BOSTON, MA (Siemens PLM Analyst Event), Sep 8, 2011 - For those who think Big Auto and Big Oil are hopelessly intertwined, here is a jolt. Daimler and Ford have formed a company whose sole purpose is to create a commercial automotive powerplant based on fuel cells. Fuel cells don’t use fossil fuels. They combine hydrogen and oxygen to release energy twice as efficiently as internal combustion engines.
Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation (AFCC), a Siemens PLM customer and user of Teamcenter, presented this technology at the press event. AFCC is owned by Daimler (50.1%) and Ford (30%). The company is pretty far along the road to commercialization of their product and has already achieved a significant milestone. A trio of B-series Mercedes (you don’t see these in the US) have circumnavigated the world – with nary a mechanical failure.
(image courtesy of AFCC)
The radical engines are due to be commercially available in 2015, having satisfied most criteria (power, range, reliability) except one big one – cost.
Though details of cost were not provided, so I am free to imagine that it would cost at least an order of magnitude above conventional engines, as the Prius driving/tree hugging/compost/organic eating/community gardening demographic would be certainly be within reach even at a 2X price differential.
Having demonstrated its fuel cells ability to function, job one at AFCC is now to bring down the cost. Achieving that, what’s not to like? Hydrogen fuel cells byproducts are water and heat. There are no carbon emissions. It would reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.
Am I missing something? Or are fuel cells a serious game changer?
What you're missing is that the hydrogen has to come from somewhere. We can't mine it from the Sun, it has to be produced, usually from non-renewable fossil fuel sources. That produces CO2 emissions in its own right and requires substantial energy input, which usually means more emissions.
Even assuming you have all the free green energy and raw materials you want to produce infinite amounts of hydrogen, you will then need to distribute it to the users. This involves the creation of a vastly expensive new infrastructure and expending yet more energy in doing so.
Fuel cells are interesting and due to their relative efficiency they might possibly have a place in our future. But there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Posted by: Steve Johnson | September 13, 2011 at 11:02 PM