What the H?: Everything You Need to Know About a Hydrogen-Fueled Future

Your guide to the science, economics, practicality, and politics of hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles.

By the end of the decade, fuel-cell vehicles from GM, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota are due to start trickling into dealers. They’ll be reliable and versatile, though they’ll cost a small fortune, and refueling them will be difficult. Clearly, fuel-cell vehicles have a lot of  hurdles to clear as they make their way to consumers. Here’s how they’ll get there:

Pumping hydrogen and oxygen through anode and cathode channels into contact with a platinum catalyst causes a chemical reaction yielding water and an electrical current. A stack of multiple cells is required to raise the 0.7  volt per cell that’s produced to a higher, more useful voltage. Fuel cells can be up to 80 percent efficient.

The fuel-cell revolution can’t begin without filling stations, and a marked lack of infrastructure still dogs hydrogen. The old “chicken and egg” excuse seems less credible now that fuel-cell cars such as the Honda FCX Clarity are transporting folks to and from work every day [see “Fuel Cells in the Field”]. So where are the stations?

Depending on where you live, you may have to wait awhile. Five years ago, the conventional wisdom was that “hydrogen highways” would fuel the future, with stations planned along the California coast and the I-95 corridor from Maine to Miami.

Now, a new model is taking hold: building local clusters of stations to serve a metro area until the clusters merge together. Using such a plan, it’s easier to initially saturate a particular market with fueling stations, making hydrogen a more attractive option for nearby car buyers.

Where the hydrogen will come from also will depend on where you live and what resources are available. In the near future, stations will be fueling cars with hydrogen that is brought in on tankers from large reformers, much as gasoline is tanked in from refineries today. In the long term, local hydrogen-processing plants will take advantage of nearby sources and renewable energy.

Steam methane reforming separates hydrogen from a fossil fuel, usually natural gas, by heating it and exposing it to a catalyst. Natural gas isn’t renewable, but it is available domestically, and the Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that a fuel-cell vehicle running on reformed hydrogen still has half the total well-to-wheel carbon emissions of a gasoline-fueled vehicle. Reformed hydrogen also is produced on a large scale and is currently cheaper than hydrogen from other sources.

Hydrogen can also be obtained from biomass, such as agricultural byproducts, animal waste, and sewage. Using a process called gasification, the biomass is exposed to heat, steam, and oxygen to form a gas that, after further processing, eventually yields pure hydrogen. “There are landfills that are ready sources of gas that would otherwise be wasted and that can be a source of hydrogen,” says the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association’s (FCHEA) policy director, James Warner.

There’s also electrolysis, the process of separating hydrogen from water using an electric current. It sounds enticing when compared with fossil fuels and animal waste, but it has its drawbacks. Currently, electrolysis is competitive in areas of the country where electricity is cheap, but that power usually comes from coal-fired plants. Solar- and wind-powered electrolyzers exist [see illustration above], but renewable-energy costs haven’t come down enough for them to be viable.

“Once we have a market for hydrogen and a demand for it, as for the various ways of getting at it, we’ll see what shakes out in the marketplace,” says Warner. “Some of it will require some regulations. If there’s a renewable requirement, then you’ll see more of a push to have landfill gas or electrolyzed water.

Currently, the tallest hurdle facing automakers is the cost of existing technology. For example, the fuel-cell stacks used in cars up to this point have relied on platinum as a catalyst. If you’ve shopped for an engagement ring lately, you’ll know how pricey that can get.

Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have demonstrated that it’s possible to substitute more-common materials such as iron and cobalt for some of the catalyst, and ­scientists at Case Western Reserve ­University have developed a carbon nanotube catalyst that’s 650 times cheaper than platinum. Recycling catalysts may bring down costs even further, though automakers aren’t yet talking dollar amounts.

Mercedes is also looking at compressing hydrogen to more than 10,000 psi so that more fuel could be stored onboard a vehicle, with advanced lithium-ion batteries for additional energy storage. With such improvements, Dr. Herbert Kohler, Daimler’s vice-president of future mobility, estimates that upcoming vehicles could have ranges topping 600 miles.

There are additional efficiencies to be gained from refining the stack architecture. Already, the DOE estimates that the cost to build an automotive fuel cell has come down 30 percent in the past three years and 80 percent in the past decade. At the same time, durability doubled­—but it needs to double again. Today’s fuel-cell vehicles are expected to run for at least 2500 hours (about 75,000 miles), and that’s not good enough. “We still need to be at 5000 hours to compete with other technologies,” says Sunita Satyapal, the DOE’s fuel-cells program manager.

Toyota hopes to sell a hydrogen-powered sedan for $50,000, less than half of what its FCHV-adv prototype vehicle currently costs to build. Although technology advances might bring down costs eventually, real short-term savings will come from volume production, according to the FCHEA. Since fuel-cell cars have no existing parts-supply chain, even production cars like the FCX ­Clarity can’t take advantage of volume pricing. The hope is that manufacturers can install fuel cells in high-end vehicles to early adopters, thereby minimizing their losses. “We might end up with a luxury-like price point, and the market will respond to that, while at the same time, we ramp up the volume,” says Steve Ellis, Honda’s manager of fuel-cell ­vehicle sales.

Starting in 2008, Honda began a limited lease program for 200 hydrogen-fuel-cell FCX Clarity sedans. Ultimately, 24 customers in Southern California paid $600 per month for a three-year lease. As those leases have ended, Honda has re-leased some of the cars to customers and dissected the others for research. Here’s what the company learned:

FCX Clarity drivers commuted over short distances throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties without difficulty (Honda claims the FCX has a 270-mile range).

The lack of infrastructure was a major inconvenience for lessees who didn’t live by one of California’s seven hydrogen stations. The stations are all near Los Angeles, effectively tethering the cars to a 150-mile radius.

Drivers averaged 12,000 miles per year. One early lessee just passed the 36,000-mile mark.

Dealerships that lease the FCX Clarity go through rigorous training to educate customers. “These salespeople are being asked questions they’ve never been asked before,” says Honda’s manager of fuel-cell-vehicle sales and marketing, Steve Ellis.

Automakers and infrastructure builders agree that one way to lower costs in the short term is through government intervention. In the U.S., though, that seems unlikely.

With Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Obama administration moved quickly to put all its eggs into the battery basket and repeatedly tried to slash fuel-cell funding, but those cuts have so far been largely overturned by Congress.

The focus on battery technology seems shortsighted to hydrogen proponents. “These are complementary technologies,” says Honda’s Steve Ellis. Tech developed for the FCX, for instance, is now being deployed on the Fit EV. “You could almost say fuel-cell electric vehicles have advanced battery-electric cars.”

The 2012 Senate Appropriations Bill may not contain that much money for hydrogen vehicles and fuel-cell research, but it does include language that supports validation and infrastructure. “It’s going to take a congressional push, and we’re starting to see the inklings to do that,” the FCHEA’s Warner says.

As far as infrastructure is concerned, those who are paying out of their own pockets to build stations say they could use some help while waiting for increased demand and lower-cost renewable energy.

Tom Sullivan believes in energy independence so strongly that he’s pouring the money he made from starting the Lumber Liquidators flooring-superstore chain into SunHydro, a firm that builds solar-powered hydrogen refueling stations. He thinks that targeted tax cuts would encourage entrepreneurs like him to build more stations. “You need something to spur it on,” he says. “People who are sane probably wouldn’t build a station.”

For Honda’s Ellis, it’s a practical issue as well as a political one. “These technologies strike at societal concerns,” he says. “If that’s the case, then will society help us transition?”

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