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Fuel Cell Powered Land Rover

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Tim
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Shelfer
I just spotted this announcement today, in Road & Track, that Land Rover is working on a fuel cell powered vehicle for production. Frankly, I've always wondered why this technology hasn't been pursued more aggressively. It seems to me that it would have some distinct advantages over plug-in electrics. I have no idea what the disadvantages might be. Comments? Opinions?

 
In the past what I always heard was that the hydrogen was just always very painful to deal with. And when it goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. But that was quite awhile ago so surely there have been some advancements. One would hope.
 
When it Really goes wrong.......
 

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If the electric charging infrastructure seems lacking, look at what is available for hydrogen.
'net search says there are less than 50 public fueling stations in operation in the U.S.
Fuel cell vehicles are a great clean alternative to gasoline, but there is a long road ahead for them for consumer use.
 
If the electric charging infrastructure seems lacking, look at what is available for hydrogen.
'net search says there are less than 50 public fueling stations in operation in the U.S.
Fuel cell vehicles are a great clean alternative to gasoline, but there is a long road ahead for them for consumer use.
True dat. Electric car charging was in pretty much the same state until social & political pressure forced the issue to ramp up electric charging infrastructure.
 
I have always thought fuel cell was a much better option for vehicles.
Getting a hydrogen fuel distribution system set up seems it would be much easier to get together than electrical (current power grid is already overloaded and can't handle everyone getting a plug in electric), plus refueling would be similar times to gasoline.
Biggest problems are current cheapest way to get hydrogen is from fossil fuels, and even the best containers for hydrogen leak out over time.
Yes you can make hydrogen from water, but the electrical cost is high and wasteful.

I know Hyundai was working on a fuel cell vehicle for a while as well, not sure what happened to that.

Edit: seems Hyundai is selling a fuel cell SUV now in California.
LINK
 
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Yes you can make hydrogen from water, but the electrical cost is high and wasteful.

Well, technically speaking, the energy required to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen takes just a smidge more energy than you can get out of it through combustion. Practically speaking, you get something like 40kW of power content from a kg of hydrogen at a cost of 50-55kW in electrical power to split it off from water with the latest technology. Through transportation and transfer to electric, and then kinetic, energy, you use up all but about 20kW in that process. So basically you are taking 55kW of power at one end of the process to produce 20kW of power in the vehicle.

There are more efficient ways to transfer and store electric energy, I'm sure.
 
Hasn’t Honda been selling FCEV’s in Cali for years?
https://automobiles.honda.com/clarity-fuel-cell
Plus BMW and ours are also working on this technology.

Yeah. Honda sold a bunch in California and I recently read an article about them that basically said they had to heavily subsidize the price to get anyone to buy them and also offered free fuel for some amount of time to the original purchaser. Even the most green-crazy Californians who bought them seem to all regret it, and they are nearly impossible to sell used because there's no fuel voucher or government subsidy for the 2nd owner. They're basically like electric cars were in 1980.
 
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