Fuel Cell Economics vs Batteries

December 1st, 2014 by Stephen Grinwis

We’ve been hearing a lot about fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) lately, thanks in large part to Toyota and its Mirai. But how does a FCEV really compare to a battery-electric vehicle (BEV) like the Tesla or a LEAF? I wanted to look at the economics between FCEVs and BEVs, and then also make some guesses about infrastructure costs. Have a look and feel free to send feedback!

Fuel Cell Economics

There are a couple of main pieces that we have to look at when looking at the economics of fuel cells:

The actual cost of the fuel cell stack, which is the important bit that actually turns hydrogen into electricity.
The cost of the hydrogen fuel itself.
The cost of the fuelling infrastructure.

The fuel cell stack is actually not that horribly expensive. Prices would currently be about $55/kW… assuming massive economies of scale that don’t exist today — 500,000 vehicles per year.

So, to get a fuel cell stack that would be comparable to a Model S would cost about $17,000 (if FCEV production could somehow get up to 500,000 vehicles per year beforehand). That’s not really all that bad. But, there is a twist here. The fuel cell in cars actually degrades over time, losing performance. Right now, the state of the art fuel cell is losing about 10% performance after just 2,500 hours. That’s about 75,000 miles. Perhaps that’s not all that bad. After all, how often do you really mash the accelerator? (For the purposes of this discussion, let’s ignore how I drive). You’d think that. But what this really means is that your 10-year-old car is going to feel worn out. And it will be, with ever-decreasing available performance. It also means that one of the fundamental things people complain about regarding BEVs also applies to FCVs: Critical components fundamentally wear out, and will at some point require an expensive replacement, even with the best possible care. For comparison, it’s estimated that Tesla has already broken the $200/kWh battery cost, making the illustrious Model S 85 battery cost about … you guessed it: $17,000. Now, yes, fuel cells will get cheaper, but Tesla is building a Gigafactory expected to drop costs by an additional 30%. That trend of decreasing costs won’t end soon for either technology. Given how well Teslas have performed, it may actually turn out that the batteries are more resilient than the fuel cells that hope to replace them, and at comparable cost.

The Fuel for Fuel Cells

The cost of fuel is the other issue with fuel cell economics. Electricity is relatively cheap, but hydrogen fuel is pretty expensive. Right now, state-of-the-art hydrogen extraction from natural gas, pressurized and delivered to the customer, costs about $4.50 for a gallon of gasoline equivalent (GGe). Since the fuel is derived from natural gas, and requires a lot of electricity to compress, store, and dispense, the net global warming potential reduction for the fuel is modest compared to hybrids like the Prius, let alone BEVs. Hydrogen production from fossil fuels is a mature technology because there are industrial uses for the gas. As a result, price reductions are unlikely. You can produce hydrogen from renewable energy, but costs escalate quickly. Right now, it’s between $6.00 and $11.00 per GGe. That’s actually assuming economies of scale that don’t exist right now. Yes, that’s right, your highly expensive new-fangled fuel cell automobile will also cost you between 3 to 5 times the current price for fuel, to actually make a difference in CO2 emissions, and it won’t actually do all that much better on that fuel than the Prius in terms of fuel economy.

The cost of fuel delivery infrastructure is the other doozy. Unlike a BEV, which can charge anywhere on the ubiquitous electrical network, fuel cells must be refuelled at a commercial station. As such, you need a lot more refuelling stations than you need Superchargers. It’s estimated that, to replace the existing gasoline infrastructure with hydrogen would cost about $500 billion. By comparison, Superchargers are only really used during road trips. And that lets me get to the fun stuff that triggered this post: Fermi estimation….

The Cost of a Complete Supercharger System

I wanted to get an idea of how much it would cost to get enough Superchargers available, within an order of magnitude. Do note: This is not an exact figure. It’s just supposed to be a rough estimate, to see where the chips land.

Assumptions:

1.6 billion person-trips per year in the US (according to US Travel)
2.3 person average occupancy in most cars
Average trip distance = 760 miles (According to US Travel, again)
Average range of a BEV = 250 miles (assuming Model S range or eventual vehicles that will have such range)
16 hours of usable time per Supercharger, and 30 minutes of time per charge to yield 200-mile range
Car leaves home fully charged, and does not charge at destination
Cost of a 4-stall Supercharger station at $100,000 (rumored price, not completely ridiculous)

Put this all together?

tesla-supercharger-grey You need a net total of 150,000 Supercharger stalls, at a cost of about $4 billion. That’s right, friends, for roughly the cost of two B2 stealth bombers, we could have an amazing EV network, capable of letting everyone go on their road trips with reckless abandon. If the cost of Supercharger deployment falls, the price will fall quickly as well, which is also part of a trend of the falling cost of power electronics.

Another issue with my estimation? It assumes that all air travelers switch to going via road trip as well… Hey, if I had a Model S, you’d have to pay me to fly….

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Tags: batteries, BEV, FCEV, fcv, Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle, Hydrogen, Model S, Tesla, Toyota Mirai

About the Author

Stephen Grinwis is an EV evangelist, and general automotive enthusiast. His engineering background means he tends to nerd out a bit on the numbers. He focuses primarily on battery technology, wind power, and electric vehicles. If you can't find him running the numbers, or writing, you might find him lifting weights somewhere!

Wim Schuerman

Hi,
At the risk of making a complete fool of myself, I was wondering…
People are always stating how much energy is going into pressurizing (or cooling) hydrogen.
On the other hand we have been experimenting with cars running on pressurised air.
Why can’t we just combine both technologies and thus recuperate the energy put into pressurizing the hydrogen?
- Bob_Wallace
  
  When you pressurize a gas there’s a lot of energy lost as heat.
  
  It’s a problem with compressed air cars or storing energy in the form of compressed air (CAES). Unless the heat can be put to some use of value the loss makes the process lossy and more expensive.
  - Wim Schuerman
    
    Yes, but if the choice is between throwing the energy of pressurizing the hydrogen away or to at least use some of it, is that not worth considering?
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Sure. We should consider anything that works.
      
      But consideration doesn’t mean that something makes sense to use. One has to line up all the positives and negatives for all the possibilities and pick the best one(s),
      
      Germany is looking at hydrogen as a way to store energy by not pressuring and putting it in their natural gas system.
      - Wim Schuerman
        
        Yes, but at the same time German companies are starting their first trials in big scale battery storage facilities.
        I was told they have a big pilot in ‘La Palma’.
        Ps, any data on how much energy must be put in to get 1kw out of a battery incl cooling?
        I stood next to a bmw electric scooter as it was charging, and the ventilators were working big time.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        We’ll probably see a lot of ideas given a try. I have a hard time seeing a role for H2 storage except possibly for where it could be stored cheaply (non-compressed) and then compete against expensive peakers.
        
        I think the standard is 10% loss during charging and 10% loss between battery and rolling the car.
        
        I wouldn’t think cooling would eat up much power. It should be needed only during rapid charging and then perhaps on a blower which doesn’t pull a lot. But that’s guessing.
Steve Godenich

Reply to Bob Wallace

HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE
———————————-
CAPITAL EXPENSES:
1) Sun, Fresnel Lens & Sensored Pivot and/or practically any Heating Source
2) “St 5 5 Horsepower Stirling Engine Running on Sawdust” on Youtube
3) Alternator (AC Current)
4) Electrolizer
5) Compressor
6) High Pressure Tank
7) Nozzles, adapters and hoses.
7) Similar in principle to “Building a hydrogen refueling station in 48 hours (time-lapse)” on Youtube

OPERATING EXPENSES:
Equipment Maintenance
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Reply to Steve Godenich
  
  HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE
  ———————————–
  CAPITAL EXPENSES:
  1) Unicorn
  2) Fart collector
  3) Compressor
  4) Methane tank
  
  REALITY:
  None of this stuff has been proven to work. If it ever does and is cost competitive then it will change decisions.
  - Steve Godenich
    
    I suggest you then stay with the centralized grid, electric heaters, electric stoves, electric cars, DC-AC inverters, solar panels nailed all over the roof and a basement full of batteries. Convert all your appliances to DC, too. Tesla and the big power companies may even sponsor you for your efforts on their behalf. The rest of the world is moving toward the hydrogen economy with distributed home-power-storage networks based on an assortment of hydrogen tanks, fuel cels, batteries, all powered by both the grid and direct AC generation from dish/lens/heat engine combinations, as well as DC solar panels. You stay with your one-solution fits all.
    
    Enjoy waiting in line for the 20 minute fill-up at the super-charger station on your way to work for an 80 mile range. I would prefer only waiting 3 minutes for a 300 mile range and produce some or all of that hydrogen at my home. We get 2-4 blackouts per year from the grid up north in my State without additional drains from electric cars. I don’t want to have to even think about major power grid faiures from millions of cars plugging in at night or natural and man-made EMP bursts.
    
    Good luck to you.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      ” The rest of the world is moving toward the hydrogen economy with distributed home-power-storage networks based on an assortment of hydrogen tanks”
      
      Steve, this is simply untrue.
      
      Some people are speculating about H2 as a storage technology. Germany is talking about exploring H2 as storage for grid use. I don’t think you can find a single company selling H2 systems for home storage.
      —
      
      ” I would prefer only waiting 3 minutes for a 300 mile range”
      
      As would we all. However in order to have fast refilling there are trade-offs.
      
      First, you’re going to have to stop approximately 50 times throughout the year to refill. (There are no home hydrogen systems.)
      
      By the time you divert from your route and drive to a filling station, do the get out – swipe – hook up – fill – unhook – button up – get back in – drive back to your route dance you’re looking at a lot more than “3 minutes”.
      
      Let’s assume they install a H2 station somewhat close to where you drive each week and not a half hour away across town and you can pull that off in 10 to 15 minutes. Ten to fifteen minutes per fill up and you’re going to spend around ten hours filling your tank. EV drivers just plug in.
      
      Second trade off. It’s going to cost you 17 cents per mile for fuel (Toyota’s number). People driving an EV are going to be paying 3 cents per mile. For a 13,000 mile driver that’s an $1,820 fee for quick fill-ups on long drive days.
      
      Adding up the lost time and lost money….
      - Steve Godenich
        
        A supercharger station will take 20 minutes to do a half-charge to top off an 80 mile range. You can also charge it at home for 4 hours. A hydrogen station will do a fill-up in 3 minutes for a 300 mile range. You can do the same at home with your own tank, hose and nozzle.
        
        On 11/21/13 qnergy com bought out infinia and its patents. A version of Infinia’s Stirling/Dish system is an excellent solar engine for HH production with an electrolizer, compressor and Hydrogen Tank. I think an enclosed fresnel lens (3-5K degrees F focused) system may be even more user friendly and generating AC without DC-AC inversion is a nice touch. It fits nicely in a backyard. There’s plenty of room for optimizing such a system. See specs for yourself with pictures of people standing by a solar-electric generator for scale:
        
        www1 eere energy gov solar review_meeting pdfs prm2008_white_infinia pdf
        
        It’s just a matter of economy of scale, like the Tesla car and now the Toyota Mirai. People will begin setting up their own systems for hydrogen cars if they are not available as a packaged system on the market. Stirling-Tech com and GenoaStirling com offer basic heat engines. Electrolizers and hydrogen tanks can be bought off-the-shelf, too. It’s a nice idea for a project. For me, there is a major hydrogen production plant an hour up the road. I don’t know whether they deliver to my neighborhood, but they have delivery trucks, probably for commercial business. There’s also a windfarm a half hour up the road that would be a nice location for a green hydrogen station. It depends alot on where you live and what circumstances you are in,… marketing demographics.
        
        Don’t get me wrong, I like the Tesla and Quant, but the hydrogen car has a market niche, also. Our nuclear plant is closing by year end so electricity rates are estimated to go up 30-50% by 2015 in upper New England. The same supply and demand dynamic will hold true as electric cars become more prevalent. Building out the grid also has a cost for the taxpaying consumer. We’re talking about crossing Gigawatt limits [1] for around 250 Million cars[2]. Electric rates also vary throughout the states.
        
        The drop in oil price is only temporary (reminds me of the ’70s) and grid electric is expensive and rising. Net metering is a poor way of storing energy for the consumer since the power utilities limit and take a big cut out of your electricity production. Fuel cell technology is coming of age with new graphene technology[1] and the recent insights in photosynthetic effect[2].
        
        It’s not just the car dynamic. It’s also the overall family budget issue for the home. I like both the electric car and the hydrogen car. I want to see some bikes with long ranges.
        
        [1] How much electric supply capacity is needed to keep U.S. electricity grids reliable? | EIA | January 13, 2013
        
        [2] 253 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads; average age is 11.4 years | LA Times | June 9, 2014
        
        [3] Graphene discovery may revolutionise fuel-cell technology | E&T Magazine | 27 November 2014 By Tereza Pultarova
        
        [4] Solar fuels as generated by nature | Max – Planck – Gesellschaft | August 20, 2014
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        170 miles in 30 minutes. And Tesla is apparently coming out with a faster supercharger.
        
        Yes, you can charge at home.
        
        Yes a hydrogen station can charge in 3 minutes. Once you’ve arrived and hooked up. While you have to leave your route, get out, hook up, fill/charge, unhook, get back in with both electricity and H2 you’ll only need to do that on very long drive days with a EV. You’ll be doing that dance 50 times or more a year with a FCEV.
        
        If you want to put a hydrogen plant in your backyard it won’t come cheap like a simple 240 vac outlet for an EV. And it will take more than 2x as much electricity to power it as to charge the EV.
        
        Home generation of hydrogen may be possible later on. If one is willing to pay multiple times per mile for the advantage of arriving a few minutes earlier at destination on long drive days. Those few minutes will cost your thousands of dollars per year.
        
        “Our nuclear plant is closing by year end so electricity rates are estimated to go up 30-50% by 2015 in upper New England.”
        
        Someone has fed you a shovelful. Closing Vermont Yankee is happening because that reactor does not make financial sense any longer.
        
        If you’re worried about electricity prices then stay away from hydrogen. That’s a transportation system that will such down more than twice as much electricity as EVs.
      - Steve Godenich
        
        No solar home system is a cheap capital investment even with tax credits. Though, the Sun is the right price for operating expenses and I don’t need to subsidize the power company. Match the fill-up time of 3 minutes at home and the roundtrip of 300 miles and it beats having two fuel cells (one for home and one for car). Competition is good (keeps prices down for the consumer)
        
        I hope you’re right and they’re wrong about the electric hikes [1].
        
        [1] Closing Vermont Nuclear Bad Business For Everyone | Forbes | 9/29/2014
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        No, Steve. Solar has reached grid parity in several parts of the US.
        
        If keeping Vermont Yankee made financial sense then the money would have been found to keep it open.
Steve Godenich

I suspect there is room in the market for both electric and hydrogen cars depending on consumer preferences for performance and economy, as well as safety considerations. There is little doubt that families will want to generate their own energy*. Batteries may be more practical for urban households and high-pressure gas tanks for suburban and rural envrionments. It is desirable to the consumer to have abundantly inexpensive energy storage.

Hydrogen is a nice store of either heat or electric energy using long lived pressure tanks. Electric storage in batteries requires expensive replacements more frequently. The average homeowner with a high pressure tank, similar in appearance to a propane tank, can generate hydrogen from their backyard. The cost of storage/conversion is a key element in pricing for the consumer.

The homeowner may use most any form of heat creation (LPG, LNG, oil, coal, wood, etc) to power a Heat Engine to produce hydrogen and electricity. This is a consumer investment in capital (rather than mere consumption) to own the means of production to create and store energy. It also distributes the power network and keeps prices competitive at the pump, rather than dictated by monopolistic interests. Nevertheless, any demand for more energy fueling stations is not such a bad opportunity for local entrepreneurs. Using solar panels or the 19th century process to store energy is simple:

Sun -> (Lens | dish) -> Heat Engine -> Alternator -> Electrolizer and Compressor -> Hydrogen Tank.

Hydrogen -> Fire (furnace, stove, hydrogen car)

Hydrogen -> Fuel Cell -> Electricity (House electric or electric car) *

Note: Fraunhofer zeolites look promising for energy storage. Wind and tidal energy sources really do need a helping hand from the arts community. Maybe Skunkworks will come up with a fusion reactor that is the size of a hydrogen refueling station in 5 years, but I’m a skeptic. Nuclear fission is messy and risks being very expensive for the taxpayer. Synfuel requires hydrogen to run the process to create synthetic gasoline. And exotic ideas of turning the globe into a huge dynamo are unnerving, to say the least.

* Double-conversion cost for electric car.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Some families would love to generate their own electricity or H2. I doubt it will ever be cheaper to make your own energy, store it, and use it to charge/refill your car.
  
  Let’s try some examples. Say homeowners can buy storage for $300/kWh. Cycling it daily to move solar from their panels to their cars would cost about 6 cents for storage plus their cost of electricity. At this point (including the inefficiencies) we’re well above 10 cents, probably above 15 cents.
  
  Homemade H2 is going to be even worse. You’re going to have to mount 2x as many panels and buy the H2 production equipment along with the compressor and storage tanks.
  
  Put that up against charging from the grid which should be less than 12 cents with TOU billing.
  
  12 cents in an EV =~4 cents a mile. Toyota is talking 17 cents a mile for FCEVs with the statement that the price might come down to 10 cents a mile some time from now.
  
  It’s going to be very difficult to beat the cost of late night onshore wind.
  
  I can’t do the math for things which don’t exist so I’ll skip the ‘maybes’.
Jim Seko

Would any auto company be pushing FCEVs if there were not $100,000 in ZEV credits per FCEV?
J_JamesM

Accusing bias is the last refuge of someone that has lost the argument.
eveee

You applied economies of scale to FCEV, but not BEV chargers. BEV chargers are already lower than 1k. I never understood exactly why BEVs were designed to have on board chargers and on board with AC to DC conversion. You can get and an inverter that gives DC. Fork lifts do that. All you need is a DC plug, cheap at less than 10 dollars. Safe, too.
They are called Anderson connectors.

The SAE J1772 is a good idea, it transmits AC to the car, preventing shock. EVs and chargers should have ground fault interruption for safety. Right now installation is by electrician only. You can get an EV charger from a hardware store for 500 dollars right now. And EVs are in low volume. There is no way that is anywhere near the cost of the hydrogen infrastructure.

Both hydrogen and electricity require some user end functionality and safety equipment. A hydrogen sniffing device or leak detector? Hoses and connectors to safely connect the hydrogen source to the car? A compressor to increase the pressure enough to store in the high pressure tanks?

End user equipment for FCEV vs BEV cost probably cancels out. Its the transmission infrastructure that FCEV are way behind on.
- EclecticLip
  
  Hi eveee, great points. And just to re-emphasize, I think EV’s will dominate; it just happens that not everyone can take advantage of them, leaving an opening for FCV’s.
  
  For Level 2 BEV chargers, I assumed a cost of about $500 for the charger unit, a few hundred bucks’ profit margin for the installer, and a few hundred bucks’ labour / materials for the installation itself. The chargers themselves will definitely get cheaper over time, but I don’t think the other two will change as much.
  Offsetting those savings is the fact that at a certain EV market penetration level, utilities will need to upgrade the transformers for the relevant city blocks, which would add a bit more cost back into the system.
  
  Battery storage would make it possible for utilities to avoid those upgrades… but would represent more money on the EV infrastructure side.
  
  As far as I’m concerned, that’s money well spent — way better for drivers to be buying batteries and solar panels (which will reduce our impact on the environment) than spending money on conspicuous consumption!
  
  I guess my main point in my rather long comment was to say
  – that yes, hydrogen is inefficient and expensive compared to electricity,
  
  – that battery-electrics will probably dominate fuel cells in market share,
  
  – that even a fuel cell guy like me wants them to (because fuel cells can’t scale production nearly as fast as EV’s can, and we need to get off fossil fuel combustion ASAP), but
  – that the infrastructure costs are probably on the same order of magnitude. If someone comes out with a thorough study showing hydrogen infrastructure will remain way higher than EV’s, I’ll gladly acknowledge that expertise. It’s just that my gut, and a couple thought exercises, lead me to think it’s probably a bit closer than most people think.
  
  Thanks again for your reply!
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    “Offsetting those savings is the fact that at a certain EV market penetration level, utilities will need to upgrade the transformers for the relevant city blocks, which would add a bit more cost back into the system.”
    
    Southern California Edison has just announced that it’s going to furnish $350 million to assist the installation of 300,000 charge points in their territory. Mostly apartment and work sites.
    
    http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/california-steps-up-again-on-electric-vehicles
    
    I suspect utilities are starting to understand that EVs are a huge market for them and it’s very much to their advantage to change out transformers or whatever is necessary to increase their business. They’ve been losing market to end-user solar and efficiency. This is a way to get that loss back and more.
    - EclecticLip
      
      Hi Bob, that’s great news!
      The cost then works out to about $1000 per station, which is in line with my guesstimate.
      I notice that they’re going to offer rebates of up to $3900 per station, which suggests two things:
      1. they expect some charging stations to cost more than $3900, which implies
      2. they’re not just covering “low-hanging fruit” with this effort, they may be reaching out to homeowners or workplaces which don’t currently have outlets near parking stalls, and may be offering to help build those. As you note, very foresighted of them!
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        There are some places that may have some larger costs, bringing larger transmission wires.
        
        For homeowners it should be fairly cheap as long as they’ve got a large enough service and room in their box for a couple of breakers.
        
        And some of the money might be heading toward rapid chargers. Perhaps something without the heft of a supercharger. Or perhaps something on that scale. The utility puts up 10% and the owner makes their investment back in a few years by charging a $2 access fee.
        
        I suspect we’ll some variations on the theme during the start up years and things getting more standardized later on.
  - eveee
    
    It needs some advancements and the right applications. Even if it costs more, it can be useful if the right situation is found. In Germany, they are researching blending it with methane to get long term storage out of renewables, only the output goes to heating, not electricity.
  - eveee
    
    I forgot. One of the interesting FC applications was to convert methane to heat and electricity. Japanese companies were interested in that, as I recall. Then the conversion heat is not wasted. Its a kind of cogeneration scheme, a good idea. It would be nice to replace hydrogen in natural gas lines, but it causes embrittlement and hydrogen seeps through things easily. Hydrogen is easier to deal with if it does not have to be compressed so much.
  - eveee
    
    There is a plug in 240V turbocharger for $649 also. No electrician required if you already have 240 for a dryer.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      If you don’t have a dryer outlet it looks like the cost of having one installed should be less than $250.
      
      http://www.redbeacon.com/hg/electrical-outlet-installation-cost/
      - eveee
        
        Yes. 110V could be DIY for those with some experience as long as its indoors. 240V or outdoors is best left to the professionals. You want your installation to follow code.
        
        Here is a good article that explains that what we are discussing is actually the EVSE, which is safety equipment t interface from the residence power to the car, not a charger. The chargers are AC to DC converters on board the car.
        
        The purpose of an EVSE is to prevent shock, overheating, or other dangerous conditions while connecting the EV to power. They have come down a lot in price.
        
        http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/how-to-get-the-best-home-charger-for-your-plug-in-car.html
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        If you can install a 110 vac outlet then you can install a 220 vac or an outlet with GFI. 1) pick the right size wire and breaker(s), 2) turn off the power before hooking up the ‘live’ end.
Bob_Wallace

Jose, I suspect you’ve hit on something telling. There’s a huge similarity about the die-hard nuclear and die-hard FCEV advocates. They may be from the same ‘universe’.

Both nuclear and FCEVs are, IMHO, yesterday’s technological dream of the future. But then solar and wind prices plummeted. Battery technology advanced. We experienced a reality shift.

Feels to me that these guys (and they all seem to be guys) have been left behind and are attempting to hang on to their dreams in spite of rational supporting arguments. Some of us had the same impressions of what the future was likely to be, but we shifted our expectations as new facts emerged.
- sault
  
  There’s also the factor of tribalism affecting some of the FCEV / nuclear supporters I talk to. Since solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars are associated with “hippies”, their knee-jerk reaction is to see them as inherently bad or just a ploy to enact some hidden agenda. Nuclear power and fuel cell vehicles are made by the real “job creators” in their mind and any facts presented to show otherwise just make these people more defensive.
- José DeSouza
  
  My basic reasoning: solar, wind and BEVs = dwindling market share for FFs in general (Good for Mother Earth, btw).
  
  In the 20th century, nuclear was supposed to take the slack left by FFs at some point of an unspecified future. Not anymore. Wind and solar have been progressing by leaps and bounds; just on the verge of becoming serious competitors to the baseload business model itself. Thus, BEVs should look like the perfect match for them, b/c, besides being a more energy-efficient match, the marginal costs of incorporating them into the emerging renewables paradigm would be minimal; when compared to a stil largely non-existent hydrogen infrastructure.
  
  The conjecture of FCEVs, on the other hand, can be seen as a backdoor through which nuclear vendors would have another strong opportunity to peddle anew their stagnating industry. Not necessarily that they’re very keen about EVs of any flavor, though.
Kieron McKindle

As a Real Estate and Business Developer in Southern Oregon, I have been working on a major project (still in stealth mode) that uses all forms of alt-energy in an interleaved fashion so that the end result whole has greater reach than the sum of its parts. That said, my approach to H2 has evolved with my research: For my project, the best way forward is to use stationary H2 Fuel cell technology, wherein the water vapor ‘exhaust’ from the FC stacks can be captured and reused instead of vented into the atmosphere (which some argue is a major GHG). When using water as the primary feedstock, we lose 17% of that mass to energy conversion. This is why it is so important to recapture that vapor to replenish that feed stock. Combine this with emerging energy storage technologies such as graphene (and other) ultracapacitors, and we can charge our electrical vehicle fleets. The energy required to crack water into H2 and O will come from a combination of Geothermal, Solar, Wind, and Hydro (regeneration), as well as from waste and waste-water capture/regeneration. It was important to design this system from the ground up, from landscape engineering to architecture, including the ‘living building’ concepts. In the end, I personally believe it is better to use stationary H2 generation and storage in combination with electrical vehicles, as opposed to H2FC vehicles. The importance here is in the interleaving of these various technologies to work as one wholly integrated system. We still have another 3 to 5 years before you will see all of this working in a real world example.
- don
  
  I like your ideas. How could I follow your work?
  - Kieron McKindle
    
    Google me. I’m easy to find.
NRG4All

I did the math reflecting on the $400 billion the pentagon has spent on the F35 jet. With around 46,000 miles of interstate highway in the U.S. and at a cost of $20,000 per charging station, we could have a charging station every 12 feet! Obviously a fantasy, but interesting none the less.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Just a small number of those charging stations could take us off oil and greatly reduce our threat levels.
Jon Lyall

It is clear that fuel cells, hydrogen infrastructure and manufacture are all on a steep development path, and cost reductions have been phenomenal over the last 5 years.
The current Toyota fuel cell is 95% cheaper than the previous version. This piece quotes figures from 2004 for hydrogen infrastructure of $500 billion, way out of date. Nascent technology improves very quickly, whilst costs plummet. It is far too early for such an article to draw any meaningful conclusions, however much the author would like to.
Battery cars need to work on cost, range and speed of recharge, fuel cells need to work on cost. If the cost falls enough roll out will happen.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Toyota (can we call them highly knowledgeable sources for thing fuel cell related?) says that high volume sales are needed to bring down costs.
  
  What is the market for a $57k car that costs far more than a ICEV and several times more than an EV per mile and has very limited fueling stations?
  
  Can you tell me who those many tens of thousands of customers are?
  - SMG_VII
    
    Can you explain why you are so implicitly against experimentation and innovation?
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      He’s clearly not against innovation. I’m sure Bob is fine with supporting research. What we’re less OK with is government money getting thrown at expensive, and at this point largely useless infrastructure. We can do research an innovate without blowing millions of public infrastructure that will be barely used, for a car that will barely sell.
      
      Imagine GM created a crappy car that was slow, expensive, and that would only be sold in Nevada. Would you be cool with the government spending millions of dollars building special roads that only this car could use? It’s equivalent.
      - SMG_VII
        
        Yes. I would be fine it on a short term basis. The government threw tons of money at solar companies that then proceeded to go bankrupt and now the industry is largely thriving.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Where could the money be thrown to bring down the cost of hydrogen? The problem is physics.
        
        You want the government to subsidize FCEVs multiple times more than they have EVs? Bring the purchase price down to $10k or some sort of a giveaway price so that people will people will be willing to pay 17 cents a mile to drive?
        
        All I’m seeing from the FCEV advocates is emotion and fantasy. No logic.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      In absolutely no way am I against experimentation and innovation. Where did you get that silly idea?
      
      What I’m against is implementation based on fantasies. Let’s research the hell out of fuel cells and better ways to produce hydrogen. But moving into FCEV production when even the major producer says that maybe they will be able to get the price of fuel down to the level of an ICEV, eventually makes no sense.
      
      Now. Would you FCEV fans please tell me who the market is for these expensive, expensive to drive cars? Are there 100,000 of you with that kind of money in your pockets?
      
      Personally if I was willing to spend that much on a car I’d fork out another $10k or so and get a Tesla. I’d have a much more enjoyable car to drive and make back the extra cost in fuel savings.
      - http://fractalicious.ca/ Adam Grant
        
        Given human nature, the “fun to drive” angle may end up being the clincher in many cases, justified after the fact with reference to costs and use cases.
        
        It’s fun to speculate about what might be the best range extending technology for an EV while batteries are improving: a small ICE, a hydrogen fuel cell, a single-use aluminum-air battery, or even a gas turbine.
        Based on the ideas in this thread, the fuel cell looks like an impractical choice. The ICE hybrid option is out on the roads, although as the years go by its justification appears to be waning. I’d like to hear if there are any updates on aluminum air batteries (which might make sense in a smaller replaceable format), and the gas turbine strikes me as worth investigating until batteries improve.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        I find the aluminum air battery idea interesting as well.
        
        Let’s say batteries improve to the point at which we could buy a 100 mile range PHEV for $20k. Then rent a battery for long trips. Or haul one around if a driver often pushes the 100 mile threshold.
        
        I don’t know enough about gas turbines in terms of costs and efficiency.
      - sault
        
        After tax credits, the LEAF is already darn near $20k and in some states, the credits push it below $20k. When the next refresh comes through, I’d hope it would get 100 miles on the highway or more consistently.
  - Jon Lyall
    
    Japanese and Californian early adopters I should imagine. These people will be provided with heavily subsidised cars with free hydrogen fueling and the companies, (Toyota, Hyundai, Honda) will lose cash one each one. Will they take this route? They already are.
    Battery cars also started with high prices and little infrastructure. Both have improved over the last decade. The same is true of other new technologies such as solar and wind power. In all these cases it is important to look at the change in costs rather than the current costs. This provides a route map for future prospects, while current (or yesterday’s prices) provide cheap points that show nothing.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Jon, aren’t you just a little uncomfortable suggesting that there are 100,000 people in Japan and California who will buy even a heavily subsidized car and pay 17 cents a mile to drive it when they could by a $20k Toyota and drive it for less than 10 cents a mile?
      
      And a little uncomfortable suggesting those three car companies will sell a could hundred thousand cars at huge losses per car? These cars won’t make sense at $20k. They won’t make sense at $15k based on operating expenses. Subsidizing 100k of them them down to $10k would be a $47,000,000 loss. On top of the loss the companies are already likely eating.
      
      EVs started at half the price with a huge amount of infrastructure in place. The electric grid and millions of people with outlets in their garages.
      - Jon Lyall
        
        Not my suggestion. Low 1000s over several years I guess, whilst development in infrastructure and fc continue.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Where’s the market for a $50,000 car that costs 17 cents a mile to drive and performs like a $20k car?
        
        Where do they sell “low thousands over several years”?
        
        Who is going to spend their money on H2 infrastructure when the odds of system collapse are significant? Is this like the nuclear dream that is totally built on government financing?
      - Jon Lyall
        
        Japan is going down this road. They have the combination of political will, technological development, and the worlds largest car companies all on board.
        You think this will fail. I think it will succeed. Time will tell.
Akos

You may need add the cost of the grid upgrade to the cost of BEV infrastructure. If that amount of car is put on the road you need more electricity and a more robust grid. It may needs trillion rather than billion…
- Patrick Linsley
  
  Or bajillions! No the reality is that there will be hardly any upgrades needed at all because the overwhelming majority of them will be charged overnight in a 120V (wall) or 240V (dryer) outlets. Overnight is when grid managers are trying to give away electricity to balance the grid. If anything more electric cars would make ‘spinning reserve’ power plants more efficiently used at night.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  The DOE did a study a few years back and found that the US already has the spare capacity and transmission to charge 70% of all American cars if they were electrics. Since that study we have added a lot more wind capacity to our grids (more late night power). And EV owners have a tendency to install solar as well.
  
  Your concern is unfounded.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    A bit off topic, but I think worth sharing –
    
    ” Southern California Edison. SCE recently submitted an application to the CPUC to develop the infrastructure for up to 300,000 EV charging stations in the next few years. SCE will develop the required distribution lines, transformers, and other infrastructure and also provide rebates of up to $3,900 for third parties to own the EV chargers. This is known as a “make-ready” approach because it relies on the utility making the infrastructure ready for third parties to build out the charging stations themselves.”
    
    http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/california-steps-up-again-on-electric-vehicles
    
    This is a utility that’s setting out to increase its market by selling electricity to drivers and taking business away from oil. They’ve lost market to end-user solar so now they are shifting their market rather than shrinking.
    
    Smart.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      More –
      
      “SCE’s focus is on “long-dwell-time” locations like apartments and workplaces. This is the case because SCE sees an opportunity to install numerous Level 1 and 2 chargers at these locations that will allow EV owners to charge up while they’re working or doing whatever they do at home. DC fast chargers aren’t included in SCE’s proposal because SCE feels that the market for these types of chargers is growing adequately on its own.”
      
      Bringing outlets to the 44% without.
    - Philip W
      
      Nice article.
      Indeed very smart.
Mikgigs

Apparently fuel cell costs less for long distances, since you do not have to carry battery, fuel tank empties constantly. A tonne of fuel cell capacity is enough for two years of car use. For the battery you need already extra to move that on.
- Patrick Linsley
  
  Unfortunately long distance daily car drivers are far and few between. Most daily driving is under 40 miles round trip. Saving fuel on the once a year car trip doesn’t add up for most people. Plus until the infrastructure is built out it is likely you will be very limited in how many miles you put on outside of California (e.g the need to ‘hover’ within 150 miles of a hydrogen station). While it may take awhile outside of 240V or 480V charge stations anywhere there is an outlet and someone willing to let you use it, you can plug in just about anywhere with a BEV (and PHEVs and EREVs take care of that worry at all).
Joel

IMO fuel cell cars are interesting since they could serve as a bridge technology to fuel cell aircraft and heavy duty trucks.
- Patrick Linsley
  
  I just wish we’d experiment more with those two directly. Really getting rid of diesel fumes from semis would do a world of good in many places in the interior west as far as particulate pollution is concerned.
Michael G

Thanks very much E.L. Very informative. A Mirai at $17,000 will be an interesting vehicle.

I think the cost of making hydrogen will come down very fast once there is a large potential market seen to be coming.
Bob_Wallace

“As you increase volumes, overhead costs proportionally decrease (the same overhead costs get spread over 2x or 3x or 10x as much production) and very gradually begin to approach the materials prices. ”

And I’ll ask you my question du jour –

How large is the market for $50k+ cars that cost 17 cents a mile and won’t find a filling station on the next corner?

Who is that market?

Scale is not dozens, hundreds, or even thousands. It’s tens and tens of thousands.
Bob_Wallace

Just a bit on the cost of charging infrastructure…

First, about 50% of all US drivers already have a place to plug in where they park (56% – UCS survey).

Second, I thought it might be good to look for some cost data. In order to get more objective data I searched for the cost to install a 240 vac outlet for a clothes dryer. Looks like a couple hundred bucks. That’s an average of 4,000 bids.

Now, here’s something you might want to add into your math. A couple hundred bucks will buy someone access to 3 cent per mile driving. Going the hydrogen route means purchasing fuel at 17 cents per mile (Toyota’s price).

Saving 14 cents for 13,000 miles of driving is $1,820. Outlet cost is recovered in a month and a half.
patb2009

I think you underestimate the cost of Hydrogen. The best pricing i got was pressurized hydrogen and technical hydrogen from the DoD Defense Energy center. The USAF buys a lot of it. (Rocket fuel)…. I worked out a price that was about 5-30X the price of Natural Gas. Nat Gas is running some $2.50/MCF and i was seeing prices of $33-88/MCF of Hydrogen. Given NatGas prices in cheaper then gasoline, you can go Gallons Gasoline Equivalent. Assuming i didn’t make a math error,
I was seeing a much higher Hydrogen price.

there are other sources showing lower costs of Hydrogen, but, perhaps we can swap some notes.
Patrick Linsley

Yawn. Wake me up when you can buy one outside of a CARB state.
Bob

fuel cell cars typical have 100 kw engines making the price of the engine $5500 in volume.
- Steve Grinwis
  
  Don’t forget, the $55 price tag applies to a market volume of 100’s of thousands of units. Right now, that 100 kW fuel cell costs $50k in the Toyota Mirai.
  
  Slow, and uninspiring. People will test drive the BEV which is peppy, fun, and in some cases, down right exhilarating to drive, and a slow fuel cell car that is more expensive to buy, more expensive to drive, and wears out faster, and it’ll make it a bit of a hard sell, don’t you think?
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    I’m really wondering what sort of car the Mirai will be, aside from propulsion system. And looks.
    
    Tesla blew folks away with safety. looks, features, and ‘luxury’ as well as range and performance. Toyota isn’t calling their car a Lexus….
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      Well, we can make some pretty accurate guesses, I think.
      
      It has a curb weight of 4078 lbs, and 150 hp. So, that’s heavier than a Chevrolet Impala, with 150 hp. Power to weight ratio is 27 lbs per hp.
      
      For reference, the Chevy spark weighs 3000 lbs, and has 130 hp. Power to weight ratio is 23 lbs per hp.
      
      So, this flagship vehicle, costing $60k will be 20% slower then the Chevy Spark EV costing $26k.
      
      If you compare it to a Model S, in it’s price range, the Model S60, it comes in at 4500 lbs, and has 312 hp, for 14 lbs per hp, nearly twice the performance of the Mirai.
      
      So, it’s gonna be one of the slowest electrics on the market. It’s definitely not going to be punching at it’s weight class in terms of price.
      
      In terms of luxury and the rest… it’s hard to say. It all depends on how much money they want to lose per car. The fuel cell is costing around $50k, and that doesn’t leave much room for the electric motor, frame, gas storage, electronics, and recouping design costs.
      
      Plus, Toyota has never been one to show off fancy tech features. My Smart car has a better stereo integration than my friends 2007 Lexus…
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        “The system accelerates Mirai from 0–60 in 9.0 seconds
        and delivers a passing time of 3 seconds from 25–40 mph. ”
        
        http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/11/20141118-mirai.html
        
        2014 Chevrolet Spark EV 0-60 mph 7.8 Quarter Mile 16.1
        
        http://www.zeroto60times.com/Chevrolet-Chevy-0-60-mph-Times.html
        
        2012 Tesla Model S Base (225 kW) 0-60 mph 5.9 Quarter Mile 14.2
        
        2013 Tesla Model S Base (270 kW) 0-60 mph 5.4
        Quarter Mile 13.7
        
        2013 Tesla Model S Performance (310 kW) 0-60 mph 3.9 Quarter Mile 12.4
        
        http://www.zeroto60times.com/Tesla-Electric-Cars-0-60-mph-Times.html
        
        Good figgerin’….
      - eveee
        
        The Mirai has pretty good acceleration. The Hyundai FCEV is relatively sluggish by comparison at 11.5s 0 to 60.
        
        http://www.autoblog.com/2014/06/18/2015-hyundai-tucson-fuel-cell-quick-spin-review/
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        The Mirai is almost as expensive as the entry level Tesla S. People who have $50k to drop on a car can come up with another $10k or so and buy a car that’s 5x less expensive per mile.
        
        And the S does 0-60 in 5.4 seconds vs. 9.0 seconds.
      - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
        
        There should be an article on this! (wink wink!)
      - Patrick Linsley
        
        Didn’t they engineer those cars (e.g. Mirai, Tuscon, FCX) to be so wimpy to ensure they got more mileage than the Tesla? The only reason I ask is if Tesla build one of their cars to have lackluster performance like the Mirai (note: For a standard family sedan the performance is fine, for a flagship car representing the brand using the old Lexus LFA bodywork shop it’s pathetic) wouldn’t they actually edge out their FCEV competitors?
Will E

I want a EV build with clean energy, Solar Wind, Giga factory style.
and I want to charge with my Solar Panels on the garage.
or open a local charge station with local Solar.
I need storage battery pack for my rooftop Solar.
And for long distance I want to fill up anywhere or swap battery pack. so for my own interest I want a Battery car. Chain of production, battery storage. and rooftop charge.
I like it when a plan comes together.
Hydrogen does not fit in.
SMG_VII

Anyone advocating solely for batteries over fuel cells or fuel cells over batteries is really just trying to justify their own preferences and doesn’t have an actual interest in exploring the possibilities for the complete range of vehicles that exist. Real solutions are going to come from a combination of complementary technologies, not just one.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Think things through a bit, please.
  
  EVs are on the roads and selling. The electric grid is in place and over 50% of all US drivers already have a place to plug in.
  
  By about the time the $57k Toyota FCEV comes to market it is expected GM will have released a $30k 200 mile EV and Tesla will have released a $35k mile EV. The Volt may have 2x the range it now has.
  
  Toyota will need to sell a lot of FCEVs to get the price down.
  
  A lot of hydrogen will have to be sold in order to get the price from 17 cents a mile to 10 cents a mile. And to get someone to invest in the massive infrastructure it would take to fuel FCEVs around the country. ($500 billion?)
  
  OK, ‘splain this. If the FCEV costs 2x that of a long range EV and it costs 5x as much per mile to drive a FCEV then how many people are going to purchase an FCEV? And why? Expensive, expensive to operate, and not very peppy.
  
  There’s no magic route to go from expensive to affordable without selling a lot of FCEVs. Perhaps over 100,000 per year.
  
  Where’s that market? Explain to me what I’m missing, please.
  - SMG_VII
    
    Your positions are exactly the same as someone in 1900 saying coal is the only thing that should ever be used to generate electricity.
    
    Who the hell thought in 1990 that a car like the Prius would be selling in massive numbers today? Pretty much nobody.
    
    Who was claiming 10 years ago that a company like Tesla would come out of nowhere to upend how people thought about electric cars? Pretty much nobody.
    
    Who in the 1940s and 1950s thought Honda and Toyota would become massively popular major players in the US auto market? Pretty much nobody.
    
    You need to quit pretending like you definitively know the future and that things move in linear patterns all the time. You don’t and they don’t.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      I’m not pretending like I know the future.
      
      I’m looking at what we know right now and putting the pieces together. The way I put them together says that FCEVs will have an extremely hard time establishing themselves.
      
      What I asked you to do is to look at the pieces and see if you can see a route.
      
      And don’t go all magic on us. Use what we know now. Not what may be invented years from now.
      - SMG_VII
        
        That EXACT logic could have been used against electric cars less than a decade ago.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        It’s now a decade later. We have good batteries that are getting better. We know that battery prices are going to continue to fall.
        
        We know that FCEVs work. What we can’t see is a route for either FCEVs or hydrogen to become affordable.
        
        And if EVs reach affordable first it will be pretty much impossible for FCEVs to unseat them. FCEVs are superior on only one fairly insignificant way. EVs are superior in multiple ways. It would take a very significant FCEV advantage to turn the market their way.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        A decade ago EVs would have had a very hard time establishing themselves.
        
        If something changes that makes H2 as cheap or cheaper than electricity per mile then FCEVs may have a chance to get into the game.
        
        With EVs we had to invent better batteries. With H2 we’ve got to invent ways to get around the laws of physics.
        
        Apparently you also don’t see a route for FCEVs….
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      People in the 1900’s weren’t saying Coal will be the only source ever, they were saying ‘Nothing else makes sense given what we know’. And they were right! 100%!
      
      They didn’t know abut global warming, or air pollution, or any of the downsides. Furthermore, they didn’t know about computer designed turbine blades.
      
      Perhaps there is some awesome technology we don’t know about that makes hydrogen completely viable. But similarly, perhaps there is some technology we don’t know about yet that makes batteries 50x more dense, and cost pennies! We just don’t know.
      
      In the meantime, let’s keep doing lots of research, but focus on the solutions we have right now, that work now. And that’s BEV’s.
    - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
      
      This is an irrelevant comparison. Diversifying your fuel source for electricity is different from using a far superior battery-electric vehicle vs a fuel cell vehicle.
      - SMG_VII
        
        Wonderful confirmation bias you’ve got there. Time will tell.
  - GCO
    
    I for one would very much like to see fuel cells used as range extenders, a hydrogen plug-in hybrid if we can call it that. If most of the driving is done on straight electricity, the higher cost/mile when on hydrogen isn’t much of a factor anymore.
    
    Fitting a decent battery in such a vehicle would also allow for a much smaller, much cheaper stack, 20~30 kW (2k$ in volume?), competitive with ICEs provided that the cost of the H2 tank etc is reasonable (I have no idea what it is right now).
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      FCEVs already have a battery pack, sized to make the fuel cell as small as possible, I would assume. Store up enough power for acceleration (more than the stack alone could provide) and soak up regen braking power.
      
      Using a fuel cell as a range extender would likely take as large a stack as a straight FCEV. All you’d be doing is delaying the time at which the car turned from EV into a FCEV.
      - Steve Grinwis
        
        You have the right of it Bob.
  - EclecticLip
    
    Hi Bob, I won’t argue with your logic — fuel cell vehicles have a very steep, very long hill to climb.
    The market for FCV’s is in your second sentence: “over 50% of all US drivers already have a place to plug in”. That means BEV’s are only going to be a solution for 50% of the market. The other 40-ish percent probably won’t pay the cost premium for a PHEV, which means FCV’s are there best option for a zero-emission vehicle.
    That said, if we start seeing $30k 400+ mile EV’s out there, maybe people will be willing to buy, despite not being able to plug in at home. (I think drivers would want a lot more than 200 miles of range before plunking down money on an EV if they can’t charge at home. Maybe they can charge at work, but in today’s economy, who knows if their next employer will have chargers? I’d imagine they’d want at least two weeks’ worth of driving, in case they’re so busy one weekend they can’t stop for a fast-charge somewhere, until weekend #2 or #3)
    
    As for cost: Toyota’s goal is to get the cost of their fuel cell system down to about $12500 by 2020. And that would probably put the vehicle in the $30k range.
    http://europe.autonews.com/article/20141127/COPY/311289994
    
    All your other points are valid — where’s the infrastructure, EV’s will have gotten better by then, etc. It’s just that for those other 40% (or at least a large proportion of them) EV’s just won’t be an option.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Southern California Edison just put up $350 million to assist with the installation of 300,000 charge outlets, mostly in apartments and work site parking lots. Look for other utility companies to make similar moves. This is a huge new market for utilities which have been losing business to end-user solar and efficiency.
      
      Plus, for homeowners who don’t have an outlet the cost of installing one is around $250. They’d make that back in a couple of months via the savings on H2.
      
      Rumor just hit that Nissan may have an :”affordable” 250 mile range EV on the way. 250, even 200 mile range is plenty. There’s no real need for 300 or more. Most people would be fine with stopping after three hours drive for 20 to 30 minutes a few times a year in exchange for very low per mile costs and the convenience of plugging in rather than going to fuel stations.
      
      I ran the numbers and someone driving a 300 mile FCEV might arrive at destination 10, 20 minutes sooner on a 500 mile day. But then spend more than 10 hours filling their tank the rest of the year.
- Steve Grinwis
  
  I’ve simply laid out the facts, with all the research I have done. My bias may leak through here and there, but I don’t think I’ve maligned any of the facts along the way. If I’ve gotten any of the facts wrong, let me know and we can have a discussion about that.
  - SMG_VII
    
    It’s not a knock on you so much as it is the entire general line of thinking that there is or should be only one solution to a problem.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Most of us can see no reasonable way for ‘the second solution’ to sell at high enough rates to survive.
      
      Sales to a few hundred FCEV advocates with deep enough pockets to afford one and who live close enough to a filling station will not create a market. Tens and hundreds of thousands of sales are needed.
      
      Rather than complain because people are looking critically and icing out your favorite/whatever why don’t you make a rational argument why FCEVs are likely to gain market share? Let’s see how it holds up.
      
      Stick with know facts. Not what might be invented sometime in the future. That sort of speculation works for both sides of the argument.
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      Let’s say you have a nail you need to hammer in. And let’s suppose you have big stick, and a hammer with which to hammer in that nail..
      
      Technically, there are two solutions. One of those solutions is so obviously superior in nearly every way, however, that most people will discuss it as being an obvious single solution problem.
      
      Now let’s say, for instance, that tomorrow someone comes up with a brilliant way to generate large volumes of hydrogen cheaply, and locally, solving most of hydrogens problems. If that happens, My dialog will change to something like this (With due respect to Tim Minchin):
      
      If you show me
      That, say, homeopathy works,
      Then I will change my mind
      I will spin on a fucking dime
      I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
      But I will run through the streets yelling
      It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        You nailed it.
      - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
        
        Way to hammer the point home.
    - eveee
      
      OK. I agree, we should keep the door open and look at multiple solutions. Thing is, we already have multiple solutions. As Joe Romm wrote a while back, we already have a plethora of existing tech that is not yet fully utilized and that has far more impact than breakthroughs. But putting FCEVs in the market before they are ready just a futile attempt to stem the tide of BEVs that are winning the market. On the practical note, today, when you drive that FCEV home, just exactly where are you going to gas it up? Air transportation and long range hauling are two areas FCEV might be interesting, but air has to deal with weight and compete with biofuels, and long haul has to compete with electrified rail and biofuels. IMO, Keep research at an appropriate level on the back burner and see what comes up. It might be useful for energy storage. Even there, kinks have to be ironed out. FCEV has many competitors.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Long haul has to compete with battery swapping. Getting to 200 miles range shouldn’t be too hard. Battery swapping is really quick.
      - eveee
        
        Yes. I think BEV long haul would have to compete with electrified rail. The US long haul roadway system makes no sense to me. Why use tractor trailers instead of shipping bulk by rail and then distributing locally with tractor trailers. Big rig owners and drivers are constantly squeezed out by high fuel prices, but rail and water are the absolutely cheapest way to transport energetically and use the least fuel. BEV seem like a difficult way to go for long haul. IMO, the FF long haul system inefficiency is a hangover of cheap FF that may go the way of the dodo bird long term.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        I agree about electrified rail, but I see no real moment that way at the moment. Ideally I think electrified rail where we have or could reasonably run tracks and swappable battery trucks for the other places stuff needs to go.
        
        Rail space is likely to be more available as we ship less and less coal and oil/products.
        
        We end up with the same problem with fuel cell trucks as with fuel cell cars. Expensive fuel. Battery swapping would be as fast or faster than refilling H2 tanks.
- http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  When EVs and gas cars battled it out about a century ago, gas cars won. They didn’t end up being complementary. Again, one technology is clearly going to be superior for large personal vehicle transportation. I haven’t seen a single line of evidence that FCEVs could compete with BEVs.
Bob_Wallace

What do you see in the NYT article that supports FCEVs in some special way?

They have the Toyota price $1,000 low, don’t they?

They talk about the problem of H2 coming from methane, about the cost of fuel problem, and that the selling cost will be higher. They talk about the three car manufacturers expected to market a FCEV.
—

BTW, I was wondering yesterday how the count was going for major car manufacturers who are selling or about to start selling an EV. I’ll share my list. Perhaps someone can help me correct it if needed.

Major Car companies with EVs

BMW i3
BYD e6
Fiat 500e
Ford Focus
GM/Chevrolet Spark
Honda Fit EV
Hyundai Kia Soul E
Mercedes Daimler Smart EV and Electric B-Class
Mitsubishi i-MiEV
Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe + Fluence
Saab ePower (2015)
VW e-Golf

In addition there are established Chinese car manufacturers that are producing EVs. Cherry is one company.

And while not one of the ‘established’ car manufacturers I’m going to add Tesla.

Major car companies with PHEVs

Audi A3 E-Tron
BMW i8
Ford C-Max Energi and Fusion Energi
GM Chevy Volt and Cadillac ELR
Honda Accord PHEV
Mitsubishi Outlander
Porsche Panamera S E-hybrid
Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid
Volvo C60
VW Passat

Major car manufacturers with announced FCEVs

Honda FCX
Toyota Mirai
Hyundai Tuscon
http://www.michaeljberndtson.com/ Michael Berndtson

Outstanding. Finally some reality. This hydrogen fuel cell thing is getting the hard sell this week. Even New York Times editorial section is pushing the hydrogen economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/hydrogen-cars-coming-down-the-pike.html

Hydrogen/fuel cells for transportation is being plugged right now basically because we’re over producing oil and gas. We also are producing way too much hydrocarbon gas liquids (or natural gas liquids).

http://www.eia.gov/analysis/hgl/?src=home-b1

We’re looking for anything and everything to take natural gas along with ethane through butanes. Liquified natural gas is one. Deploying a hydrogen economy is another. Burning ethane through butane along with methane to generate electricity via gas turbines is another.
Jon Lyall

I am surprised that the comparison here is between fc and ev. To me, fc vehicles are set to compete not with EVs but with ices. Fossil fuels will run out. This is not speculation, it will happen. This century, oil reserves will be exhausted. So, what will replace gasoline? For small, light urban cars, ev s will dominate. For larger long range cars, buses, trucks etc hydrogen fc systems are more appropriate. They are more scalable and refuel in a reasonable time frame.
Some of the figures in the article are a little suspect, but the real problem is the basic premise. It isnt EV or fc, it’s both!
- Steve Grinwis
  
  There is no technical reason why we can’t right now make a 500 mile range EV that can fast charge in 15 minutes. It would just be expensive, but prices are falling.
  
  City busses work very well as EV’s. Long range busses and trucks should have no issues using biofuels in the interim. Our current ethanol production already covers nearly 8% of fuel use, so once people stop using it in cars, a lot becomes available for trucks and buses, and planes.
  
  Furthermore, we’re no where NEAR the theoretical limit for energy storage of the lithium battery. Right now, we’re sitting at somewhere around 250 wh / kg. The theoretical limit of the Lithium-Air battery is over 5000 wh /kg, nearly 20 times the density.
  
  With a battery like that, your range would actually be larger per kg of storage than it is for most cars today. Therefore, trucks, and busses will likely one day be battery electric as well, with 2000 km ranges, and all the awesome benefits of EV’s. Fuel cells are at best an expensive distraction from the real solution.
  - Shane 2
    
    A lithium air battery with 5000 wh/kg with thousands of charge recycles would change the world. We don’t know if we will have such a battery in the next 50 years. It turns out to be extremely difficult to have good charge recycle characteristics in metal-air batteries.
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      You’re entirely correct. I was merely pointing out that it’s not like battery research has stopped, or stagnated. it’s actually accelerating it’s pace of innovation, if anything.
MIchael G.

Your cost estimates will be out of date in six months and laughable in 3 years. You have to figure that the cost of electricity is going to be so insignificant in 10 years that electrolytically derived hydrogen will cost essentially nothing. Saying electric batteries are more efficient may be true but if the difference is between $0.0011/mile and $0.0015/mile it won’t matter.

You are not looking at it from the viewpoint of the average user which is what the auto cos are doing. Most people do not have home environments (condo, apt., small urban house) where they can charge their car. Most people do not want to wait 30 minutes to fuel up. If the options are electric without a home charger and with a 30-min wait vs. current ICE, most people will choose ICE.

You have to decide whether your goal is to stop global warming or convince yourself that you have glommed onto the superior technology. If we keep all options open for exploration we have some chance. If we play around with numbers we can convince ourselves of anything we want, with a big amen-chorus of fellow believers to reinforce our arrogance.

You’re trying to predict technology over the next 10-20 years. Most people can’t predict stocks over the next 10-20 days. Can you?
- JamesWimberley
  
  “Most people do not have home environments (condo, apt., small urban house) where they can charge their car.” Evidence? Every suburban and rural house can charge an ev from the socket in the garage. Not in Manhattan flats of course, but then few Manhattan dwellers own cars.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    A survey by CSU found that 56% of drivers report that they have a place to plug in where they park now.
    
    Some cities are starting to require new construction to add, at minimum, conduit so that wire can be easily pulled later if a charger is desired.
- Steve Grinwis
  
  I’m not looking at it from the perspective of the auto companies? Go see Bob’s list of companies that have launched EV’s. There are 12 of them, and we may be missing some. There are also 10 companies who have launched PHEVs. Look at the number of companies that have launched or announced FCV’s: 3.
  
  I think the auto company argument goes to me, don’t you think? These are real people, selling real cars, unlike Toyota, and their limited roll out of a special hand crafted car.
  
  Electricity is not projected to drop like you are suggesting… There is a price floor for the cost of the raw materials in solar cells and wind turbines, at about half of what it is currently, in today’s dollars. It’s unlikely that we’ll see significant advances in the mining industry, after all, we’ve been mining stuff for a pretty long time, and it’s a pretty mature industry.
  
  So, no, your assumption that energy will be worth nothing is unfounded and more laughable than predictions by government agencies who are experts at making those predictions.
  
  I am trying to stop global warming, and I’m doing that by saying we should throw our money at the solution that is already here, in front of us, that works, right now, instead of a $200k boomdoggle (had to throw in a Hindenberg joke, sorry) produced in limited numbers, by a company that only plans to sell a few hundred in California.
  
  By all means, continue to do research! Research is awesome, and we should support it. But in terms of rolling out public infrastructure, let’s try not to have flights of fancy. Let’s stick to what the science says we should support, right now.
  - Michael G
    
    Some of the same cos that have PHEVs also are going for FCs, partly because of their experience with customer reaction to EVs. Many of the EVs out there are govt. mandated compliance vehicles and without massive govt. tax breaks would be uneconomical for any but the top 5% of the population.
    
    EVs were more advanced than ICEs in mid-1800s and look where that got them. Current versions may very well win a large market share, but so will FCVs. The FCV cost will come down considerably by the time EVs get to even 5% of the market (they are at 0.2% now, I think) and we are so far away from that day that anything can happen and should be prepared for.
    
    The cost of a single 30-second Superbowl ad is $4M and you’re complaining about the cost of FC stations?
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      “Some of the same cos that have PHEVs also are going for FCs, partly because of their experience with customer reaction to EVs. ”
      
      Are you saying that Toyota, Honda and Hyundai started their fuel cell programs after the Leaf started selling four years ago this month?
      
      “EVs were more advanced than ICEs in mid-1800s”
      
      Batteries weren’t up to the job. And batteries came up short again when the EV1 came out.
      
      ” so will FCVs. The FCV cost will come down considerably by the time EVs get to even 5%”
      
      I’m going to ask again the question that I have been asking for weeks without receiving a logical answer.
      
      Who will pay a large premium to purchase, pay an expensive price per mile to operate, and almost certainly have fuel access difficulties for FCEVs? Remember, even Toyota talks about very large sales numbers needed to bring down the cost.
      
      Can you answer that question? How large and who is the market?
      
      $50,000 for a non-luxury car. 17 cents per mile. Only 200 fuel station in all of California. Few if any in other states. Jay Leno isn’t likely to buy more than one.
      - Michael G
        
        As noted elsewhere on this page, the FCVs will be around $17K – the price of a Civic – once some economies of scale kick in – around 500,000 cars.
        
        The price per kWh of PV electricity has been dropping at 15% to 24% per year for 40 years and has maintained that pace to this day. That means the $0.06/kWh today will be $0.012 to $0.004 per kWh in 10 years and $0.0002 in 20 years. Electrolytically generated hydrogen will be cheap in 10 years and basically free by 2035.
        
        People keep claiming “physics” as a barrier. I have a degree and a lot of coursework in physics and am currently teaching it. I may not have kept up with everything but I don’t see the physics barriers. Please explain.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        “around 500,000 cars”
        
        Who will be the purchasers for those 500,000 FCEVs?
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        ” I have a degree and a lot of coursework in physics and am currently teaching it.”
        
        Really? And you think there’s a route for electricity at $0.0002 in 20 years? Do you teach a science fiction physics course?
        
        If you know anything about real world physics then tell us how we crack water into H2 and O using less energy than is now considered possible. And how can we compress H2 using less energy than is now considered possible?
        
        Answers that incorporate worm holes and extra dimensions are not acceptable. No appealing the laws of physics to the Supreme Court to see if Scalia , Thomas, and the other wingers will declare those law unconstitutional.
        
        And “I really, really, really love nuclear energy” is also not an acceptable answer.
      - eveee
        
        Physics. Chemistry. OK. Ask about electrolysis. Point to energy release. Thats the fundamental problem. Heat escapes. Lots of it. Not all the electrical energy gets converted to hydrogen. Loss.
        
        Heres the view.
        
        288kj goes in
        
        188kj goes out
        
        http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/electrol.html
        
        Thats ideal. And if the waste heat is not used for something else. And all that complexity and cost for the hardware for multiple conversion processes.
        
        Not bad compared to FF and Carnot law limits, but not nearly as good as an efficient single step conversion in a battery.
      - Joseph Dubeau
        
        “Really? And you think there’s a route for electricity at $0.0002 in 20 years? Do you teach a science fiction physics course?”
        
        The replicators on the Enterprise can create all the hydrogen you need. – Science Fantasy.
        
        “Distinguishing between science fiction and fantasy, Rod Serling claimed that the former was “the improbable made possible” while the latter was “the impossible made probable”.[2] As a combination of the two, science fantasy gives a scientific veneer of realism to things that simply could not happen in the real world under any circumstances. Where science fiction does not permit the existence of fantasy or supernatural elements, science fantasy explicitly relies upon them.”
      - Michael G
        
        They will be sold the same way EVs are sold now – through a combination of subsidies, tax breaks, and mandates. Are you arguing that pure EVs other than the Tesla would sell without that?
        
        At least you dropped the physics comment.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        No, I haven’t dropped the “physics comment”, I trying to get some logical replies out of you guys.
        
        Who is going to create this “combination of subsidies, tax breaks, and mandates” that will put 500,000 drivers in FCEVs?
        
        I’m getting worried about you, son.
      - Michael G
        
        The same people that created the current subsidies, tax breaks, and mandates that might possibly (in the future) bring EVs to a mass market and profitability
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        The FCEV will get the same subsidies as EVs receive. $7,500 federal plus state where offered.
        
        FCEVs are getting $200 million from the State of California in order to set up a bare minimum of fueling stations so that people can drive around the more populated parts of CA.
        
        You’re suggesting the government force people to purchase FCEVs? (mandates)
  - JamesWimberley
    
    It’s side issue on this thread, but I beg to differ on future electricity pricing. (Hydrogen cars still work out more expensive than evs with free electricity, so I’m not challenging the inference.) In a very high renewables scenario – say above 80%, without cheap bulk storage – you need to overbuild wind and solar. Accordingly you will have excess supply for long periods, at a marginal supply price of zero. There will be a lot of nearly free electricity on windy summer days. IMHO this will favour intermittent P2G and synfuel plants rather than FCVs.
    
    This scenario will fail only if bulk storage becomes cheaper than overbuilding wind and solar. Possible, but I’m not betting on it.
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      Bulk storage of Hydrogen will be a thing. It’ll be cheaper to store power as hydrogen, or ammonia at combined cycle plants, when it’s a windy summer day, than it will be to overbuild enough that there is enough power on a sunless still day in winter. What I’m saying is, that excess power will still have value, because you’ll be able to store it, and sell it at a premium when the sun isn’t shining. Deep grid backup will have inherent value, as will generating synthetic fuels for things like planes.
      
      I have another article brewing on this topic. Stay tuned.
  - J_JamesM
    
    Ironic, because modern hybrid airships are actually not a boondoggle at all… so comparing Hydrogen cars to the Hindenburg is insulting to the latter, not the former.
- Dragon
  
  Michael, you’re comparing current EVs to theoretical future FCEVs and saying future FCEV wins? Future EV battery tech is just as likely to allow 5 minute or even instant full charging with enough capacity to go as far as ICE or beyond.
  
  You’re right that future tech is impossible to predict, but the fact there is so much battery research going on and so little fuel cell research bodes well for battery tech continuing to dominate. The fact that you can charge an EV at home/work for a growing number of people and that setting up electrical chargers or extra outlets in parking spaces or light posts is inherently simpler/cheaper than hydrogen production and fueling infrastructure means that EVs have a major built-in advantage. I don’t see how any leap in hydrogen technology can change that.
  
  Even if government was willing to pour enormous amounts of money into hydrogen infrastructure and push it as quickly as possible, I still don’t see it drawing ICE-biased consumers away from ICE vehicles for many years, at which point battery tech is just as likely to draw those same consumers from ICE vehicles but without pumping so much money into the process.
  
  I think you’re coming from the standpoint of let’s fund EVs and FCEVs with as much money as possible and see who wins because that’s best for the environment. I agree, on a philosophical level. But tax dollars and investment dollars are limited. I’d rather see them go to EV subsidies and infrastructure and research than to FCEV because EV is more likely to replace ICE faster than FCEV could. I could be wrong, but there is really a lot of evidence to support that theory. I don’t think trying to push both types of vehicle at the same time speeds the demise of ICE, unless there really is enough money available to push both techs as fast as possible. With fossil fuel currently rooting for FCEV and throwing some money at it, maybe that’s possible, but it seems unlikely. Fossil companies aren’t going to fund electricity to hydrogen research and if that tech ever materializes, suddenly fossil-fuel funding for the expensive FCEV infrastructure will disappear and go into fighting FCEVs instead.
  - Michael G
    
    You are correct – I’m saying let’s fund both because the money involved is trifling in the general range of govt-industry funding. We can’t at this point tell which will win. I see no reason both can’t be available like diesel and gasoline are now.
    
    I am sure there will be some breakthroughs in battery tech. I am equally sure there will be breakthroughs in hydrogen tech.
    
    The penalty for being wrong is too severe to place all your money on one.
    
    Too many people are simply not going to wait 30 minutes for a recharge if an ICE takes 3 minutes. Does the buyer of an Cadillac Escalade or Lincoln Navigator seem like the patient, environmentalist type?
    
    If you project breakthroughs in charging speed, why not project breaktroughs in hydrogen production? Until you get one or the other breakthrough (or both) it is pure speculation.
    
    The cost of electricity from PV has been dropping at a pretty steady and predictable rate for 35 years and if it continues will be only 10% of it’s current price in another 20-25 years (if not sooner). At that point electricity will be so cheap as to be inconsequential in cost analysis. Saying that there will be no further lowering of costs per kWh ignores history.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      “If you project breakthroughs in charging speed, why not project breaktroughs in hydrogen production?”
      
      The laws of physics.
Adrian

Average trip distance of 760 miles? That doesn’t sound right at all! Maybe 760 person-miles = 330 vehicle miles @ 2.3 persons/vehicle.
- Adrian
  
  Oh, includes air trips… Never mind.
  - Steve Grinwis
    
    Yes, the air trips really up the distance travelled.
Marion Meads

There are about 122,000 gas stations in the US averaging about 32 miles between them. If people also charge at home, the number of chargers that you would need would be less than 122,000 because of the daily commute factor at less than 100 miles per day for more than 95% of the population. So the installation of 150,000 chargers would be an overkill to say the least.
- Steve Grinwis
  
  There’s a fundamental difference in what we’re discussing though. Each gas station can process between 8 to 12 cars at a time, and at around 3 minutes per fill, that gas station can fill up 3840 cars per day at peak capacity.
  
  A single supercharger stall (which is where I’m saying we need 150k of) can fill up 32 cars per day, because it takes 30 minutes.
  
  At peak capacity, the existing gas station network can fill 500 million cars in a day, compared to our supercharger network which can fill only 5 million battery packs a day at peak capacity.
  
  We need far fewer chargers, despite those chargers providing less range, because most charging will take place at home.
  
  I don’t think my network would handle things like Christmas or Thanksgiving, where a large portion of the population travels a very long way. We’d likely need more than I’ve described, since I assume that travel is spread out through the year, where it’s really clustered around key travel times, like holidays and the summer.
  
  I think my numbers hold up roughly, and aren’t overkill at all.
  - Marion Meads
    
    Was counterchecking your calcs, and it passes my litmus test conservatively.
    
    Working the other way around, considering that there are 253 million cars and trucks registered, and on the average require fuel fill up once a week, each gas station on the average only serves about 297 cars per day, not 3,840 cars (which it can if pushed for capacity).
    - Adrian
      
      Remember also that most vehicles will slow/medium charge overnight and will rarely visit a commercial fast-charger.
      - Steve Grinwis
        
        That was assumed in my calculation. I explicitly only dealt with people travelling.
  - TedKidd
    
    I think Tesla will have the peak demand issue sorted out – I bet they are working on it now.
    
    I saw a presentation somewhere that showed charging graphically over holidays. What seems to be happening is there are a few SC that get busy, but they have nearby alternatives that are less congested and people are learning to jump the ones that are busy on holidays.
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      Ya, it’s not a hard problem to solve, it just means that they will have to be able to install more units to deal with peak times, not just the average case. I think it’s pretty trivial to add more stalls to an existing supercharger. I’ve heard rumours that they installed way more electrical capacity than we’re currently seeing used at these stations too, hinting that they’re planning for growth, either for more chargers, or faster charge rates. Either way, I’m confident that they’re on top of things.
      - Marion Meads
        
        One way to solve the power demand problem of supercharging station is to have battery energy storage that can be trickle charged during off-peak times and then can DC quick charge to the cars without disrupting the grid. These battery energy storage can also help stabilize the grid. When the battery energy storage comes down cheap, along with the supercharger deployment, we can say goodbye to oil for our commuting needs.
      - Steve Grinwis
        
        You’d need some pretty serious battery, but it would definitely take a load off the grid.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        And could likely make some extra money by providing grid regulation.
      - Matt
        
        They are already doing this, see the CTO presentation. http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/24/tesla-cto-presentation-ev-news/
    - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
      
      With Tesla’s software focus and savvy, I imagine there will be a smooth solution in place shortly, and it will stay on top of this.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    How about generating some ‘worst case’ numbers?
    
    Assume everyone was driving a ~200 mile range EVs and 30% of all drivers had no place to plug in but were using ‘super chargers’. On about 90 times a year. (Assuming most people would charge up while they still had ~ 50 miles left. 13,000 / 150 = 87x.)
    
    And that 20% of all cars drive > 200 miles in a single day on major holidays. (20% might be high. Few multi-car households are going to take more than one car. Many people just drive ‘across town’.)
    
    If your lower bound is $4 billion vs. $500 billion for H2 it still looks like no contest.
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      The holiday scenario dominates the discussion, and sets the peak. That’s 40 million cars that need to charge on that day, and each charger can only charge 32 cars a day.
      You’d need 1.25 million charging stalls to handle the load, at a cost of 30 billion-ish.
      
      In reality though, the cost of the superchargers would fall like a rock if you put in an order for a million of them… They’re not that complicated. It’s a big power supply, in a shiny box, with a thick cable, and a computer board. This company can build a 25 kw DC quick charger, for $2400, with large margins in small numbers out of a basement:
      
      http://www.emotorwerks.com/products/online-store/product/show/75-new-emotorwerks-quickcharge-25000-hv-a-25kw-pfc-charger-for-higher-voltage-batteries
      
      I’m pretty sure we could get the cost for a supercharger stall down below $10k if you ordered a million of them, reducing the cost to a much more manageable $12 billion
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Thanks. I think you should include something like this in your article to hold off the “But what about Christmas?” questions.
        
        $12 billion vs. $500 billion. There’s some distance between those numbers.
      - GCO
        
        The problem isn’t so much the hardware, but its installation.
        Permitting, digging trenches across sidewalks and parking lots for possibly long runs of thick wiring, pouring some concrete to anchor the shiny boxes etc, all this adds up.
        
        (But yes, it remains quite affordable compared to building new gas or H2 stations…)
      - Steve Grinwis
        
        All these things are why they chose where to place superchargers near power, and where they don’t have to rip up too much, but it’s a fair point, and one we should be aware of.
        
        I wouldn’t guess that it would double the cost though. I’d estimate that $5k would cover it, and you’d get more than $5k in savings on a bulk roll out. Don’t forget, you’re going to run many stalls at each location, like probably 20-50 stalls at a time. That should drive relative costs of installation down.
- Joseph Dubeau
  
  I don’t think you charge a Volt or Leaf from one of the Tesla Superchargers.
  So we don’t the added expense.
  - Marion Meads
    
    GM should adapt to Tesla’s specs.
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      Access to the supercharge network would be badass, for sure.
      - Adrian
        
        Would be nice if that was BMW’s big i3 announcement, but I suspect it will be j1772 frankenplug (CCS) instead.
      - Steve Grinwis
        
        BMW already announced support for the SAE-CCS plug, ages ago I thought.
    - Omega Centauri
      
      Tesla is providing these free of charge if I understand it correctly. They don’t want to give free charging to competitors, so obviously some arrangement to share physical charging infra-structure is needed.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Free for purchasers of the top priced model. No charge, unlimited use for the bottom model after a $2k payment.
        
        I would think that Tesla, with its tie into SolarCity, would love to have people purchase charge from them. I’d bet they would charge only a modest margin over cost and use the revenue to install more and more chargers.
      - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
        
        Tesla has stated that it would be happy if other manufacturers would like to partner up and use them, but that means they have to build their cars so that they are able to.
- Wim Schuerman
  
  Isn’t the cost and availability of the infrastructure to get the electricity to the charging stations going to be the deciding factor?
  And how are we going to produce all this electric energy?
  How many kW of fossil fuels are we using per year? And to what capacity of production and transportation of electric energy would that lead?
  How many tons of copper wiring would we need to transport it (not counting transformers,…)?
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    There will be some cost to wire up the rapid charge station such as the Tesla Superchargers. For the most part those chargers will be built as close as possible to higher voltage lines.
    
    A few years back the NREL did a study and found that we have enough spare generating capacity and transmission during late night hours to charge 70% of all US cars were all our cars electric. As we add wind turbines to our grid we increase the amount of late night supply as that is when the wind often blow the hardest.
    
    Also, EV drivers tend to add solar panels to their roofs. They’re buying their “fuel” for the next 30+ years and putting more capacity on the grids.
    
    If you google the EIA Annual Energy report you can find amounts of the various fossil fuels we use per year.
    
    As we move from petroleum to electricity we obviously lower the amount of petroleum we use and we lower the amount of petroleum we ship on truck, rail and by pipeline. Same for coal. As we move off coal we use less fuel for the engines that haul it. We also free up a sizable amount electricity that was running our refineries and mines.
    
    Copper, back above. We’ve almost got the transmission we need to charge our EVs. What is missing will be worked as needed. Some utility areas are already starting to modify their grid so that they can deal with EVs as they come on line.
Vensonata

Yes, that $55 kw fuel stack had me searching amazon. One kw per hour is 24 per day, twice the amount I need. I overproduce pv in summer and need some way to store for winter since I am off grid. All I need is a 200 liter hydrogen tank to zero all carbon fuels. Such a simple concept to put the cherry on the cake for off grid living.
- Steve Grinwis
  
  Sorry. Article updated to be more clear now.
- http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  Crazy that the DOE puts out a $ for 2014 that is based on 500,000 FCEVs produced a year… when we are nowhere close to that. Big flub on DOE’s part, but we should have noticed and noted that mismatch… and now we have.
Marion Meads

Reality Check: So hard to believe that the Fuel Cell Stack costs only $55/kW! This could effectively put Bloom and Redox Power Systems out of business altogether. Bloom’s SOFC stack reportedly is in the $10,000/kW (i doubt this number from the source below), and Redox Power Systems claims only $800/kW. So a $55/kW would truly be a super breaktrough. What gives?

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/new-fuel-cell-technology-could-cost-one-tenth-price-bloom.html
- Marion Meads
  
  Counterchecking the reference in the article, the $55/kW is a cost projection at 500,000 units per year, and $280/kW for 20,000 units/year. So it really could cost way much more.
  
  http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/14012_fuel_cell_system_cost_2013.pdf
  - Joseph Dubeau
    
    I think the cost of fuel cell is much higher.
    “a cost to Toyota for building each and every fuel cell of around $50,000″
    https://transportevolved.com/2014/11/25/toyota-admits-cutting-costs-hydrogen-fuel-cell-technology-will-tough/
    - Steve Grinwis
      
      The Toyota fuel cell is 114 kW.
      
      Do the math, and that works out to about $450 / kW. We don’t have anywhere near the economies of scale to bring fuel cell prices down to the level cited in the government report.
      
      I’ll be honest, I didn’t think citing a government report would be the most controversial part of my article.
  - Steve Grinwis
    
    Yes, that’s how cheaply they could be made with current technology assuming economies of scale that definitely don’t exist.
  - Steve Grinwis
    
    Updated the article, good catch, I should have mentioned it!
- spec9
  
  Well . . . I believe the Bloom one runs on natural gas and that is a bit harder than running on pure hydrogen.

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