Will electricity or hydrogen win the race from fossil fuels?

Publication date: 30 June 2009

By Rob Ollierock

Talking about car propulsion and fuels of the future there is only one thing sure and that is that nothing is certain. However, looking at present developments it seems the competition is going to be between the electrical car and the one with hydrogen or fuel cell propulsion. We are taking a look ten years ahead from now.

It is seven in the morning as your neighbor walks to his car. He takes the plug from the electric socket, rolls up the cable and gets in his car. For eight hours his car has been attached to a loader, but now he can drive it silently en free of emissions for almost a hundred kilometers. Enough for his daily trip to his office, which lies 35 kilometers from his home, and back again.
He could charge the batteries in his electric car quicker. For example with energy power or with the aid of special speed chargers, but that will effect the life cycle of the batteries in a negative way.
Driving on electricity has a soothing effect, your neighbor has experienced. The torque of the electric motor is enormous, so the car accelerates fast. There is no need to shift gears and apart from the light buzzing noise in the background, he only hears the wind soaring and the sound from the tires. And on top of that comforting experience, a full charge of electricity only costs him two euros at the present energy prices.

Only if your neighbor wants to drive further than to and from his work, he has a problem. And that is the range of the car. At least, you might think so, for he has two solutions at hand. First he has a small combustion engine in the car, which automatically charges the batteries when their capacity comes below a certain level. This engine runs on bio fuel and can generate enough energy to charge the batteries, if necessary. Your neighbor can either find his way home without having to refuel or, when he is further from home, his second option will be to drive into a modern refueling station. Here his car is not plugged into a charger, but the whole battery pack is simply exchanged for a fully charged one by a robot within a few seconds.

A far fetched future scenario? Certainly, but a realistic one for that. The Chevrolet Volt, which General Motors will shortly introduce, has a small engine which can charge the batteries if need be. And exchangeable batteries, with a deposit fee, will also be a reality soon. The advocate for an infrastructure to make swift exchanges of battery packs possible is the American visionary and multimillionaire Shai Agassi. He is the brains behind the Project Better Place, in which the use of electric cars is being promoted in a similar way as is the case with mobile phones. The customer can subscribe to an amount of electric energy and the electric car comes with the subscription, almost for free. Some countries, like Israel, Denmark, Australia, Japan Canada en the US states of Hawaii and California have already linked up to this Project Better Place.

Now that your neighbor has driven his car out of the street, you walk to your own car. Amused you have been looking on how he was busy rolling up his electricity cable and stowing it away. Your car does not have any cables hanging out and leading tot sockets in your house or shed. You can just get in and drive away. The only thing you notice in you car is the reduced luggage space caused by the hydrogen tank for the fuel cells, but in driving your car is very identical  to your neighbors. So now and then you will hear a buzzing sound, which is caused by the compressor which keeps the hydrogen tank under pressure. But apart from that, and some noise from wind and tires, the car moves through traffic without a sound and without the emission of fumes. Refueling is simple too, although done with a pressure of 700 bars. Attach a filling pistol to the car similar to that of a natural gas connection and after three minutes you are done. You will never want anything else again.

This scenario is also closer by than we think. Only the introduction date of fuel cells seems uncertain. According to scenarios some years ago hydrogen as a car fuel should have been on the markets already, but apart from some prototypes manufacturers have not yet come further. The problem of hydrogen is the problem of the chicken and the egg. As long as there are no cars running on hydrogen are being manufactured, there will be no one willing to invest in hydrogen pumping stations. And as long as there are no refueling stations, there is no use in owning a hydrogen car. BMW claims to have the solution for this problem. “We believe in hydrogen, but as a fuel for combustion engines, says a spokesman for BMW Netherlands. “Just like LPG is now. With such a solution you can break through the stalemate, because a car like that can run on normal gasoline as well. Besides that, the regular combustion engine is important to us just for the fun and sport of driving a car. For us a car with an electric engine is only feasible for compact urban usage.”

But here are more problems. As it looks now hydrogen cars are very expensive to produce. And hydrogen in itself is not a wonder fuel, because to manufacture it electricity is needed. Hydrogen is not an energy source, but an energy carrier. Whenever the electric to produce hydrogen is not manufactured in an environment friendly manner the problem of the automotive exhaust fumes is positioned back to the power plant, where different damaging fossil fuels are burned, like lignite (brown coal) which is used in many parts of Europe. However these disadvantages do not weigh up to the advantages. Whenever electricity is won on an environmentally sound manner there does not have to be a problem. And the pollution levels in cities and villages will drop significantly because exhaust fumes will be extinct.

As things are and develop further the consumer will be better off. In many countries taxes on environmentally friendly cars, like VAT, are dropped to encourage the motoring community to buy new cars. Due to the global credit crunch some countries are considering even more benefits for future car owners.

And there are more advantages to consider: for instance car maintenance. The electric engine, which is to be found in the electric as well as in the hydrogen propelled cars, runs almost for ever and as there are no other moving parts, you only have to check in with your garage occasionally for the brakes and the tires. Electricity can be produced locally. Everybody can produce electricity by means of the solar batteries on his roof top either to refill the car’s batteries or to produce hydrogen. Also small windmills and heat exchangers which convert earth heat into electricity can help save on car costs.

The Energy Research Centre Netherlands (ECN) thinks electricity and hydrogen are the motorists’ fuels of the future. “To bring the CO2 levels down in de coming years, these fuels are of utmost importance”, says Coen Hanschke, researcher at ECN. “We have looked at a number of potential fuels and propulsion systems and calculated the effect on climate and environment. Some technologies are ready to be implemented, like natural gas and first generation bio fuels as fuels and the use of hybrid engines or intelligent IT-solutions to bring down fuels consumption levels. But in the long run the effects on the climate are simply too small with these solutions.”

According to Hanschke there will be no demand for cars with damaging emissions within twenty to thirty years. “It is possible to have electric cars or hydrogen cars running at that time. And whenever the fuel needed can be won from biomass or from electricity generated by the sun, wind or water this will not burden the environment at all. Whenever fossil fuels are used to make electricity, like coal or gas, CO2 shall have to be intercepted and stored in one way or another.”

At this stage, according to Haschke, it is too early to say whether the hydrogen car or the electric car will prevail. “Around 2015 this will become clearer. In the mean time governments, national or local, can support demonstration projects and coordinate instigation of an infrastructure of refuelling stations of the future. This will make the public more aware of the alternatives to the combustion engine.”

Toyota and General Motors, the two largest car manufacturers in the word, both believe in electric and in fuel cell cars. “We are presently aiming for plug-in hybrid cars”, declared a Toyota spokesman. “Priusses with an electric plug, so to speak. The next step is hydrogen as propulsion fuel. This could be done by letting the combustion engine in the plug-in hybrid run on hydrogen. But eventually the fuel cell will dominate the car manufacturing industry.” General Motors also sees the electric car as an in-between following the hybrid cars.  “Soon we are introducing the electric Volt to the market”, says the spokesperson for Opel. “But as we look beyond the coming ten years, we shall see that the fuel cell cars will eventually make out the bulk of car sales.