RESPONSIBLE TRANSPORTATION: HOW HYDROGEN IS BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT – AND THE POCKET

Electrification of transportation is a given, but we need to look at this in a more holistic way. The starting point for the debate was reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, but we need to go further and reduce our dependence on all finite resources.

At Viritech we focus on Responsible Transportation, Without Compromise. This means developing new ways and new materials to deliver mobility solutions that are endlessly sustainable. Our vision is that in a decade our hydrogen powertrains will be driving vehicles designed for a 30-40-year service life, manufactured across the world in micro-factories from abundantly available fully recyclable materials, powered by green hydrogen, made from water, sunshine, wind and waves…

BEV Trucks Will Never Reach Cost Parity With Diesel

It is widely believed that battery electric vehicles will steadily come down in price until they are comparable to petrol or diesel-powered ones. However, Daimler Trucks has warned this week that battery electric trucks will never reach cost parity with diesel competitors. Speaking to the Financial Times, the chief executive officer of Daimler Truck, Martin Daum said,

“If you take the entirety of engine, transmission, axle, tank system, cooling, we have a maximum of about €25,000 [of material in a combustion engine truck].”How much battery do you get for €25,000? Even if [battery costs fall to] €60 per kilowatt hour, and I need 400 kilowatt hours, then I need €24,000 alone for the battery cells [in a single truck]”.

This provides a necessary corrective to the argument that batteries, like microchips, will always get cheaper. Over half the cost of a battery is in the raw materials and, as demand for raw materials goes up, prices go up, not down. Currently, battery packs cost around $130 per KWH, and are expected to stay above $100 for at least two years, according to BloombergNEF, a widely quoted analysis firm.

This is encouraging Daimler to take more interest in hydrogen fuel cell trucks. In the same interview Daum said, “In the fuel cell, we have far less rare raw material and we don’t compete with millions of passenger cars for the same material.”

We Need To Look At The Green Energy Question In A Different Way

In fact, this raises the question of whether we need to look at the whole green energy question in a different way. We tend to think of the issue being about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, but a more sensible way of looking at it would be about reducing our dependence on finite resources. Replacing oil with lithium is good, but replacing oil with renewables would be a lot better.

Anything that has to be mined or refined involves a major environmental impact – for example, one tonne of copper requires 100 tonnes of ore to be mined and processed. It also has a major political impact – like oil, commodities for batteries are often concentrated in places we would prefer not to be dependent on.

The paradox of renewables is that, being truly global, they can be local – there is no need for the UK to import wind energy from distant autocracies. Coastal countries have direct access to wind and hot countries have direct access to solar: if you think of Europe, most countries fall into at least one of those two camps.

Engineers like to talk of hydrogen as an “energy vector” – in a fuel cell, you don’t burn hydrogen, but convert it into electricity. Hence it is not really a fuel, but a way of carrying energy. In that sense, a tank of hydrogen is not so different from a battery, which is a way of storing energy. The difference is that the hydrogen tank needs a lot less energy to make, and the fuel cell using the hydrogen needs far fewer finite resources than the battery pack.

This means that the price of hydrogen really can only go down, because the raw material (wind or solar energy) is free. The cost is in converting that energy to hydrogen, which depends on wind turbines and electrolysers. The cost of both of these products is mostly the cost of manufacturing – as we make more of them, the manufacturing cost falls. Apart from a few rare-earth metals in the motor, a wind turbine needs almost no raw materials that are in short supply or have political implications.

We Can Reduce Battery Size By 90%

Fuel cell vehicles will not eliminate the battery altogether, but Viritech’s unique architecture, incorporating the fuel cell and the battery as dynamic elements of the powertrain, can reduce battery size by 90%. That massively reduces the amount of lithium that has to be mined from Chilean deserts or nickel that is currently sourced from Russia.

We need to look at electrification in a more holistic way – how do we reduce the overall environmental impact of generating power for vehicles? Fuel cell vehicles have a smaller environmental footprint than battery-only vehicles, and it is the overall footprint we need to focus on.

We’d love to hear what you think, get in touch info@viritech.co.uk

#hydrogenpowertrains #FCEV #responsibletransportation #cleantech