The Shift From EV to Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Dec. 29, 2014
Toyota is convinced that hydrogen fuel cell technology is the future of transportation.  Could this really be a sustainable model for the future? 

Being a child of the 1980s, one of my favorite movies is “Back to The Future.” The adventures of Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Dr. Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd) captured my imagination with the ideas of time travel and vehicle technologies that seemed far-fetched yet somehow believable. In one classic scene, “Doc” is rooting through Marty’s curbside garbage can in order to find fuel for Mr. Fusion, a device that was designed to obtain the 1.21 jigowatts (actually gigawatts) of electricity that would be necessary to take them “back to the future.”

Fast-forward 30 years to 2015, and suddenly some of these ideas don’t seem so far-fetched. Taking something as common as garbage and creating electricity necessary to propel a vehicle can’t be possible can it? Well, how about this for an idea: Take hydrogen gas along with oxygen and put it through a catalyzing membrane to produce voltage with only water vapor and heat as emissions. This very idea is coming to market in Summer 2015 in the form of the Toyota Fuel Cell Vehicle or FCV. In fact, Toyota is convinced that hydrogen fuel cell technology is the future of transportation.  Could this really be a sustainable model for the future? We will look at Toyota’s technology and investigate some of the monumental hurdles that fuel cell technology critics claim may make this technology about as realistic as time travel in a Delorean.

Toyota is no stranger to committing to long-term projects. It began its work on electric and hybrid vehicles long before they gained popularity here in the U.S., and judging by their success, Toyota was correct in its belief that HEVs would be a powerhouse.  Similarly, Toyota’s fuel cell research and design began in 1992, and by 1996 it unveiled its first attempt at a fuel cell vehicle, a version of the Rav 4, in a parade in Osaka, Japan. The FCV will be the seventh Toyota Fuel Cell vehicle produced, but the manufacturer feels that it has a product that is now ready for market.

Toyota’s Craig Scott, national manager of Advanced Technology, recently stated: “Today, Toyota actually favors fuel cells over other zero-emission vehicles, like pure battery electric vehicles. We would like to be still selling cars when there's no more gas. And no one is coming to our door asking us to build a new electric car."  

Toyota firmly believes that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will surpass full electric vehicles due to the fact that EVs have a shorter range, high battery costs, long recharging times and require an infrastructure of individual charging stations for each vehicle to be recharged. Toyota claims the advantages of the fuel cell vehicle are many including Zero emissions, a 300-mile range and a three to five minute refueling time. What they don’t mention are the disadvantages to FCVs that have been discussed and argued at length in hybrid and HEV forums and blogs all over the Internet: high expense, short overall fuel cell life cycle, a non-existent hydrogen infrastructure and the fact that FCVs may not be as green of a technology as supporters claim.

A Look on the Bright Side
In order to understand Toyota’s side of the story, let’s take a look at its technology. If you are familiar with Toyota’s hybrid platform the transition to hydrogen is easy to understand. Toyota FCV technology utilizes tested and proven technologies from their HV motor generator, power inverter and HV battery units. The use of its existing technologies has helped speed the transition as well as lower the cost of FCV production. The main difference in the FCV is the elimination of the internal combustion engine and the addition of a Hydrogen Fuel Cell stack and two high pressure Hydrogen storage tanks. Let’s take a look at each piece of the FCV system:

Hydrogen Fuel Cell: The Hydrogen fuel cell stack is a fascinating piece of engineering. According to the U.S Department of Energy, the Fuel Cell Stack is made up of multiple individual Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) Cells that utilize hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to produce electricity. How this happens is actually very similar to the production of electricity in a battery. Within the cell, hydrogen is routed through field flow plates to the anode on one side of the fuel cell while oxygen is routed through to the cathode on the other side of the cell. The Anode and Cathode are the positive and negative plates, respectively. Hopefully this terminology sounds familiar (think “battery”). At the anode, the hydrogen is split into positively charged ions (protons) and negatively charged electrons through the use of a platinum catalyst. The PEM cell allows only the positive ions to flow through it to the cathode. The negative electrons cannot move through the PEM and have to travel along an external circuit to reach the cathode. This flow of electrons is electrical current flow. At the cathode the hydrogen and oxygen combine to create water vapor. According to the U.S. Department of Energy website, the individual cells produce less than 1.16 volts each. Stacking the cells therefore is necessary to produce a voltage capable of powering a vehicle. Toyota boasts a fuel cell output of more than 100 kilowatts. In order to reach that output, several hundred cells are stacked in series. Toyota also claims that 83 percent of the hydrogen provided to the cell is utilized
to produce voltage making the use of hydrogen much more efficient compared to the gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine.

Secondary Battery – The secondary battery is a familiar sight, as it looks nearly identical to the HV batteries of the Toyota Prius and Camry Hybrid Vehicles. The battery is also similar in construction to its HV counterpart, a nickel-metal hydride type battery, and has a power output of 21 kilowatts. The secondary battery is used to store voltage produced by the fuel cell and also voltage produced by regenerative braking. The battery provides supplemental power and aids the fuel cell during acceleration.

Electric Motor – The FCV is powered by an AC Synchronous motor and utilizes similar technology to a Toyota Hybrid. It provides up to 260Nm of torque and an output of 90kW to drive the vehicle. It serves as a generator under deceleration.

Power Control Unit – The Power Control Unit is close in design to its hybrid counterpart. It features an inverter that converts DC into AC to power the motor as well as a DC to DC converter to charge the secondary battery. Toyota is particularly proud of the boost converter they designed for this unit that has allowed them to up the overall voltage of the system allowing for a smaller cell stack, battery and motor, which reduces the overall weight of the vehicle. The boost converter can best be compared to a step-up transformer, in which a low voltage is stepped up to a higher voltage.

High Pressure Hydrogen Tanks – The FCV utilizes two hydrogen storage tanks with a capacity of 70MPa, or roughly 10,000 PSI. These tanks are designed specifically for safety and reliability. The tanks materials enable it to hold a large amount of hydrogen for an extended driving range of approximately 300 miles.

But on the Other Hand Now that we have a better idea of how the FCV works, let’s take a look at some of the problems with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Hydrogen Infrastructure – Have you seen a hydrogen fueling station recently? Unless you live in California, have a connection at the local utility company or work in a fuel cell / alternative fuels education program or research facility, the answer is probably no. There are currently 12 hydrogen fueling stations in the US according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Yes, you read that correctly. 12, all of which have been installed at research facilities in order to study ways to bring hydrogen refueling stations to market and to determine how best to implement a refueling station.  

Toyota’s vision for the fuel cell vehicle as the vehicle of the future is dependent on having a place to refuel. Toyota compares the lack of refueling stations to the days when the first automobile was introduced. The first gas station was opened in 1907 and by 1929, 300,000 stores were selling gasoline in the United States. The difference between then and now is that there were not millions of vehicles already in existence that ran on different fuel in 1907. In other words, there was a demand for gasoline. This technology depends on consumer demand for hydrogen. Toyota is taking a “if we build it they will come” mentality, which sounds like another 1980s movie fantasy to many. If there is no infrastructure, there is no future for these cars.

Maybe Toyota has plans to build their own refueling stations? It remains to be seen. The rules and regulations set out by the Department of Energy provide another hurdle for entrepreneurs to jump over to bring hydrogen to market. Then, of course, there is the cost of hydrogen. What entrepreneur will venture into a business with stringent regulation and limited consumer demand while providing hydrogen to the public at affordable prices? It’s hard to imagine refueling stations coming into existence without some help from Uncle Sam (you, the taxpayer) or from the manufacturers themselves. We will see before long just how much of an investment they are willing to make in their own technology.

Fuel Cell Expense – Fuel Cell Vehicles still are very expensive to produce. The FCV to be introduced in Japan will sell for 7,000,000 Yen or about $65,000. The price has not yet been determined for the U.S. market, but one would imagine it to be in the same range. So what you have is essentially a $65,000 Corolla. The goal of the Department of Energy is to continue to drive down the cost of Fuel Cell vehicles to $30 per kW by 2017, a number that has already been delayed. It originally was slated to happen by 2015.

Durability – according to the Department of Energy, fuel cells are not yet as durable as internal combustion engines. In recent years, the lifespan of a fuel cell has been extended to 75,000 miles. At that short of a lifespan the DoE realizes that manufacturers will have to get to a lifespan of at least 150,000 miles in order to be competitive with other vehicle platforms. The failure of fuel cells has to do with degradation of the Cell. One type of degradation that occurs is caused by what are known as free radicals, a byproduct contained in Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2), which is formed easily with the presence of hydrogen and oxygen that break down the cell membrane.

Another problem in fuel cells is the starting and stopping of the production of electricity associated with powering the cell up and down (ignition on and off). During power down, water can pool and cause a blockage in the anode side of the cell causing the carbon in the cell to turn to carbon dioxide gas. Ironically, CO2 output is what manufacturers are claiming to eliminate with fuel cell vehicles. With the production of carbon dioxide comes a degradation of platinum, in which the platinum Catalyst Layer will disintegrate and disappear. This ultimately leads to a dead Fuel Cell.

Durability was once a concern on the Prius platform as well. I once heard a story about the Ford E-150 “Rescue Vans” that were set up by the Toyota training regions in order to help dealerships should they have catastrophic problems with the Prius. The short version of the story is that the tires on those Ford vans went flat because they never left the training facilities. Toyota was prepared for problems, but Prius was a huge success. The success of Prius speaks to the reliability of Toyota’s engineering. With a bit of help from the government in the form of grants awarded to research firms and universities, Toyota isn’t alone in finding solutions to a better more reliable fuel cell.  A simple Google search will reveal that the EPA and other government agencies are spreading a boatload of money around to try to address the concerns of Fuel Cell Vehicles.  A “wait and see” approach might be necessary to prove the lifespan of the FCV in real world conditions.

Hydrogen Not As Green As It Seems? – In theory, hydrogen fuel is amazing. It is found in abundance in water and in fossil fuels. The controversy with hydrogen is in how we produce it. As with anything on earth in order to get something we usually have to give something up. There are many green hydrogen production methods available but most are still too costly and inefficient for mass production. Currently fossil fuels, mainly in the form of natural gas, are the most common source of industrial hydrogen. In order to separate hydrogen from natural gas a process called steam reformation is used.

The problem with steam reformation you ask? Its byproduct is carbon dioxide gas. So as it stands, our current method of production for hydrogen uses fossil fuels and releases carbon dioxide. The dependence on fossil fuels and the production of CO2 are the two main reasons we are looking at alternatives to the internal combustion engine to begin with. Until green methods are able to produce hydrogen in high volumes, hydrogen fuel cells are just another technology with considerable downside. If you want an entertaining opinion on the topic of hydrogen, Google electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla and its CEO’s take on the hydrogen fuel cell. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s opinion echoes those of hydrogen doubters. There are too many expletives here to publish his opinion. Amidst the doubt Toyota is optimistic that hydrogen can be produced cleanly but also admits in their promotional materials that hydrogen is produced from natural gas.

The FCV is a fascinating feat of engineering and its possibilities are real but not yet realized. With many logistic hurdles in front of it, the FCV will hit the U.S. market in late 2015. Toyota is hoping its past engineering successes can repeat themselves once again. Their success hinges on finding creative solutions to large problems, some of which seem more complicated than harnessing 1.21 Jiggowatts of electricity from a bolt of lightning. In any case it will be fun to watch. Without a time traveling Delorean to take us to the future we will all just have to wait and see how this one ends. 

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