The Real Reason Tesla Doesn't Make Hydrogen Powered Vehicles!

let's talk about hydrogen as it applies to powering electric cars you've probably heard that elon musk is no fan of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles he's gone so far as calling them mind-bogglingly stupid and the majority of automotive industry folks seem to agree with elon on this one which is a rare occurrence as we've hardly seen any hydrogen powered cars come to market i think you can count all of the models released so far on one hand but we also know that there are some problems with battery powered cars and we know that those existing struggles are actually getting worse right now by that we mean the metal commodities necessary to make lithium-ion batteries like nickel cobalt aluminum manganese and of course lithium which have always been expensive and hard to come by but over the course of the past six months the market for these commodities has gone absolutely berserk and that's casted a bit of a dark cloud over the electric vehicle industry it's a question of whether or not this transition is actually going to be sustainable or even possible and that's got us thinking is hydrogen actually that stupid i mean it is the most common element in the known universe it would be a real cosmic insult if we couldn't make it work as a fuel source and if not then why exactly is that more importantly can hydrogen be made less stupid to the point where it actually becomes a reasonable choice let's try and find out okay so we all know that hydrogen is a highly combustible fuel they used liquefied hydrogen as a rocket fuel for the space shuttle and just look at what happened to the old hindenburg but there is no combustion involved in a hydrogen-powered vehicle at least not if everything works properly a hydrogen-powered car stores gaseous hydrogen in a high pressure tank that hydrogen is then released into a fuel cell when the car is switched on and that's where the energy stored in hydrogen is converted into electricity a hydrogen fuel cell is pretty similar to a battery in its structure and function it has a cathode and an anode with an electrolyte separator in between and it splits out electrons that travel through a conductive circuit between the two sides so the hydrogen gas enters the cell at extremely high pressure through the anode or negative side where it encounters a catalyst separator made of platinum now when the hydrogen molecules or h2 encounter the platinum they will have a tendency to split and release their two electrons at this point the free electrons will travel into the conductor and through the electrical circuit that powers the vehicle while the remaining hydrogen ions are pulled through the electrolyte separator and into the cathode or positive side of the cell when the hydrogen electrons and ions meet up again in the cathode they will combine with oxygen molecules and create h2o or water that's a lot of science magic happening in there so let's just backtrack for a second hydrogen enters the cell through the anode or negative side oxygen enters the cell through the cathode or positive side the hydrogen has to travel from the anode to the cathode but in order to do that it has to be split into electrons and ions by reacting with platinum the electrons can only leave the anode through the conductive circuit and that creates the electricity but the ions have to also leave the anode and they can only travel through the electrolyte separator and when everyone finally arrives on the cathode they meet up with oxygen and form water which then exits the cell as a harmless by-product now that all sounds pretty cool right so why does elon musk think it's so stupid to really understand the process we've got to pull back and see the bigger picture where does that hydrogen that powers the fuel cell come from hydrogen is the most common element in the entire universe it is number one on the periodic table it is the lightest element in existence it is colorless odorless tasteless and non-toxic while also managing to be highly combustible hydrogen is an amazing thing and it is everywhere but there is no pure hydrogen in existence on the earth hydrogen atoms are clingy and they are only ever found stuck to other elements like oxygen so in order to create the pure hydrogen gas necessary to power a hydrogen fuel cell we need to separate hydrogen from something else and that's where the big problems lie one way that we can do this is through electrolysis which is basically just using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen so that they can be collected separately the device that accomplishes this is called an electrolyzer and it more or less works in the opposite process to a fuel cell and if the electrolyzer can be powered by renewable electricity like from a solar panel or windmill then the hydrogen becomes a zero emission fuel referred to as green hydrogen the other way to obtain pure hydrogen is by extracting it from a fossil fuel like natural gas this is called steam reforming what they do is combine methane gas with steam in a heated high pressure environment and then they introduce our old friend the catalyst which causes the mixture to break up into hydrogen and carbon monoxide the hydrogen is stored and the carbon is released into the atmosphere which we all know is bad this is referred to as gray hydrogen and naturally green hydrogen is much more expensive to produce than gray hydrogen so which method do you think the majority of producers choose to make hydrogen yeah they use the bad one for about 95 percent of all hydrogen gas creation which is not surprising but still disappointing anyway following the creation of that gas it then needs to be compressed chilled and transported to a hydrogen filling station which again requires a large amount of energy generated by fossil fuels now don't worry i'm going to get why batteries also suck we're not ignoring that we're just doing one thing at a time so let's cut to the chase and identify the biggest issue with a hydrogen powered vehicle and that is efficiency we have energy in and energy out but how much gets lost along the way there's going to be energy lost in the production of gas in the transport and storage and in the conversion of hydrogen to electricity in the case of our hydrogen fuel cell the energy input starts at the creation of the gas and the energy output is the power to the wheels of the vehicle the loss in between averages about 62 percent or more in the worst case scenario it could be as much as 78 loss so that means the efficiency of hydrogen power in a vehicle is somewhere between 38 and 22 percent and that's not good but it's still better than an internal combustion engine which has an efficiency as low as 13 but these fuels both pale in comparison to the efficiency of a battery electric vehicle which achieves an efficiency of between 73 and 80 percent and that is the reason that elon musk thinks hydrogen fuel cells are mind-bogglingly stupid because elon is obsessed with efficiency it is the driving force behind everything that tesla does every move that they make is done to increase efficiency so that settles it right hydrogen is stupid and batteries are the superior power source well it's not that simple there's actually a laundry list of pros and cons attached to both sides so we know the bad part of batteries is the ingredients required to make them require a lot of mining and processing that means digging giant holes in the earth and then spewing out a bunch of toxic chemicals it's like sucker punching the environment and then kicking it while it's down not cool then there's the whole manufacturing side of things also using a ton of energy and producing a lot of toxic crap as a result and the end result is a lithium-ion battery cell that is only going to work at its optimal level for a few years and then get progressively worse until we throw it in the garbage and buy a new one that's the pessimistic case at least though unfortunately for now it's also fairly realistic but things can and probably will get better we are developing more sustainable battery chemistries like lfp that rely a whole lot less on rare metals we're figuring out how to recycle battery cells at a large scale and create a more closed-loop cycle we're powering more of our resource extraction and manufacturing industry with green renewable energy so batteries aren't great but they can and are getting better they still have a lot of room to improve over on the hydrogen side there are also some ups and downs so we know that through a combination of electrolysis and renewable energy we can create green hydrogen which is awesome but electrolyzers and fuel cells don't exactly come cheap in terms of environmental impact remember about five minutes ago when we mentioned the platinum catalyst in the middle of the fuel cell yeah turns out that the device is necessary to create hydrogen gas and to turn it into electricity still require rare earth metals and platinum group metals to work so mining and resource extraction is still going to be a thing the environment still gets curb stomped but that doesn't mean that green hydrogen is a lost cause much the same as batteries people know that there is room for improvement and they are working hard to make things better more efficient hydrogen electrolyzers are coming and more renewable energy sources like solar and wind farms are coming to power them and eventually this will become the cheaper method to produce hydrogen and therefore the most popular as well so if hydrogen isn't totally stupid and batteries aren't totally perfect then which one is better well because only the sith deal in absolutes we don't actually have to just pick one side or the other we can use both technologies to their individual strengths for mass-produced personal vehicles yeah batteries are most likely going to be the best option the massive lead in efficiency and the convenience of drawing energy from the grid is exactly what we need for consumer-grade electric vehicles sure you can refill a hydrogen car in about five minutes while right now fully charging a battery ev takes 45 minutes or an hour but that would require finding a hydrogen filling station which might range somewhere between difficult and impossible depending on where you live while electricity is literally surrounding us at all times already there's no sense in tearing out gas stations just to replace them with hydrogen stations or replacing gasoline tanker trucks with hydrogen tankers we already have an electrical grid just plug in your car all it requires is some pre-planning and some patience and you can drive anywhere you want on the other hand hydrogen is very useful for heavy-duty and commercial vehicles because you can store more energy in a hydrogen tank than in a battery and you get that fast refill so for industrial machines that expend massive amounts of energy hydrogen fuel cells are likely the best solution they've already done this with some forklifts and it's been working out great hydrogen is also a very good solution for long-haul trucking again the combination of longer range and faster refilling is going to make the difference between a diesel-powered semi and an electric semi basically negligible so you're probably wondering why is tesla making a battery powered semi again this isn't about absolutes it's about efficiency tesla already makes batteries tesla does not make hydrogen fuel cells tesla already has electric superchargers and they do not own any hydrogen filling infrastructure it wouldn't make sense for the company to develop and implement an entirely new technology when they already have a system that works perfectly fine the tesla semi will have the same guts as any other tesla vehicle same battery cells same motors same electrical architecture just more of them and scaled up to a larger size that's efficiency sure the tesla semi will never get as much total range as a hydrogen-powered semi-truck could but that doesn't make it useless it just makes it limited and that's not the end of the world that's perfectly fine so did we answer the question that we set out for at the beginning i'm not sure but it's really about the things we learned along the way but after this entire video how do you feel about hydrogen power do you think it's stupid like what elon says or could there be a use for it in the future let us know your opinions down below don't forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it that is so important for getting our content out to more people if you enjoy the content then you'd probably also enjoy our weekly newsletter so sign up with the link down below at the teslaspace.com a huge thank you to all of our patreon supporters who are listed on the screen now you help us make the best content we can and we really appreciate it thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: The Tesla Space

Views: 253,183

Keywords: hydrogen, hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen powered cars, tesla, hydrogen tesla, hydrogen engine, elon musk

Id: sSexr90TIfc

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2022