H is not a landing pad

It's been a while since I posted my last article, but to quote Daniel Ricciardo "for anyone who thought I left... I never left ".

Being passionate about people, innovation, technology, and the automotive industry, along with a deep appreciation for renewables, I believe there is a myth out there that needs to be dispelled quickly.

My aviation enthusiasts friends may get annoyed at me, because H is certainly the symbol for a helicopter landing pad, but the H I am refering to here, is hydrogene.

Hydrogene is not the solution for consumer mobility. For as much as I can appreciate a good concept, particularly in terms of design (it's simply stunning), as did Hopium with their Machina , physics don't lie, and whilst numbers can be manipulated, they usually tell the truth.

For one, they are not efficient:

Quoting Fernando Nuno here in his post , the analysis carried out by?Agora Verkehrswende and Agora Energiewende in May 2018 ?gives us a basic but very telling picture. In the case of battery electric vehicles, car wheels receive as much as 69% of the energy generated. While in the case of fuel cell vehicles, car wheels receive only 26%. This is a huge gap, which could be slightly reduced through the improvement of electrolysers and fuel cells, but is likely to remain at a 2:1 ratio at least. For this application, energy efficiency-wise, the choice is obvious. The electricity generation capacity required by a battery-electric car fleet would be less than half of what a fuel cell car fleet would need.

Many would have also seen this graph (work initially done for the aviation industry), which is quite telling:

The idea of hydrogene is nice, it converts the stored fuel into energy and only emits water, yet beauty is in the details. For that we need to look at, is the entire value chain of how the energy is both created, distributed and stored:

For BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle):

Renewable energy —–> transport —-> Battery —> motor —-> motion

For a Hydrogen car - note: this is assumes "green" hydrogen)

Renewable Energy —-> Hydrolyser —-> Storage —-> transport —> Storage –> Fuel Cell —> Battery —–> motor —> Motion

It takes 3 times as much energy as renewable energy and batteries. In other words, 3/4 (!!) is wasted in the process.

To further this point, today there is not a plant in the world making large quantities of green hydrogen. The capital cost of the hydrolyser means it will need to run at high utilisation, and that means it will required 24 x 7 renewable energy to be fully green.

When I did my studies in Aalto EE MBA & DBA Programs one of the most fundamental learnings I took away is "don't believe everything you read" (which nowadays with social media and deep fakes, would be "question everything you see and hear").

So you have to wonder, why is hydrogene being touted as the next best option for sustainable transport? If you look closer, the same fossil fuel companies are the biggest protagonists of this industry? Why? They can simply transpose the business model from gas. They own the manufacturing, the distribution and sales of fossil fuels. Substituting H is simply duplicating an existing model.

We live in world where we do not want to be tied to a single entity, and the explosion (and some crashes along the way) of crypto currencies, is nascent from the desire for decentralized currencies and independence. I personally do not see a future in hydrogen for mobility, the exception could be heavy transports as it can serve on long distance journeys (which this use case will also weaken as charging networks continue to evolve/grow).

To wrap it up, even if you can argue that hydrogene could find some use cases in mobility, I leave you with this simple yet powerful back-of-the-napkin physics my friend Cyril Touchet shared some time back:

The amount of energy to break a water molecule is a PHYSICAL CONSTANT (it cannot be changed)

The manufacture of 2g of hydrogen by fragmenting one melecule of water (without taking losses into account) requires the input of 241 kJ.

In other words, 120,500 kJ to manufacture 1 kg of hydrogen.

120,500 kJ = 33.47kWh

With 33kwh an electric sedan can travel about 200kms in combined cycle .

With the equivalent 1kg of hydrogen, a fuel cell car can travel 120kms… Whilst this is already an unfavorable result for the end consumer, this calculation DOES NOT ACCOUNT for:

?? The actual yield of hydrolysis

?? compression at 700b = 4.95kwh

?? Distribution to the “nettwork” = ? Let's say 5% of the energy transported (super optimistic given what was shared earlier)

?? The efficiency of the fuel cell + battery + car engine = currently maximum 50%

So to make a case for the EV (as if it needed it), with 33kWh of electricity:

?? a battery-powered EV can travel 200kms

?? An "ideal (and theoretical for now!)" Hydrogen-powered vehicle (VH2) car (without any losses for molecule cracking, distribution and re-transformation into electricity) would do 120kms

?? Currently, as in: the real world range of a VH2 is … 67kms. Yes… (57kwh per kg of H2 )

?? A VH2 that would benefit from major technological advances could perhaps go up to 80-90kms.

For all these reasons, in a world where energy must be saved, the hydrogen car is just not a landing spot, nor a viable alternative. The climate crisis we are living requires fast and drastic changes, and the longer consumers are led to believe hydrogen is a viable option, the most resources will be wasted, let alone time.

As my Finnish Economics professor use to tell me: "Time is a luxury we simply do not have".

Christopher

Disclaimer: if you see some of your work/charts in this post and you are not being given the credit for them, please reach out and let me add you. Thanks!