Rasa, a hydrogen-powered city car for the masses
 

Thought this was interesting.


Riversimple]Riversimple launches Rasa, a hydrogen-powered city car for the masses launches Rasa, a hydrogen-powered city car for the masses

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1455727968

Very VW XL1ish. I'm thinking more of the older prototype, not as much the "production" car. I like it.

I'd rather not see a fuel cell in it. EV or small gas engine would be fine.

I think the Europeans are on a carbon footprint curve, and fuel cells are where it's at.

I don't want to derail this thread, but I don't see how that makes sense. EV would definitely be the way to go then IMO. France is primarily powered by nukes, Germany has massive solar, Spain has tons of wind power... Why rely on hydrogen?

I wonder how many Watt hours per mile that particular car would use at 65mph?

Even My 900lb Subaru 360 needed 15hp to go 68mph

Cheers
Ryan

Looks like a mini 350z. And/or the Smart Sport. I want one.
Hydrogen = electric. Modify it to hold some batteries and off you go.

You still have to get hydrogen from somewhere though, and its either from fossil fuels or electrolysis as far as I know. Both are more carbon intensive than just using batteries.

Hydrogen is simply the energy carrier.
 

Currently, natural gas is the cheapest source of hydrogen and electrolysis is doable but inefficient.

However, hydrogen is far more energy dense than current or near term battery solutions. With advances in catalyst science and hydrogen storage, a 300 mile range in a fuel cell vehicle will become much cheaper and already has.

All that is needed is the fueling infrastructure. And, the fuel source.

Once renewable energy sources reach the point of useful excess, this excess can be stored via hydrogen. Much like battery storage, this hydrogen can be used to level loads or to fuel transport. Even if a relatively inefficient electrolyzer is used, it has storage value since the hydrogen then represents "lost energy" that would have been dumped. Much the same way aluminum processing plants take advantage of being situated along cheap electrical grids such as the Niagara and Columbia Rivers. Excess hydro power is "stored" in the processed aluminum. As inefficient energy wise as the process is, one could re- oxidize the aluminum back to bauxite and derive the energy there-in at any time in the future.

Couple this with the small (3.3 kg) fuel load due to the efficiency of this vehicle and you could power many longer range vehicles such as this.

Battery vehicles still make sense for city cars. But when you need several hundred miles of range and fast refueling, hydrogen fuel cells bear investigation.

PS

This car represents a far better market solution than the winner of the both classes of the Xprize which was won by "gamer solutions" that have little practicality and have resulted in no benefit to the transportation sectors.

Yes, this car does leverage half a decade advance in both price and performance of fuel cells, but it is still relatively "practical".

I like the idea of how little it weighs, compared to anything else being produced these days....that alone would help it consume half the energy of a regular vehicle, and would be prefect for someone like me to commute in.

I'm disgusted at how much additional weight we have to move, just to get around in an enclosed cabin for comfort.

Yes, lets all buy Hydrogen.
Invest in a country spanning distribution network.
Not just adding charging points like for electricity but a whole new infrastructure.
New trucks that can transport the high pressures that hydrogen requires.
New storage tanks at the petrol stations.
New refineries to create the hydrogen in the vast quantities required.
Then we get to drive around with flammable gas under pressures that would make superman cry.
And accept the "short term" usage of fossil fuels to create the hydrogen.
All so that the oil industry can keep selling fossil fuels. :confused:

If people are willing to expend that sort of money on an infrastructure to distribute an inefficient fuel source then why not just bite the bullet and put in the under road charging points. They might not be efficient but at least once done nobody would need to refuel a vehicle, ever. Carrying the fuel for your entire trip would be a thing of the past. No flammable fuel transporting either, not by the infrastructure or the end user.

The under road chargers wouldn't have to be under every road just major roads. For city areas the cars could use their batteries. The under road chargers would be for those 5% of trips that the average person makes that exceed the range of an all electric vehicle.
Having batteries would also keep you going when sections of roads have faults or need road works so that you aren't left stranded.
Imagine driving a 1000 mile trip without refuelling once and arriving with a fully charged set of batteries.
Oh and once you are getting your fuel as you go you no longer have to be scared of the accelerator pedal. All the high horsepower enthusiasts can have their overpowered electric cars without reducing their range to impractical levels.

So if we are talking about building an infrastructure why not build something that suits the needs of the users, rather than just copy the existing fossil fuel model.

I go to the fuel station because i have to not because i want to.

Your post ignores current and near term advances.
 

Metal hydride storage and chemical conversion storage schemes could make low pressure transport the norm for hydrogen. No need for cryogenic liquid or high pressure gasses. Your idea of building induction charging into the roadways will be considerably more expensive and limiting than a current fuel station dispensing hydrogen as a side fuel. Think about it, if my electric car needs 15 minutes of induction charging to reach a reasonable battery level, at common road speeds, that could be miles upon miles I will need to travel on a "charging road". At common costs of construction, I would rather build out a current fueling station to handle hydrogen dispensing than miles of induction roadway. Also, you ignore the safety aspect of an electromagnetic energy coupling that could see all sorts of machines passing over it or becoming stranded on the charging lane. This is something that has to be thought through.

As time goes, battery performance has not increased as much as fuel cells have especially in the area of cost. And fuel cell costs are dropping even more quickly as catalyst research is finding common material configurations that displace most if not all of the rare earth metals in current fuel cells. Remember , fuel cell cars are essentially battery powered cars but without the need for a large, expensive pack as the bulk of the energy is stored in the hydrogen. Within a few miles of my beach side condo, here in San Diego are an electric car charging station, a natural gas refueling station and soon a proposed hydrogen station. This is infrastructure happening NOW. I don't need to dig up the roadways and disrupt traffic for a few cars in the starting stages of things.

If they can make it feasible to run on both...ie plug in battery for city driving, hydrogen cell as an unlimited range extender, all in the same vehicle...why not? I'd have to "gas up" only when going on a trip, once or twice a year.

Under road charging does sound like a huge undertaking but roads regularly get pulled up for resurfacing or expansion. The main road near my place has had some part of it involved in road works, almost continuously for many years. The charging infrastructure could have been put in many times over with no additional disruption to traffic. Many of these major roads already have high capacity electrical connections installed all down their length. Used for the lighting that shines all night even when the road is empty.
Concerns over non-electric vehicles getting fried as they roll over the charging pads are unfounded. Your electric car would communicate with the charging pad. Negotiating charge parameters. Checking you bank balance etc. ;) Only then would the charge pad activate. Timed to deliver the charge as precisely as possible. Other cars would just be driving over an inert piece of technology.
This sort of communication already occurs for automatic payment of road tolls.

Oh and you wouldn't need 15 minutes of roadway converted to charging. I believe the charging units would only be several meters long and spaced nearly a kilometre apart.
Some sort of super capacitor set up would take a large amount of power in the short time the car was above the charging pad. Then it would deliver it at a lower rate to the electric motor. Enabling the car to travel to the next charging pad and beyond. Any excess or unused power would be used to top up the batteries. So more a pulsed charging rather than the constant charge you would get from a fixed charge point or a domestic power supply.

Oh and i recently watched the Rob Llewellyn video "Electric Cars Are Rubbish. Aren't They?" https://youtu.be/6q7_xN0ilag?t=2607
I know, i know, not the most authoritative information source and it may also have given me a slightly jaded view of hydrogen cars. :D
I nearly fell off my chair when he said $250000 dollars just for the fuel cell in the Honda Clarity. Improvements in technology may be able to reduce this. Economies of scale will help as well but unless they can reduce the platinum required then it will stall, platinum isn't likely to have a ten fold drop in price.

Tesla claimed that electricity could be wirelessly transmitted many miles without the need of tearing up expensive roads, just put a wireless electrical broadcaster every so often

Past performance is not a good indicator of future performance ... :D

I'm good with any sort of change away from gasoline and diesel. Hydraulic hybrids, solar cars, compressed air motors ... even burning diesel to make electricity to charge electric cars is lower emissions than a decent gas engine in a car. Everything is a step in the right direction.

I'd prefer to stop using fossil fuel. But hydrogen cars, as was mentioned, develop the electric drivetrain as well so it benefits electric systems.

And I'd prefer not to have billions spent on new infrastructure - pipelines, fuel storage, electric roads, et al.

If we spread the research dollars around a bit, the lowest cost/greenest/whatever other criteria we come up with .. option will be found.

And everybody gets a lovely spikey hairdo for free. :D

Calling hydrogen fossil fuel free is hilarious.
If it were battery powered it would be cheaper to buy, cheaper to refuel, easier to refuel, actually have the possibility of actually being fossil fuel free and most importantly people might be willing to buy it.

I am not here to say you are wrong, just that there needs to be a bit more thought.
 

So which comes first? The road or the cars? I won't buy the car if you don't have a charging road. Who is on the hook to build and maintain the road charging sections? So, you want to put charge pads under roads that need repair. How about the little used roadways that will be decades in the backlog of repairs? How about the long private roads that lead to private homes and businesses?

So you say you can "pulse charge" a capacitor with enough charge for a few kilometers. Have you calculated the energy transfer needed? What will be your current and voltage to provide such an energy pulse? What will be your air gap? What happens if another vehicle is in close proximity to such a pulse? What will be the effect of the resultant electro-magnetic radiation on your vehicle systems? Have you had this discussion with other EEs and Physicists as I have?

What happens when a travel disruption leaves you stranded between charge points for a period of time such that your secondary loads drain your power systems? I'm thinking of the stretch from Baker to Las Vegas in the middle of summer.

And platinum is the least worry for fuel cells. Continued research in material science has molecular configurations that use three orders of magnitude less platinum for the same performance. In the past year, configurations of compounds such as relatively common elements of boron, cobalt and iron are approaching the catalytic performance of platinum. The 250,000 dollar fuel cell stack you quote, is not due to the platinum, but the fact that it's a small run system. Economies of scale are already bringing that price down.

It is not road power versus hydrogen. There really is a place for both. I think future solutions could embrace both to some extent.

Again, you think of the now, not what is coming.
 

Batteries are limited by chemistry. There are no chemistries on the horizon or in the super computer selection modeling being done in universities that will allow energy density three times that of current lithium batteries. There are hydrogen chemistries that will allow the storage at room temperature and standard pressure of hydrogen produced by any means you care for that already match that triple factor advantage. Or nearly so.

You don't have to thermally decompose fossil natural gas to get hydrogen. As I outlined in other posts, you can use renewable energy from excess sources. For example. If and when solar panels become so low cost and ubiquitous that they are the replacements for roofing material, sunny locations will charge a short range battery electric car and run a house energy needs easily. If there is excess , what can you do with it? You could put it into another battery in your basement, or you could also run an electrolyzer and store the hydrogen for future use. To be exact, you could store it indefinitely. You could store a large enough amount that it may get you through some long spells of cloudy weather. It also could be ported into your Fuel Cell car for longer trips. The density of hydrogen storage is already an advantage. Low pressure, non-cryogenic storage will make it a game changer. Renewables will now have a place to dump excess energy long term.

Battery tech has reached the point of percentage gains for the effort.

Hydrogen is still moving in leaps and bounds when it comes to possibilities.

The statement has to come with caveats.
 

There are no chemistries possible to allow batteries to match hydrogen's energy density. I don't care how much you spend on battery research, percentage gains is all that you will find. And believe me when I say a lot of money and mind power is going into improvements of battery chemistries. It is a limit that is dictated by the laws of nature.

Common micro-pore carbon sponge can already store hydrogen energy at densities greater than current lithium batteries. Metal hydrides extend that greatly. Complex metal hydrides trump lithium's power density by three. These are compounds already in existence today. What will tomorrow bring?

Cella Energy | Hydrogen Storage Technology & Power Systems

Those Cella hydrogen storage beads are a one time use media that must be sent back and recycled after every use. Out of the question for a car.
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Hydrogen/ oxygen reaction releases 140,000 joules per gram of hydrogen. This is only .0388 kW. A 50kWh battery would match 1288.7 g of hydrogen.
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The best carbon nano storage systems are 700 psi at liquid nitrogen temps and only hold 40g/ Liter so a 32 Liter tank would compare for energy storage but a battery EV is 90% efficient from battery to wheels and fuel cells are only 50% so 60 liters for the hydrogen tank is getting pretty large.
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Research « ALL-CRAFT
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The best high temp hydrolysis manufacturing of hydrogen is only 60% efficient so round trip efficieny of hydrogen for grid storage is also a very poor option compared to batteries.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-t...e_electrolysis

Capacity is but one aspect.
Usability and availability are just as important.

There is one breakthrough development in battery technology that can make a big difference in public acceptance: fast recharging.
If you can recharge the batteries in a few minutes the absolute range becomes less important.
You'd still want a range fit for your commute, so you can manage by just charging at home, but the occasional long trip would not take (much) more time or planning than it would in a gas powered car.

Also the electric charging network is growing fast.
Over here it is hard to find a parking spot that is further than half a mile away from the nearest public charging point. I pass several of them on my way to work just driving through my home town - there are many more charging points than gas stations.

Fast charging and the ability to charge wherever you park changes everything.
It is a matter of time before EVs become attractive enough to go mainstream.

We are losing some gas stations because they are too close to houses etc.
The nearest gas station is limited in its opening times and under constant threat of being closed permanently. LPG is banned from many stations as being too dangerous.
LPG powered cars are banned from some parking garages etc.
LPG is on a steady decline.
I would expect hydrogen would run into some of the same problems as LPG, and a new one: as it is lighter than air a hydrogen leak would spread under the ceiling of tunnels and garages, where the lighting units are.

Electricity is here and growing fast.
Hydrogen is almost nowhere yet and taking baby steps.
You could not drive the Rasa anywhere today nor in the nearby future; probably never.

If you cant get fuel for it then its just going to be an expensive road side decoration.

Toyota is stopping all sales of their FCEV car, the Mirai - because of the near total lack of working hydrogen fueling stations. And when the total energy cycle is considered, FCEV's will always be a fraction as efficient as a BEV; no matter where the hydrogen comes from.

Back on topic, sorta - here is the original Riversimple car:

http://www.technologicvehicles.com/m..._Car%20(3).jpg

It is not nearly as good as the Rasa.

Any statement that has hydrogen and fossil fuel free in the same context should be in the unicorn corral.

This is why this whole discussion is really about applied solutions.
 

As a city car, the battery electric vehicle makes the most sense. But, for longer range and heavy payload vehicles, batteries become too bulky and expensive.

Most of the research in batteries is to improve charging rates so that the relatively short range of the BEV can be bridged over. The energy density of battery chemistry is already near it's limits. Cost, longevity and charging performance is the thrust of research.

But, not all chargers are created equal. A common 110v outlet will not allow you to do a 5 minute charge on a Tesla sized battery pack. This cuts down your charging choices greatly. Even 220v home chargers won't do this. Most public chargers still can't do this. However, the only real need for a rapid 5 minute charger is along the highway/freeway corridors.

So, it looks like battery solutions are the it!

Except in long haul, heavy payloads. The size and cost of a needed battery pack displaces your net vehicle weight limiting your profitability.

We always think of well to wheel efficiency because our primary power sources are largely dirty or limited as is the case with renewable energies. But if our primary power sources were cheap and clean and our renewable energy sources were plentiful, well to wheel efficiency becomes less of an issue. Using this power is all we need to think about. If batteries are not going to work for heavy, long haul situations, look for other solutions. And one of them could be a hydrogen solution. You can fuel up at the freight centers and along the traffic corridors. Well to wheel efficiency is not even the question with the right primary sources. All an operator needs to see is the costs.

And that would reflect badly on the forum.
 

I can think of numerous solutions that would result in fossil fuel free hydrogen.

Some exist now, others have near future possibilities while others are a real future probability.

Thanks for the good discussion. Most everyone has contributed.
 

As I remarked to Niel Blanchard in another post, it is about applying solutions. The Rasa may not become a market success. BEV's have an advantage in the people mover market and that advantage is the charging infrastructure. However, it embodies technologies that could be applied in other markets.

I've already remarked on other threads.
 

I will comment on the Cella beads.

The beads are a primary source. But so is gasoline.

From what I can glean from the company website, it is a product that can be bulk produced and recycled with ease as it is simply a polymerized complex hydride. Their current objective is the Adblue market. They must have a delivery system cheap enough to compete with common urea. If this is the case, I see no reason they could not produce cheaply enough.

Bulk beads could then be delivered to a fueling station. The beads are poured into a vehicle. The used beads are vacuumed out to be recycled. The vehicle is on it's way in minutes. The same tanker truck that delivered fresh beads returns to the factory/recycling center.

This is a game changer for hydrogen refueling.

I am quite interested in hydrogen powered cars from a technological viewpoint.
I see more possibilities on the fuel cell side than on the feeding an ICE with hydrogen gas side, especially when those fuel cells can also use methane or alcohol or glucose, you name it, as an intermediate fuel source. That would fix or circumvent some of its problems.
It would allow for a true EV/hydrogen hybrid, which may be the best of both worlds.

Sort of like hydrogen cars without hydrogen available at every service station.
There will always be early adopters of technology.
But unlike hydrogen there is already large numbers of all electric vehicles out there.
Just as drivers of petrol cars paid to convert to LPG or go dual fuel so to will electric car drivers retrofit road charging to their vehicles if the road they commute on gets charging installed. Car manufactures could offer road charging as an option on new vehicles.
It doesn't need to be an all or nothing deal. Just because every road doesn't have road charging it doesn't mean nobody will buy it.

I am not an EE or a physicist but i don't think they are all knowing either. EE's not involved in the technologies development may have questions and may even have their doubts but i don't think they would say it was impossible or dangerous without first studying in detail the technology. And probably not until they had actually tested the equipment.
If the EE's involved in the development of the road charging systems believe they have a marketable and safe system then who am i to question them. There is more than enough bureaucracy in place to ensure the technology is safe before being allowed on the roads. Actually considering the possible fears that could easily be placed in the general public i would imagine the technology would need rigorous testing to allay those fears.
I have a friend who will not eat micro waved food because it has been exposed to radiation and they don't want radiation poisoning. These are the sorts of people that the proponents of the technology need to convince. I don't envy them their task.

Tricky question as i don't know precisely what load the secondary systems place on the battery system. I can make a bit of a guess. If you are stationary then the drive train is not consuming. I imagine as you sit in traffic you would be using your air conditioner and the radio/sound system.
Say you were driving a road charge enabled Leaf. A quick check of wikipedia gives me a table of EPA tests. One of which is the heavy stop go traffic scenario with the air conditioning running. They list a speed of 10km/h and a drive time of 7 hours 50 minutes. I am guessing if you were totally stationary then the drive time would be even longer.
7 hours 50 minutes seems like a long time in traffic to me. I would imagine many of the ICE drivers sitting in their vehicles with the engine idling to keep their air conditioning going may have ran out of petrol by that time and may be looking enviously at the Leaf with the nicely air conditioned cabin. :D
Then once the travel disruption clears you continue on your way, powered by the road charging system and your batteries start recharging as you go. Meanwhile those ICE drivers that haven't ran out of petrol nervously look for the nearest petrol station and then get to queue up for an extended period due to the large number of vehicles involved in the traffic disruption that are now also looking for fuel.

True, the electric car will not ensure success in every scenario just the same as any other car. At least if you had been travelling on a charging road your tank (batteries) are likely at 100% charge which should help weather some of the storms.
There would have been people in petrol powered vehicles in those snow storms who were planning to get off at the next exit for petrol when they got stranded.

With hydrogen fuelled vehicles the issue of whether hydrogen is fossil fuel derived or sourced from a green source is a significant one.
There may be technology on the horizon which will make green hydrogen a more efficient and cost effective fuel but the sceptic in me doesn't trust the oil companies. Am i alone in that?
I don't think they will let people off the fossil fuel hook until it is pretty much all used up. And they will develop clever ways keeping the public hooked.
I can see them marketing the greener hydrogen, with say 10% sourced from green sources. Then a few years later announce the even greener (and more expensive) 20% green hydrogen. And onwards and onwards with 100% green hydrogen being cheaply available just as the last few drops of fossil fuel have been refined.
I would be very happy to be wrong.

In road charging of personal EV's on the fly at highway speed is quite a pipe dream. The only place I see an application for in road charging would be for busses at stops and even then the cost/ benefit isn't practical. It would be much cheaper and better to just have the driver hop out and plug the bus into a dc charger at major stops. Large batteries in busses could probably be designed to use a proprietary large vehicle format dc charge at 800V even if they run the motors on 400V.

It is not an all or nothing question.
 

I am a firm believer that the solutions of the future will be a combination of solutions.

I make discussions with you Astro, not for simple argument but to hopefully educate and prod the reader to think. I appreciate the back and forth.

I will first answer the sourcing of hydrogen as being green - or not. It is not green at this point as it is sourced mainly from natural gas. However, this is due to the cost. It is very low cost. At some point, fossil fuels will become exceedingly more difficult and expensive to extract and costs will rise allowing alternatives to compete. Unless we tax fossil sources to account for the environmental burdens they impose it may be a few decades for this to happen. But, if electricity becomes dirt cheap, there are several pathways that would allow us to continue with our modern, energy intensive culture though efficiency should always be underlying every move as that in itself is a "source" of energy.

I have made mention of the limits imposed on battery chemistry, but that does not kill battery power for many solutions. Hydrogen will have it's niche. I can see regions where cheap electricity already abounds that would allow basic electrolysis solutions to produce hydrogen. I live in one of those regions. And, there is already one local company that leverages these resources. My business lies along the Palm Springs energy corridor and the wind farms produce mega watts of electricity. The base loads are covered by a series of geothermal plants just east of us. The geothermal plants are best run at high loads as modulating their output is difficult. The wind farms taper and feather their output based on demands. We are right in the middle of the windiest time of the year. Many of the wind machines are idle as the load doesn't require them. A local company buys electricity at a greatly reduced rate from the excess electricity available to the power company. They use a high pressure electrolysis machine to produce hydrogen and oxygen for industrial uses in the medical and tech industries. Of course this is an aside to the their standard condensation of air to gain other gas types. And, it was a way to get a state grant. But it underlines what we can do to use excess electricity that often is dumped or the capacity is not used.

As to under road charging schemes - they have their place and their problems. I do have a background in electrical engineering overlaid on my industrial and mechanical engineering as I eschewed the doctoral path to gain broader knowledge instead of deep specifics. It does allow me to talk with a large number of people in various fields with some basis of understanding. Under road solutions will have to struggle with various problems. Economics is just one of them. The idea of the road charging technology is to extend the range of electric vehicles. But fast chargers will mitigate that advantage as several people have mentioned already. As costs of batteries drop, more battery range can be added to a vehicle. But, if you add a road charging system you will incur a significant weight penalty to mount the sympathetic coils under your car. Why not just use the weight to add more battery range? Also, alignment of the coils is critical. How do you drive straight and true? Yes, automated driving aids are already here, but roadway smoothness becomes paramount as proximity between the source coil and the sympathetic coil becomes important. A few centimeter difference can mean the difference between 85% energy transfer efficiency and 60%. Yes, this is for AC induction coils in the tens of hertz. You can extend the coil distance by going to the kilo hertz region and if you use the idea of Tesla's resonant coils as MIT did in some studies done a decade ago, you can go to the mega hertz region and transfer energy over meters distance. But now interference becomes a real issue as numerous devices use the KHz and MHz bands. Pacemakers are affected in the low Hz range. Charging roads are being tested and these issues are being addressed, but by the time they are addressed other solutions may become more plausible.

South Korea has a charging road that has a 7.5 Km length allowing a set of test buses to transit it's length in about 10 minutes charging a small battery pack that allows sufficient energy to complete a set loop. However, several cities have similar buses with similar capabilities running similar loops but that are charged with fixed underfloor induction coils in the 10 minute rest period allotted for driver breaks. These charge pads are a fraction of the 7.5 km under road charging section. On the other hand, an automated charging arm can do the same thing at the fraction of the cost of a charging pad. For personal vehicles, I think you can see some of the same arguments and solutions coming into play. Why pay for the large costs of an under road charging section when a charging pad will do the same thing at a fraction of the cost? Why use a charging pad when I can use an inductive paddle and ditch the weight of the under body charging coils and go from 125 Km range to 175 Km range? At that range, I'm going to stop anyways and let the wife out to run around and buy a 32 ounce drink that will force me to stop again in a couple hours. Just make fast chargers available at these stops and I'm good with the whole situation.

Back to fuel cells.

I was connected with Ballard back in the late 80's and one of the things that irked me was their insistence of myopically focusing on pure hydrogen fuel cells. These cells need pure hydrogen as they are easily poisoned by various compounds. I was a proponent of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). They can use various fuel sources and are less sensitive to poisoning. They are less efficient due to the high temperatures they run at, however, new material technology as well as catalyst advancements are pushing the operating temperatures of SOFC down to the targeted 600 degrees C and below. At those temperatures, more common materials can be used for structure and reliability increases tremendously. At that point, heavy payload vehicles can use Low Temperature SOFC (LT-SOFC) in a hybrid configuration with a reasonably sized battery pack and using hydrogen and oxygen from electrolysis trapped in a hydrocarbon such as methanol or ethanol with the carbon coming from carbon dioxide trapped flue gasses or distilled from the air.

All the above is plausible with the only trip up being the primary energy source. Since not all regions have cheap hydro, wind, solar or geothermal energy, a primary distributed source is needed. That comes down to our Western Societies overcoming the fear of nuclear power in all guises. I am a supporter of nuclear power. We have nuclear power technologies that bear investigation. Solutions such as liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) I have mentioned in the past. Even if we don't build them here in North America, the Indians and certainly the Chinese will as they have no choice but to investigate all avenues for future power and they do not have the opposition blocks we have here in the west.

Hydrogen is an energy carrier. It in itself is not going to solve our energy problems. But if we combine clean primary sources with hydrogen entrapped in hydrocarbons with carbon sourced from biosphere sources, we can cover all our current needs. The electricity stored in batteries powers our local needs. SOFC power our heavy payloads. The concentrated energy of hydrocarbons will power our heavy air loads. And yes, there will be a place for road charging solutions.

Last time I checked it would take at least $7 worth of hydrogen to replace the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline. And that is using the cheapest most efficient method of hydrogen production, which uses natural gas.
If you were to use electrical power to produce hydrogen the price, best case scenario at least doubles. Realistically the price triples.
Worse yet that is only counting the cost of the electricity.

Hydrogen can be made from wood, but that is only about as green as all the paper made and wasted each year.

It appears to be a lot cheaper and maybe even more efficient just to get a battery powered car or fuel a vehicle with compressed natural gas.

The only thing green associated with the hydrogen car concept is all the money.

And $7 worth of natural gas would drive you 7x as far as that $7 worth of hydrogen.

And natural gas tends to burn as cleanly in most cases

I rather have 3600psi of natural gas under my rear than 10000psi of hydrogen.

Yeah $7 worth of natural gas, when I figured up those numbers would have been about 2MMBTU (if you could fill at home). Natural gas pumps at gas stations charge some where around $1.50 per gallon of gasoline equivalent. Natural gas sold at $1.50gge makes the price something like $12/MMBTU. Which is a little expensive, but a lot cheaper than getting your car towed home so you can fill it.
To make enough hydrogen to replace 1 gallon of gasoline (lets say 125,000BTU) you start with something like 2 or 3 times that amount of BTUs in natural gas.
So if you powered a car with the natural gas directly, not only would it cost a tiny fraction of the $ to power it, you would be making far less CO2.
Any CO2 anyone thinks they are saving by using a hydrogen car, has already been produce and released, 2 or 3 times over. Ironic, isn't it?

"The most efficient process for making hydrogen from natural gas" isn't really that efficient.

I won't argue your numbers.
 

But if throw away electricity is available, why not use it? Batteries may or may not give me the performance I need. I outlined a scenario where locally, I can justify a clean and possibly low cost sourcing of hydrogen.

Most of the North American power grid is still fossil fuel. We have argued this point in other threads. Electric cars are cleaner but do shift the emissions. That is all that happens in most municipalities. What it does do is allows us to clean those primary power sources over time.

Hydrogen is a carrier of energy. If that energy comes from low cost renewable sources, it can be stored as a plastic hydride pellet or a hydrocarbon liquid. Iceland produces hydrogen gas via electrolysis because of its considerable geothermal power. If they could store it in a hydrocarbon, it becomes transportable world wide. The pathways are there. The choice to do so is the only question.