Lexus unveiled its hydrogen fuel cell concept car, the Lexus LF-FC, at the Tokyo Auto Show earlier this year, marking another major step in the inevitable market shift toward alternative fuels powering our cars. That got us thinking about alternative fuels in general, and why people haven’t seemed to be more excited for them…until now.
The Lexus LF-FC represents the carmaker’s foray into the steadily increasing push for zero-emission vehicles both in the U.S. and abroad. Courtesy of Lexus
The key to your car is an app. The app scans your face, confirming that you are its owner before it unlocks and starts your car. When it starts, the car glides to where you stand and stops, the handleless driver’s side door opening automatically. This machine appears to be the car of the future, but it is not. This car is not the next big thing.
You know the scene in fantasy movies where the ground starts lurching unpredictably and it turns out our man is actually on top of some gigantic living thing, some creature too massive for him to take on even though he is literally standing on it? That’s always kinda weird, right? Like, “SMH. This dummy didn’t even realize that was a giant monster he was on, and not just a big-ass rock.” I hate to have to tell you this, but right now you’re that dummy standing on that giant.
It’s not your fault. The internet has made us all experts at focusing on the trees while missing the forest completely, and that’s what you’re doing right now. Important is one of those words like “indie” that’s lost all its snap. A lot of the times when we say “important,” what we really mean is “interesting,” but we also understand intuitively that there is a second kind of important out there, the kind of thing whose impact in the world doesn’t depend on whether you care about it right now or not. These are things like global warming research or sustainable farming that are not important because they’re interesting; they’re important just because, well, they are.
Then there are certain things that exist within both definitions of “important” at the same time. Take, for example, whatever device you’re reading this on, that magical object that’s both little-I important and capital-I Important — that’s the kind of important that hydrogen fuel cell technology is. Self-opening doors won’t make the car of the future — the technology that powers it will. That’s the next big thing. That’s the massive living thing you’re standing on right now, and you don’t even realize it yet. But soon you will, because it’s waking up.
Let’s get some terms and definitions out of the way up top. Industry professionals refer to these cars either as FCVs (Fuel Cell Vehicles) or FCEVs (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles). Those terms are pretty much interchangeable, and they distinguish this type of car from BEVs or BPEVs (Battery Powered Electric Vehicles — more on the differences between these two types of cars later). As for how FCEVs work, brace yourself, because this part is so facepalmingly simple that when I asked experts Bill Elrick and Chris White of the California Fuel Cell Partnership about it, I felt a little dumb when I heard their answer. But here it is: You’re gonna fill the hydrogen tank in your car at a pump just like at a gas station. In fact, they’ll be at gas stations, right next to the gas pumps, until, y’know, those aren’t a thing anymore.
Courtesy
What happens next is the sciencey part, so I’ll let one of our experts, Chris White, explain it: “[The] hydrogen goes into one side of the fuel cell stack … [and] air goes into the other side, and hydrogen is naturally attracted to the oxygen in the air. To get to that oxygen it moves through a series of plates, and those plates force the hydrogen molecule to separate into electrons and protons. The protons just move right on through, but all electricity is is an excited electron … so we grab that excited electron and direct [some of] it … to the electric motor where it powers the car, but the rest of it goes inside the cabin where it runs the air conditioner, the sound system, the power windows — anything that takes electricity. When the electron has done its job, it comes back into the fuel cell stack, it meets up with a proton and the oxygen that’s been waiting for it. It makes a new molecule: water. And that’s what comes from the tailpipe of the car. It’s water so clean you can drink it.”
So, two things. First, there’s no more science. I promise. Second, how bonkers simple is that? You use oxygen to attract hydrogen, you split the hydrogen, you grab the energy that splitting hydrogen produces, then you use what’s left to make water. That’s it.
Here, look:
Courtesy of The California Fuel Cell Partnership
Or, if you want the fancier, more visually stimulating version, look at this:
Courtesy of Lexus
A battery stores electricity that’s generated somewhere else, while a fuel cell stack produces electricity inside the vehicle. So, yes, for all intents and purposes, a hydrogen car is an electric car, which means the whole controversy about hydrogen versus electric is, in some ways, a false debate.
While we’re at it, let’s deal with another misconception: that replacing a combustion engine with a fuel cell is essentially swapping one engine out for another. Anyone who tells you this is truly basic. The correct comparison isn’t the difference between one engine and another — it’s the difference between your landline (google it) and a smartphone. Because for both FCVs and BEVs, there are massive advantages to being powered by electricity.
This is where the design revolution comes in. We’ve been building cars with combustion engines ever since the Model T rolled off the line in 1908. Electric cars are inherently less mechanical, meaning that their parts don’t all need to be physically attached to each other to function. The parts can, instead, communicate electronically. If this sounds abstract, think about a landline phone. A combustion engine is the power source, the part connected to the wall, and the wheels of your car are like the receiver — they literally connect to the power source through that weird pigtail cord (just google it already). Getting rid of the combustion engine is like cutting the cord, and it has unleashed a wave of what-other-rules-can-we-break creativity among car designers who have gone low-key bananas with new cool-as-hell features.
“It essentially creates a ‘whiteboard’ start over, and [engineers] can play with [the elements of a car] in ways we probably haven’t even imagined, let alone seen yet,” Elrick tells me. So, fine, let’s get rid of the axles and put individual electric-powered motors on each wheel. Fewer friction points also means fewer breakdowns, which means lower maintenance costs. Since we now have fewer parts and we can move the fuel cell stack anywhere, let’s tuck it in a corner and make the car’s cabin gigantic, like the cockpit of a luxury spaceship. Storage space for days. And since our fuel cell stack kicks out extra electricity, why not just use the surplus to make these lil’ devils Wi-Fi hotspots? What if we plug it in every night not to charge it, but as an emergency generator for our house in case the power goes out?
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