Fuel- cell fiasco
We bought the dream that fuel cells could free us from pollution and foreign oil. Now Honda has the real thing – and it falls short
hether you’re hoping
for an affordable
vehicle using domesticfuel or a car
whose tailpipe emits pure water instead of greenhouse gases, don’t hold your breath for fuel-cell vehicles ( FCVs). They may never arrive in any practical form, as even carmakers now finally admit.
Honda recently released 20 of its most advanced FCVs for unsupervised public evaluation. It was a first for any car company, but initial results fall far short of all the great expectations. These vehicles couldn’t survive the competition available even now. Why would anyone buy a $60,000 subcompact fuel-cell car with double the fuel consumption costs of a mid-sized, $30,000 hybrid?
The FCV concept began as a wonderful dream. Liberation from dependence on imported oil; clean air — how irresistible to the public! For most of the auto industry, the fuel-cell idea proved far more attractive than having to sell range-limited electric vehicles pushed by California, or working on hybrid technology chosen by Toyota and Honda to back up their electric developments. Working on the “ultimate technology” — the FCVs — would also buy more time, as any commercially viable product could not be expected for at least another decade. For the time being, carmakers could keep putting off any costly changes to production lines and concentrate on making money selling the vehicles people seemed to want most, SUVs.
One automotive writer described his week-long experience with the new Honda FCX in a recent New York Times article. While impressed with Honda’s advanced FCV technology, he wasn’t convinced about its future. The Honda FCX is a four-passenger car with limited trunk space. It really is a subcompact that packs the weight of a small SUV. It weighs 360 kilograms more than Toyota’s five-passenger Prius, which has much more cargo space. The FCX’s driving range is only 300 kilometres — less than half that of a Prius. The worst disappointment has been, however, the fuel efficiency. In spite of the hybrid features (regenerative braking), the U. S. fuel efficiency rating for the FCX is 57 miles per kilogram of hydrogen, much less than expected by supporters.
One kilogram of hydrogen contains approximately the same amount of energy as one U.S. gallon of gasoline. So the energy consumption would be comparable to the larger Prius, but only if you could discount the unavoidable energy loss (and cost) of converting natural gas to compressed hydrogen. Based on a same-sized vehicle, then, the “well-to-wheel” energy efficiency is only one-half that of a current hybrid. Even if you believe that the current cost of compressed, high-purity hydrogen made from natural gas could be reduced more than 10 times to US$5 per kilogram, as per an optimistic but dated projection made by the U.S. Department of Energy when the cost of natural gas was half of what it is now, the tax-free fuel cost per 100 km would still be three times that of the samesized hybrid.
Some FCV supporters propose making hydrogen from nuclear or renewable
WHonda’s fuel-cell car is costly and heavy, lacks trunk space and driving range, and disappoints on fuel efficiency. electricity. This, unfortunately, makes little sense either. Using these expensive electricity technologies to produce, compress and deliver hydrogen — and then converting it back to electricity in the fuel cell — is hopelessly wasteful. A full two-thirds of the electrical energy is lost.
Many vehicle cost projections appear equally unrealistic. Current prototypes cost more than a million dollars each, mostly due to the costs of the fuel-cell systems and of storing the hydrogen. Burnaby, B.C.-based Ballard Power Systems Inc. — a leader with 15 years’ experience in fuel-cell development — projects that its fifth-generation propulsion system, mass-produced at an annual rate of 500,000 cars (double the current Prius production rate), would still cost three times the economically acceptable target. Ballard believes that this “projected mass-production cost” can somehow be reduced three times after five more years of development.
Carmakers are more cautious. They do not expect commercial production for another decade. Ford executive VP Richard Parry-Jones recently admitted that the technology may not work, and that they must develop other systems as well. Some carmakers have even contemplated shutting down their FCV efforts, but the dream has proven too popular with the public. Politicians feel the pressure and are pouring in cash. US$1.2-billion of U. S. federal money were recently slated to support the dream.
Even if Ballard’s optimistic projections prove true, who will buy the costly FCVs rather than much cheaper and more fuel-efficient hybrids, which continue to improve as well? Who would finance five more years of development and subsidize production of at least half a million vehicles before an economical production rate can be reached?
Most of these disappointing performance and cost numbers relate to fundamental problems in the hydrogen fuel-cell technology itself. These include hydrogen’s low energy density; the weight and volume of the FCV system, including the high-pressure storage tanks; and the need for platinum. If we are no closer to a viable fuel-cell vehicle than Honda’s example, after the investment of so many years and billions of dollars, it is hard to believe the optimistic projections by Ballard and others.
Fortunately, a number of options superior to fuel-cell vehicles exist. While many carmakers continue to downplay hybrids as an interim technology, more and more drivers disagree. Toyota and Honda have more than 300,000 hybrids on the roads already. Ford was the first Detroit carmaker to see the light and recently introduced a hybrid version of its Escape model. Next year, Toyota and Nissan will start producing hybrids in the U.S. General Motors has produced 300 hybrid transit buses. If hybrid sales continue doubling every year, as they currently are, pushed by increasing gasoline costs (Toyota alone plans to double its hybrid production next year to 500,000 cars), most new cars would be hybrids before the first FCVs can even hit the showrooms.
Advanced passenger hybrids with clean diesel engines built from lightweight materials are being developed, and can have fuel efficiencies close to one-third of today’s cars. They will let us continue to drive, even with future oil prices more than three times higher.
If the purpose of FCVs were to liberate us from imported oil by making hydrogen from domestic natural gas, a better option would be to convert gasoline hybrids to compressed natural gas. Toyota is already at work on this alternative. The result would be an affordable car with much better fuel economy and performance, and less compromised inside space than a hydrogenfuelled FCV ( natural gas contains three times more energy per litre than hydrogen). We could also avoid the limitations of storing compressed gas by converting the natural gas to a liquid fuel, which is a much cheaper process than the original coal-to-liquid technology perfected in South Africa. One such gas-to-liquid plant is already being built in Qatar to produce premiumquality low-sulphur diesel for the European market.
If our main concern is clean air in our cities, we have better options too. Many experts believe that the ultimate car technology will be the so called plug-in-hybrid. It would have a larger battery than a current hybrid, and would run for a limited distance in the city on batteries only. The vehicle would then revert to normal hybrid mode on the highway.
As most trips are less than 50 km, much of the driving could in fact be done using low-cost and currently available night electricity. Plug-in-hybrids would cost more than a current hybrid, but not nearly as much as the realistic projections for the FCVs. Driving advanced hybrids, which use a small fraction of the liquid fuel cars now consume, seems a far better and more realistic option than waiting for the elusive dream of FCVs.
Projections are always risky. Supersonic flying seemed a wonderful dream too, and certain, we thought, to become the new standard. While the Concorde proved a brilliant engineering feat, it no longer flies. The fuel-cell vehicle could end up in that same museum of dreams, likewise unable to survive the laws of economics and practicality. Victor Ettel is a Toronto- based energy
and transportation consultant.