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The New Great Race - - Tesla versus Clarity
Listening to battery enthusiasts wax poetic about the Tesla recently - - and seeing a few of them appearing on the streets of west Los Angeles - - I began thinking about the old Tony Curtis film "The Great Race" (remember every time he smiled, there was a shiny sparkle of superiority that gleamed from his teeth?). The roads and Holiday Inns have improved dramatically since the period depicted in the movie, but the idea of testing the claims of exciting new technology at the dawn of a new transportation age is very much the same. So let's have a 21st Century "Great Race" and pit the Tesla against the other electric car on the market today, the Honda Clarity.
The Tesla is an electric sports car powered by batteries, while the Clarity is an electric sedan powered by hydrogen (a fuel cell converts the hydrogen to electricity). The range of each is rated by USEPA-approved testing at about 230 miles. The similarities end there however - - the Tesla is the fastest production car ever built at zero to 60 mph, giving the little hot rod a distinct advantage that would seem to make a race with a Clarity anything but "great". Or would it?
The venue for the race has already been set - - in late May, hydrogen enthusiasts are staging a road rally from BC to BC (Baja California to British Columbia), some 1400 miles up the west coast of North America. The idea is to demonstrate the commercialization of numerous hydrogen vehicles and the fueling stations along the way - - the "Hydrogen Highway" - - that will power the 2010 winter Olympics in Whistler near Vancouver. Already, clean electric buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells shuttle skiers around the resorts and slopes of the soon-to-be Olympic venue.
So all that's needed for The New Great Race is to get a Tesla to participate. Surely the champions of battery technology, the undisputed 0-60 mph speed record-holders, would accept such a challenge. Well, given that they haven't, let's use a little math and imagination to stage The New Great Race anyway.
Acceleration speeds aside, highway laws in the four states/provinces along the route will limit competitors to something around 60 miles an hour. The 1400-mile distance means that each car will be driving for about 23.3 hours. At 230 miles range between fueling stops, the cars will also each stop 6 times. It takes me about 7 minutes to refuel my Honda Clarity, so add about 40 minutes for refueling and it will take Team Hydrogen about 24 hours to get from Tijuana to Vancouver.
Team Battery, however, will need four hours of charging time for each battery refueling according to the Tesla website. That's 24 hours for charging stops in addition to the 23.3 hours of driving for a total of about 48 hours to cover the same distance. Oh well, The New Great Race isn't so great after all.
In recent testimony before Congress, Energy Secretary Steven Chu acknowledged that for batteries to compete with the performance expected by consumers - - and delivered today by the Honda Clarity and other hydrogen vehicles - - it will take $2 billion of taxpayer subsidies (in the current energy bill for starters) and many years of R&D. The results are uncertain, as recent announcements by MIT researchers suggest - - their "breakthrough" in the lab with lithium batteries that dramatically decreased charging times is years from commercialization and doesn't address the half ton of batteries you still need to lug around to power a car, which makes the battery-electric vehicle much less efficient than hydrogen-electric vehicles.
By the way, the hype around plug-in electric/gasoline hybrids is also deflated when examined in a distance-driving setting like this. That technology would either make all but 40 miles of the trip on gasoline (the range of the batteries) or stop 35 times to recharge, adding days to the trip.
While all of these technologies are important to help us kick our oil addiction and solve climate change, the clear winner of The New Great Race is definitely hydrogen. Cue the sparkling smile and roll the cameras!
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Tesla may be quick, but it's far from the fastest charging car
While a Tesla today takes 3.5 hours to charge - and they promise a 45 minute charger in the near future - it is still far from the quickest charging EV out there.
MIT's announcement may have grabbed the headlines, but Aerovironment and Altairnano have already demonstrated 10 minute charging of a commercially-available electric vehicle battery.
http://www.pagnet.org/Documents/Committees/CleanCities/2009/CleanCities-...
Now, while that is roughly the same refill time as your FCX, the cost of the electric recharging station is about one fourth the cost of a hydrogen station and uses something that is available in every neighbourhood - the HV grid.
A fraction of the cost and quicker to set up? I think Secretary Chu has made the right call.
defining victory
"the other electric car on the market today, the Honda Clarity."
Would Mr. Tamminen please enlighten us as to where exactly can one *purchase* a Honda Clarity FCX?
Granted your stated race parameters, let's compare apples to apples, shall we?
1. For the cost of 1 Honda FCX Clarity, estimated at a cool $1M (http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=123662...) Team Battery can post a freshly charged luxury sports car at every intermediate location and pass the baton to victory.
2. If the race is held in any conceivable short-term time frame HFCX won't even make it out of LA area. In the meanwhile electrical grid is at Team Battery's disposal.
3. Being this is a "Climate Action Blog", could you please describe the climate impact of producing hydrogen from natural gas? Or perhaps the waste of renewable energy on electrolyzing water and compressing hydrogen to reasonable volumes?
Who is the winner again?
defining victory part 2
You took the words out of my mouth. Given the 1M price tag of the FCX we would only need 6 roadsters to complete the race without charging on route. Add to that we would complete the race with a spare $400,000 left over!!!
Given Norway is one of the few countries to produce over 99% of its electricity from pure renewables it speaks volumes to hear that they can't even say the same for H2 Production!
If we consider the (1995) GM EV1 to be the first of this new breed of EV's, which now spans about 15 years of R & D. For which Tesla has just delivered its 500th roadster.
GM developed the first H2 concept in mid 60's and still were told it will be decades before we can purchase a H2 car at normal prices! Thats nearly 50 years of R & D and nothing to show for it. We've only been driving cars for 100 years!!!
Stacking the deck
You could do the something similar with EV quick charge stations.
It has been proven that it is possible to recharge EVs in 10 minutes with the right equipment and battery pack technology.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/05/30/aerovironment-successfully-quick...
Or you could use battery pack swap station technology.
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/better-place-unveils-batter...
The conclusions of this article are based on a hypothetical race on a course specifically being designed to favor hydrogen vehicles right now. Talk about "stacking the deck" against the so called competition.
I wouldn't consider a 24 hour non-stop highway "race" to be a good real world driving situation to prove the merit of one vehicle technology against another. Typically people drive vastly shorter distances in one sitting.
hydrogen vs. battery
This type of race represents a very small amount of real world automobile driving. A long distance endurance type of race is the well known weakness of battery electric vehicles due to long charge times. .
Also your comment about lugging around a half ton of batteries makes a battery electric vehicle less efficient than a hydrogen vehicle is baseless. Here's an interesting graphic comparing the "efficiency" of hydrogen vs. battery electric vehicles. http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen4.png
Your chart is wrong
Your chart is not entirely accurate. First of all you only consider compression and liquefaction for hydrogen storage methods and you don't mention metal hydride storage which is the most efficient form of hydrogen storage. Secondly, you assume that a lot of energy will be wasted in transporting the hydrogen, but what if I use an electrolyzer powered by a solar panel on my roof to produce the hydrogen for my vehicle, then there would be no energy wasted in transporting the hydrogen.
I wouldn't be so sure the
I wouldn't be so sure the hydrogen car will win. The last tour they did was only possible due to huge tractor trailers to carry the cars and other fuel supplies. Give the same amount of backup to the EV and the result will probably end up the same.
And the race for consumer acceptance is not about long distance travel, though hydrogen advocates like to focus on that because that's pretty much the only place where they have a clear advantage.
It's about vehicle cost, fueling costs, and convenience. Sure, if you want to travel long distance, a hydrogen car definitely is more convenient, but for everyday use, charging at home and not having to visit a fueling station for months or years is a good experience for people who have tried it. The PHEV will be able to get people used to this while being the most cost effective and convenient. For hydrogen, on the other hand, the consumer still needs to wait for basically nonexistent infrastructure and cars with possibly astronomical costs.
A "race"?
Where one competitor carries it's fuel in a trailer?
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/05/28/ba-fuelcells29_p_0500201637...
Take away that cheat and the Clarity never gets out of LA.
Battery wins.
H2 tour not a race.
The 2009 H2 tour is taking 9 days to go from LA to Vancouver BC, and the Tesla Roadster would have no problems covering that distance in less time than that - but it is a promotional tour, not a race.
So lets try a different contest - give both teams a "budget" of 400 Kwh of electricity to cover that distance. Turns out the Roadster would only need about 300 Kwh, but the Clarity would need at least 891 Kwh to make enough H2 through electrolysis - it wouldn't even make it halfway!
Of course, the Clarity would need to have a fleet of "mobile refueling" trucks to fill in the gaps between LA and the Bay Area, and between Sacramento and Vancouver, while the Roadster could use recharging stations and electrical outlets already in place along the whole route.
So, they have a diesel truck
So, they have a diesel truck carting around the fuel to keep these cars going because there are no hydrogen fueling stations.
Some people criticize hydrogen because there is no infrastructure for fueling. Building thousands of fueling stations will cost taxpayers many billions of dollars.
Rather than refuting those arguments, this "Great Race" is confirming them.
Wasted fuel
This article says:
quote: "...it will take Team Hydrogen about 24 hours to get from Tijuana to Vancouver."
But check this article:
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/may/27/1m27hydrogen234559-ve...
quote: "...a NINE-DAY West Coast road trip..."
and this:
http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1900698.html
quote: "...from Chula Vista to Canada OVER NINE DAYS..."
quote: "...there's not enough infrastructure yet to allow the tour to roll without an assist from mobile fueling stations..."
So this ~1400 mile trip is taking 9 days, not 24 hours. Why not do quick fill ups and carry on? Well, there is a mobile refueling truck driving the same course having to set up many places to stop and provide fuel for the vehicles. This "hydrogen highway" doesn't exist.
(Note, there is an electric grid already installed to cities all along highway 5, and given 9 days, a Tesla would be able to recharge during this trip without needing to have a tanker truck full of hydrogen following it around.)
When calculating how much energy it took for a hydrogen vehicle to drive from "BC to BC", be sure to take into account all the (probably diesel) fuel used by the refueling truck that has to drive the course in support of this stunt.
A picture of the mobile hydrogen refueling station can be found here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2009/05/29/BAET17SV0...
But wait, there's more...
More on the story here:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/06/02/hydrogen-road-tour-how-can-h-sub...
A race? Here's my pic
http://www.visionmotorcorp.com/cheetah.htm
It's about vehicle cost,
It's about vehicle cost, fueling costs, and convenience. Sure, if you want to travel long distance, a hydrogen car definitely is more convenient, but for everyday use, charging at home and not having to visit a fueling station for months or years is a good experience for people who have tried it.
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
Well said Terry. Hydrogen can offer so much. You know it’s true that batteries do have a role to play. But just not by themselves. You won’t find a battery-only version of the multi-purpose, long-range vehicles most Americans want. Hydrogen has the flexibility we need in our cars. Plus, a hydrogen-dominated US fleet would simultaneously: cut greenhouse gas pollution by 80% below 1990 levels; reach U.S. petroleum quasi-independence by mid-century; and eliminate nearly all controllable air pollution by the end of the century. Now there's a real winner!