67 replies to this topic

[Ben1445]

https://www.autospor...th-hydrogen-car

 

BMW have been talking to the ACO about running hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at Le Mans in coming years. 

 

"We did a concept study to check if it is possible or not, and we came to the conclusion that with a few constraints it is feasible," explained Marquardt, who said that developments in fuel-cell technology could remove those constraints as early as 2024.

 

 

[Pierre Fillon:] "We have a clear goal: from 2024 it should be possible to drive completely CO2-neutral at Le Mans — and that is only possible with certain technologies."

 

Curious stuff. Le Mans started as a means to improve the ICE vehicles of the day (and boy did it succeed) so makes sense I guess that Le Mans should continue to provide that platform as we go into the revolution that is happening in the automotive industry. 

 

if CO2-neutral can be done as soon as 2024, personally I think that would be a huge achievement and one that should be celebrated as a milestone in engineering and technical prowess. 

[AustinF1]

Did they not get the memo that full EV has rendered all else obsolete? /s

[Ben1445]

Did they not get the memo that full EV has rendered all else obsolete? /s

There really has not been any such memo. The only memo as been that carbon emissions must be brought down and so a myriad of creative solutions are needed. Full EVs are part of that solution but have never been the magic bullet. That has been a consistent message from their supporters. 

[AustinF1]

There really has not been any such memo. The only memo as been that carbon emissions must be brought down and so a myriad of creative solutions are needed. Full EVs are part of that solution but have never been the magic bullet. That has been a consistent message from their supporters. 

Oh, plenty of EV supporters have made that ridiculous claim, here on this board, and elsewhere. I have serious reservations about EVs being any better any time soon in terms of C emissions than good ICEs & hybrids. But back to the topic: Fuel cells, otoh ... seem very promising imho. It's good to see BMW talking about them this way. Good find!

Edited by AustinF1, 16 April 2018 - 21:45.

[Ben1445]

Oh, plenty of EV supporters have made that ridiculous claim, here on this board, and elsewhere. I have serious reservations about EVs being any better any time soon in terms of C emissions than good ICEs & hybrids. 

Oh, those. Maybe I have quite a strong 'ridiculous claim filter'... 

 

But back to the topic: Fuel cells, otoh ... seem very promising imho. It's good to see BMW talking about them this way. Good find!

I'm certainly interested to see how this all goes. Like with EVs there are drawbacks and challenges to address with the technology but I think it's really exciting to see new possibilities emerge. May the cleanest, most viable and highest performing technology win! 

[Fatgadget]

Did they not get the memo that full EV has rendered all else obsolete? /s

What is obsolete is fossil fuels mate...And that is road relevance right there.Like it or not.

Edited by Fatgadget, 16 April 2018 - 22:19.

[jAnO76]

Did they not get the memo that full EV has rendered all else obsolete? /s

 

A fuel cell car is a full EV vehicle, only difference is the battery, instead of using current to charge it in the car, the current is used to get hydrogen from water at a plant, hydrogen that can be pumped moved and transported and eventually pumped into a fuel cell/tank, rendering charge time down to petrol standards.

 

Really cool would be thorium based salt reactors creating the hydrogen as locally as possible  

[Vielleicht]

That would be cool.

 

In my mind Battery-EVs and HFC-EVs go hand in hand. A lot of cross over between the two, so it's possible that both have a place in the future mix. Just depends on applying the right tech to the right task. So on that note, city street sprints are the most relevant place for Formula E to race for the foreseeable future and, in a similar way, Le Mans would be a great place for Hydrogen Fuel Cells.

[maverick69]

Creating energy from water is a big move (and a big investment).

 

Fair play to BMW. The petro-chemical dependent countries for economical purposes will be a bit twitchy.

 

Then again..... I remember reading something like this in Autocar in 1992.

 

Meet the new boss...........

[Vielleicht]

Interesting that the article also states that "Audi suggested it had the technology to build a fuel cell LMP1 car just a few months prior to its decision to quit the category."

[ArrowsLivery]

The problem with large scale hydrogen use is producing it and transporting it safely. Neither of those are getting solved by racing at Le Mans for 24h. This is just another marketing stint that the ACO has fallen for. I hope IMSA stops falling for their deceit and continues doing their own thing.

 

Creating energy from water is a big move (and a big investment).

 

Fair play to BMW. The petro-chemical dependent countries for economical purposes will be a bit twitchy.

 

Then again..... I remember reading something like this in Autocar in 1992.

 

Meet the new boss...........

 

It's energy from H₂, not water. 

[SCUDmissile]

Fantastic news. Hope it goes well for them.

[F1 Mike]

Hydrogen will form some part of the future of vehicle power so it makes a lot of sense

[ANF]

[917k]

What is obsolete is fossil fuels mate...And that is road relevance right there.Like it or not.

 

Considering I'm driving with an ICE, and will be for the foreseeable future, hardly obsolete.

[Vielleicht]

The problem with large scale hydrogen use is producing it and transporting it safely. Neither of those are getting solved by racing at Le Mans for 24h.

To be fair, the same could probably have been said of petroleum. Yet here we are.

This is just another marketing stint that the ACO has fallen for. I hope IMSA stops falling for their deceit and continues doing their own

I actually see it as Le Mans staying true to its original purpose. A test of technology.

[Afterburner]

Nobody better to propel motorsport into the future than the most Star Wars name in motorsport: Jens Marquardt.

[maximilian]

About time someone makes a REAL push for a better propulsion technology than the pseudojoke we have now...  Thorium WOULD be nice! 

[AustinF1]

What is obsolete is fossil fuels mate...And that is road relevance right there.Like it or not.

The fossil fuels the EVs get something like 80% or more of their charge from and the overwhelming majority of cars get all their energy from? Those fossil fuels? OK.

 

A fuel cell car is a full EV vehicle, only difference is the battery, instead of using current to charge it in the car, the current is used to get hydrogen from water at a plant, hydrogen that can be pumped moved and transported and eventually pumped into a fuel cell/tank, rendering charge time down to petrol standards.

 

Really cool would be thorium based salt reactors creating the hydrogen as locally as possible

Great point. I misspoke. And an EV that's charged by an onboard fossil fuel-powered generator not tied to the drive train is also a full EV that makes about eleventy-billion times more sense than the plug-in EVs we have now. I guess in a sense that could be called "Hybrid Power" rather than "Hybrid Drive", but I guess it's just semantics.

 

 

 

Just because someone plugs in their EV in their garage or at a charging station, that doesn't mean they're getting their charge free from fossil fuels. Far from it. Until we either get hydrogen fuel cells and/or enough solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear power to charge them, we're still going to be relying massively on dyno power to run EVs. And that's probably going to be quite a while. I'm not saying EVs can't be clean and relatively free from reliance on fossil fuels in the future or that we shouldn't work to that end. But it's ridiculous to say (as above) that fossil fuels are obsolete when the world continues to rely so much on them for energy. It's just as ridiculous to say there's only one plausible path forward, or that fossil fuels cannot play a significant role going forward.

Edited by AustinF1, 17 April 2018 - 16:06.

[Wes350]

What is obsolete is fossil fuels mate...And that is road relevance right there.Like it or not.

 

*...looks out the front door at vehicles on the street...*

 

Ummm, yeah. Not so much...

[maverick69]

It's energy from H₂, not water. 

 

But you start off with water.

[Vielleicht]

But it's ridiculous to say (as above) that fossil fuels are obsolete when the world continues to rely so much on them for energy.

I wouldn't say it's ridiculous, perhaps just a simplified view of the situation.

 

The guilt free use of them is most definitely obsolete - we simply cannot continue burning them at the rate we are and the general trend of their future use is therefore decidedly downwards. Fossil fuels are still in use and will continue to be in use for some time, but any technologies that can do the same job without them will immediately better meet our new requirements, hence the path to obsolescence is clear.

[Ben1445]

Demo Le Mans lap of the GreenGT from 2016. The car that was supposed to be a Garage 56 entry for 2013. 

[Ickx]

But you start off with water.

Not really.

[Henri Greuter]

 

 

A gas filled bag is something entirely different than a storage medium that binds hydrogen and releases it controlled and according the need.

You're making the big error to compare a transportation device dat used hydrogen to create lift to a transportation device that doesn't float in the air and uses hydrogen as a fuel.

Hindenburg and other hydrogen fueled blimps didn't use the hydrogen as a fuel but as a lighter-than-air component to create lift.

 

Makes me wonder, why did you not include the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion? That was another case of an aeronautic accident involving Hydrogen. (The engines in the shuttle used hydrogen) So that would have been more appropriate than putting up the Hindenburg.

[Ickx]

To be fair, the same could probably have been said of petroleum. Yet here we are.

Quite the opposite. What made oil dominating is the easy access to energy at low price that is easy to store and handle. Add to that relatively safe an, compared to coal, kind of clean.

[FredrikB]

The petro-chemical dependent countries for economical purposes will be a bit twitchy.

 

The interesting thing is that those countries also have huge open spaces and a lot of sun.

I saw a documentary in Swedish about the UAE already being able to sell electricity from solar power cheaper than fossile based electricity.

 

Another aticle about it http://gulfbusiness....ojects-in-2017/

[Vielleicht]

Quite the opposite. What made oil dominating is the easy access to energy at low price that is easy to store and handle. Add to that relatively safe an, compared to coal, kind of clean.

I can think of more than enough oil storage fires and way too many incredibly environmentally damaging oil spills in my time to convince me that it's no plain sailing.

Edited by Vielleicht, 17 April 2018 - 06:54.

[Nonesuch]

 

That has just about nothing to do with hydrogen fuel cells. That German monstrosity was coated in flammable paint and had no business flying in a thunder storm.

 

It also had massive diesel engines, the systems of which burned for hours, and while the hydrogen did also eventually burn - it all burned up very quickly, as one would expect the substance to.

 

Hydrogen fuel cells are under ridiculous pressures. Even the slightest breach of the cell will see it dissipate into the atmosphere in fractions of a second.

 

[Kalmake]

Why is the big airbox needed? Can't be very efficient it needs much cooling?

[Nonesuch]

Good thing they have a few more years to iron out the ... details. Or the whole car, preferably.

[jcbc3]

Better?

Pininfarina H2 Speed


(not a race car, just a hyper car)

[Ali_G]

Huge unsolved issues around Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars

- How is the hydrogen produced? Electrolysis of water is incredibly inefficient. Just store the electricity used in a battery instead
- transport and storage of hydrogen. Hydrogen is very difficult to store and transport. Huge investment in global infrastructure required. Hydrogen also leaks out of containers very easily.

[HistoryFan]

what about the hydrogen car from the Dutch university Delft what was planed to be raced in a LMP3 car in Dutch prototype championship 2 years ago?

[Clatter]

Huge unsolved issues around Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars

- How is the hydrogen produced? Electrolysis of water is incredibly inefficient. Just store the electricity used in a battery instead
- transport and storage of hydrogen. Hydrogen is very difficult to store and transport. Huge investment in global infrastructure required. Hydrogen also leaks out of containers very easily.

Don't see anything unsolvable there though. Never be blinded by today's technology.

[Ickx]

Don't see anything unsolvable there though. Never be blinded by today's technology.

 

Oh it is by no means unsilvable. The problem with hydrogen and fuel cells is that for most application there is not any particular advantage with it. The fuel is difficult to store, the equipment is heavy, expensive and the efficiency is not revolutionary, 

[Brian60]

It is a solution I advocated a few weeks back for F1 to pursue. I saw a tv program that had a hydrogen fuel cell in a car powering a small combustion engine that was used to generate electricity, this went into a battery cell from where it powered 4 electric drives built into the wheels. Surely this is a technology to pursue rather than the very poor electric cars that race so far. The one drawback about the E series is swapping cars half way because the fuel cell is depleted, err that is nor racing, its an endurance as to who can drive the slowest while leading, for longest distance possible.

[Ali_G]

Don't see anything unsolvable there though. Never be blinded by today's technology.

It not unsolvable. However cars that use batteries are almost certainly going to be much more efficient at furling cars rather than hydrogen power.

This isn’t a technology issue. It’s the laws of thermodynamics. The only way hydrogen power would trump battery powered cars is if the source of hydrogen didn’t come from water. If it comes from methane, you’re just better off using the methane to power power stations that then charge electric cars. It’s simply more efficient.

[Ali_G]

It is a solution I advocated a few weeks back for F1 to pursue. I saw a tv program that had a hydrogen fuel cell in a car powering a small combustion engine that was used to generate electricity, this went into a battery cell from where it powered 4 electric drives built into the wheels. Surely this is a technology to pursue rather than the very poor electric cars that race so far. The one drawback about the E series is swapping cars half way because the fuel cell is depleted, err that is nor racing, its an endurance as to who can drive the slowest while leading, for longest distance possible.

How can a fuel cell which generates electricity from oxidising hydrogen power an internal combustion engine?

[maverick69]

Not really.

 

I thought saline water was the most efficient way to produce hydrogen for fuel cells.

 

But hey! I've been wrong before.

[Brian60]

How can a fuel cell which generates electricity from oxidising hydrogen power an internal combustion engine?

Misunderstanding?

They were using hydrogen to power an internal combustion engine (instead of petrol?) the combustion engine powered a electrical generator. They never produced electricity from oxydising the hydrogen. The hydrogen was carried as a liquid in a tank and turned to gas onboard to power the engine.

Edited by Brian60, 17 April 2018 - 11:31.

[Vielleicht]

Surely this is a technology to pursue rather than the very poor electric cars that race so far. The one drawback about the E series is swapping cars half way because the fuel cell is depleted, err that is nor racing, its an endurance as to who can drive the slowest while leading, for longest distance possible.

Good thing there's only five more races with the car swap and then it's merely a part of FE history, from next season they'll use one car for more or less the same race distance. Technology doesn't stand still.

 

It not unsolvable. However cars that use batteries are almost certainly going to be much more efficient at furling cars rather than hydrogen power.

This isn’t a technology issue. It’s the laws of thermodynamics. The only way hydrogen power would trump battery powered cars is if the source of hydrogen didn’t come from water. If it comes from methane, you’re just better off using the methane to power power stations that then charge electric cars. It’s simply more efficient.

If the application in question required a fast recharge/refuel time (as it would at Le Mans) or could benefit from not carrying around excess weight (a discharged battery), it could be a viable solution. That's why it might be worth investigating as part of a future mix, but like everything, it's not a magic bullet.

[Ali_G]

Misunderstanding?
They were using hydrogen to power an internal combustion engine (instead of petrol?) the combustion engine powered a electrical generator. They never produced electricity from oxydising the hydrogen. The hydrogen was carried as a liquid in a tank and turned to gas onboard to power the engine.

That is quite a roundabout way of powering a car. I’d imagine that simply using the internal combustion engine to power the wheels would be more efficient. You wouldn’t have potential regeneration under braking though.

[Pete_f1]

Just to point out, the Metropolitan Police in London are rolling out a fleet of hydrogen cars. Unlike battery police cars that quite a few police forces use, this will be front line response cars. Along with the cars, a network of hydrogen refuelling stations will be rolled out.

I believe it's a bit of a folly to discount hydrogen at this point in time.

[Ali_G]

Good thing there's only five more races with the car swap and then it's merely a part of FE history, from next season they'll use one car for more or less the same race distance. Technology doesn't stand still.

If the application in question required a fast recharge/refuel time (as it would at Le Mans) or could benefit from not carrying around excess weight (a discharged battery), it could be a viable solution. That's why it might be worth investigating as part of a future mix, but like everything, it's not a magic bullet.

I’m thinking more of real world usage. Advances in battery and capacitor technology could finish off this technology in the coming decade. We’re potentially looking at 5 minutes for an 80% charge using a super capacitor in the not too distant future.

The technology would work at LeMans though and in the short term is more viable than battery powered cars. I wouldn’t like to be anywhere near a car being refuelled with hydrogen though or driving a car with pressurised hydrogen in it.

[kissTheApex]

Demo Le Mans lap of the GreenGT from 2016. The car that was supposed to be a Garage 56 entry for 2013. 

Was going to mention this and another failed attempt at Hydrogen FC car for G56 around the same time. In 6 years, it may change for the better with respect to the fuel cell car, but I don’t think we’re going to be ditching the fossil fuel ICEs within the next decade, or two.

[Vielleicht]

 

[Pierre Fillon:] "We have a clear goal: from 2024 it should be possible to drive completely CO2-neutral at Le Mans — and that is only possible with certain technologies."

 I dare say that in the grand scheme of this, this is a highly significant piece of news. Possibly more so than the HFCs. 

[Ickx]

I dare say that in the grand scheme of this, this is a highly significant piece of news. Possibly more so than the HFCs.

I guess they will not accept bio-diesel or alcohols, for some well thought out reason.

[Fatgadget]

That was a 1000 years ago mate.

[ANF]

Makes me wonder, why did you not include the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion? That was another case of an aeronautic accident involving Hydrogen. (The engines in the shuttle used hydrogen) So that would have been more appropriate than putting up the Hindenburg.

Ah yes, I should have gone for Challenger instead! (The Hindenburg was just a bit of trolling. Sorry.)