Written by -- Shivam Verma
Is hydrogen will be the reason for the downfall of EVs? Is the hype of Lithium powered electric cars will come to an end? In this article, we will be going to discuss the answers to these questions.
Hello, friends, my name is Shivam Varma and I am an enthusiastic learner of green technology and love to research upcoming innovations in the field of green technologies and sciences.
Before diving deep into the topic, let’s first understand why the concept of EVs came into the picture when everything was going fine with Gasoline cars. The exact reason for this is Global warming. The activities of humans related to the industrial, mining and transportation domain has released that much greenhouse gases in nature due to which the heat levels of the earth is increasing drastically. The ice sheets present in the regions of Antarctica and Greenland is melting down at a tremendous rate due to the rise in temperature. If we talk about data and reports then Antarctica is losing 150 billion tons of ice per year and this rate is worst in Greenland accounting for 270 billion tons per year.
If destruction like this continues, the ice present on earth will completely get dissolved in the ocean by the time period of 600-700 years causing the sea levels to rise by 20 feet. The countries like Tuvalu, Maldives, Marshall islands, and the Gambia will completely get submerged under water. This will disturb the whole nature cycle and indirectly will destroy the natural stability on earth.
Europe subcontinent
This is the simulation image that shows the parts of Europe completely submerged (shown in colight blue), if the all ice melts are present on earth.So, to avoid such disasters we are taking several steps and EVs are the foremost one towards this.
INTRODUCTION
EVs are a great choice when it comes to the replacement for traditional gasoline cars. But their success credit goes to one person that is entrepreneur Elon musk, his sole initiative was to build an electric car so much efficient that it can overthrow the gasoline cars from the market and will meet the needs of the public, although he is quite successful with his intentions when he launched first commercialized model of electric car named Tesla roadster and today his company Tesla has dominating market share of 63.5%. They are loved by people because they are environment frienfromave no noise from the engine, less cost of charging, and are highly efficient. Tesla roadster was the first commercial model of that electric car which was powered using lithium-ion battery.
After this all automobile makers used lithium-ion batteries and started manufacturing their versions of electric cars. This is not the first time electric cars were adopted, efforts were also taken in past about this.
HISTORY
The first electric car was built by Thomas Parker in 1884 and by the end of the 19th century almost 40% of cars present in the USA were electric. He used lead acid batteries in his cars which were first commercialized rechargeable battery present. Although the business didn’t last for long and was completely devastated due to the tough competition by gasoline cars by Karl Benz and Thomas Ford.
What reasons led to the failure of electric cars in the 1900s, let’s discuss this:
1. Batteries at that time were not that much efficient and comparatively bulky in size due to which the weight of electric cars was too much.
2.Batteries were very expensive at that time and only wealthy families can afford electric cars. If we compare the price, an electric car costs around 1750 USD and a gasoline car costs just 650 USD, there is no need for a calculator to show the difference.
3.Electric cars required electricity for charging and it was present in some of the regions only, making it regional constrained and not accessible to everyone.
4.The range provided by electric cars was very less as compared to the gasoline cars at that time.
Scientists like Thomas Edison tried to solve the battery-related issue but due to a lack of technology and innovation, the research was stopped.In the 1970s Armand was the scientist who proposed the idea of a lithium based battery later known athe s Lithium-ion battery.It was first commercialised in 1991 by sony and Asahi Kasei. They used these batteries for portable devices like calculators, music players, game sets, etc. Later on, Li-on battery got adopted for electric cars.
Now you must be thinking that title is Hydrogen and the article is covering just EV and lithium-related stuff.
Now here comes the Hydrogen in the picture.
The oil crisis and environmental concerns in the 1970s sparked the idea of Hydrogen based ars, because the crisis has raised the prices of gasoline to the moon & the global warming started to affect the environment. The first hydrogen truck was invented in 1933 by Norway-based company Norsk but the idea was not supported and initially dropped due to efficiency and development concerns.
The same happened in the 1970s and the idea was sparked but again dropped. But Toyota started the development and innovation in Hydrogen fuel cells in 1992 , with continuous long research and development of over 20 years they launched Toyota Mirai,an hydrogen-based car. It was the first and most successful hydrogen-based car and sold over 21,000 units of it worldwide.
PROBLEM
EVs are good but everything has pros and cons, several problems related to EV’s are there which in turn will push public towards the Hydrogen based cars.
Let’s put some light on the issues with EVs:
1. The range provided by EVs is always anxious because it highly depends on the charging and the lack of charging stations on long highways makes it worse.
2. The battery overheating issue is common in lithium-based devices, whether it is mobile phones, music players and even electric scooters, etc, the overheating is caused due to overcharging of batteries which in turn puts the whole device on fire.
3. The Lifetime of a lithium-ion battery is not more than 8-10 years, this means that once for a car, a whole lithium battery pack needs to be replaced which will cost thousands of USD.
4. The most common problem with EVs is Charging time, on average,it takes 2-5 hrs for an electric car to get fully charged. People who are familiar with gasoline cars just hate this.
5. The production of a single Electric car releases about 17 metric tonnes of carbon into the air and gasoline cars release only about 7 metric tonnes of carbon. It takes two years of usage for EVs to become efficient as compared to brand-new gasoline cars.
All these problems will become severe day by day with the number of EVs increasing on earth.This problem can be solved by Hydrogen based Cars, but remember the sentence “Everyone has some pros and cons”.
SOLUTION
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe accounting for 70% of all gases present in the universe. But on earth only 0.1% of Hydrogen is present in its pure state, and the remaining is present in the form of chemical mixtures like water, Methane, etc.
There are several methods present for the extraction of hydrogen also called Hydrogen rainbow, but we only use the Green hydrogen extraction method because it produces net zero carbon emissions while other methods are not that much efficient.
Hydrolysis is a reaction where an electric current is used for extracting hydrogen from water.
The advantages of using hydrogen fuel cells over Lithium-ion batteries are:
1. Hydrogen engine produces water as by-product.
2. No recharging time as it requires minutes only to reload the gas in the tank.
3. Hydrogen-based cars provide a long-range as compared to Lithium-ion based cars.
4. No overheating issue.
Now the difference is clear, we can say that hydrogen cars are the best option. But still why they are not adopted?
There are some serious cons related to hydrogen-based cars:
1. The cost of infrastructure to build hydrogen power plant is very high, on an average it requires $2 million to build a single hydrogen station and for a gasoline station the cost is $50,000 & for the electric recharging station, it is $200,000, no need of calculator to see the difference.
2. The cost of hydrogen is very high as compared to gasoline like petrol and diesel, the need of hydrogen is very low due to which the price is significantly high.
3. The demand for hydrogen cars is less which in turn stops industrialists and investors to invest in the development of hydrogen Technology.
All these challenges are not that much serious and can be solved with little bit of efforts, but the most challenging issue is efficiency.The efficiency of hydrogen-based cars is 33% while the competitor holds the efficiency of 75%.
Why the efficiency of hydrogen is so low?
It is due to the extraction of hydrogen, the hydrolysis process consumes lots of energy to produce hydrogen gas, for every 100 watts of energy wasted in the extraction of hydrogen, only 30 watts of electricity is generated and 3-5 watts get lost in form of heat.Electric cars produce 70 watts of electricity for every 100 watts of energy wasted for charging.
Now you know the reason why EVs are adopted over hydrogen cars, and the decision is correct.
CONCLUSION
Although both Lithium-ion and hydrogen-based cells have some pros and cons, if improvements and developments in the method of hydrogen extraction take place, there will be again the rise of this wonderful invention.
For today’s needs the EVs are sufficient but their increasing numbers might trigger the issues we discussed above. The future of hydrogen is based on developments and innovations further, and one day it will fulfill the intention for which it was designed.
Today, most trucks are hydrogen-based because the electric concept for trucks is a big failure, even if it is made the charging time will be 4-5 days for such a big battery pack, Its usage is expanding over big vehicles like carriers, trucks, etc.
The fight between EVs and hydrogen-based cars will be interesting to see.
Lithium batteries and hydrogen gas can be the new petrol and diesel for upcoming generations.