Reshuffling The Stacks: Volkswagen Bets On Hybrids While Toyota Thinks Hydrogen Is A Winner

by Bertel Schmitt

Published: March 15th, 2013

reshuffling the stacks volkswagen bets on hybrids while toyota thinks hydrogen is a

Volkswagen has been tinkering with hydrogen for longer than I can remember. Yesterday, CEO Martin Winterkorn said it was all for naught. Hydrogen fuel cells are unlikely to become a cost-effective way to power cars in the near future, Winterkorn told Automotive News at Volkswagen’s press conference in Wolfsburg. He said it’s not Volkswagen’s fault:

“I do not see the infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles, and I do not see how hydrogen can be produced on large scale at reasonable cost. I do not currently see a situation where we can offer fuel cell vehicles at a reasonable cost that consumers would also be willing to pay.”

Automotive News takes that as an indicator that VW won’t join a list of global automakers that want to roll out fuel cell vehicles in the 2015-2020 time-frame, among them Toyota allied with BMW, a Nissan-Renault-Daimler-Ford alliance, Hyundai, Honda, and more.

Instead, VW is seen to embark on a somewhat belated diesel plug-in hybrid strategy, while hybrid pioneer Toyota does not have a problem envisaging fuel cell vehicles at a reasonable cost. Two years ago already, Toyota’s chief engineer Satoshi Ogiso told TTAC that an affordable hydrogen-powered car in this decade is “his job.”

#BertelSchmitt #Hydrogen #Toyota #Volkswagen

Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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15 of 44 comments

L'avventura on Mar 15, 2013

Let's look at the BIG PICTURE: Japan has just announced (a few days ago) that they have successfully extracted methane hydrates from its waters and turned it into natural gas: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21752441 Its a project Japan has been working on for a long time, they plan to fully commercialize it in 2018, and large scale production within the next decade. With methane hydrates Japan will have 90 years worth of natural gas. Natural gas can be converted to hydrogen with 80% efficiency. Meaning hydrogen will be one of the only natural resources that resource-poor Japan will be able to produce domestically. Hydrogen will energy-Independence for countries with a lot of natural gas (soon to be Japan).

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- Th009 on Mar 15, 2013
  
  80% efficiency is nice, but natural gas can be converted to natural gas at 100% efficiency and remarkably low cost. Shocking, isn't it? So why not just run the cars on CNG rather than using expensive fuel cells? Both Toyota and Volkswagen (among others) offer cars running on CNG already.
  
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- B787 on Mar 15, 2013
  
  @th009 Because internal combustion engines are at best 40% efficient (even if they are running on CNG instead of gasoline). Fuel cells, on the other hand, have efficiency of 60-80%, making overall efficiency between 50% and 60%, quite a bit higher than CNG cars.
  
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- Rada on Mar 15, 2013
  
  @b787 I would say 40% efficiency for ICE is way too high, it is only valid for large diesel engines. For normal car engines with Otto cycle it is not greater than 25%. Also, mechanical transmission loses another 20-30% of shaft power. The electric motors have remarkable efficiency. Those loud A/C drill motors with brushes that are supposedly not efficient actually have 90% efficiency. The electronically-switched motors have efficiency of 99%.
  
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- Brian P on Mar 15, 2013
  
  @Rada Real-world fuel cell efficiency is not 80%, either. Hydrogen is hellishly difficult to transport and store. If you want to transport or store it as a liquid, the energy cost of compressing and liquefying it is a substantial (approx 1/3) portion of the chemical energy content - that's an efficiency-killer right there. Then you have to constantly refrigerate it on-board the vehicle, or deal with a slow but constant evaporative loss. It can be stored as chemical hydrides, but then you are carting around a substantial amount of extra weight. If you have natural gas ... use natural gas as fuel. Don't convert it to hydrogen. You CAN make fuel cells that work on natural gas, you know ... and that's if you insist on going that route as opposed to an internal combustion engine.
  
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- L'avventura on Mar 16, 2013
  
  @Rada Golly Gee Wilikers Brian, I'm hoping that you are aware that natural gas is a GAS, as its name suggests. To store it as liquid also requires refrigeration as well. Transportation and delivery of hydrogen and natural gas is equally difficult, however, hydrogen achieves much greater efficiency. Neither is economically feasible as a liquid, which is why Toyota has been spending large amounts of R&D on mass-production CF tanks for hydrogen.
  
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- Tinker on Mar 16, 2013
  
  If diesel sales are limited by memories of GM diesels in the mid-80s, then you better believe that HYDROGEN fuel is limited by the HINDENBERG fire in the 30s. After all, moldering GM junkers are less eye-catching than a mass incineration.
  
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- Brian P on Mar 17, 2013
  
  @Rada Natural gas is much easier to deal with when compressed, than hydrogen is. Hydrogen reacts with a lot of metals and its molecules are so small that it leaks through many materials. Natural gas, on the other hand, presents no particular difficulty in this regard. And, for a given volume and pressure of compressed gas, natural gas (methane) has a higher energy content. I've been involved with a prototype hydrogen fueling project, so I have some personal knowledge of this. Unfortunately, I can't say much about it, only that all of the measures that were necessary to protect against leaks and fire/explosion made it a very, very, VERY expensive proposition. You can't use ordinary pipe fittings and sealant as you would with natural gas - the hydrogen will leak through them.
  
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- L'avventura on Mar 17, 2013
  
  @Brain The issues that hydrogen faces with transport and storage is essentially identical to CNG vehicles. They both require carbon-fiber reinforcement, and both are compressed to around 700 bar. They also have plastic liners inside of them to protect from corrosion. Here is CNG/Hydrogen tank failure study on the DOE website. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/cng_h2_workshop_8_wong.pdf Unless you are Iran (which has an active CNG vehicle program),you are not using metal tanks. All tanks are carbon fiber. Hydrogen, stored as a liquid, is a dead-end road, just as its with natural gas stored as a liquid. And I'm guessing that's what you are working on based on your previous comment. Toyota (which is topic is partly about) is working on an automated method to make these CF tanks. They seem to reusing the carbon-fiber loom technology they developed with their LFA. Also, the 80% efficiency of conversion from natural gas to hydrogen has actually on the low-end. Hydrogen production methods such as steam-reforming can get near 99% efficiency when converting natural gas to hydrogen. http://chemeng-processing.blogspot.com/2010/05/hydrogen-production-by-steam-reforming.html Hydrogen is AT LEAST a decade away, and CNG looks to be a dead-end. Outside the fuel-cell stack & hydrogen tank the rest of the machine is basically an EV, meaning development can be conducted in parallel to EV/PHEV cars.
  
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- Brian P on Mar 17, 2013
  
  @Rada The tank is the least of your worries.
  
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- L'avventura on Mar 17, 2013
  
  @Brian Given you lack of facts, and your discussion of liquid storage of hydrogen, its pretty clear to me that your knowledge of CNG & hydrogen is very narrow. All the problems you present for hydrogen can also be applied to CNG as well. The reality is that natural gas and hydrogen both share a common drawback when it comes to storage and transportation, they are both gaseous and explosive. The reason hydrogen is looked at by Toyota is because it can also extend their EV program. Natural gas, which Japan will have a lot of in the next decade, can also be used to generate electricity. EVs will be the first beneficiary of natural gas. The eventual progression of a natural gas society will move that EV platform to hydrogen. There are massive hurdles, yes, but that is what a country with zero oil reserves has to plan for. Much like methane hydrate technology, which was said to be too difficult and costly, hydrogen will be a technology that they will have a near-monopoly in if they succeed.
  
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Darkhorse on Mar 15, 2013

HFCs sound nice but I bet it would cost $1 Trillion to replace our current liquid fuel infrastructure. Hell, I'd have to drive 50 miles today to refuel a Honda Civic CNG vehicle.

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Claytori on Mar 16, 2013

I have some experience designing a storage and distribution system for hydrogen gas. This stuff is both extremely dangerous and difficult to contain. The molecule is the smallest of any, and will get through even the best seal if everything isn't perfect. When it does, it is the the most flammable and explosive gas. The range of concentrations in air that will explode is very wide (about 5% to 80%, from memory) as compared to natural gas (methane). When it burns, the flame is colorless. You can walk into it without seeing the flame. The industry literature recommends approaching the equipment with a corn broom ahead of you as a warning device. The safest way to store it is in liquid form, which requires cryogenic temperatures. Then there is the issue of generating the hydrogen... Hydrogen is used where nothing else does the job. The system I worked on was for an electric generator for a major power plant. The hydrogen is used to cool the generator and is (supposedly) kept away from air. In spite of all the precautions and safety systems used, there have been generator fires. These fires are highly destructive and impossible to put out until the hydrogen supply is cut off. Winterkorn is right. This technology is a non-starter as a vehicle fuel and doesn't deserve any funding by anyone.

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- Brian P on Mar 17, 2013
  
  Your experience agrees with mine. The application was different but the issues are the same. I'm thinking that none of the people who are proponents of using hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles operated by the general public, have never actually been involved in the nuts and bolts of handling hydrogen, because if they were, they would realize how dangerous and stupid (and EXPENSIVE) the whole idea is. And that's without even getting into the means by which the hydrogen is generated in the first place.
  
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95_SC on Mar 17, 2013

Oh the Humanities!!!

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