It was only a few weeks back that Toyota Mirai, a FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle), travelled around 1300 kms without refuelling. With this journey, Mirai became the longest ranged FCEV and set the bar high for its cousins, the BEVs(Battery Electric Vehicles). But, is range everything? Which one of these have the high ground? Would we ever see a time when Fuel Cell EVs dominate the streets? Here is our take on the topic.
It was only a few weeks back that Toyota Mirai, a FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle), travelled around 1300 kms without refuelling. With this journey, Mirai became the longest ranged FCEV and set the bar high for its cousins, the BEVs(Battery Electric Vehicles). But, is range everything? Which one of these have the high ground? Would we ever see a time when Fuel Cell EVs dominate the streets? Here is our take on the topic.
Expensive is a volatile term in the case of our commodities. Value is often a result of demand and rarity. As a well known tale goes, Napoleon III was served food in aluminum platters, whilst his guests in gold. If you are wondering whether Napoleon III was such a humble human being, doubt no more. He wasn’t. Simply put, aluminium was really hard to refine and purify back in the day and was indeed more expensive than gold, irrespective of the truth or lie that the tale might be. The funny thing was that aluminium was and still is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust. Even more abundant than iron. Yet aluminium held on as the top dog in terms of cost until Hall and Heroult introduced the famous Hall-Heroult process for refining aluminium at really low cost. What exactly is the relevance of this story here? Well we’ll eventually revisit it at some point during the course of this article.
Coming back to our primary topic, an FCEV is actually more similar to a BEV than different. An FCEV is basically a BEV with a really small battery pack as a secondary source and a Fuel Cell as the primary source of electricity. The battery pack is usually used to store electric energy from regenerative braking, which would be later used to deliver extra power or smoothen out the power delivered from the fuel cell. So, it would indeed be correct to state that a FCEV = BEV+Fuel cell+compressed hydrogen tank. Unlike a BEV where electricity is directly used from a battery pack, in an FCEV, the chemical energy of hydrogen is converted into electricity inside the fuel cell and is then utilised. Apart from this, both BEV and FCEV are almost identical. But these subtle changes are enough to make a difference.
When it comes down to EVs, fuel cell or not, range is indeed a thing. We, a generation which has gotten used to refuelling at gas stations in 2-3 mins and never worrying about the maximum distance we could cover, might find it hard to cope up with range anxiety. And on top of that, charging an EV using anything other than DCFC(DC Fast Charging) would cost a decent 6-8 hours. Hence, range has become one of, if not the most sought after specification of an EV. The highest ranged BEV so far, the ‘Lucid Air-Dream edition’ has a maximum range of around 840 kms in a single charge. But, it was not long ago that the Toyota Mirai, an FCEV, rewrote the horizons by travelling 1300 kms without refuelling. And it’s no wonder, since FCEVs have always had an edge over BEVs in terms of range. Another advantage of FCEV, at least for the time being, is that it only takes roughly 5 minutes to refuel, as opposed to the 15 minutes of expensive DC fast charging time of a BEV. Hydrogen fuel mimics traditional fossil fuels in this respect. But does it mean that FCEVs are more advantageous? Not really!
The primary hurdles to widespread use of hydrogen fuel for vehicles include:
Production:
As we discussed in our article about green hydrogen, the most common methods of hydrogen production aren’t that green. The process which is indeed green, electrolysis, has an efficiency of 60-80% and is expensive.
The raw materials which are absolutely inevitable for the process includes iridium, platinum, tantalum, cobalt, nickel etc. and these are all rare and won’t be easily available to meet the rising needs.
Transport:
Hydrogen is a really flammable gas which disperses into the air too quickly. This makes its transportation really hard. There is also the process called metal embrittlement wherein the diffusion of hydrogen into metal causes it to become brittle and hence weak.
Despite the risks, there are commonly three methods used for hydrogen transportation. First method is using pipelines, second is via tube trailers and third, as liquid. All three methods come with a definite amount of risk related to flammability. And for widespread use of hydrogen, we would indeed require more techniques and infrastructure for transportation. And if it isn’t already clear, as of now, we lack such infrastructure. And it would take a great deal of investment and will to build enough.
Storage:
On a weight to weight basis, hydrogen contains 3.4 times the energy of gasoline. But on a volume to volume basis, hydrogen is nowhere near gasoline. This is due to the fact that hydrogen has really low density and even a small mass of it takes up a huge volume.
The only way to counteract this is by storing hydrogen at really high pressures. Usually, this pressure goes up to around 800 atmospheres or so. And tanks which can withstand such high pressures are usually made up of carbon fibre which is strong yet lightweight. But as you might have guessed, it is indeed expensive compared to its counterparts. And we cannot cut costs or make any compromises in the case of the tank, since a failure would be an ideal scenario to describe catastrophe. The dilemma surrounding storage is valid in the case of both hydrogen refuelling stations as well as individual vehicle units.
Expense:
Although the cost of hydrogen fuel is expected to be lower than that of gasoline in a few years, as of now, it costs more than gasoline as well as electricity. The FCEVs are also expensive compared to BEVs, at least for the time being.
To consolidate, The primary disadvantages that Hydrogen fuel has are:
- Infrastructure for transport and supply, which is nowhere near widespread or established as electricity grids.
- High expense of hydrogen in general, as well as storage facilities.
And these constraints have eventually led to the world focussing more on BEVs over FCEVs. There are only three mainstream companies focussing on FCEVs and they are Toyota, Hyundai and Honda. And hence it's no surprise that these 3 are the only mainstream companies which have FCEVs as part of their product portfolio. And that too in the U.S. and a few in Europe. Some companies like Volkswagen have even outright turned their backs on FCEVs. Elon Musk, an avid supporter of BEVs, has always been super critical about fuel cells, even going as far as outright mocking the technology at times.
But things are slowly changing. In fact, there is one inevitable thing that could forever change the destiny of hydrogen fuel- Renewable energy!! With the rise in renewable energy worldwide, grid management and storing the excess energy during non-peak hours have become really challenging. And thanks to this realisation, eventually countries are slowly but surely turning reluctantly towards hydrogen. The Orkney islands in Scotland have too much renewable energy that they are producing hydrogen with it. It was only a few months back that India declared its plans to set up a standalone commission to take care of its future green hydrogen plans. China is investing heavily in green hydrogen, although with the primary aim to make its energy mix more green. And Japan is miles ahead in the Hydrogen Economy. If these changes are coupled with more extended infrastructure for supply and refuelling, hydrogen fuel cell technology could have things swinging its way.
As for addressing the technologies related to storage and transport, we might want to recall the aluminium story. At times, science and engineering is all about a Eureka moment at the end of extended studies and research and the next thing you know, it's changing the world. Now, to answer our initial question. Would we ever see a fuel cell EV era? Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. The fact that it only takes 5 minutes to fill up hydrogen fuel would mean that almost all commercial fleets, which would have no interest in down time, would prefer it over BEVs, given that we have enough re-fueling infrastructure. Maybe we might witness a future where BEVs which could be charged overnight would dominate the private vehicle segment and commercial vehicles would be conveniently using hydrogen fuel cells. Maybe we won’t.
If there is one thing which we are sure about the future, it’s that it will be unpredictable. The best we could do is predict likely outcomes depending on existing data. And in this particular case, we don't need to overextend our concern as long as we are moving towards a future era of net zero emission, which both BEVs and FCEVs ensure, right?
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