i3 dilemma. Calif/Toyota/Hyundai and battery deterioration

[cove3]

I've having 2d thoughts about buying an i3 bev (not rex)

1. The state of California and Toyota/Hyundai appear to have made a strategic decision that fuel cells have more of a future than electrics. California is putting more incentives toward that end and Toyota/Hyundai are putting most of their development resources on fuel cell vehicles.

2. Battery deterioration is a concern as much as range. Even if the warranty covers 70% capacity for 8 years, 70% is a range of 56 miles. I'd like to see some time/capacity deterioration curves for several typical environments eg hot states, miles driven etc. Even 90% means a range of 72 miles

Waiting for a fuel cell infrastructure and competitive costs with electrics would mean waiting some extra years, but my 88 528E and 92 525i look like they're going to run forever. On the other hand, it's not clear whether fuel cell stacks, tanks and fuel + their 100+lb battery will in the future weigh more or less than batteries in bevs. This excellent article suggests less.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2303255-teslas-fuel-cell-threat but the focus is on long range bevs like Tesla and the rumored 200 mile i5.

Currently, the Hyundai Tuscan fuel cell car is 4100 lbs compared to 3200 for a gas Tuscan and 2634 for the i3 and 3090 for the e-Golf. So if most of your daily driving is 60 miles or less, bevs may have advantages over fcs, and if you can plan ahead for the occasional longer trip and perhaps even count on Level 3 charging stations, I'm now thinking i3 or e-Golf, but may wait a year to see how events unfold

Ron

 

[mindmachine]

I've having 2d thoughts about buying an i3 bev (not rex)

1. The state of California and Toyota/Hyundai appear to have made a strategic decision that fuel cells have more of a future than electrics. California is putting more incentives toward that end and Toyota/Hyundai are putting most of their development resources on fuel cell vehicles.

2. Battery deterioration is a concern as much as range. Even if the warranty covers 70% capacity for 8 years, 70% is a range of 56 miles. I'd like to see some time/capacity deterioration curves for several typical environments eg hot states, miles driven etc. Even 90% means a range of 72 miles

Waiting for a fuel cell infrastructure and competitive costs with electrics would mean waiting some extra years, but my 88 528E and 92 525i look like they're going to run forever.

Ron

Not to mention the much higher cost of producing the fuel cell vehicle and their necessary higher price to buy. I would imaging the wait for fuel cell infrastructure will be quite long too. Fuel cell refueling is a bit more complex from a safety and cost of implementation standpoint.

 

[MikeS]

That is why I will lease the i3. In that way I am future proofed and I don’t much care about the battery! Moreover, the lease cost is roughly equal to my expectation of the devaluation.

 

[cove3]

It looks like California has either re-evaluated or relaxed the standards for existing gas stations to where 18% could add an hydrogen refueling station with no incremental costs for safety....just the 1-2 million installation. It seems like a lot, but 10000 stations is only 10-20 billion, peanuts when we spend 800B YEARLY for defense and 60B for food stamps

California is funding 100 hydrogen stations, so all our government has to do is make up it's mind, like the Manhattan project. I always pay attention when the government or the Federal Reserve makes a strategic decision

The Hyundai lease only is $499 for 3 years with free fuel and the Toyota fuel cell comes in mid 2015 which will provide some clues. An i3 lease is 650 for 3 years with 2500 down and 10,000 miles per year.

One thought is that with the sunk development cost and experience curve with the i3, the platform could probably be adapted easily to fuel cell, and I'd bet BMW has a concept car in development

The other issue is the battery charging infrastructure for underground or street parking vehicles, whether units are owned or rented. I have a tendency to think of my home & garage with an outlet or easily installed, and forget a lot of cars are not like that in the cities but also in the suburbs. Maybe that's one of the factors driving California, Toyota and Hyundai i the fuel cell direction

Ron

 

[elptex]

That is why I will lease the i3. In that way I am future proofed and I don’t much care about the battery! Moreover, the lease cost is roughly equal to my expectation of the devaluation.

+1

 

[Stevei3]

...Waiting for a fuel cell ...

Hi Ron,

yeah, waiting could be smart. Or not, because you could start saving on your energy costs today

It could well be that an i3 type of vehicle with a fuel cell REx will be the future of things to come should battery tech be lagging, but the H2 economy is still not around the (mainstream) corner IMHO. Please feel free to differ & discuss.
Look at Hyunday planning to build 1000 fuel cell Tuscons per year, and quotes I've seen that a Toyota could be priced in the 50-100k$ range (do correct me if I'm wrong) gives an idea that the tech exists but is not ready for prime time yet.
Great that manufacturers are getting off their lazy behinds and try to innovate though! Espescially Toyota deserves credit for honing its hybrid system to date. Let's see what happens, mighty interesting.

I, for myself, am especially interested in fuel cell system-efficiency (still not great), power/range to weight (still unknown) and longevity (still not great except perhaps for FlowCath type of systems).

Regards, Steven

 

[jadnashuanh]

Hydrogen is not easy to contain, and tends to make most materials brittle. Then, throw in the fact that a typical hydrogen flame is invisible, it is not the greatest fuel (except for a fusion cell, but those are a very long ways away, if ever, in any package, let alone a portable one!). Since most hydrogen today is produced from fossil fuels, while the actual conversion of H2 to energy is clean, there's a lot of carbon to be disposed of freeing it from the fossil fuels. Hydrolysis takes a fair amount of energy to strip off the O2, so isn't all that efficient, either. The good thing about a fuel cell is its emissions, water and heat. Compare that to the BEV...emission - heat. Depending on how the energy is created, there may be no carbon footprint to that, either (wind, hydro, solar, wave, etc.). So, the BEV has the potential of being cleaner than a fuel cell. THe difference is, you can refuel a fuel cell quicker (if you can find a source!). Lots of places to plug in, though, for the BEV. I don't see a home H2 fueling station in the near term, but all homes have a source, water and electricity, or maybe natural gas.

I do not know how long a fuel cell will last...I think some of that would depend on the purity of the H2 it is being fed, and the stability of the stack used to convert it to electricity.

 

[mindmachine]

Fuel cell technology may or may not be great, but don't look for the necessary infrastructure to be put in place very fast. Just look at the EV infrastructure and it is much easier to install not to mention the cost difference. Hydrogen fueling stations at about 1 to 2 million a copy compared to EV charging stations at about $20,000 for two outlets of a level 2. Talks about range anxiety with an EV, wow now think about the availability of hydrogen. Plus hydrogen isn't really clean energy when you consider how much fossil fuel it takes to extract it.

NO fuel cells are just in their infancy and when you consider the price of a fuel cell vehicle and the required maintenance with very few people to work on repairing ect... fuel cells are currently a bad joke to me. I really don't see many people wanting to adopt a technology that is so expensive and without the necessary infrastructure already in place.

 

[cove3]

There shouldn't be much range anxiety because fcs have a 300+ mile range, and since the population of these cars will be initially small, there won't be a need for very many fueling stations for some years. Just a few in larger cities and one every 200 miles or so along major thruways. These could be subsidized by states like California, natural gas companies, or the car manufacturers themselves, and the cost is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. We might have to get by with a few less stealth bombers is all.

As far as price goes, I think the price will come in lower and faster than most people think. The Hyundai Tuscan fc 499 lease is already cheaper than an i3, although I don't know how much Hyundai is subsidizing that. But more importantly, the 2015 VW Golf is designed from the ground up to take gas, diesel, electric or fuel cells. With a common frame/body generating lower costs for bevs and fcs courtesy of the 95% gas platform volumes, the incremental difference between electric and fuel cell should narrow

If VW and others follow the i3s lead with aluminum frame/carbon body, as they all seem to be doing with concept cars, there's no reason you couldn't have a 400 or 500 mile fc car.

The big problem currenty might be weight. The current Hyundai fuel cell car is 4100 lbs vs 3200 for the gas model, 2634 for the i3 and 3090 for the e-golf. If you don't do much driving beyond 80 miles, you windup lugging extra weight you may only need 5% of the time, and even then you will have the potential of Level 3 quick charge for that event.

However, this excellent article feels the fc components will evolve to weigh less than bev batteries, which might explain Calif and Toyota decisions to push fcs. Although the focus is on long range bevs like Tesla and the rumored 200 mile i5
http://seekingalpha.com/article/230...o sublimate it with a lot of forum posts Ron

 

[mindmachine]

There shouldn't be much range anxiety because fcs have a 300 mile range, and since the population of these cars will be initially small, there won't be a need for very many fueling stations for some years. Just a few in larger cities and one every 200 miles or so along major thruways. These could be subsidized by states like California, natural gas companies, or the car manufacturers themselves, and the cost is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. We might have to get by with a few less stealth bombers is all.

As far as price goes, I think the price will come in lower and faster than most people think. The Hyundai Tuscan fc 499 lease is already cheaper than an i3, although I don't know how much Hyundai is subsidizing that. But more importantly, the 2015 VW Golf is designed from the ground up to take gas, diesel, electric or fuel cells. With a common frame/body generating lower costs for bevs and fcs courtesy of the 95% gas platform volumes, the incremental difference between electric and fuel cell should narrow

If VW and others follow the i3s lead with aluminum frame/carbon body, as they all seem to be doing with concept cars, there's no reason you couldn't have a 400 or 500 mile fc car.

The more I study it, the more I'm starting to agree with the fc strategic direction chosen by California and Toyota. If my two old 5 series hold out and which I still like, especially not having to have collision insurance on either, I might wait it out a couple of years. Although I must admit, I'm really itching for an i3 or e-Golf. I may have to sublimate it with a lot of forum posts

Ron

Well I will again say range anxiety will be a problem for several years until infrastructure is sufficient to get you where you want to go. How many hydrogen fueling stations do you really think will pop up in more remote localities like Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, even Ohio for that matter. Heck we still don't even have much of an EV infrastructure yet and electric cars haven't yet become mainstream either.

Dream on guys about the fuel cell vehicles, it's going to be a few years before they even catch up to the EV volumes we are current seeing.

 

[cove3]

Montana and similar states wouldn't be the volume target states. It would be California and the 8 other populous states who have signed on with California and who would be subsidizing hydrogen fueling stations.

As far as ev infrastructure, I've looked at the ev stations and think there already are enough for me to buy an i3 if I don't want to wait. I think a year from now ev vs fc will have enough facts for me to decide

Ron

 

[ultraturtle]

Different power sources have their strengths and weaknesses. At today's state of technology, battery powered vehicles are efficient up to about the 80 mile range offered by most of the auto makers that have thought the problem through. Because of battery power's incredibly low mass and volume specific energy density, efficiency of battery powered EVs drops off too rapidly beyond that point for battery power to be a practical means of longer distance transportation:

Enter gasoline ICE powered generators for the short term, and fuel cell for the long term to extend the range of battery powered vehicles.

The advantage of Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFC) technology is the simplicity of a fuel tank and a stack to directly output electricity, as opposed to the ridiculously heavy, voluminous, complex, inefficient and maintenance hungry mish-mash of ICE, cooling system, lubrication system, fuel system, not to mention the additional efficiency loss of a generator to convert what little energy is left into electricity.

Toyota is misguided in its refusal to acknowledge that battery power is the most efficient manner to power vehicles for that first bit of range and give us an 80 mile battery range / fuel cell range extender vehicle in the same manner that Nissan and Tesla are misguided their refusal to acknowledge that batteries are a horrible way to power vehicles for the miles beyond 80 or so that we may occasionally need to travel between charges.

BMW is not new to the hydrogen game, having leased about 100 primitive hydrogen ICE dual fueled 7 series to various high profile fancy boys. Horrible efficiency, and something of an embarrassment, but at least they have hydrogen fueling infrastructure at their development facilities. As we have seen with the i3, BMW tends to be technologically years ahead of its competitors, and willing to take risks, so I look forward to these brilliant folks being to first to jump on the obvious answer for sustainable transportation - a battery/fuel cell plug-in hybrid vehicle with significant battery electric range.

Significant battery electric range is a moving target, with 80 being about right for 2014 (the i3 BEV is, by significant margin, the most efficient 4 wheel passenger vehicle on the planet at 124 MPGe and 81 miles range), but 160 miles being a more reasonable target for some year prior to 2026, as we can expect energy density of battery systems to double prior to that time.

Unfortunately, it is the marketplace that determines which technology - if any - wins, not logic. There is an almost irrational resistance to HFC technology by folks with clout who want to keep us stuck in the primitive age of battery powered EVs, so I applaud not just California, Hyundai and Honda, but Toyota in particular for risking big by devoting a tremendous amount of R&D budget to the effort.

A practical plug-in hybrid battery electric/HFC vehicle will almost certainly not become available this decade, and perhaps not even the next, but (assuming somebody wakes up and realizes we can tap excess, currently wasted nuclear plant electrical energy to inexpensively create hydrogen fuel with no emissions) for the very near term (30 years or so) it is the smartest way to replace the ICE vehicle.

 

[cove3]

I've discovered that fuel cell cars for short range situations may be heavier than bevs due to requiring a 100+ lb battery in addition to the fuel cell stack, tanks and fuel. The Hyundai Tuscan fuel cell car for example is 4100 lbs compared to 3200 for the gas version, 2634 for the i3 and 3090 for the e-Golf.

For me, this extra weight may be a showstopper, especially for if short range driving is most of it.. Since most of my daily driving is 60 miles or less, and I can plan ahead for the occasional longer trip and perhaps even count on Level 3 charging stations, I'm now leaning toward a i3 or e-Golf, although it's not clear whether fuel cells won't be a preferable solution over long range bevs due to lower overall weight per this interesting link
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2303255-teslas-fuel-cell-threat

Ron

 

[jadnashuanh]

By using a battery with a FC power source, you don't need as big of a FC since the batteries act like a big buffer. Just like on the i3 REx, if you aren't trying to use more power than the generator can produce, you can go just fine. It's only when you exceed that where the battery as a buffer is required. I have no idea how fast a FC can adjust it's output based on how much H2 is introduced, but I'd guess that there is a delay in response. The batteries (or a big capacitor or flywheel) would even things out.