicle too, but damn, you need to give credit where its due.
Wolven:
Solar power is not very efficient. If it cannot run a households electricity needs, it’ll never create enough electricity to run a car.
Plus, if we paper the world with solar cells to create electricity, what sort of effect will that have on the climate?
You may be technically correct that all fuels are just energy carriers, but there is no massive source of H2 gas in the earth just waiting to be burned. It has to be created to power a car. Oil doesn’t need to be created. Uranium doesn’t need to be created. Waterfalls don’t need to be created.
Well, if you believe the scaremongers, we’re running out of oil. Even if we’re not, it’s a rather dirty fuel. And then there’s the whole issue of fueling the Islamic jihadist middle east with oil money. It’s way past time to get off oil.
Uranium has a few MAJOR problems. One is called spent fuel. I would suggest we just dump it all in your yard, but I personally don’t want it lying anywhere, even in your yard. Remember Chernobyl? Again, if they were to build all the nuke plants in Africa and beam the power here, I still wouldn’t want the risk of fallout being blown here by the jet stream.
Waterfalls… ever heard of dams? Have you missed the enviro luddite screams about salmon, wetlands, and the Tsi Tsi fly? We aren’t getting anymore dams (nor will you be harnessing a waterfall) in Amerika. I live in WA state, less than 15 miles from two dams. Did you know that Hydropower isn’t considered “renewable” energy by the state of WA? How’s that for brilliant.
Finally, the efficiency argument. I imagine when the Incan inventor presented his plan to the king for building guns… the metal mining, the manufacturing shops, the gunpowder making, etc., that the chief Incan scientist quickly pointed out the fact that all that effort was going to be a net loser in energy and efficiency. Why go to all the effort and waste all that energy when we have spears and rocks… And where are the Incans now?
Wolven: Once you took the trouble to collect all that solar power, just store it in batteries and use as electricity. Safer, more efficient, easier to transport over large distances and easier to store.
I have yet to hear a pro-hydrogen argument that is unique to hydrogen. Pro-hydrogen arguments tend to be generic pro-renewable energy. Yours are no different.
Engineer, What are these batteries made of? How much do they weigh? What sort of range do they have? How much do they cost? Can I get them now?
Why would you transport H2 anywhere? Just make it where it’s needed, we already have water and an electrical grid. While obviously pro-H2 is pro-renewable, it isn’t “generic”. H2 is available NOW. It’s completely non-polluting. It never runs out. It can power our current engines, jet engines (why isn’t anyone pushing that option?), and any other fuel based engine we come up with. It’s a fuel that ANYONE can produce, no need for giant, world controlling, oil companies. Which is why it will be fought tooth and nail…
While obviously pro-H2 is pro-renewable, it isn’t “generic”. H2 is available NOW. It’s completely non-polluting. It never runs out. It can power our current engines, jet engines (why isn’t anyone pushing that option?), and any other fuel based engine we come up with. It’s a fuel that ANYONE can produce, no need for giant, world controlling, oil companies. Which is why it will be fought tooth and nail…
LOL! Thanks for the entertianment, Wolven, I don’t think I have read such a bunch of … recently.
1. H2 is available NOW. H2 may be available, but not renewable H2. All affordable hydrogen is made out of natural gas. Natural gas prices tend to be volatile. What will a HUGE demand increase do to natural gas prices?
2. It’s completely non-polluting. On what planet is that? Making H2 out of natural gas (CH4) means you are releasing the CO2 at the factory, instead of the tailpipe.
3. It never runs out. Misleading! Water may not run out, but water is not the most important source when you make hydrogen: your source of energy is. And those certainly do run out.
4. why isn’t anyone pushing that option? Perhaps because in the real world hydrogen is more of an expensive, dangerous pain in the ass, than existing fuels. Like I said, when we see aeroplanes converting to hydrogen, I’ll start believing that were getting to the point where it could be considered a viable fuel.
5. It’s a fuel that ANYONE can produce, no need for giant, world controlling, oil companies. Sure. Anyone willing to blow up their surroundings that is. You still need an energy source to make hydrogen. As mentioned, the current favorite fuel is natural gas. Close second would be crude (hello OPEC). No large scale plants using solar power, wonder why that is? Oh yes, solar power is so diffuse (~1 kW/m^2) at best.
Dream on Wolven. The only thing fighting tooth and nail against hydrogen is hydrogen’s properties. And they are doing a “heck of a job”.
Engineer: “So until we see hydrogen fueled airlines, I doubt it will make much of an impression on surface travel.”
Stand by folks… Things are a’ changin’…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7330311.stm
A hydrogen powered plane in development…
I wasn’t going to bother debating with Engineer any more, since he doesn’t really seem interested in facts, or bothering to do a little google searching on the subject. But there is plenty of info regarding H2 powered vehicles, including jets. Although I can’t find it at the moment, I read that Boeing successfully flew a H2 powered jet as far back as the 60’s (I believe). The technology certainly isn’t new, it just hasn’t been pursued.
Here are some links to info regarding jets powered by H2…
http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/FRheft/FRH9809/FR9809k.htm
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/72466_airbus30.shtml
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2008-01/green-skies-mach-5