I don't follow the hydrogen vehicle development, but it seems to me the companies must have done the analytics to a path to profitability. That's Business 101.
GM and Honda Start U.S. Production of Hydrogen Fuel Cells
- Thread starter buster
- Start date
Tax write off.
There is no development the only mass produced hydrogen vehicle available is the Toyota Mirai. Toyota, Honda and gm talk big on hydrogen and never deliver or make any real moves.
The only way HFC would work in cost is nuclear reactor based production without going through electricity first. It may happen in Japan or S Korea, but not anywhere else.
You have to add the battery cost to your Nissan Leaf to make it fair, and the cost of the fuel cell (with platinum inside) for hydrogen vehicles.
To me hydrogen is more of an energy security strategy on a "what if" and "just in case" side bet than saving the world. If you think Li-Ion based battery is bad hydrogen is not any better.
It is an EV with the large battery pack replaced with a hydrogen tank and a HFC and a smaller battery. You can't build a HFC large enough for the burst load so you still need a battery. All the powertrain electronics is identical size.
The infrastructure for hydrogen would be very expensive, let alone the production of hydrogen and the loss in transit. I think battery EV already won.
Solid state batterys will be the silver bullet. If can make it other 2 or 3 years...
I've been in the industry for 27yrs and my plant that produces cryo liquid H2 has been in production since 1980. We've never been able to keep up with demand.
Currently our "feedstock" comes from 3 sources. #1 is neighboring chlorine and bleach producing plants. They off-gas a crude form of H2 that we buy from them, clean up, cool it and condense into liquid. Our second source is extracting it from natural gas, through steam-methane reformation. Everyone is trying to get away from this as it is not "green" LOL. We are currently building a large electrolyzer to zap H2 out of water.
You also need massive air seperation plants onsite to provide the initial refrigeration sources (liquid and cold gas N2) for a plant to even begin to produce shippable LH2 product. The insulated tanker trucks you see shipping LH2 around the country are about $3-4M a piece not including the product within them.
When our electrolyzer is done, my facility will pull somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 megawatts of juice, producing Lh2, liquid N2, O2 and argon.
My point is, there is nothing green about making usable amounts of H2. You need LOTS of energy. Tons of heat produced, water consumption, etc.
What battery cost? When the battery can't cut it I'll sell the car after I used it for about 10 years like I usually do. Not my problem.
I'll pretend for a minute it is my problem. I put over 80,000 miles on my car in about 5 years. In 5 more years I'll say it's 150,000. I find a better junk yard battery for $4,000, put it in sell my old leaf battery modules, charge controller, plugs wiring harness, buss bars on ebay for probably at least $2,000 profit. That would increase my cost an additional 2 cents per mile.
Still way cheaper than gasoline and way, way cheaper by leaps and bounds than dead in the water hydrogen.
Batteries are bad, hydrogen is worse.
No they're not. We have been hearing about them since 2016 and still nothing. In 2016 they were "definitely only 2 or 3 years away" and "would be wide use by 2020".
Don't believe it till you can buy it.
Tax write off? Not sure I follow...
That makes little business sense; a tax write off will reduce your tax liability, but is still a loss. You wouldn't do this purposely...
Last edited:
The answer from those who are proponents (or will profit from hydrogen development) is that "the science will catch up and make it work". Please, for the love of all things sacred, check out Ballard Energy's history. If the science was to save us, we'd all be running it already. please see signature below. Thanks.
Perfect driving record?
They sound scarier than they are. They are built incredibly strong out of layers of thick aluminum, SS and steel. They're basically a vacuum insulated thermos bottle and the LH2 runs around ~10psig in the inner container when the trailer is in motion. They're in use for so many millions of miles that accidents happen. I've seen them after countless collisions, after an end over end roll, axles knocked off, dog house broken open. We have a team that will offload them at the scene if needed.
These trailers have been on the roads since the 1960s.
You are paying for it in depreciation, that's like a car that would last only 80k vs a car that last 200k (or a car that would last 10 years vs 20 years) is not your problem. Look at why Nissan Leaf residual value after lease is dropping like a rock, because the battery doesn't last.
If everyone is hunting down the junkyard battery it won't be $4k.
Last edited:
The science is there with nuclear pyrosis hydrogen, but they are not build for economical reason. If a country wants to do it, it would be for national energy security reason and it would not be in the US (we have lots of NG and oil).
I’m reading these comments and there seems to be some alternate reality. Hydrogen vehicles will continue to grow and are growing as evidenced at Walmart and Amazon.
Never mind hundreds of other companies around the world.
The word vehicle does not necessarily mean passenger car and for some reason the thread has turned into a passenger car discussion.
It just goes to show many have not read the original post along with the link
Besides that with the can’t do attitude of some, we’d still be living in the Stone Age
Never mind hundreds of other companies around the world.
The word vehicle does not necessarily mean passenger car and for some reason the thread has turned into a passenger car discussion.
It just goes to show many have not read the original post along with the link
Besides that with the can’t do attitude of some, we’d still be living in the Stone Age
I bought it in 2017 for $7,000 when gas was $2 a gallon and no one wanted electric cars and could probably still sell it for close to that.
Still winning.
Timing the market win. It could also be the other way around like you bought it new and then it tanked to 7k from 30k. Are you feeling lucky?
Here's the short version.I’m reading these comments and there seems to be some alternate reality. Hydrogen vehicles will continue to grow and are growing as evidenced at Walmart and Amazon.
Never mind hundreds of other companies around the world.
The word vehicle does not necessarily mean passenger car and for some reason the thread has turned into a passenger car discussion.
It just goes to show many have not read the original post along with the link
Besides that with the can’t do attitude of some, we’d still be living in the Stone Age
Hydrogen: 30 cents a mile fuel cost.
End of story for every working American.
Amazon and Walmart are worth how many hundreds of billions of dollars?
They can afford pointless virtue signaling to trick people into thinking they care about the environment.
I always time the market. I bought our dodge Dakota when gas was $4 a gallon and electric cars and hybrids were hot.
Luck had nothing to do with it.
I'll never buy a $30,000 dollar vehicle, you're virtually always guaranteed to lose money on a new or newer car. So it ain't going to happen.
Again luck has nothing to do with it. It's just math and numbers that anyone can look up.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Exactly. Steam-methane reformation is currently the dominant source of hydrogen production, it's something like 98% IIRC?
Do you have any idea of what the production level is of the electrolyzer you are installing? We could use that to determine how much electricity would be needed to generate the necessary amount of hydrogen to replace gasoline used daily.
Similar threads
