The car of the perpetual future
Transport: Mass-produced hydrogen fuel-cell cars have been promised for a
decade. Where are they?
DURING a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in
January, the boss of General Motors (GM), Rick Wagoner, unveiled the
Cadillac Provoq, a new hydrogen fuel-cell concept car. With a drivetrain
emitting only water vapour, a 300-mile range and a top speed of 160kph
(100mph), the vehicle, said Mr Wagoner, represented "the promise of truly
sustainable transportation". It was a promise that sounded vaguely familiar.
A decade earlier, in 1998, Mr Wagoner?s predecessor, Jack Smith, told the
Detroit auto show that GM had a plan to produce a production-ready fuel-cell
vehicle "by 2004 or sooner". That same year, Ford?s incoming boss, Jacques
Nasser, said that he saw fuel-cell cars as being a viable alternative to
petrol cars for many people during the course of his career (he was replaced
in 2001). And as recently as 2004 California?s governor, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, rhapsodised about "hydrogen highways" all across the state
by 2010.
Ever since the writings of Jules Verne in the 19th century, the idea that
hydrogen would one day displace fossil fuels has attracted many adherents.
Most recently, the dream has centred on hydrogen-fuelled cars, powered by
fuel cells—electrochemical devices that combine stored hydrogen with
atmospheric oxygen to generate electricity and water vapour. (This means the
car produces no CO2 emissions directly, but whether it is emission-free
overall depends on the source of the energy used to produce the hydrogen.
The hydrogen is more of a temporary store of energy from other sources than
a fuel.)
But the promise of hydrogen-powered personal transport seems as elusive as
ever. The non-emergence of hydrogen cars over the past decade is
particularly notable since hydrogen power has been a darling of governments
worldwide, which have spent billions of dollars in subsidies and incentives
to make hydrogen cars a reality.
Proponents of hydrogen fuel-cell technology point to advances that have been
made in the size and efficiency of fuel cells, and the appearance of a
smattering of hydrogen filling-stations in a few parts of America and
Europe. Carmakers are also keen to publicise the handful of trials that are
providing them with data on the real-world performance of hydrogen fuel-cell
cars.
This year GM and Honda are deploying a few such vehicles, which are being
put into the hands of carefully selected drivers. GM has recruited
celebrities, journalists, businesspeople and members of the public to test a
fuel-cell version of its Chevrolet Equinox. Honda has started leasing small
numbers of its FCX Clarity, which it describes as a "production model" to
drivers in California.
But aside from these high-profile, low-volume projects, the logistical,
technological and economic problems facing hydrogen fuel-cell cars mean that
they are very unlikely to make it to market any time soon. One thing holding
back hydrogen vehicles is a chicken-and-egg problem: why build cars if there
is nowhere to fill them up, or hydrogen filling-stations if there are no
cars to use them?
Earlier this year GM said that despite its own rapid progress on hydrogen
fuel-cell vehicles, America?s energy industry and government were lagging
behind when it came to building hydrogen filling-stations. Mr Wagoner even
said that this might mean that hydrogen cars would be deployed elsewhere
first—such as China. Honda, meanwhile, is covering itself by developing a
Home Energy Station, which drivers of fuel-cell vehicles can use to make
their own hydrogen at home, by tapping into the domestic natural-gas supply.
"The real challenge as we move toward retail is that we need to change the
nature of the fuelling system," says Catherine Dunwoody, executive director
of the California Fuel-Cell Partnership (CaFCP), an industry body. She says
that in order for fuel-cell cars to become a reality, hydrogen filling
stations have to move from serving fleets of corporate or municipal vehicles
to being able to serve private customers.
Duncan Macleod, vice-president of Shell Hydrogen, admits that there has been
a "disconnected debate" between the carmakers and the fuel companies, but
says discussions with carmakers over the past year have been much more
productive. He says Shell?s solution to the chicken-and-egg problem is a
series of local mini-networks, each comprising hundreds of fuel-cell
vehicles and at least two refuelling stations. Despite the grand vision,
however, Shell currently has only six hydrogen filling-stations worldwide.
BP, another early advocate of hydrogen, is also retreating from its early
bullishness: it closed its only hydrogen filling-station in Britain in 2007
and has recently started to switch its focus towards biofuels, rather than
hydrogen, as a near-term replacement for petrol.
One thing on which carmakers and energy firms do agree is the need for
government funding and the appropriate public policies in order to promote
the commercialisation of hydrogen vehicles. Governments in Europe and
America have been more than willing to oblige. Since President George Bush
launched his Hydrogen Fuel Initiative in 2003, America?s Congress has
provided over $1 billion for hydrogen research—though not everyone approves.
The Bush administration?s enthusiasm for hydrogen has worked "to the
detriment of nearly all other renewable energy sources," says Severin
Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute at
Berkeley.
In Europe the flow of funding for hydrogen research has been slower to come,
but no less substantial. In May the European Parliament approved ?470m
($730m) for a fuel-cell and hydrogen initiative, a sum it expects the
private sector to match. The establishment of the National Organisation for
Hydrogen and Fuel-Cell Technology in Germany, a joint venture between German
industry and government, recently put a further ?500m into the pot.
How much more investment is needed to make mass-produced hydrogen cars a
reality? According to a recent study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
sponsored by America?s Department of Energy (DoE), public funding of $10
billion would be required to get 2m hydrogen fuel-cell cars onto America?s
roads by 2025, rising to $45 billion for 10m cars. A report issued by
America?s National Academy of Science in July was less optimistic,
estimating that $55 billion of government investment would be needed to put
just 2m hydrogen cars on the road by 2023. And both reports assume that the
technology will get a lot cheaper: the Oak Ridge study assumes it will be
possible to make fuel-cell vehicle systems in quantity at a cost of $45 per
kilowatt of output by 2010, and $30 per kilowatt by 2015.
This is ambitious. Although fuel-cell costs have dropped by 65% since 2002,
according to the CaFCP, today?s fuel cells cost around $107 per kilowatt.
Are sudden cost reductions around the corner? Not according to one of the
pioneers of fuel-cell technology, Ballard Power Systems, a Canadian supplier
of fuel-cell systems to a range of carmakers. In November 2007 it sold its
automotive fuel-cell division to Ford and Daimler after a decade of losses,
citing the "realities of the high cost and long timeline for automotive
fuel-cell commercialisation" for its exit from the business.
These realities are also being noticed outside the business world. In March
this year the California Air Resources Board, an agency of California?s
state government and a bellwether for state governments across America,
changed its requirement for the number of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) to
be built and sold in California between 2012 and 2014. The revised mandate
allows manufacturers to comply with the rules by building more
battery-electric cars instead of fuel-cell vehicles.
Even if the network of hydrogen filling-stations can be built, and the
technological advances needed to reduce the cost of fuel-cell vehicles can
be made, a huge problem still remains: the production and delivery of
hydrogen in large quantities. The Oak Ridge study says the two most
promising ways to produce hydrogen cheaply in the near term are to make it
from natural gas (through a process called "steam reforming") at the filling
stations themselves, or to make it from gas derived from biomass or coal at
large, centralised plants, and then deliver it by lorry or pipeline.
Hydrogen sceptics point out not only the large capital costs associated with
the production, transportation and storage of hydrogen, but also the
availability of far more viable alternatives. Hydrogen is "just about the
worst possible vehicle fuel", says Robert Zubrin, a rocket scientist and the
author of "Energy Victory", a book on the post-petroleum future. Even if the
requisite gains in fuel-cell technology are achieved, he says, the fuel-cell
cars of the future should run instead on methanol, which has a higher
energy-density than hydrogen and can be stored and transported much more
easily.
Furthermore, steam reformation of natural gas is far from a zero-emissions
solution, undermining the whole rationale of hydrogen cars in the first
place. According to America?s National Renewable Energy Laboratory,
producing a kilogram of hydrogen by steam reformation generates emissions
equivalent to 11.9kg of CO2. Given that the Chevy Equinox fuel-cell vehicle
can travel 39 miles on a kilogram of hydrogen, and the FCX Clarity can
travel 68 miles, powering these cars using hydrogen produced by steam
reformation would result in emissions of 305 and 175 grams of CO2 per mile
respectively. By comparison, today?s petrol-electric Toyota Prius hybrid
produces tailpipe emissions of around 167 grams per mile, and many small
petrol cars achieve similar results.
Even hydrogen optimists concede that the reliance on hydrogen from steam
reformation is not viable in the long term. "If all we can do is make
hydrogen from gas, we shouldn?t even start the journey," says Mr Macleod at
Shell. Instead, he says, the solution to large-scale hydrogen production
lies in using renewable electricity to extract hydrogen from water via
electrolysis. Others suggest making hydrogen using off-peak electricity or
nuclear power. But it would surely be easier simply to use this energy to
charge the batteries of all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Yet for advocates of fuel-cell cars, hope springs eternal. The CaFCP sees
tens of thousands of fuel-cell vehicles on the road by 2017; Shell predicts
that mass roll-out of fuel-cell vehicles is "absolutely achievable" by 2020;
and the DoE maintains that fuel-cell cars will be "practical and
cost-effective" by the same year. BP is cagier, predicting that it will be
2030 before a significant number of fuel-cell vehicles are in use. In other
words, claims that hydrogen will be the automotive fuel of the future are as
true today as they ever have been. |