New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China
- Thread starter supercat
- Start date
I don't get why direct hydrogen fuel cells is even considered. It's essentially a fossil fuel without any of the advantages of fossil fuel such as taking advantage of existing infrastructure or high energy density right out of the ground. Yes there are theoretical infrastructure and chemistries that can take advantage of hydrogen, but they're either low specific energy (compressed hydrogen) or combine hydrogen with carbon in an organic molecule (methane/methanol conversion) at which point you can just use it in a diesel/ICE electric hybrid directly.
I think the technology competitors should be battery EV for most passenger cars, and extremely high efficiency diesel/ICE-electric hybrids for commercial vehicles and heavier passenger cars like SUVs and pickups (used for small businesses).
You should know that Hyundai is dropping their hydrogen program, and Toyota's is practically dead for defacto purposes, all it needs is a formal announcement.
I heard people saying that while hydrogen isn't good for consumer vehicles, it is competitive on large size commercial ones such as city and airport buses, construction trucks etc. These big rigs have the room and load capacity for safer hydrogen storage. Their usage patterns allow them to use centralized or dedicated hydrogen refueling stations.
Filling up the empty tank of a regular sized city bus with hydrogen is a lot faster than recharging the batteries to full for an eletrical bus of same size.
SteelBird
Colonel
I think @SanWenYu already answer your question quite adequately. However, I'd to add that battery EV is rather new and the tech is not 100% mature yet. The bottle neck of this technology is battery and battery materials are not mined in China. Today, China control a lot of these mineral resources but what if one day China loses it or having difficult to access it? Or the whole battery EV technology turns out to be not so sustainable? So, hydrogen cells would be a backup program and while we reserve the minerals for consumer vehicles, commercial vehicles use another methods, that would be more sustainable to our environment as a whole.
To the contrary, LFP removed Nickel and Cobalt from the battery, leaving only Lithium as the only material you need to import because your local demand exceeds your local production (China also produces a lot of its own Lithium, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and North Korea as potential future sources, along with current sources such as Argentina, Chile and Bolivia). Nickel and Cobalt comes from Africa, but then again, China is ahead forging relations to the continent. Instead LFP battery uses both phosphate and iron which are plentiful in China.
Ultimately you can eliminate Lithium by developing Sodium Ion battery instead and Sodium is plentiful in China which is why its a top priority development project by companies such as CATL and by government institutions. .
Compared to Hydrogen which has to be broken down from what, reformation of methane and coal gas --- both carbon fuels --- instead of water hydrolysis. This means your dependency on hydrogen goes back to whoever extracts fossil fuel gas which is typically the same culprits the countries behind fossil fuel.
methane/methanol/formic acid fuel cells or fossil diesel-electric hybrids are far superior for commercial vehicles.
hydrogen is better off converted to methane, methanol or formic acid. for example formic acid is nontoxic, can be burned in fuel cells, and There is no reason for direct H2 use.