Have you used a vehicle powered by natural gas? I have. For safety reasons, in many places you have to get out of the vehicle while it is being refuelled (the cylinder gets really hot!). And that is a change from your 50+ years driving habit. It also takes longer than a comparable gas pump (even if it is measured in single digit minutes). The gas gauge also reads differently (my guess is due to pressure decreases as gas is consumed).
You can't really expect to radically change tech and have the entire experience be the same.
Not to mention that the only thing preventing one from filling up a tank the way they do with gasoline is battery technology. If they are improved (graphene capacitors?), almost nothing needs to change in the grid.
[EDIT: I am comparing the hydrogen gas stations (which are so rare that might not even exist) to the experience of refilling a compressed natural gas vehicle. It is the closest real world parallel I can think of.]
Being able to "refuel" quickly is a pretty big plus, so in the balance it could still be better to accept some moving parts in exchange for that.
And it's easy to imagine retrofitting a gas station to all of a sudden have charged electrolyte instead of gas, but I'm sure that has all sorts of additional complexities that I know nothing about... ;)
The refuel time is dependent on the pressure in the tank. There's an intermediate tank that's used to pressurize the hydrogen before it can be pumped into the car, and pressurizing this vessel can take a lot longer when the main tank is empty. I'd say that the refueling time is only as good as petrol in the best case scenario.
With some reasonably cost effective (compared to the cost of a car) installation, electric, fuel cell, and CNG vehicles can have their "fuel" delivered right to your home in a very cost effective manner, allowing you to refuel overnight. This is a distinct advantage over gasoline & diesel that goes a long way to mitigating, and for some people completely obliterating, the disadvantage of slow "refueling" times.
They have in the sense that I go to a station and fill up then leave in a reasonable amount of time. I don't have to alter my driving habits from the last 50+ years.
The one near my home seems to work, by observing people using it (it's colocated with a gas station) pretty much just like a normal gas station. I'm sure the coupling hardware is quite special, and it might take a little longer (or not) for a similar range fuel load, but when people fuel their Mirais it's the same basic flow as with gas vehicles, pull up to the pump, hook it up, fuel, and go from a drive-in pump, not a parking space. So, it's on the same basic ballpark, UX wise, not the “well, if I was on a long trip and needed to fuel, it's okay because i’ll just time it with a meal/rest break” kind of thing that is used to justify BEV charging not being excessively inconvenient.
The more I learned about H2 the less excited I became.
The stuff literally boils out of the tank when your car is stationary. The refueling process is a weird process of suck and blow and it takes 5-10 minutes.
The fuel system needs to be adapted to handle the natural gas though. Looking around, it appears that there are vehicles on the road that can switch at pretty much the push of a button.
Propane or natural gas vehicles have great emissions profiles, but unless it's a fleet operation that runs its own filling station, you're going to get range anxiety unless there's a massive uptake.
Pressurized fuel tanks have a larger safety requirement than gasoline or diesel, too; additionally, fueling accidents tend to be much higher energy. In the US, at least, the tanks expire and need to be replaced which is often uneconomical and puts a hard cap on vehicle lifetime.
refueling time is a huge impediment. Adding tens of gallons of capacity [in this context 'fuel cell' is 'extra gas tank'] prevents tens of minutes spent at 0mph.
Those taxis usually run CNG because their country/region has access to lots of CNG (eg Phuket Thailand). I wonder if that means they have access to lots of hydrogen as well, if not, they won’t go for it.
BTW I was in a CNG taxi that had to refuel before (transferring between resort areas in Phuket), the wait was long and refueling was slow, probably because they had lots of CNG vehicles and not a lot of fueling infrastructure, and the pressure was slow for some reason. Definitely a supercharger session would have been faster.
I'm no expert but I think when cars are converted, they can run on both natural gas and on gasoline. Gasoline is used to start the car. Wouldn't that solve the range issue?
Obvious problem in USA is availability of natural gas at gas stations, but that is a chicken and an egg problem - would be solved with more demand.
After looking into natural gas vehicles, I don't see how any high pressure gas vehicle could work in the states, except through fleets.
At least natural gas had distribution already (but usually not anywhere near the pressure needed for fueling; and that compression is energy intensive!). The pressure tanks in the vehicle expire, at which point the vehicle turns into a pumpkin. At least early Mirais had 15 year tanks.
In theory, you can replace the pressure tanks, but when I was looking at aging CNG Crown Victorias (circa 2017), it was very hard to find new tanks (and many of them had been sitting for some time, so you're not even getting the full tank lifetime), or someone to install them. When I saw cost estimates, it was in the couple of thousands; not really economical when that money would get you a similar age gas car that will probably never need its gas tank replaced.
It takes like 3 minutes tops to fill up a passenger car from near 0 to 100% range. I would have to stop for gas 10 times in a single month to use 30 minutes of pump time, which, for a car with 500 mile range, would imply 5000 miles of travel in a single month, which is almost non-stop driving at 50 mph. Driving to a station is never an issue, because gas stations are ubiquitous, and found along the route you're traveling anyways.
In Brazil as well, which is where I am coming from.
I did not notice a real decrease in refuelling stops, compared to a gas vehicle. But that is subjective, I haven't measured. That might also be explained by the size of the tanks: most 'converted' vehicles retain their ability to be powered by gasoline by flicking a switch, so the tank cannot be too big and has to go in the trunk.
Almost all conversions are done to decrease costs, most frequently by taxi drivers. As you are required to do annual inspections, it drives up the costs and it is only worth it if you drive long distances in one year.
You can't really expect to radically change tech and have the entire experience be the same.
Not to mention that the only thing preventing one from filling up a tank the way they do with gasoline is battery technology. If they are improved (graphene capacitors?), almost nothing needs to change in the grid.
[EDIT: I am comparing the hydrogen gas stations (which are so rare that might not even exist) to the experience of refilling a compressed natural gas vehicle. It is the closest real world parallel I can think of.]
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