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This is at 66.9 km/h (40 mph) in order to greatly increase its range due to lower drag compared to normal highway speeds.
As a comparison a Tesla Model 3 got 975km (606 miles) at 40 km/h (25 mph) [1]. I can't seem to find any range tests at a similar speed as the Nexo.
I found an EPA dyno test for the Model 3 at 77 km/h (48mph) for 708 km (440 miles).
The Nexo and Model 3 have similar dimension and weight and price, while the Nexo advertises 380 miles vs 353 miles.
It doesn't seem like current fuels cell have much of a energy density / range advantage even though hydrogen itself is much more energy dense, the fuel cell weight and efficiency and high pressure liquid hydrogen tanks must be accounted for.
Also fuel cell cars seem to use a buffer battery and have lower power output than BEV's as current fuel cells can't output as much burst power and can't store power from regenerative braking with out a battery somewhere.
Pretty skeptical about hydrogen fuel cells compared to the continued advancement in battery tech.
1.https://electrek.co/2018/05/27/tesla-model-3-range-new-hyper...
Edit: very good efficiency comparison of hydrogen vs batteries by Volkswagen, which to me shows the biggest issue with using hydrogen in cars the "well to wheel" efficiency:
https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2019/08/hydroge...
> This is at 66.9 km/h (40 mph) in order to greatly increase its range due to lower drag compared to normal highway speeds.
> As a comparison a Tesla Model 3 got 975km (606 miles) at 40 km/h (25 mph) [1]. I can't seem to find any range tests at a similar speed as the Nexo.
> It doesn't seem like current fuels cell have much of a energy density / range advantage even though hydrogen itself is much more energy dense, the fuel cell weight and efficiency and high pressure liquid hydrogen tanks must be accounted for.
I'm curious to know how you come to this conclusion? I don't know much about aerodynamics other than at, as a first order approximation, drag is proportional to the SQUARE of the velocity. Driving 887.5 km at an average speed of 66.9 km/h is, afaict, much more impressive than driving 975 km at 40 km/h.
>It doesn't seem like current fuels cell have much of a energy density / range advantage even though hydrogen itself is much more energy dense, the fuel cell weight and efficiency and high pressure liquid hydrogen tanks must be accounted for.
Hydrogen has a better gravimetric scaling than batteries - as stored energy increases, the fixed weight of the fuel cell is amortised over more energy and the weight of high pressure tanks goes up with their surface area while the energy stores goes up with volume.
So for applications where you want to store a lot of energy and are weight but not volume limited, hydrogen might make enough sense to pay the efficiency penalty required to turn electricity into hydrogen and back again.
That's why it makes more sense for big trucks than it does for passenger cars where volume limitations matter a lot more and where total energy is less.
Hydrogen needs to be a game changer to command a redirection of investment and effort for consumer transportation.
Even if it offers 20% better range and some allegedly better refuel experience (H2 people keep handwaving that as "solved"), that wouldn't justify the gigantic infrastructure switchover cost.
Electric vehicles can use the grid. That's a massive advantage for infrastructure readiness and scalability, even if the current grid isn't ready for full EV consumer transportation.
EVs can use home solar as well. Easily scalable, adds redundancy and alleviates load to the grid.
H2 would need a huge buildout of hydrogen generators, transporters, refuelling. EVs are so far ahead of all of that.
By the time any significant H2 infrastructure was out there, it'd be 10 years even if they secured 100s of billions in financing yesterday.
In 10 years, the alternative energy / solar / home solar / grid / battery / storage economic proposition is likely to be 50% cheaper in real dollars, and possibly even better.
It's the same problem nuclear faces.
Sure, throw some money at places like aviation or maritime shipping.
But it's just distraction, because I think the oil industry knows that the hydrogen will come from natural gas for the foreseeable (10-40 years) with some "future switchover" to "green hydrogen".
Green hydrogen smacks of "clean coal". Granted the physics/engineering for it are a lot more realizable.
But everyone should see that for the shell game it is.
Hydrogen makes much more sense for container ships, where electric batteries can't be made practical, but hydrogen storage can be scaled easily.
And a Hyundai Kona Electric did 1000km as well, probably at ridiculously low speeds as well :) ( https://thedriven.io/2020/08/14/three-unmodified-kona-electr... )
The one thing H has going is quicker fills at the pump, right?
Being low on joules is a pain when you're going to work in the morning, but it's a royal pain if you have to wait a half hour to charge.
The Nexo is much less aerodynamic than the Model 3. One is an SUV/CUV, the other is a low sedan which looks like wet poop. The Nexo has more frontal area and a higher CD. And the Tesla is known for rigging its EPA tests for higher, but illusory, numbers.
Since “tank” isn’t a unit of measure, I suppose anyone could trivially break the record with a larger tank.
From the article:
> The Nexo consumed 6.27kg of H2
For comparison with the other production H2 cars:
Toyota Mirai: 5.6kg
Honda Clarity: 5.0kg
Seems like a promising technology. My understanding is that the current blocker is infrastructure. It’s hard to pressurize up to 10,000 PSI, so many facilities are only able to refill to 60-80% capacity.
Beyond the missing expensive infrastructure, the big problem is energy efficiency. Moving forward, we have to switch every energy production to renewables. But for the same amount of electric energy produced, an electric car gets about 3x the mileage than producing "green" hydrogen and powering fuel cell cars with it. Hydrogen means at least 3x the electricity cost and for many years to come, we are going to struggle producing enough clean electricity in the first place.
Also the infrastructure for electricity basically is there, mostly needed are plain outlets at all long-term parking spots. And of course, one can charge an electric car from your own solar.
> anyone could trivially break the record
"Make it bigger" doesn't really work in cars, otherwise range anxiety wouldn't exist as a concept.
The record still makes sense because the Hyundai Nexo is commercially available and it's not a prototype with a comically-large just for the record tank.
Sounds like you're talking about distribution infrastructure, which is true but in my mind the biggest issue is efficiency. Storing and using H2 isn't very efficient, and current production techniques for H2 emit as much or more carbon as Diesel.
10,000PSI hydraulics are rapidly becoming cookie cutter commodity parts. Once you have the supply chain for all the little crap that nickles and dimes you the rest is a lot cheaper. Having industry expertise at working at those pressures really has a huge multiplier effect on everything else.
Building a system to plumb stuff from A to B at a pressure nobody uses is expensive. Calling up a sales rep and asking for slightly modifications on an existing product line so it can be used with your product is pennies by comparison.
Gack... one of my pet peeves: 90% of my friends compare car millage in terms of "how much money I spend to refuel", completely ignoring:
1. Significantly different tank sizes - 53L to 70L on regular cars.
2. Different prices of gas (suburbs vs downtown, 87 vs 91 octane, etc)
3. Different habits - some refuel at 1/3 left, 1/4 left, 50km left, yellow light on, needle at the end of the gauge, etc
It drives me absolutely bonkers banana berserk, but... nothing I've been able to do so far :-/
The amount actually traveled on a single tank is indeed meaningless - Teslas can go a thousand miles if you go up a mountain, end up at 10% battery, then charge to & past 100% on the way down the mountain via regen. Improving overall efficiency should be what is strived for.
FWIW: the material challenges for hydrogen are such that I do not think that it will ever be a mainstream storage medium for vehicular use (it's not a fuel, it is a battery).
- hydrogen embrittlement
- leakage from whatever container you plan to use
- very low activation energy -> always danger of explosion
So it's a great thing in the lab and to get subsidy for but it sucks for large scale deployment, and deploying it in devices that have a long projected lifespan has its own special class of problems.
Plenty of manufacturers have already had hydrogen test fleets and as far as I'm aware all but a few have been abandoned.
Hydrogen fuel is still a fossil fuel byproduct right? I’m not sure what the point of this is. It sure doesn’t seem like a green technology at this point.
> has since taken the Californian market by storm, with approximately 400-500 units running in the sunshine state right now.
Um, "taken by storm" is a bit of an overstatement. 500 out of 14 million? https://www.statista.com/statistics/196010/total-number-of-r...
It doesn't say anything about the size of the tank, which seems a little weird. Technically you could break that record by adding a bigger tank.
Does anyone know what this means: "It purified 449,100 litres of air on the journey – enough for 33 adults to breathe in a day."
Why is the car purifying air while driving? Is this a side effect of hydrogen powered cars?
> “I was constantly checking the Nexo’s efficiency readout to maximise the distance I was getting per kilogram of hydrogen. I found that by using techniques from rally driving, such as looking as far down the road as possible, as well as tips I have learned from my dad for driving a truck efficiently over long distances, it’s actually possible to go way beyond Nexo’s official range.”
Anyone have some insights on this? The efficient driving tips that is?
What is the appeal of a hydrogen car vs an eletric car? The range appears to be similar, but being able to charge at home is so much more convenient.
In hydrogen versus electric, it would seem that hydrogen offers way more to the auto and fuel industries in terms of ability to extract ongoing payments out of consumers for parts, single source or limited / controlled source fuel, and maintenance of a large complex system of high tech components.
It also ties the consumer to that fuel system with no other options. You can’t, in other words, fill up at home in your parking spot.
The potential for auto parts profits is high because hydrogen, being the smallest molecule, is notoriously corrosive as it is able to leak through almost any material. And able to bond with many molecules, causing corrosion. So I would expect a lot of degradation over time.
So I guess that’s why Toyota loves this: ongoing parts sales. As a former Toyota owner, I loved the reliability at first, but it was not absolute, and the parts cost for repairs started approaching the cost of car payments as the car got older.
Keep this in mind when thinking about hydrogen: https://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01w.shtml
I remember back during the 2008 oil crisis, I was on a forum where we were talking about energy and the alternatives to oil and the consensus was that hydrogen was a lot less efficient than batteries. You had to store the hydrogen in compressed cylinders, it's flammable, you need expensive catalysts in fuel cells to transform it, though hydrogen is light, it takes a lot of volume to store it because it doesn't compress very well, refueling is complicated. There are also losses at every step of the energy pipeline: electrolysis, pipelining, compressing, decompressing, running it through fuel cells ,etc. It's much more efficient and less complicated to just use electricity and batteries.
Archive link if it goes down again (seems OK right now, but seemed to be swamped just before):
Hydrogen is the future of electric transportation!
Imagine you are driving and you have several cartridges of magnesium hydride and when you pass by a refueling station a drone catches up with you and swaps nearly-depleted cartridges one by one all while you continue going! How cool is that! B-)
And then you can refuel by stuff that you produce yourself using photo catalyst solar panels in your back yard.
Tangentially- Korean taxi driver talking about using a hydrogen Nexo around Seoul: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210405000819
It's not quite clear from the article, but is this a stock Hyundai Nexo or was it modified to add more fuel tanks? The stock range of the car is 413 miles or 664km, so how exactly was this new record achieved?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the issue with hydrogen the supply chain? I believe the overwhelming majority of hydrogen is currently produced from fossil fuels.
> As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation of methane, and coal gasification. [1]
Didn't the Gumpert Nathalie [1] already break the range record beyond 1000km?
Granted, their cars use methanol "fuel" to bind hydrogen, but the car is all electric and uses fuel cells to produce electricity.
For anyone asking whether this is legit: Gumpert was the inventor of AWD/quattro and a long time the Audi Sport engineering lead.
Let's appreciate the achievement rather than
comparing instantly with electric or Tesla.
Would be interested to know what makes nexo different to be able to break the record.
I'm more interested in what Toyota is doing with hydrogen powered race cars.
https://jalopnik.com/this-is-what-toyotas-hydrogen-combustio...
There is a great concern about the safety of Lithium batteries because of the fire hazard, yet we are pursuing a much more dangerous technology with Hydrogen with very little gain in performance. Also, it still takes a significant amount of energy to produce the hydrogen.
I've always hoped hydrogen would have taken off. Since you can convert gas engines to run off of hydrogen it would be easier to move the market to hydrogen than electric. Allowing us to build out the infrastructure first, then transition vehicles over to fuel cell.
Just to put this into context, my 2003 diesel car with a 68 litre tank can drive ~7-800km.
Editor’s note: there is no naturally occurring source of hydrogen and no established industry of producing hydrogen from renewable energy. It’s made from oil and natural gas and exists purely by the grace of the carbon industry.
Great. Now you just need to find an economic and clean way to make large amounts of hydrogen. Nuclear power is probably the best option given that you can use it as a source high process heat source.
Isn't driving on a tank full of hydrogen like super dangerous?
Off by a magnitude, but can you see any future where entry level car manufacturers like Hyundai and Toyota will snatch the market from the German auto makers?
For everyone here comparing Teslas range to this:
It takes less than 10 minutes to fill a tank with hydrogen.
It takes 40+ minutes to fill a Tesla to 80%.
Is hydrogen escaping into space something we should be legitimately concerned about if it became mainstream?
Teslas run on coal power if you’re charging from your outlet
887.5km = ~551.46 miles
how do you convert oil into hydrogen?
551.47 miles
I have an acquaintance who has made a substantial fortune from energy focused startups (including a battery tech one) and is now working on another hard tech startup and they are very critical of hydrogen as a fuel. I’ve had superficial conversations with them about it but could never get a sense of their fundamental arguments. Is hydrogen a non starter or are they just protecting their investments with FUD?
Hydrogen is not dead, all the hate it has been getting from Musk made people leave the space. If somebody bets on it right now it seems like a better bet compared to say 5 years ago.
The whole promotional attitude towards EV will cause an EV winter when the rubber meets the road and things aren't as rosy as advertised. Mark my words. It's already happening .
Hydrogen car is much less comfortable and more expensive to use than electric car - few refueling stations, much lower energy efficiency.
Maybe for long distance transport hydrogen makes sense, because you can have a big tank and CO2 impact is lower than gasoline/diesel, but this will require incentives/subsidies from the state to make economic sense.