I'm staring down a long highway and I think that I can just make out, in the distance a Stop sign; yes, that's what it is, and it seems to have a Hydrogen symbol on it. I think that's the end of that road.

Recently, UK car magazine and TV show Top Gear looked at the all battery powered Tesla Roadster and the hydrogen only Honda FCX. In the end they could only find two problems with the Roadster; the time taken to recharge it and the 'long tail pipe' argument. They pinned down the two factors that people, in my experience, bring up when talking about battery electric cars; let’s take one last look;

The ‘Long Tail Pipe’

The concern here is that the emissions from an electric car aren’t zero; they’re just not from the car but from the power station instead. Well, we can talk numbers and you can read them here but before you go down that rabbit hole, consider this; the relationship between Hydrogen and Oxygen is a long standing friendship; it's a polygamous one, most often it's two hydrogen to every oxygen but; that's their thing; I'm not here to judge; It’s so strong though that pulling it apart, which is what you need to do to get hydrogen, is expensive and consumes a lot of power, actually, about 5 times more power than if you just put it in a battery.

It’s hardly a scientific test but, I have the hydrogen toy car and fortunately, it comes with its own hydrogen fuel station; fortunate as I don’t think that there are any others on the East Coast of the USA. With the best intent I spent twenty minutes making hydrogen – that’s the limit otherwise the electrolysis piece in the charger goes bad – and managed to get one length of my living room out of it. Out of curiosity; I swapped the fuel cell in the car for a rechargeable AA battery with predictable results from the same twenty minute charge; I crashed the car into the wall at such speed the insides fell out.

My conclusion here is that, if you want to look at the ‘long tail pipe’ argument, you have to find a better way to make hydrogen as, whatever the numbers hydrogen is still five times worse.

Refueling a battery electric car takes too long

Dan Neil of the LA Times talks about the ease of charging the hydrogen car in his article and video and concluding that the FCX is beauty for beauty's sake. But, today it is refillable reasonably quickly if you’re close enough to one of the refueling stations in LA but let’s break it down before delivering the final blow.

If I said to you that you could leave your garage at home every morning with 200+ miles of fuel, petrol, electricity, gas, hydrogen, etc. in your tank, how often would you need to refuel? Once, twice a year, a century? If I said that I could re-fuel your car for $7.50 in 15 minutes at your local Starbucks, Sushi bar, grocery store whilst you had your coffee, fish or weekly shop, would you favor that over a five minute stop at a gas station where you end up smelling of petroleum vapors and get relieved of $75+? I think I would and that’s the promise of the latest news in battery technology. Many are covering the news but Scientific America breaks it down; in short, Byoungwoo Kang, a graduate student in M.I.T. has combined the benefits of traditional li-ion batteries with the fast charge ability of li-phosphate to create high capacity batteries that can be charged in seconds rather than hours. The result is that, with the kind of electrical power available to small businesses and hotels, 15 minute charge stations could be a reality for negligible cost. A high voltage version of the ChargePoint Technology charging station could become commonplace at every grocery store and rest stop.

But wait, what if you had enough fuel to do 2,000 miles each morning, then how often would you want to re-fuel? I’m going to guess, never. This is the goal of Stanford University's research into silicon nanotubes; Nature magazine has the details on that but, again, in short, by using silicon nanotubes to form the anode and cathode in the battery, the storage density goes up by 10 times. That’s a laptop running at full power for two days straight or a Tesla Roadster driving from LA to Chicago without a break.

So how does hydrogen fair? 270 mile range compared to 2,000 and recharge at home for a few dollars versus a trip to the gas station for a high-pressure fill up? What’s left for Hydrogen, what does it have that battery electric technology doesn’t? – The support of the auto industry.

In April 2003, the California Air Research Board, the governor of California and ultimately, President Bush were dissuaded from supporting battery technology and pushed towards Hydrogen. I have no idea as to how this could have happened; I can only speculate that the auto industry saw the writing on the wall for the lucrative engine, transmission manufacturing process and, more importantly the service industry and panicked. What are you supposed to do as a large multi-national supporting yourself and many others when one of you breaks ranks and produces an ‘electric’?

Looking back at the EV1 debacle and listening to those supporters that assure us that the project was axed because it was only an experimental vehicle; a prototype of things to come, like the volt. Imagine what the Volt would look like today if they hadn't axed the program then?

Ed. Begley Jr. summed up the situation on July 25, 2003 at the funeral held for the EV1:

"What the detractors and critics of electric vehicles have been saying for years, is true.

The electric vehicle is not for everybody, given the limited range, it can only meet the needs of 90% of the population".

MPT

{source, leads: LA Times, Dan Neil, fshhead, Scientific America, Nature Magazine}