Does Hydrogen Have a Future?

Let me make one thing absolutely clear right from the start.  Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology is incredibly cool.  Even the name is cool - a "fuel cell" sounds like something from Star Trek.  The tech in the cars themselves is an impressive feat of engineering and there are companies who are building really easy to deploy filling station solutions that can literally be dropped off the back of a lorry. So why do I believe hydrogen electric vehicles (HEVs) will lose out to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the long run?

Let's start with the assumption that to beat BEVs, HEVs need to offer a clear advantage to the customer.  That's not a terribly safe assumption as there have been examples in the past of superior technology losing to another that's clearly inferior - the epic battle between Sony's Betamax video tape format vs VHS being the most notable example, but I think it's fair in the case of EVs.  HEVs appear to have just one clear advantage over BEVs, their "refuelling" time.  Refilling an HEV is a very similar process to filling a fossil fuelled car - you pull up at the pump, attach the hose, press a button and a few minutes later you can pay and drive away.

But wait, that's a huge advantage, isn't it?  If you asked people what car they'd rather have, one that refuelled in a few minutes or one that might take an hour or more, aren't they all going to choose the one that does it in minutes?  However, my argument is that this advantage is not as large as it might seem, and here's why.

If you ask the question of current drivers, they will all think about the way they refuel their fossil fuelled car.  Everyone must visit a filling station to refuel, and if you drive a lot, that could be 5 or even 10 times a month.  Most people will probably regularly be in a situation where they're tight for time but are forced to stop to refuel.  So it's easy to see why, if you simply swap those fossil fuelling stops for BEV charging, the hour long wait can seem like an enormous pain.

"Seriously? I'm already late for that meeting and now I've got to wait for an hour for my car to charge?"

"What?  I'm going to have to spend 10 hours a month waiting around for my car to fill up?  Not gonna happen."

The reality is though that BEV charging is very different from fossil refuelling.  Simply put, a BEV can charge anywhere there's a power socket.  They can charge at home, at the office, at the shopping centre, a friend's house, a hotel, even a farm in the middle of nowhere (with the owner's permission!).  This means that for the majority of BEV owners, refuelling is something that happens while they're doing something else.  Many will refuel while they're asleep, while they're working at the office, shopping, etc.  Imagine if your fossil-fuel tank was magically filled to the brim every night.  How often would you need to visit a filling station?  I drive about 15,000 miles a year and I can say with some confidence, for me the answer would be possibly never.  Even if I did have to do so occasionally, the "occasionally" changes the impact of that HEV refuelling advantage.  It's seen as a huge advantage only when you think like a fossil fuel user.  If you think like a BEV owner, it's really no advantage at all.

There are other problems with hydrogen refuelling.  There are people making some great solutions for this, but it's not cheap and it's not easy.  Fitting a BEV charging point at its simplest is no more than wiring. Even a more complex charging station is relatively straightforward compared to supplying a hydrogen station.  So availability is going to be a problem.  If you're an independent filling station looking to provide services for green vehicles, right now which technology are you going to choose to support?  A BEV charging point, capable of providing that service to any of the 80 or so BEVs and PHEVs available to buy today, or a hydrogen station able to service the, er, 2 currently available cars?  At the time of writing, there are 4532 electric charging locations in the UK and they're being fitted at the rate of between 50 and 100 per month.  There are 15, fifteen, hydrogen charging stations.

Availability is key.  Remember the Sony Betamax vs VHS battle?  That was won by VHS pretty much purely because of availability, the Betamax technology was superior by any reasonable measure, but VHS won.

There's more.  Major manufacturers are right now faced with tough decisions about the direction their propulsion units are going to take.  Volvo, just this morning, have announced they intend to sell only EVs or PHEVs from 2019, just two years from now.  Just like the filling station owner, these manufacturers are going to have to choose between BEV and HEV.  It's not practical or financially sensible to produce both a BEV and an HEV (in the longer term) because they require fundamentally different chassis designs (if you're going to make the best BEV or HEV you can, rather than a compromise).  If you were BMW, would you choose HEV or BEV right now, especially when you already have several BEVs and PHEVs on sale?

It's possible HEVs will see a brief period of popularity, but I firmly believe BEVs will end up the winners in this electric race.

Debunking the Long Journey ICE Advantage

When the subject of range comes up in an online EV discussion, at some point one or more pro-ICE poeple will say something along the lines of:

"Ah, but I need to drive 400 miles.  In my ICE I only need to stop for 5 minutes to refuel, in an EV I'd need to stop for an hour.  That's why I won't buy an EV."

I got tired of typing out the same replies, so I thought in this blog post I'd summarise the counter-arguments.

How long does a 400 mile journey take?
I'll stick with 400 miles because it's (currently) comfortably beyond the range of any EV on a single charge (although it probably won't be for long) and because it's not too extreme, even in a small island like the UK.  How long you'll be on the road depends ultimately upon your average speed; it's easy to suggest that where your journey includes a lot of motorway (freeway) miles you'll be barrelling along at 70mph, so 400 miles should take only 6 hours or so, right?  Well, having driven countless such long journeys (and further) and blessed with a car that tells me my average speed for every journey, I know that even with a lot of motorway miles, my average speed rarely passes 45mph.  Why?  Because no journey begins and ends precisely on a motorway so you'll always have part of the journey on much slower roads, including periods where you're totally stationary (junctions, traffic controls, etc.), and no journey on a motorway (at least in the UK) doesn't involve at least some periods of slow or even stationary traffic, even outside of busy periods,  So, let's be generous and assume you average 50mph on your 400 mile journey, that's eight hours on the road.

I don't know about you, but if I'm behind the wheel for 8 hours, I'm going to want to stop more than once, and for a lot longer than 5 minutes.  I'm probably going to want to eat, I'm definitely going to want to use the bathroom but most importantly I'm simply going to need to take a break from driving.  How long for?  Well, let's say 4 times in those 8 hours (that's 2 hour driving spells, which falls in line with advice from the AA and note on this page that around 2% of all injury accidents are influenced by fatigue), twice for just 15 minutes and twice for say half an hour.  Oh, hang on, there's that hour I need to recharge my EV and more...

But I'm a superhuman, I don't get tired and I don't need a break...
Well, congratulations, but even if that's true, is having to stop for an hour in an 8 hour journey that much of a big deal?  We all make choices when we choose our cars; some people need an estate to hold dogs, carry packages, etc., some people like 2 seater sports cars, others luxury saloons.  What car you choose will be determined by how important such factors are to you so let's say you really like a saloon with an ordinary boot (trunk) but three or four times a year, you need to move something that won't fit in the boot of that car, do you buy the estate version instead?  No, of course you don't, if 99% of your driving doesn't need an estate, you buy the saloon and find another solution when you need more room.  Choosing an ICE over an EV because of the recharge "problem" over long distances is much the same decision; unless you're driving these sorts of distances very regularly, you're making that decision based upon the minority of your driving, not the majority and that makes no sense.

But what if it's an emergency?  I feel happier having the option...
OK, firstly, how many emergencies, that need your absolute best speed to get 400 miles or more and where adding an hour to the journey is a life or death issue are you going to face in your life?  I'm guessing probably never, but if it does happen, you've got other options.  You could take a train, you could fly, or you could rent a car half-way there, or drive to a rail station closer, or...

Seriously, this argument is like saying I need a car that can turn into a boat in case I'm caught in a flood and you're far, far more likely to find yourself in deep water than you are to be in a situation where recharge time can't be accommodated.

There's an easy option
Remember, we're talking about an 8 hour plus journey that needs to become closer to 9, and only if you're superhuman and can drive for 8 hours without endangering yourself or others and without needing any food or bathroom breaks.  The simple easy solution is, leave an hour earlier.

At the end of the day, this argument is really saying:

"I feel strongly that a minor inconvenience, easily solved and rarely occurring, is worth continuing to support fossil fuel burning vehicles and ongoing pollution."

but I bet that's not how you'll phrase it at parties.

Final note
I can't have an honest post without acknowledging that there are drivers out there who drive long distances daily and for whom that extra hour would make a substantial difference to their routines and, right at this moment, for them an ICE probably makes more sense.  But if you're not one of these drivers, please don't use the long-distance argument, it really doesn't hold together.