Is there a role for hydrogen in the fuels of the future?
For the last five years at Zero Carbon Futures, we’ve been focusing on the role of electric vehicles to prompt the steady transition away from the Internal Combustion Engine. Battery technology is certainly the technology that is currently catalysing that change.
However, I would argue that it is not quite the finished product. The range of the vehicles on the market now is currently good but not just good enough. I have driven 20,000 miles in my EV so I can speak from experience when I say that we need bigger batteries and faster charging. What I really want is a 150 mile range with around a 10 min charging, ideally with a cost of ownership the same as an ICE vehicle.
We know that we’re going to get there. Larger capacity batteries are coming. Faster charging technology will be here in the next 5 years or so. The role of all of us, including government, is to support these goals and carry on investing in battery and charging technology.
So what is distracting us?
Before we have truly embedded what is acknowledged as a potential winning technology, we are already trying to move on to largely problematic technology. That current technology distraction, I think, is Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCV). I honestly don’t see a place for hydrogen vehicles in the passenger car market. This technology might be viable for certain class of vehicles, but not I would argue, for passenger/family size vehicles. Yes they are coming out of Japan and Korea, but in tiny numbers and they are very expensive.
To me there are a number of fundamental problems with FCV which have to be overcome:
- Purity and cost of the hydrogen fuel;
- Reliability of the fuel cell has to be proven;
- Lack of fuel stations;
- Transport of the hydrogen;
- Storage of the hydrogen; and
- Business case
Let’s take them in order.
(1) We know that purity is available at point of production, but the cost is just still too high for passenger cars.
(2) reliability will come with time but needs significant testing and investment.
(3) fuel stations may be available but they are prohibitively expensive with no business case.
(4) transportation of hydrogen is a very big problem and nobody has come up with a viable answer for large volume transportation.
(5) storage at point of delivery is technically feasible but at what cost?
Which leads us to the final point which is (6). The cost of solving points (1) to (5) compared to adopting EV with ranges of over 150 miles with 10 minute charging is what kills the idea of FCV for family cars for me.
I’m interested to know what others think, will the day come when hydrogen is ready for the passenger car market?
Zero Carbon Futures is an electric vehicle consultancy which manages and delivers projects which help towns and cities increase EV uptake.
Is there a role for hydrogen in the fuels of the future?
I would suggest a very definite yes: although it could be some time away. I would pose the question: if BEV is so obviously the short term answer, why are auto manufacturer’s still pushing FCV concepts? Perhaps because they see the BEV obstacles only too clearly?
Consider the current growth of BEV which has been impressive over the last few years (a good thing as it reduces GHG emission and urban pollution). This being driven by several incentive schemes: Norway for example offers an incentive of zero vat, road tax, additional grant etc. totaling £12,000 and has seen most rapid growth (currently 12% of car fleet (ref: Electric vehicles in Europe- McKinsey, 2016)
Can this BEV growth rate continue over the next 5-10 years? If the focus is on BEV and not PHEV I would suggest not. The ‘early-adopter’ market of wealthy, climate-conscious individuals is being quickly saturated. For mass-appeal EV will need to match traditional ICE cars in terms of cost, performance, and ease of use. I foresee some problems with this over the near-term.
Extending range from current battery technologies above 120 miles (and maintaining driver comfort in winter) will be very difficult. Rapid charging will continue to develop ~ but will it develop rapidly enough or be sufficiently widely available to satisfy demand?
For this reason I predict that BEV growth will flatten within 5-years, and Hybrid will be the way to go. Hybrids will improve and become ‘more electric’ and less hybrid with time. It’s the hybrid design, configuration and choice of back-up fuel that will be most intriguing. In the short term fuel will still be petrol / diesel, however lower-carbon alternative such as methane exist. And in the future I would imagine hydrogen.
Hydrogen can be produced in-situ (it only requires water + electricity), and the H2 transit argument is therefore somewhat overdone. A 2-MW H2 system (roughly the size of a small house) could easily produce 500 kg (gallons eq.) per day if running 24/7 with enough storage capacity.
Energy storage using H2 (‘power to gas’) is on the rise right now in EU, USA and Japan – and this will push down H2 system costs. It’s not impossible to forsee a future FCV being lower in cost to produce than a PHEV.
So yes, I think there is a role for hydrogen in the fuels of the future.