ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Richard230 on January 25, 2021, 04:07:09 AM
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This comes from an article in my newspaper today written by Peter Douglas, titled "Toyota May Be First to Deploy a Solid-State Battery". His article quotes another article in Nikkei Asia that was boasting that Toyota has developed a solid-state battery and will unveil a prototype next year. The Nikkei Asia article claims that "Toyota plans to be the first company to sell a vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery in the early 2020's". Nikkei Asia says that Toyota has taken out over 1,000 patents related to solid-state batteries, more than any other company.
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I'll be really surprised if we actually see solid state in any meaningful way in this decade. We hear about breakthroughs and patents, but scientific breakthroughs are one thing, building a factory that can produce the quantities you need economically are another. Even once someone has properly announced they're putting solid state into production, it's going to take them a long time to sort out all the logistics and supply chains to truly get started, and the quantity at first will likely be limited to batches of vehicles so small they may as well be considered marketing material.
After watching battery tech improve over the last 15 years, the one constant is that progress is incremental and big breakthroughs are often announced but rarely materialize.
I'm especially skeptical of Toyota, which has been extremely cautious of EV's in general despite making the most popular hybrid.
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Toyota undoubtedly suffer from massive infighting amongst factions within the company with the hydrogen guys and hybrid guys keen to explain to everyone why their engineering is the best solution.
Cas :)
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Call me pessimistic but I think their push for hydrogen is purely a marketing ploy to delay EV's as much as they possibly can while still being able to release zero emission compliance cars.
The infrastructure challenges of hydrogen are so massive there's no way they don't understand how unattainable it is.
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Japanese companies' focus on hydrogen has to do with the lack of power sources at home. They don't have giant deposits of lithium to make batteries from and import nearly all of their energy. So they're devoted to this solution that gets around their battery shortage.
-Crissa
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You'd think they'd maybe devote more, er, energy, into alternative battery chemistries that don't involve lithium instead of the insanity of hydrogen.
Cas :)
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Well, they have lots of water. And not so bad in the sun and wind department, either.
-Crissa
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That's interesting context, but doesn't mesh with the idea that they're also working on solid state batteries that still use those resources they don't have.
I wonder if building the hydrogen infrastructure is an easier process for them too, since their country is relatively small and dense so the investment to build enough fill stations is much smaller.
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Well, even the hydrogen economy needs battery tech to supply peak power.
So anyhow I think it's an attempt at self-sufficiency. They can make hydrogen and fuel cells, but batteries are more resource intensive.
The US can make a battery economy without looking outside.
-Crissa
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I mean the US still gets a lot of its battery resources from imperialism. To quote mr. musk "we'll coup whoever we want"
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Japan doesn't quite have that ability.
-Crissa
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Well, they have lots of water. And not so bad in the sun and wind department, either.
Such a good point. It's great to be not only energy independent but also materials independent.
Here is some data I researched:
- Total energy content of H2 is 33.6 kWh, very similar to gallon of gasoline.
- FCEV motor efficiency 70 mi/kg H2. Only about 2 mi/kWh, half that of batteries.
- Best efficiency of electrolysis 80%, 48 kWh/kg H2 (theoretical best 39 kWh/kg)
- Better than batteries for time shifting solar/wind ("grid storage")
(H2 can be manufactured at point of electricity generation or point of use)
- Typical vehicle range 300 miles.
- Vehicle refueling time similar to gas
- So clean
- Elon Musk lobbies so hard against it, so we know it must be quite a viable threat.
Nevertheless, they are failing in the US.
That H2 fueling station at STP has been dead for 18+ months, ever since the 3 years of government boondoggle money ran out. What a surprise.
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The H2 station next to the Skylonda General Store has apparently been functional for the past couple of years. According to one of the owners of Alice's Restaurant, which is located across the street, no one has every seen an H2 car filling up at the station. The station's office remains vacant and there is no brand name on the station. My understanding is that the station cost something like $3 million to construct.
One other thing: I assume that the energy in H2 depends upon the pressure in the fuel tank. I notice that the pump at the H2 station has two nozzles. One is 350 bar and the other is 700 bar. How much pressure can you stand? ;)
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I think the real reason that hydrogen is so unpopular is because it creates far more problems than it solves. It's super-dangerous and incredibly difficult to use safely. It's not at all efficient to produce by the time it gets into a fuel tank. It's very hard to transport in any quantity. A remarkable amount of it simply escapes without being burned, and leaving it in a fuel tank for a long time eventually leaves you with ... no hydrogen. The engine tech required is even more complex than the most complex petrol engines and doesn't lend itself to small applications at all.
Then you compare it to electricity from a battery and an electric motor and you'd be thinking, why would anyone ever think it was a better idea? Which is why we're in this forum.
Cas :)
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All good points. To me the biggest issue with hydrogen is just the chicken and egg problem. You can't switch to hydrogen until you have enough extremely expensive infrastructure to support them. You can't justify that infrastructure cost until people are buying hydrogen cars. So even if you put all of the efficiency and safety problems aside, hydrogen is hard to to implement and grow.
If we could just flip a switch and have every gas station replaced with hydrogen, it would be adopted quickly since it doesn't suffer from the very real practical challenges of charge time and range that EV's have. Most consumers care more about convenience than efficiency or even safety. But we can't flip a switch, and no one is going to invest in building hydrogen infrastructure everywhere before they sell a single car.
EV's biggest advantage is simply that a homeowner can install a charging station in their garage and not have to rely on a bigger infrastructure for the majority of their driving. Many apartment dwellers with parking spots have done the same thing. This is what's allowed EV's to grow as much as they have. They can sidestep the chicken/egg issue.
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Exactly: Hydrogen isn't unduly dangerous, not compared to other energy sources. The big problem is that it can't be used without infrastructure.
I didn't understand why when they built the filling stations they didn't place them along a truck route they replaced trucks with. Because that's what Tesla is doing with its Semi: It builds the stations, then runs the trucks between them.
Cars really are the last place for hydrogen. They go random places instead of set routes, and so need far more infrastructure before they're viable.
A new fuel makes the most sense for vehicles that ply a set route. That makes the infrastructure installation cheaper. Once you have a bunch of set routes, eventually you have the map covered. Bonus for something like hydrogen that is relatively bulky (but light) which means it fits beat in things like boats, trucks, and trains... things that don't care about bulk as much as something like cars (or worse, motorcycles).
-Crissa
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Hydrogen for planes is a good idea, I think. And probably trains.
Cas :)
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Planes don't have extra volume. Extra volume is extra drag.
-Crissa
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I think the real reason that hydrogen is so unpopular is because it creates far more problems than it solves. It's super-dangerous and incredibly difficult to use safely. It's not at all efficient to produce by the time it gets into a fuel tank. It's very hard to transport in any quantity. A remarkable amount of it simply escapes without being burned, and leaving it in a fuel tank for a long time eventually leaves you with ... no hydrogen. The engine tech required is even more complex than the most complex petrol engines and doesn't lend itself to small applications at all.
Then you compare it to electricity from a battery and an electric motor and you'd be thinking, why would anyone ever think it was a better idea? Which is why we're in this forum.
Cas :)
I am in agreement lots for the first half or so.
I would hope the use in transportation would be with fuel cells and electric motors so hydrogen power is still electric if in a motorcycle.
The compressed aspect seems to have made the chemical storage in Metal hydrides hardly considered.
I would think hydrogen has strategic implications think space force.
As for the solid state batteries or the cells in them it seems there is volume shifting inside the cell. Perhaps not a solid as one might think of as first?
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One problem that I have with H2 in vehicles, much less airplanes, is the weight of the fuel tank. I bet a tank that can handle 700 bars of pressure is not very light and takes up a considerable volume which is not something that can be placed out of the way under the vehicle like a battery pack can. And who wants a tank of highly compressed H2 between their legs while riding a motorcycle? ::)
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I believe that the majority of the tank's structure for H2 would be carbon so very light. And you would probably not want to be terribly close to it in the event of a crash, no.
Cas :)
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They're very light.
And have to take extreme damage to burst.
-Crissa
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Dunno about burst, but they only need a rather tiny rupture to release an awful lot of hydrogen at 30 bar or whatever daft pressure it's at.
Cas :)
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Dunno about burst, but they only need a rather tiny rupture to release an awful lot of hydrogen at 30 bar or whatever daft pressure it's at.
Cas :)
You get your choice of 350 bar or 700 bar at the Sky Londa H2 station. :o
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Hmm a chap I worked with had the end of his finger sliced clean off by a leaking 150bar line with a hairline crack in it.
(You won't believe this but many years later he then sliced the end of his thumb off with a circular saw reaching behind it... I said to him I thought you'd be more careful after the first one :P)
Cas :)
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Hydrogen could be stored quite safely in a porous ultralightweight foam matrix to help reduce run away ( cascade) explosion on pressure release. It could also be stored between the outer and inner shell of the cylindrical body of the plane
Hydrogen is not as dangerous as made out. For a start, 2(H2)+O2= 2(H20) ie 3volumes becomes 2 volumes, so the untemp risen reaction is IMPLOSIVE.
If you are thinking Hindenberg, the massive fireball was caused as much by the nitrocellulose doped fabric as the ruptured hydrogen.
A porous metal hydride store could also help keep it stable or a liquid source compound.
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There have been lots of improvements in hydrogen safety. The fact is any dense energy source has dangers, including gasoline, and our batteries.
Hyundai (http://"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpRyn5-ZbPU") uses carbon-fiber reinforced plastic that's actually designed to rip apart on a huge impact in order to disperse the hydrogen rather than compress it further and cause an explosion.
Again, most of the complaints about hydrogen are not the things stopping it from gaining mass adoption. Gasoline is dangerous, relatively expensive, but entirely convenient. The safety and efficiency issues of hydrogen are really non-issues when we compare them to gas. And even compared to BEV's, once a hydrogen infrastructure is set up, we need far less precious minerals to be mined since the battery doesn't need to be nearly as big per car. This is a huge advantage when we hit the volume of gas cars.
Hydrogen's biggest problem is simply a logistical and funding problem. But the impact of that problem cannot be overstated.
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I think that hydrogen will make in roads into trucking, trains, and large transport aircraft by the end of this decade.
Batteries will continue to improve and become more and more popular for cars, bikes, etc. Politics will push it forward along with needed infrastructure.
With hydrogen you probably have to go with liquid hydrogen to make it viable and that requires cryogenic bottles for storage and that creates design and distribution problems.
On large aircraft, today's batteries are just too heavy to be considered, the higher power density of hydrogen makes it doable but storage is a problem since it can not just be pumped into the wings as with kerosene. Todays "jet" engines can be run on hydrogen with relatively small design changes and it appears that they will be more efficient than when burning kerosene. Airbus is doing a lot of work in this area now. Boeing seems to be concentrating on biofuels.