Can We Convince You Fuel Cells Have a Future? - AAH 679 

Everybody knows that hydrogen is over - they have the cars have the resale value of zero Cost to fill car 80-120 $ Cost to fill up EV 0-35

No you and they cannot convince me. Here's why: --Head of MANN trucking has already said that fuel cells are not competitive due to the 70% energy loss in creating the hydrogen. Also that if you get hydrogen from fossil fuels then there is no CO2 savings over using straight diesel trucks. -Green hydrogen requires massive amounts of energy to make AND in the compression and shipping of hydrogen much more energy has to be expended versus just flowing electricity across electrical lines. Losses of around 70% versus just using the electricity directly in an EV truck. -Tesla has already shown that their semi truck is much more efficient and cost effective per mile that fuel cell created electricity. Battery energy density is just going up. Already there are now batteries with twice the power than just last year.... recent announcements of batteries pushing 800 KWhr energy densities... which will make even commercial jets running on electricity viable. -Hydrogen gas constantly leaks from storage containers. Hydrogen makes metals of almost all types brittle. Hydrogen atoms are so small that they can eventually leak around almost any seal. This is why most hydrogen used in industry is made on-site due to large losses in transport and storage. -Hydrogen gas increases global warming by combining with disulfides in the lower atmosphere. Disulfides normally go into the upper atmosphere where they help degrade methane (which is much worse than CO2 for global warming), but by diminishing that mechanism, hydrogen will drastically worsen and extend global warming. This has been recently reported in scientific studies on the action of hydrogen in the atmosphere. -Finally, hydrogen gas filling stations will require a completely new infrastructure. Hydrogen stations can only hold a certain amount of hydrogen in tanks and that amount reduces due to constant leakage. Even countries that have implemented fuel cell buses have now announced they are no longer being used because of the high cost of hydrogen and fuel cell maintenance costs. Fuel cells require extensive filtration of incoming oxygen. Therefore there is a lot of filters that must regularly be cleaned or replaced. Countries such as Denmark have closed all the hydrogen fueling stations in that country due to them being cost prohibitive and uncompetitive with electricity prices. To summate....Hydrogen based fuel cells are a losing proposition. By the time they can be rolled out there will be much better battery solutions without the added cost of building a completely new hydrogen infrastructure.

It's one thing to say that the technical issues with fuel cells in vehicles have been solved and all the technical issues with hydrogen distribution have been worked out but it's a completely different issue whether it makes economic sense (i.e. least expensive tech that will do the job). I really didn't hear that fuel cells/hydrogen will be less expensive than alternative technologies that are zero emissions.

As Charlie stated, you still need a battery and electric motors. That sub-system will have the same efficiency as a BEV. Then you have the 40% loss through the fuel cell stack. Then you have the electrolyser losses in making hydrogen. Add the energy used to compress the gas at 300 atm and this propulsion method is no more efficient than ICE. Then you have to build all the infrastructure to produce, store and distribute hydrogen. BEVs use electricity, which is already ubiquitous in our built environments. Fuel cells are the last ditch attempt by fossil fuel industry to maintain relevance. They want the source to be “grey”, made from fossil fuels.

You notice how Honda sends a salesman not an engineer.

So the most enthusiastic hydrogen person you could find at GM still concludes the video by saying that fossil fuels are the only way to make hydrogen cheap enough

Tesla built its own charging network. Is GM going to build out its own hydrogen refueling network?

Can't get this content anywhere else. Awesome.

Simple answer to the question at hand is "NO"

H2 is only necessary for chemical production. Not transport.

Grid storage was the only sensible suggestion he made. Fuel cell will not displace BEV as a road transport propulsion system. That ship has sailed.

Hydrogen FCEV is DOA. Non-starter being slung by Oil companies to delay electrification.

H2 is going nowhere. Green H2 is way too expensive. The Petro industry is pushing this to a dead end

Personally if was a GM executive I wouldn't mention Kodak.

Strapping in my kids car seat right above 10000 PSI storage tank. Yep thats the car for me!

so much BS, he's like a car dealer guy, telling you that you'll be happy with the POS used car they have in the back by the garbage cans.

What an incredibly interesting interview! Thanks!

Short answer? No

It is sad to see companies dumping money into hydrogen. It is extra sad to government money dumped into supporting hydrogen development programs. I would bet hydrogen had higher development resources on average over the past fifty years. It is only in the last ten years did EV get the better finding and results are coming quick.

Battery tech keeps seeing big improvements, saying you cannot do large vehicles eith batteries seems to ignore what is happening in the commercial truck space. Orders of magnitude cheaper than refurl hydrogen trucks sounds incorrect. It is nice to know PepsiCo for example could install solar on their warehouses/factories and battery storage to make it do the can "refuel" with their own power. They can also help power the buildings, let alone the semi. Much simpler to install at a lower cost. Cheaper to build full electric and easier to maintain. GM and Honda needs to apply as much of their resources on getting their EV programs working. The Tesla Semi is only getting better and production wilk be ramping up. This will make hydrogen commercial vehicles not make sense. GM will be fighting to be in a shrinking market. It will be like developing laser disc production when Bluray and 4k are in the market.

Nothing new here; no detailed comparisons to BEV class 8 trucks already on the road and damn few details on H2 TCO.

Unfortunately you can't store hydrogen without leakage and the explosive aspect.

You’ll be able to convince the science illiterate that H2 has a meaningful future. But that’s it.

This hydrogen “expert” is best explained by John Updike, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

What a waste of resources and money - still no convincing argument for HFCVs vs EVs just fluff and softball questions. Pretty much all of the "advantages" apply equally to EVs and thanks to the expensive/difficult hydrogen infrastructure and lower efficiency HFCVs will always be worse no matter what the scale. Seems like a boon for the suppliers (Big Oil) though. As an aside one of the reasons they are using large vehicles is the high pressure hydrogen tanks fit better... Legacy auto will have just as much difficulty redesigning their manufacturing lines to fit the HFCV drive train as EVs, maybe worse due to the more complicated setup.

No

Before starting this vid, I will say I'll try to keep in mind that anything is possible and that the mark of a great man is to be able to change your mind at a moment's notice when presented with new evidence, so let's begin:)

H2 was a dead letter when we turned against massive nuclear energy adoption for no good reason. We'll never have enough excess grid capacity to spend excess gigawatts on splitting water and compressing the hydrogen.

I saw a Mirai for sale dirt cheap, and thought hey, rip out the fuel cell and put in a little more battery, you have a nice BEV. But it was 1000 miles away, and how would I get it here? Couldn't drive it.

This program convinced me fuel cells don't have a future.

3kWh of electrical energy = 1kWh of electrical energy out of a fuel cell. Very clear what the future is.

the problem is not the Fuel cell but Hydrogen , there is two way to produce it with petrol or with a large amount of electricity and you have loses all the way , to make it , to transport it it's less efficient compare to put electricity directly to a battery . But all electric it's not possible for certain usage maybe for them hydrogen can be a solution. Not for the mass market.

At 17 minutes "we had to prise the keys from the user's hands". Sound familiar? EV1 anyone? gm led.

The cost question. H2 vs Battery. Sure, a FCEV might be cheaper to produce than a BEV, but the Total Cost of Operation will never beat a battery now that we can build batteries for sub $100/kwh. The laws of physics say that BEV operation will always be at least 3x cheaper than H2. And Batteries are just getting started. I expect the cost of batteries to fall another 50%. There is a path for BEV's sticker price to be less than FCEV's. It's only a couple of years away.

As a fuel cell vehicle enthusiast, I feel you definitely picked the wrong guy to champion this pathway. He's a sales guy and in it for the wrong reasons. It shows through and through. I hope you showcase a better representative of fuel cell technology in the near future. We need it.

Being able to make a product is not enough. It needs to be the right product.

I was suprised maritime applications like container shipping didn't come up as that also would seem to be a good use case. I think the biggest enabler if we do see hydrogen mass adopted would be distributed production, particularly if you can efficiently and cheaply make hydrogen at places like remote mine sites from solar.

Tesla Semi did 1076 miles of 70,000 lbs deliveries at over 50mph in a day run and demonstrated a 410 mile run with charge left, by Pepsi at NACFE Run-for-Less trials. Perhaps Mr Freeze can point to an independent trial of a commercially available FCV Semi that exceeds these parameters?

Please correct me if I am wrong but as I understand it a typical semi tanker delivering compressed Hydrogen will only be enough for less than 40 vehicles. If this is true then every Hydrogen station will need to be refilled every hour?

I think some folks are just mesmerized by the word ‚fuel‘ and falsely believing it’s NOT an electric car with an electric motor AND some battery.

Gary, Hyundai's fuel cell truck is a class 8 (over 33,000 lb GVWR), not class 7.

Thanks for the interview seems like only real advantage is removing the point source pollution from the multitudes of diesels out there. Especially if we use fossil fuel to generate the hydrogen. But this does not really seem to be better than bev for passenger cars.

I still don't see the case for Hydrogen. Anything that would be a candidate for hydrogen, it seems that a diesel hybrid would do better until a full battery electric is ready.

As someone that has experienced an industrial H2 explosion, H2 is scary as h$ll.

I like how they are accelerating green trains, but the rest of the planet is already doing electric trains and have done so for numerous decades already. Only in the US are the railways too incompetent to go electric and save on running costs. Nope, gotta keep burning that diesel! Or maybe switch to stupidly expensive exploding hydrogen. Sense making is important! You go hydrogen boy. Don't let anyone tell you your dream is stupid and dangerous and just bad for the environment.

We need charging stations for the cars Americans have already chosen to replace ICE cars. We don't need another type of car draining resources from that effort. Spend the billions you are wasting on fuel cells perfecting battery cars and developing a charging network that is reliable and available everywhere. It's true that most charging happens at home but we need to be able to travel also. This is not just for the car owners it's for any business that relies on travelers to survive. If EV owners decide to only go where they can fly or just stay in their area on vacation a lot of folks are going to lose.

Can I get a hydrogen fuel cell plugin, without the extra hydrogen fuel cell hardware? And more batteries? Man that would be sweet.

Fuel cells can make sense, just needs to be the right use case.

A feasibility study for ultra large static based green power plant storage is probably a better way to *begin* to "pave the way" for the far more difficult small rolling vehicle fuel cell storage and distribution systems.

A hydrogen fuel cell seems perfect for large vehicle plug-in-hybrids. I'd say it'd be great for something like the Edison Motor's truck, at least until something better comes along.

Electrolytic generation of H2 is just too much more expensive than putting the same electricity in a battery. The only way I see it being economically feasible is if they can make it at high temp in a nuclear reactor. Mr. Fusion maybe. Maybe they can make synfuel economically (sorta). They can use existing distribution and engines for that.

EVs are not perfect but they are real. You can drive them today. The batteries are getting better all the time.

Executive Director of Global Fuel Cells, General Motors. What did he do wrong to get that job? 😢

NO!

I will give Charlie Freese credit for being a smooth salesman for hydrogen, but it doesn't change the hard fact that hydrogen fuel cells will never be competitive with BEVs. A hydrogen fuel cell heavy duty truck consumes between 0.25 and 0.43 megajoules per ton-km, whereas a heavy duty BEV truck consumes between 0.03 and 0.09 MJ/ton-km. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2022) Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group III, Mitigation of Climate Change, p. 1146-7) No rational trucking company is going to spend 5-8 times more energy to move the same amount of cargo. In California, the price of H2 is $36 per kg, and that is the only state where there are enough H2 fueling stations for hydrogen trucks to be used for long-distance transport. The Nikola TRE FCEV has a 70kg tank and a 500 mile range and costs $750,000 and takes 20 minutes to fuel. It gets a $40k federal tax break from the IRA, plus a $240k - $288k grant from the California HVIP, so it costs $422k with all the incentives. If I assume a 15 year lifespan, 54,000 miles per year, and zero maintenance costs, the TRE FCEV will have a lifetime cost of $4,504,400 or $5.56 per mile. In comparison, the Tesla Semi has a 500 mile range and takes 30 minutes to fuel up to 70% of its battery capacity. We can guesstimate that it has a 900 kWh battery and a price tag of $400k, but it will get the $40k federal tax credit and $120k-$150k grant from California HVIP. The average cost of electricity in California is $0.27 per kWh, but trucking companies are probably going to charge their trucks at night when electricity is 40% cheaper, so they are only paying $0.16 per kWh or they are going to buy it on the unregulated wholesale market where the average price is $0.19 per kWh. However, small operators can't afford to install their own DC fast chargers, so they are going to charge at Tesla Megachargers and let's assume they are paying $0.60 per kWh. If paying $0.16 per kWh, the total cost over a 15 year lifespan and 54,000 miles per year with zero maintenance costs would be $454,944 or $0,56 per mile. If paying $0,60 per kWh, total lifetime cost would be $1,128,540 or $1,13 per mile. Therefore, the hydrogen truck costs 4 to 10 times more per mile. Most H2 fueling stations only pump at 1kg of H2 per minute, so it would take 70 minutes to fill a 70 kg tank, which means that the trucking company would have to install its own H2 pump if it wants to be able to fill the H2 tank in 20 minutes as Nikola advertises. Nikola plans to offering its own H2 fueling trucks so trucking companies may be able to fuel in 20 minutes and I'm guessing that Nikola will charge less than $36 per kg of H2, but I don't see the business case for hydrogen trucks when BEV trucks will be so much cheaper.

The thing I struggle with regarding hydrogen, is this. The fuel cell makes electricity, but except for a limited number of applications, the fuel cell cannot deliver enough energy to power machinery, cars etc. So, at a minimum, it needs an electric motor, but generally ( as in a vehicle), it will also need a battery to act as a buffer. ( I can't really imagine a scenario where a cement mixer powered by a fuel cell makes any sense). So by increasing the battery size - you no longer need the FC and all its complex systems, and you also do away with the need for hydrogen infrastructure... Surely, the only reason that hydrogen gets any traction (see what I did there ?) is because its a by-product of the fossil-fool industry, and they are trying to make a profit from it by lobbying politicians (who can be bought, let's face it !) as if it's a certain future fuel...

The problem with hydrogen fuel cells isn't the fuel cell, it's the hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen is an expensive, bulky and difficult to store fuel. If a fuel cell could be designed that works on cheaper easy to store fuels, that might have a future.

kept waiting for Nicola and their GM partnership to come up but for some reason it didn't, Trevor was at least entertaining

As a mechanical engineer who likes to view technology rationally I don't see a hydrogen fuel cell as anything but a novelty technology. Battery technology is already so good for transportation in cars and small trucks. Getting hydrogen to the pump and then store it and compress it to get it into the car and then operating it at 10,000 psi is much too complicated and unreliable.

So the issue with Fuel Cells always comes back to the following key points: 1 KG of Hydrogen costs $9.47 ❗️ It costs $3.85M to build a small H2 refuelling station❕ “I charged my BEV to 90% at home, yesterday for just $11.27” Every U.S vehicle under 25 tons will use batteries 🔋

Even if you can get over the expensive and complicated problems of manufacturing fuel cells you still need batteries within the vehicle which creates as much complication as a conventional hybrid. The only clean way of producing hydrogen is electrolysis. That uses about four times the amount of electricity than that used by an EV. Distribution, storage and delivery are also problematic. There may be specialist applications but it is never going to be a commercial solution for the automobile market.

H2 Fuel Cells are the future coming our way for all LARGE transport and Grid / Off Shore ( no need for massive cables ) etc, for cars its quite dicey for class 8 trucks for sure ...; pick ups maybe the best as well. Pilot the countries largest truck stop chain ( they are EVERYWHERE ) is building out a nationwide H2 fueling network. When and exactly where will have them is open to debate, but it , like all Electronic Civilization disruptions of the old Industrial civ. paradigm are on their way, but exactly when they hit you is debatable. Robotics, AI, Renewables, Greenhouse Vertical food production, etc Eco Architecture, all are the future you build or buy. PS the Reciprocal Trade economy is the biggest of all and gets the least press. As Universal Income is a necessity when zero marginal cost production hits bug IE no more jobs / one organization infrastructure....... IE robots and mega cyber markets ( Amazon, etc ) See Yanis Varofakis on the end of captialism. See Breaking Boundaries , Zeitgeist and MIT Limits to Growth 2040.

Train's if they do it should only be extremely short term, which I doubt would be worth it. They've had a solution to their electrification for many decades. Overhead catenary lines and a pantograph are the superior option in all the cases I can see that don't involve stupidity or corruption.

1:04:00 sounds great, but it would cost 5-6 times more in electricity to run a FCEV than just running a BEV. This is why hydrogen makes no sense. Not to mention the safety aspect of this bonkers plan

Until energy storage cost parity ( or better ) is achieved on a very *LARGE* scale is proven, the hydrogen path for mobile applications will likely require multiple decades to 'work out'.

Even if you could get unlimited free Hydrogen at 10,000 psi ready to pump into vehicles, it would still not compete with BEVs. Just providing the fuel cell and maintaining storage for this problematic element might prove impossible. Haven’t run the numbers but suspect there is NO scenario that would make Hydrogen work. Few whys but probably more: 1. Fuel cells need extensive maintenance after 100,000 km. 2. Hydrogen causes and brittle meant to all metals which have to be tested and replaced regularly. 3. Hydrogen being the smallest element, will leak out of practically every joint and destroy every material. It’s in contact with. 4. Hydrogen at 10,000 psi, which is the pressure it stored in the Toyota Mirai takes up nine times the volume of the equivalent energy you can get from gasoline. This drastically limited space in any passenger car. Note the cut away of a Toyota Mirai or a good part of the trunk, and a good part of the backseat is used up by the tanks. 5. Hydrogen pumping nozzles are very critical, requiring frequent checks and maintenance. Even so they will freeze up, and they certainly cannot leak. 6. Total Maria only has 156 hp believe to keep powertrain volumes to acceptable limits which would necessitate a larger battery to improve acceleration making it very close to a BEV. 7. Fuel cells are incredibly expensive expensive to manufacture, as is the rest of the fuel distribution system. 8. Only Tesla has been able to make BEV‘s profitable prices, indicating that competing with new technology and making it competitive is not as easy as everyone made it out to be acknowledging that BEV are super simple compared to FCEV.

Fuel cells have 2 big problems Physics and Economics. $35 per Kg now in California and that is dirty grey Hydrogen where you would be better off just burning the natural gas in the first place.

Excellent guest. What a relief to have a thoughtful well-spoken engineer using balanced arguments on Autoline AH.

Hydrogen, with all of its conversion steps, is WAAY more complicated and WAAY less energy-efficient than electricity.

H2 as compared to the efficiency of Battery Stored Electricity. Is more expensive to convert from water and Electricity, or from other petrochemicals. It must be held a way too low of a temperature, -457 degrees Fahrenheit at maximum, and if it is not, then the fuel will boil creating immense pressure. Now just think of a 100 degree F Day…. The third problem is since H2 is the smallest atom, it leaks through metal, so cheap Gasoline tanks won’t due. It can be held on a metal hydride, a porous metal within the containment pressure vessel, which will make the storage unit heavy, like a Lithium Battery! The consumer will end up paying more for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline in Hydrogen form, the cost will be much more expensive than gasoline. The efficiency of converting the hydrogen and oxygen into electricity to run electricity motors in the fuel cells, further drives up the cost per mile. For a car, or light pickup truck, battery electric vehicle, hydrogen just doesn’t fit, considering there almost no infrastructure to make and distribute the gas! Leaked Hydrogen is major contributor to Global warming! That is just what you want, a vehicle pouring out an ice slick by the tailpipe, in freezing weather. How many people will slip and fall?

Would love to see hydrogen go to oceanic shipping. They need to ban bunker oil and get hydrogen container ships going

Thief are going to cut them out like catalytic converter to get precious metals

Hydrogen is not even suit for big commercial bus. Australia has tried that and it's turn out Hydrogen powertrain has high maintenance and low lifespan than BEV or even Diesel. Who would have thought of that

He’s gonna run out of oxygen if he doesn't stop to breathe once in a while.

They need to develop natural gas fuel cells for homes as back-up generators.

Plenty of technical talk about how they do it so to hide the fact that there’s no why.

They seem to just think of hydrogen from reformed natural gas = not renewables

Great video. I hope his company is successful. We need a more diverse green energy infrastructure.

Fuel cells are replenished at a "station" . My electric car is charged at home. No contest. BEV wins.

You need H2 for one thing: Rockets 🚀.

Just clicked on this, not even 1 min. In but HFC ARE the future!!! Electric vechiles have not proven as scaleable with the car buying public. HFCs solve many of those issues.

PLEASE STOP saying: “..is is that..”. You only need one ‘is’ ❤😂. ‘The thing I wonder is, will fuel cells be reliable?’ For example... Not, ‘What I wonder is, is that will fuel cells be reliable?’ Thanks!

Forget the price of H2, I went and looked at the price of Platinum, and they are putting $700 per cell. I think they need to invest in asteroid mining 🚀.

No, because they dont.

Not happening, as the people said below, no one is going to build an infrastructure for this, and most Hydrogen is not clean anyway. I did not watch this waist of time, and please keep doing good interviews. Please don't do Solid State batteries next Thursday!!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂

To sum it up. Fuel cells could be great, but probably not.

Low energy density, storage, low overall chain efficiency, cell capacity limited conversion rate, lack of fueling infrastructure, no real prospect of economics of scale..... In terms of automotive: dead end street especially compared to both EV and ICE.

There is a place for hydrogen with steel and cement. Everything else is a waste of time and money. It is just too difficult to store and transport.

No no, just let the BEV boneheads sit and stew in front of chargers for hours on end... till they get it.

👍

Have we solved the storage of Hydrogen yet . You have either liquid hydrogen that’s stored at absolute zero ( like -450 degrees) , or gaseous hydrogen requires super high pressure like 10,000 psi . Once you solve this issue , you might have a chance

The hydrogen haters make me laugh. "Stop the science, hydrogen is the devils gas" Dont worry chill out, there not coming for your tesla. There'll still be evs for you to buy. Hydrogen may never be best option for passenger cars

This is as dumb as it gets from a first principles physics standpoint. WOW!

If someone wanted to make this simpler, they'd develope a liquid carrier for the hydrogen. Perhaps a carbon based liquid.

The oil companies can supply white hydrogen. They have the infrastructure to do it. And people who like to have an engine can still make all the noise they like. It works better in northern states and RED states that don't like EVs.

NO.

For industrial and commercial use, fuel cells may begin the solution. Infrastructure has to set up for this. And oil industries tycoons are going to be against it.

Hydrogen fool cells 😂

😂😂😂😂😂

😂😂wonder how many of these comments were pre prepared before the video went out ? Gary needs to exert some control over St John the Bevangelists biased opinions .😮