Is this hydrogen car the future—or just a gimmick?
April 20, 2016 10:58 AM   Subscribe

 
One thing I've wondered about the push for electric cars is where do you charge them if you don't have a private place to park at home. If you don't have a driveway or a garage, and you can only park on the street... where do you charge up? When you're parked at work during the day?

Hydrogen cars seem like a good solution to this. As long as we can move away from burning dead dinosaur juice, though, I'll take it.
posted by SansPoint at 11:03 AM on April 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


> you can only park on the street... where do you charge up?

It seems like it would make sense for cities to replace meters with vehicle chargers. People get places to charge, municipalities get money. Double win?
posted by delicious-luncheon at 11:08 AM on April 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


delicious-luncheon: That's great downtown. I was thinking more about parking at home, though. Never been to a residential neighborhood with street parking and meters.
posted by SansPoint at 11:09 AM on April 20, 2016


Granted the top speed may seem a little on the low side, but it’s worth clarifying that Riversimple envisages the Rasa as a fundamentally local car for running around—not one for long-distance motorway cruising.

That's the classic "We can't do any better right now, so that's the pitch we're going with" argument. You heard the same thing about electric cars 15 years ago. It's no more compelling now with a different power source.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:09 AM on April 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Hydrogen cars are a gimmick.

(so are gull-wing doors)
posted by ryanrs at 11:16 AM on April 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Horseless carriages are a gimmick.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:27 AM on April 20, 2016


That top speed is really an issue for most US drivers. "Local driving" still often means the occasional jaunt on a highway. I once had a rental car that was set (unknown to me) with a feature to limit its top speed to 80mph. I had a pretty scary moment trying to merge onto a highway where traffic was moving at around 85.

I don't think people in the US would want a car as their primary transport that can't manage on the highway, even if they didn't need to drive on the highway every day. Is that true for the UK also? Either way it makes it a bit easier to call this a gimmick, or at least not yet ready for prime time.
posted by cubby at 11:31 AM on April 20, 2016


My parents were born and grew up just a little north of Llandrindod Wells, so they'll love this news.

I just wonder how the car company plans to get investment in hydrogen fill-up infrastructure. It's easy to show and sell a prototype car, but fill-up stations are less sexy for risk-averse investors. If you invest your money in hydrogen stations, but few customers have the cars to use them, that's pretty risky.

As a fellow Welshman, I wish them luck, but it seems like electric is the path forwards for most established car companies.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:59 AM on April 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


> Never been to a residential neighborhood with street parking and meters

Where I live there is free street parking for inhabitants, meters for guests and free electric chargers and parking for electric vehicles.

I'm intrigued by the fact that Toyota (which is the largest car manufacturer) seems to be going all in on hydrogen rather than EV. There are a lot of nay sayers when it comes to hydrogen powered vehicles, but no one seems to be able to explain what Toyota is up to yet.
posted by uffda at 12:07 PM on April 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Toyota is responding to the Japanese government's incentives aimed at building up its hydrogen infrastructure.
posted by notyou at 12:23 PM on April 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hydrogen car projects are all pretty much gimmicks designed to take advantage of various grants, tax incentives, and other free money you can get for designing a car that runs on clean, renewable energy that also happens to be 100% generated from fossil fuels, mostly from fracking. It is basically a scam.
posted by ryanrs at 12:34 PM on April 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh come on the sun is made of hydrogen
posted by XMLicious at 12:53 PM on April 20, 2016


Given the low price of natural gas due to the fracking boom, large-scale hydrogen production will never not come from natural-gas powered steam reformers. Any talk of water-splitting presumes a huge source of cheap electricity, in which case just charge electric car batteries instead.

At one time, hydrogen cars had the advantage of more range than electric cars. But battery tech has improved and the difference is not that significant any more. Probably batteries will surpass hydrogen before long, since storing lots of hydrogen is actually a very hard problem.

Really the only solid benefit of hydrogen over electric is refueling time. But on the other hand, electric power is far, far more widely available than hydrogen. You can just go buy a charging station and have it installed in your garage, for instance.
posted by ryanrs at 1:02 PM on April 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Toyota is responding to the Japanese government's incentives aimed at building up its hydrogen infrastructure.

Interesting piece:

The stations currently cost four or five times more than a traditional gas station, so a priority for these companies will be to cut the construction and operating costs of the facilities.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:29 PM on April 20, 2016


Here in British Columbia, we've been plumping for the "hydrogen economy" for a couple decades with no end in sight. The result is a handful of cars and twenty buses (fuelled, of course, with hydrogen from natural gas) while there are 2500 electric vehicles on the road.

Realistically, this car is a tiny, light little thing with 40gCO2/km emissions, compared to say a Prius at 90gCO2/km. If you put a hybrid drivetrain in a tiny car like this, you could probably get it pretty close to 40gCO2/km running on gasoline.
posted by ssg at 1:29 PM on April 20, 2016


One thing I've wondered about the push for electric cars is where do you charge them if you don't have a private place to park at home. If you don't have a driveway or a garage, and you can only park on the street... where do you charge up? When you're parked at work during the day?

I've seen a few EV charging stations around here (Cambridge, MA) in various places like parking garages. AFAICT, they're not metered, so they're probably subsidised by tax credits. My guess is that, if EV technology really catches on in a big way, you'll see metered/for-pay versions of those stations popping up.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:50 PM on April 20, 2016


...a handful of cars and twenty buses (fuelled, of course, with hydrogen from natural gas)...

How does it make sense to fuel buses with H2 derived from methane, when you could fuel the buses with methane?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:57 PM on April 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


How does it make sense to fuel buses with H2 derived from methane, when you could fuel the buses with methane?

Like ryanrs said:

Hydrogen car projects are all pretty much gimmicks designed to take advantage of various grants, tax incentives, and other free money you can get for designing a car that runs on clean, renewable energy that also happens to be 100% generated from fossil fuels, mostly from fracking.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:03 PM on April 20, 2016


Toyota is struggling with their hydrogen powered Mirai. Elon Musk thinks hydrogen is a waste of time, I'm inclined to agree.
posted by memebake at 2:29 PM on April 20, 2016


One thing I've wondered about the push for electric cars is where do you charge them if you don't have a private place to park at home. If you don't have a driveway or a garage, and you can only park on the street... where do you charge up? When you're parked at work during the day?

Flow cell batteries always seemed less pipe-dreamy than hydrogen making sense, if they could get it going.

I also never saw a problem with electric vehicle "gas stations" basically being vending machines that swap your battery.

You sign up for lets say a "Shell ePower" or whatever subscription, and now you can use a smartphone app(or the interface in your car) to navigate to the closest station with a spare battery. Pull in, power lift pulls the battery out of your car and cycles a new charged one in.

As a bonus, you can also use the "subscription" batteries as grid storage.

I was sort of amazed teslas supercharger stations weren't this. Especially with their home battery product.
posted by emptythought at 3:43 PM on April 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's the future, and it's a gimmick. The future is all about the gimmicks. The future of cars is hybrid hydrogen-electric power, always-on 3D-printed software-defined comfort-enhanced suspension, 54-month 0.1i% lease financing, touchscreen-heated power seats, smart solar albedo-limited natural asphalt, vehicular ad hoc networked infrared camera-assisted steering, low-rolling-resistance pedestrian safety wheel-hub airbags, lithium-ion ethanol-blended catalytic electrolytes, and integrated-infotainment autonomous quad-rotor iPhone charging stations.
posted by sfenders at 3:49 PM on April 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


I was sort of amazed teslas supercharger stations weren't [battery swaps]. Especially with their home battery product.

Tesla had plans for stations that could swap the Tesla's battery out in 90 seconds. They trialed it a bit in California but everyone was getting on OK with the superchargers and the battery swap didn't attract much interest.
posted by memebake at 6:14 AM on April 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


The tanks to hold any compressed gas at 5,000 psi (350 Bar) safely are somewhat tricky, either expensive (carbon-fiber or kevlar wrapped) and reasonable weight, or reasonable cost (steel and fiberglass) and heavy. Earlier, they were talking about 10,000 psi (700 Bar) tanks which is crazy. Also, a Prius drivetrain with natural gas power (skip the steam reforming step) would beat the carbon emissions of this thing. But I'd still drive one!
posted by Hello Dad, I'm in Jail at 8:14 PM on April 22, 2016


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