Hydrogen Fuel Cells Are Not The Answer

Recently Top Gear had a segment on the "world changing" Honda FCX Clarity, a commercially available (in California and Japan) hydrogen fuel cell car. The hyperbole spewed forth during the segment was over the top even for Top Gear. Statements about how this car is the single most important thing to happen to automobiles in the past 100 years, or that it makes all battery electric vehicles obsolete were thrown around with gay abandon. Jeremy Clarkson, famous for "dissing" plug-in electric/hybrid vehicles among other things, was in full agreement with James May's assessments that this car is basically Jesus with wheels.

It annoyed me no end and actually prevented me from falling asleep for an hour or so as their biased comments kept bouncing around in my head. Sure, hydrogen fuel cell cars are a step in the right direction (i.e. away from oil dependence) but to liken it to the invention of the internal combustion engine was just too much for me.

Refuelling

What most boggled my mind was May's joy in finding that he had to stop every 250 miles (~400 km) in the Clarity to fill up on liquid hydrogen at the few and far between filling stations at a cost similar to what we pay for petrol. Surely if we're going to have a revolution in motoring it won't involve making things worse for us by opening the door for a whole new generation of cartels and corporations to rule our driving.

Currently I travel around 450-500 km in my Nissan Pulsar per tank and I despise having to divert from my route just to fill up, and that's with petrol stations all over the place. My vote goes to whichever technology means I don't have to keep stopping at some third party establishment where the unit price fluctuates hourly. Imagine if the local store had a sign out the front showing how much a litre of milk was going to cost you if you bought it right now.

The Power

Ahh, but the hydrogen fuel cells emit only water as a byproduct but BEVs use the electricity from the AC outlet and where does that come from? This is one of Clarkson's oft repeated BEV-bashing comments and is based on the fact that most household power comes from polluting sources like coal, natural gas, nuclear power etc which is totally true. Unfortunately for the Clarity electricity is required to produce the hydrogen that it needs, as are the raw materials the hydrogen is ripped from. Once the hydrogen is prepared it still needs to be shipped and trucked to fueling stations which uses up even more energy.

Wikipedia says that "As of 2006, 49.0% of the electricity produced in the United States comes from coal, 19.4% comes from nuclear, 20.0% comes from natural gas, 7.0% from hydroelectricity, 1.6% from petroleum and the remaining 3.1% mostly coming from geothermal, solar and biomass.^[32] When hydrogen is produced through electrolysis, the energy comes from these sources. Though the fuel cell itself will only emit heat and water as waste, pollution is often caused when generating the electricity required to produce the hydrogen that the fuel cell uses as its power source (for example, when coal, oil, or natural gas-generated electricity is used)."

Surely the best answer would be to cut out the middle men and use the electricity directly and via the billions of AC power outlets around the world. Or even better, get yourself a nice solar panel set up in your house to charge your car for free.

Batteries

The Clarity and other fuel cell vehicles don't require batteries for storing power. Batteries are the biggest cause for concern in BEVs in that they take a while to recharge, they don't hold the charge long enough, they're heavy and they're made from finite natural resources such as zinc, nickel and other metals. There are a few points here that I'd like to address.

Charging Time

During Top Gear's test of the Tesla Roadster in the same episode, the statement was made that it would take 16 hours to charge the car's battery pack completely. As part of Tesla's response to the review it was said "that the 16-hour recharge time quoted by Top Gear is an absolute worst-case scenario - sort of like filling your gas tank using a thousand Dixie Cups full of petrol." The Tesla website says it can take as little as 3.5 hours with the High Power Connector which you'd install in your garage at home. Countries with higher voltage AC, like Australia's 240 volt, 50Hz power, will be able to charge their cars faster.

The general public will have to change their thinking around charging their cars. Currently the thinking is that it is same as filling up with petrol but in actual fact it is a lot more like how you handle the power in your mobile phone. I keep my phone plugged in at work and I have a charger at home. It never goes flat.

Of course, you aren't required to charge the car's battery totally each and every time you plug it in. If you need a quick charge you can give the car enough juice to get you where you want to go. Cars like the Chevy Volt take the idea a little further by having a secondary power source (a small internal combustion engine) to generate the electricity if you get into trouble.

Battery Technology

Battery technology has taken great leaps in the past few decades. Remember the handbag sized battery packs that were required to power mobile phones back in the 80s? How much smaller are the batteries you now find in phones and laptops? Even if we can reduce the size of the batteries by half over the next decade that's a huge leap. Regardless of Top Gear's admittedly ficticious review of the Tesla Roadster, it comes with a custom lithium ion battery pack that gives you up to 220 miles (300 km) per charge which is far more than I'd ever drive in a single day.

Servicing

After the Clarity review, as May and Clarkson dried their tears of joy, an off-hand comment was made that you might never have to take your Clarity in for servicing as it only has "one moving part". Sure, the propulsion system only has one moving part (the electric motor) but what about the wheels, axles, tires, brakes, suspension, steering and accessories?

This is the case for all cars using electric propulsion. Doing away with the noisy and messy internal combustion engine doesn't mean you don't need your car serviced, it just means the service will be easier, cleaner and maybe less frequent.

The Final Straw

May's final statement sums up everything that was wrong with his Honda Clarity review nicely. To paraphrase, he said the Clarity was the most important car in living memory because it was just like the cars we drive today. Fuel-cell vehicles are more polluting, rely on an overblown production, transportation and delivery infrastructure, are more complex than BEVs and with advancements in photovoltaic panels (solar panels), battery technology and newer methods of generating clean electricity maybe we should be trying keep things simple instead of just doing what we've always done.