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AAH #699 - Hybrid? BEV? Hydrogen? Which Way Would You Go?
AAH #699 - Hybrid? BEV? Hydrogen? Which Way Would You Go?
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About this episode
Exploring the future of automotive powertrains, this episode dives into the ongoing debate between hybrids, battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and hydrogen technologies. Guests Mohammed Futuri from Bosch and Jason Folgelson from Cox Automotive discuss the industry's shift back towards hybrids, the challenges of infrastructure for hydrogen, and the evolving consumer preferences. Insights on the regulatory landscape, technological advancements, and the potential for e-REVs as a solution are also highlighted, making for a comprehensive look at the current and future state of automotive propulsion.
Topics:
hybrids
battery electric vehicles
hydrogen technology
e-revs
infrastructure challenges
regulatory landscape
consumer preferences
powertrain optimization
diesel engines
sustainability
TOPIC: Powertrains PANEL: Mohammad Fatouraie, Bosch; Jason Fogelson, Cox Automotive; Gary Vasilash, shinymetalboxes.net; John McElroy, Autoline.tv
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I'll online after hours is brought to you by bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your journey. Hello, Gary John, how are I'm doing well? But I
want to know which way is this industry going? Is it hybrids? Is
it plug in hybrids? Is it evs? Is it what it's going?
Like this? I think and we're going to learn more about that. Why
so because we have with us now, Mohammed, I'm going to screw up your last name and I'm going to screw up your title even more so.
This is Mohammed Vittore. That's right of Bosh. He is the director of
systems engineering for Powertrain. That's correct. Close. Yeah, Yeah, that
was perfect. Okay, that was perfect. Thank you. The title and
the name good. Okay. We also got Jason Folgelson from Cox Automotive with
us, and it's great to have you back on the show and in person here in the studio too. Even better still, thank you. Good to
be here. So, Mohammed, so with that rather long title, playing
to us, what it is that you're responsible for in what you do within that responsibility? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, there's quite a bit of
titles and responsibilities that I have had in the past few years, but currently I'm responsible for systems Engineering and our Power Solutions division. Systems Engineering is basically
the underlying support activity that we do for all of our business units that are developing the products that goes into the market. With systems engineering, we're focusing
on our combustion systems topics. That would mean gasoline, diesel, hydrogen combustion
across all of the passenger cars all the way to Class eight and off road commercial vehicles and the transition of these to the next generation of technologies after treatments and all of that. The second branch of my organization is looking into the
powertrains, optimization of the powertrains in terms of the vehicle level optimizations, So this would be what we call vehicle energy management. You're looking at the energy
flows, and energy flow is of courseful pulsion, but we have other sources of energy like heat and thermal management, which is becoming more and more interesting for battery electric vehicles. And then the third branch of my organization is focusing
on the hydrogen topics, specifically for fuel cell fuel cell stacks as well as the hygen production of the electrolyizer stack that we are entering the market. So
there's a lot of topics for us to get into here, Mahabe. What
I'm curious now is we're seeing the industry pivot back more to hybrids, and I'd love to get some of your insights of what you're hearing from your OEM customers and not just hybrids, as you know, there's various kinds of hybrids, plug in hybrids, e revs in the light. What are you hearing
from your customers and how has that changed in the last couple of years.
It has been an amazing In a couple of years, we have had a lot of things. Of course, the externalities of the COVID and all of
that. But with the Biden administration, we had major rulemakings in terms of
the legislative rules that were in the making over the past two and a half years from EPA, from NTSA, and then of course California had their rules a little bit ahead of them. All of those are finalized now and then
kind of pencils down now that you're fined until again, and that's and that's the cycle, right, But at least now, after two and a half years of uncertainty, we have something that is okay. Pencils down for now,
and in addition to that, all of the new technologies that have been now introduced, and then people are going beyond just the niche application. The
enthusiasts mainstream are trying these technologies and then figuring out what they like and don't like about them. So the consumer is also getting into the picture more from
a pragmatic perspective rather than just the brand loyalty or technology loyalty perspective. And
the last factor that is very important is the infrastructure. Right, some of
these technologies that we are talking require significant infrastructure. We take it for granted
all the gas stations that we have around the corner. Basically they didn't pop
up overnight. It took decades to get this infrastructure. So when you're talking
about some of these technologies like eves with the charging infrastructure, we are still in the baby steps and that with the low penetration of the technology might be okay, But as the penetration rate goes to a little bit more mainstream, some of the deficiencies are becoming more apparent. Let a loan some of the
technologies like hydrogen, that's infrastr structure essentially that doesn't exist for the public, So with all of that, a lot of things have changed, and then what we're seeing is that certainty in the regulation for now, it's good uncertainty or maybe a little bit of a change of mind in the market that we need to figure out. But at the end of the day, if the
goal is sustainability, we need to provide the solutions that still get to our sustainability targets, regardless of the ups and downs in the regulations, ups and downs in the administrations, and some of the cyclic consumer pendulum behavior. But
you're not simply saying it, bosh, Okay, we're all in on evs, we're all in on fill in the blank. You guys think that there
will still be various solutions. We always have said this. The end goal
should be sustainability, right, how do you get there? Our approach is
technology neutral. You need to develop technology and provide the technologies to the customers.
Our customers are the oms and the oms to the end consumers. And
this would mean that we are spending a lot of effort and money on the electrification you're over here. Every year, I think we are round four hundred
and fifty million dollars that we're still investing in the electrification. Hydrogen is something
that we are committed and we are spending a lot, but we are not pulling back from the investment of the development for let's call it. The alternative
solutions be the hybridisation. We can talk about levels of hybridization and all of
that, but this hasn't changed for us. We always kept this technology neutral
position that give us the targets performance target and let us develop technologies that meet or fulfill those targets and let the market speak for itself. How much of
your technology is focused on infrastructure? And you know, I'm just fascinated by
how bad the infrastructure is right now, especially here in Michigan for charging and also just completely absent for hydrogen. You couldn't own a hydrogen vehicle as a
consumer right now in Michigan. So are you involved in that end of it
as well or just the moving of the vehicles. I'll answer the last bit
first and then I'll come back to the first bit. In terms of hydrogen,
I do agree with that. I mean not that I agread it is
the fact right there is zero public station in not only the state of Michigan, but none of the surrounding states. What are we doing about it.
We're putting our money in our mouth. Is that means that we are entering
the production of hydrogen as we are offering our technology or know how that we have from our industrialization as well as the technologies that we have developed for fuel cell. We are deploying those in to the hydrogen electrolysis technologies that are enablers.
Basically, we are providing the stack which is the heart of the hydrogen production and we want to shift the market and we want to be part of that because I agree with you, as long as you don't have the infrastructure, the penetration will be different. The first bit, the different use cases
and different consumers would have different requirements in terms of the technology and infrastructure need.
What I mean by that is if you focus on the light commercial passenger car, regular end users, right the private users, that's a very different story compared to fleet operators for certain light duty like commercial vehicles, and then you go to heavy duty. So the solution space can also be a little
bit different because you can have captive fleets, you can have depots. You
can start with let's call it, they're the kind of the islands insulated deployment of the infrastructure. Before you get to a point that you have infrastructure around
the corner along the interstates and all, is there any move on the part of, you know, the the traditional fuel delivery companies to get involved with this infrastructure. I mean, why can't the gas companies take a look at,
you know, the real estate that they own and the existing infrastructure and say, how could we adapt this to charging stations, How could we adapt this to hydrogen fuel fueling stations? You just aren't seeing as much of that
as I would expect. Yeah, so this is a little bit. They
are working on it. What I can say is that the companies, some
of the companies want to pivot from let's say oil and gas or petrochemical to energy companies. And we're seeing this, maybe not to the point of retail,
but we are seeing upstream. My colleague Tim and I were at Sarah
Week this year and there you see really how much emphasis some of these companies, global companies are putting on the efforts to become the energy companies. And
energy can be electrons, energy can be hydrogen, energy can be the chemicals that would be the carriers of energy, and there is a lot of effort and money that is being put. Will it change overnight. No, we
are talking about, like again, decades. It took us to get here,
so I'm not saying that decades will be required, but it will require a hell lot of time and money. Let's go back to hybrids a minute.
Where do you think the industry is going to go right now? Or
are it's going to get into various different ones? But I'm wondering where you
would place your bets full strong hybrids, plug in hybrids, or increasingly I'm hearing about e rev extendard range evs or where would you place your bets or where are you placing your bets in that regard? Very good question, To
be perfectly honest with you, There is not going to be a unique solution.
There is not a silver bullet. It will very much depend on each
individual OEM, the platforms that they have developed, the capacities that they have developed, both in terms of the ICEE hypertechnology as well as EV as well as the calculations that they can make in terms of the compromises that they want to make. As an example, there are topology of hybrid that can be
more easily applied if you're taking an IC vehicle, right, So you have an IC vehicle or traditional hybrid vehicle, and you want to increase the electric range, you want to increase the performance of that, and so on and so forth. It might be easier just to take that platform. On the
other hand, if you have now the capacity of your electric vehicle platforms and you want to increase the value value proposition of that capacity that is already installed, and you want to deploy the range extenders within the same lines, you're going through a different solution. That solution or that formulation or that calculation will
be independent for each OEM. As a matter of fact. Listen, an
hour ago I had a huddle with my team and we were looking at a very specific use case of a certain OM and looking at the simulations results from our view, what would be the best topology hybrid topology solution for that company and that use case from our perspective. This week I have already had meetings.
It's a great week in that regard with three of the OEMs. Tomorrow
another OM that we are meeting, and this is the topic of conversation.
Quite frankly, a couple of years ago, we didn't have that many conversations about the hybrids. The frequency has increased immensely in the past year, year
and a half. So they were talking two years ago about electric vehicles mainly.
So if we look at hybrids and you know, Toyotas I think is on a fifth generation now of hybrid and you know clearly have the majority of sales they have, you know, a bulletproof product. Others have had them
departed from them. Do you see the opportunity for there to be further developments
that would advance the hybrid technology to make it better, to make it more efficient, to reduce emissions, to do whatever it needs to be done.
Absolutely, and this is maybe a little counterintuitive, but the improvements that we have had in BEVs is now translating to the hybrids. Interesting what part of
bev's translating to it many I'll give you a couple of examples. Let's talk
about batteries. Right at the end of the day, the hybrids that we
are talking also have batteries, and the battery technologies that are being developed in terms of both the energy density and cost of the BEVs are translating to the pheaves. Especially when you're talking about plug and hybrids with longer electric range of
the pheaves that have now somewhere between thirty to fifty kilobo hour batteries. A
few years ago, that was the battery size of a BEV, So all of the improvements that you have in the battery technology can apply. And then
this is another point that I mentioned the BEV platforms being translated to the phefs or hybrids, is that within an OEM you have different class of vehicles, smaller vehicles, larger vehicles. We are looking at the models that what if
you take the smaller size of the battery for your sedan BEV and put it on a larger pickup truck PHEV. That means that you are increasing the rate
of the production of those batteries and the costs go down, and you're deploying it for two very different vehicle platforms. The other topic that is very important
is that the developments that we had on the BEVs in terms of technology, the efficiency technologies, and we are one of the forerunners of silicon CARBI technology for example, that is being introduced in the BEVs that increases the efficiency of the power electronics of the BEVs are now translating. We're taking those power electronics
and using them in the pheaves. And lastly, at the end of the
day, it's all about increasing your efficiency or decreasing the size and keeping the same performance for the BEVs in terms of machines and machine technology. Same applies
for the peaves, and it is more critical for phebs because packaging wise, you have some further limitations because you need to package an engine and so on and so forth. So all of those improvements that we have and the BEVs
and the Williams have developed will translate not for all of the topologies, but depending on the topology of the hybrid. So when you're talking to people,
are pheaves the point of discussion. I was looking at Deloitte just to a
study that they came out with, and they're finding for twenty twenty four that sixty seven percent of people are going to buy pure ized vehicles, which curiously enough is up from fifty eight percent last year. So people are going back
to ice, sixteen percent hybrids, five percent p haves, and six percent evs. So you know, the p have seems to have some headroom or
maybe it's gotten nowhere to go because it's always been low. I think it
needs a press agent because people don't really understand pheves yet. That's what we've
discovered is we have to explain it over and over and over again. Here's
what you know. You don't have to plug this car in, but if
you do, you get the benefit of added electric range. You don't have
to go to charging stations, so infrastructure doesn't matter as much to you.
You can charge this at home. But getting consumers to understand that, it's
an educated consumer who understands it. But I don't think the average consumer does.
No, they don't. I can tell you that from firsthand experience,
So Mohammed. One of the problems with pebs, at least from a manufactor
true standpoint, is they can't seem to get the pricing to pay for the technology. Do erevs offer a cost advantage over phebs if you look at just
the components, just the components, meaning that I think of it as a chef, right, you're looking at the ingredients. It isn't the cheapest option,
which one p no ev e rev e rev. Let me put an
asterisk here. I'll come back, okay, because I think I think we
go to we have to explain to the audience exactly is, so it's like the I three, right, like the BMW I three. So an e
REV is extended range EV. You have an onboard power source. In this
case, it's going to be a piston engine because everybody, all the legacy automakers make piston engines. All it does is run a generator that recharges the
battery, so it drives like an electric vehicle, but instead of trying to store all the energy in a battery, you've got an onboard ic engine that that provides the power to run the generator, sort of like the VULT used to be, sort of sort of not directly. I think I three is
a good example Nissan ePower if you're familiar with that, right exactly, And that is and then ram charger that I think you alluded to correct If you look at the hardware, it isn't the cheapest solution compared to the alternative powertrain topologies of PV that can be applied. But what is unique about it is
that what you mentioned, you have an EV. It drives like an EV.
You have all of that instant torque of an EV, right, and then you only need it if you're running out of battery capacity. The other
point that is very important is you're talking about emissions. In most of the
topics, it's CO two emissions, which is very important, but we also need to think about criteria emissions the knox and unburned hydrocarbon. With that solution,
because your engine is not coupled to your wheels, if you will, you can control and optimize the weight that your engine is operating charge at an ideal operation exactly, but I'll make up a number two thousand rpm. You
just run it at a constant two thousand rpm. Correct, it will not
be a single point, but exactly what kills the both in terms of transience is what kills the efficiency of the emissioning. Right that when you are having
a tip in an acceleration and your engine needs to come up and then go down on the shifting gears, so you are eliminating that coupling of your wheels to your engine. And that that's the reason I'm saying that if you look
at it at a vehicle, not just the addition of the ingredients, because there is a cost of emissioning. That cost of emissioning for the Knox and
ENDMOG shows in the precious metal coding that you need to put in your catalyst, right, So this is the reason that I'm here. Catalyst would be
cheaper potentially exactly, and that is how you can justify some of the additional costs of some of the other components. And that's exactly my point when we
are saying that you need to optimize the whole system. Don't look at the
lens of your machine, your whatever E drive. Look at the entire vehicle
and see what you can optimize to deliver the performance. That's why he does
systems engineering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the reason I'm asking is,
you know, as you mentioned, Rams coming out with an extended range EV pickup truck. But I also see that E revs are the fastest growing
segment in China right now, and so that that's my question all about this.
The China story is a little bit different. At the end of the
day, technology is very similar, but where it is coming from in terms of the segment is a little bit different. In China, the e revs,
as you mentioned, are selling very in a very rapid clipped A couple of weeks ago, byd came out with the numbers of the efficiency and the range of their era. That is mind boggling. Their application is more you're
coming from the sedan side, smaller vehicle side, and how can you reduce the cost of the vehicle. The means that instead of having for those kind
of vehicles fifty sixty kilo what hour battery for a vehicle that in day to day use is only using fifteen to twenty kilo? What hours of that battery
capacity? Why do we have that another forty kill what hour that isn't being
tapped in? So it's cheaper to put an engine that is optimized and like
dialed in and then remove that battery and make it cheaper, significantly cheaper.
In the case of ram charger, it is it's the same technology, but they are looking at the performance. You're looking at the truck segment that as
a battery electric vehicle, when you go to tow, when you go to have the high power demand cases, you're running out a range, and they are providing that solution. It's still a powertrain that is identical. It gives
you all the performance of a battery electric vehicle, and in addition to that, you can get a range of a regular gasoline or diesel. And that's
the reason I'm saying it's the same technology, but the reasons and then the market segments are slightly different. So the for the user it's transparent. I
mean, if they're used to going to a gas station and pumping gasoline, that's they continue to do that with an e ref And so you know, a Jason to your point of you know, people buying Peh house in not knowing that you can plug it in or not. You know, here's a
situation where arguably there need not be a plug, right, yes, So now you're talking about the strong hybrids that don't have a plug, right, And of course the plug, the plug itself is now running the vehicle.
The plug itself is the size of the battery and that means the electric range that you need to have, right, So just rough numbers. I drive
an EV so I like and my wife and I we talk. And then
my wife is a psychologist, so not an engineer at all. I have
learned to make it a little bit simple, so very very simple. With
my car. I live in an arbor, I work in Farmington Hills.
I commute every day, and I have I have statistics that I know exactly how much energy I'm consuming. I am consuming one killo what hour to drive
four miles on average? That's an efficient EV that that's a good EV right
now. If I am driving from an arbor to Farmington Hill thirty five miles.
If I want to drive in an EV mode, that's a simple math and you need to multiply. So twelve and a half killa what hours is
the capacity that I need? Twelve and a half killo what hour cannot be
charged if you don't have the plug per se extended the EV so range extenter EV You can do that, but you're basically simplifying the equation, and it is much efficient in terms of the overall scope that you charge. You plug
it and then get the energy from the plug and then have that EV range extended through the energy that you're storing in the battery. So essentially having a
plug or not having the plug is going to be proportional to the EV range that you want to have in the hybrid that you have. Last point that
I want to mention, we started with the regulatory topics. California has been
a forefront of some of the changes the zero emission vehicle requirements that they have for the quota that the OEMs need to sell in the state of California.
And when I say California's such as California, there are other so called Section one seventy seven states that have adopted California rules, although we just saw Virginia drop out exactly, but it's roughly thirty percent of our market. There is
a requirement that the plug and hybrids in order to qualify to become a zero emission vehicle, they need to have a seventy mile electric ra and this is also the regulation is also incentivizing the OEMs to provide longer ev ranges. Where
does that seventy mile come from? Seventy miles of the sticker range is around
fifty miles of regular driving, real world driving and CARB actually California Air Resources Board when they were doing the investigations, they studied themselves. I remember they
were multiple studies. University of California Davis also did his study and they looked
and Department of Transportation has those statistics. They looked at the miles driven daily
by regular consumer in the state of California and a nation, it's around forty to forty five miles daily commute. So they wanted to go just above that.
So on average for the average user. You can have enough range ev
range in real drive conditions that you can use your ev in electric, but it does add significant cost, of course by putting in that bigger battery of course. So that and then you get back to Jason's issue of nobody understands
plug in hybrids. Yeah, no, it's it seems to me that you're
kind of operating on the opposite model of the software industry, where they're looking for the killer app. They're looking for the one solution that's going to change
their industry, and you are looking at the whole industry and saying, all right, we take this piece here, this piece here, and this piece here for this application. We take these pieces over here for that application.
So applying your technology to solutions rather than looking for a solution to your technology.
I don't know if that works. No, I see what you mean,
and I do agree with it. But at the end of the day,
consumer speaks. As an engineer, I can have that ideal solution,
but if the consumer doesn't buy it. You mentioned the study by Deloitte.
A couple of days ago, McKinsey had another study, and this was shocking that they surveyed the BEV owners and the retention rate of their next car purchase was not good. So you can have a solution, but if that solution
is not being picked up again and again by the consumer, then you have to diversify. And this is forty six percent say they want to go back
to gaslink in the United States, right, and it was almost thirty percent worldwide. But this is the dilemma for the auto industry. The REGs say
thou shalt do this, and the market, the consumers not playing along with it, at least not yet. I think that can change in the future
as BEVs, for example, get better in the like. But look,
we got to take a quick commercial break. We got a lot more to
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All right, we're back talking with Mohammed Futuri. I think I got that
right from Bosh on all different kinds of things. Let's switch a little bit
here you mentioned hydrogen for ice engine. We're starting to hear a whole lot
more about that. Intriguing because you know, the internal combustion engine doesn't generate
carbon. It's the fuel that it burns that generates the carbon. So if
you can take the carbon out of the fuel, bingo, I mean, internal combustion engines could be around a whole lot longer than that we thought and could actually be quite a good solution to reducing a carbon footprint. Well,
where do you see you going? I mean, passenger cars, I kind
of doubt it, but maybe heavy trucks, maybe trains. I mean you
filled in the blanks. Where do you say it go in terms of technology?
You describe it perfectly? Right. I have an analogy that I use
is that hydrogen is the perfect fuel. Why do you think the shuttle that
took the man into the moon used hydrogen as the fuel? Right? It's
the perfect fuel. And yes, if you have that perfect fuel with the
infrastructure all around the corner, of course, it could be an impeccable fuel, both for the fuel cell applications as well as the hydrogen engine. But
we are not there. So what we see and this is happening at a
very fast pace as well, is that the shift is more happening from the heavy duty side and then it's slowly percolating down to the medium duty. We
are actually going with our first production, the mass production program globally end of this year of this technology. It's in India and burning hydrogen in what diesel
engines, So it is the baseline would have been a diesel engine. You
need to do upgrades of that. But yes, it basically would be compression
or it is a spark spark ignition, and that's that's the beauty of the fuel. I don't want to go to the details of it, but it
doesn't matter. We wouldn't unders but I'll try to very simplify it. Hydrogen
is a perfect fuel because it has high tendency to resist out of ignition, so you cannot ignite it by compression so it doesn't knock. And it has
a very wide flammability limit and high flame speed so when you ignite it, it propagates very quickly, so you really burns cleanly, burns very quickly, very thoroughly, at very lean conditions and low temperature. So it is a
really good fuel. So spark ignition, but the base could be a gasoline
or diesel engine. For the heavy duty first applications, base are retrofits of
the diesel engine. But in the future you're going to see like optimization of
that including gas So why, I mean, I'm still mystified why everybody thinks Class eight is where you need to go with this. I mean, if
you drive a Morale the Toyota fuel cell vehicle, I mean, it is a wonderful experience. Honda just started building fuel cell vehicles down in its performance
manufacturing center in Ohio in a CRV. I mean, I can't tell you
why. And it all comes down to fueling stations. So State of California
estimates, if I've got this right, you can fulfill all the needs of long haul trucking in the state of California with about sixty five hydrogen fueling stations.
You need a minimum of seven hundred if you want to do passenger cars.
So, because by long haul trucks, they go from point A to point B, and you know they do the same routes. Every time you
put a refueling station at point B boom, you can serve us a bunch of trucks. So the government is basically saying, oh, let's spend billions
of dollars to build out the electrical charging infrastructure in the nation. But somehow
hydrogen doesn't get the same attention. I mean it does have a couple of
months ago, there was the National Strategic Energy Corridor something like that, I can't remember the exact name. Included the hydrogen infrastructure along the interstates, and
they have identified the locations of the battery electric vehicle charging as well as hydrogen refueling stations along the interstate for movement of goods, so for freight operations.
Well, you know a lot of people are working on this too. And
remember we had Larry Burns, former CTO at General Motors on this show earlier this year, and he's working with some people that are looking at doing on site hydrogen production. Fact, he's talking about Amazon at its warehouse creating hydrogen
on site and then using its trucks to deliver little canisters to your home liberating from natural gas. Is that what they were. He didn't get into the
details, but basically, so if you had a hydrogen vehicle and you had Amazon crime that they're going to come and basically have They're not going to be your fuel delivery company. They will wait, they will be they'll they'll come
to the truck and they'll give you these and you just slide them into your vehicle. So instead of running pipes all over the place with stations, they'll
they'll come deliver canisters to you. And you know, he didn't get into
it then, but I know in the past Larry Burns made the point that every building you see, every single building you see, has got water pipes in it, and you can electoralize that water. So who knows, maybe
maybe maybe we don't need the the kind of hydrogen fueling structure infrastructure that we thought we did. Maybe there's a new way of doing it. Of course,
and just a little bit putting the lens of near future, right, so not very like far fetched ideas. The colocation of the hydrogen production and
quote unquote hydrogen hubs is an idea that is happening. And I'm not saying
one hundred years from today, No, within the next few years you're going to see it. And this was part of we were engaged in lots of
Department of Energies hydrogen hubs initiative that was part of the IAJA Act, right, Department of Energy basically awarded seven projects regional projects in terms of states that are looking into the hydrogen topic. And one of the criteria for the selection
was the projects needed to have production, distribution and off take in their applications, and all of the awardees have that. We are very let's say fortunate
that Michigan, as part of the Midwest also is one of the awardees that is going through that and this is something that we are also working with our partners there and see how we can provide the technologies as I mentioned in terms of electoralizer stack technology to be able to localize and colocation of the hydrogen production.
And why BOSH is entering this we are not at oil and gas or gas manufacturer. The reason is that we're talking about if we really want to
be successful, we need to go from scales of that you have one off quote unquote handbuilt plant to a plant that you can have a modular design as we're discussing, and you can add those modulars skid models. Basically, right,
you have these containers that you can pop. If you need one container,
you put one, if you need two, you put two, three, and then you can scale it up very quickly without having to invest a billion dollars before you can get the first molecule. So that's fair. It.
So there are actual plans in the United States to start doing on site hydrogen production for hydrogen fueling stations. There are plans. We don't have anything
yet out there. In a few years, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it is coming. Electoralizing water correct very interesting and does the equation work out
in terms of energy in energy out compared to what compared to gasoline? Ooohed
gasoline? Certaintly. I thought you were going to say compared to electricity because
electrolyizer. So electrolysis is basically you have the electricity. Rather than using the
electricity, you're using that electricity to generate hydrogen. And then what you can
do with that hydrogen You can use it in a fuel cell to generate electricity.
And people might say that, why am I doing that? The reason
for it is that we want to be sustainable. Sustainable means that we want
to get the sun and wind to produce our energy. This afternoon is a
great wind day, and then you're going to produce a whole lot. But
these are intermittent and when you have overcapacity and you cannot use it. What
do the electrons happen? You have to literally waste them now because your grid
cannot take more than what they can consume. In fact, if I can
interject, you know a lot of people dry by wind farms and they see some of the turbines are not turning, and they assume they're broken and not working. They're shut down because they would otherwise generate access electricity. And the
point here is that use that excess electricity when you cannot use the electricity, store it in terms of energy in hydrogen, and then in the middle of the night, when the wind is not blowing, you can use that hydrogen either to generate electricity again or use that hydrogen to move your car, move your goods and everything. So now I know Bosh in Germany is doing stationary
fuel cell sites for municipalities. I mean, is that a better use than
mobility? Apples to oranges. There are different technologies and they're use cases.
Right, So we see now pivoting to the mobility. We see hydrogen fuel
cell as a lynchpin of sustainable transportation, in specially in the heavy duty applications.
When you're talking about a class eight truck. Right, you need to
move goods, and every kilo, every pound of good that you cannot move because you have to put a larger battery is going to eat up your profits or total cost of ownership well or total cost of levelized cost of moving goods is going to be impacted by that. Fuel cell technology is the solution that
we see that will fit that application very well. And that's the reason.
Sorry, I just that's the reason that we're seeing that Class eight in terms of the fuel cell application globally is taken off. China is going at a
very rapid clip because they have the infrastructure too. And I bet you if
we had the infrastructure here or we will have the infrastructure and we will see that growth. Oh I was going to say, I just realized it's some
money thing. Of course, of course, of course, yeah, every
cent. So we've talked about burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines. What about
some of these other fuels, especially the zero carbon fuel that Portia is developing.
Do you see any hope for that? Very good question. I am
going to go a little bit on a detour. When we look at the
sustainability, we shouldn't look at a small lens. The regulations that we have,
they're so called tanked to wheel. They look at the energy being in
your vehicle. Basically when you're plugging your vehicle. They don't care where that
electricity comes from. They say electricity is green, the same way with the
gasoline or diesel or whatever. That's first point. If we really want to
look at the impact on the sustainability of this globe that we have, we need to look at a larger scope. We need to pan out and see
how that energy, whatever that energy is, is being produced and that vehicle that barry blah blah blah. The other impact here is that we're talking about
right now less than ten percent of sales of the new vehicles with these technologies that you're talking about. That means that it's going to take us decades to
turn over the fleet that we have today. The efuels compatible with the standards
of the fuels that we have today is a solution that potentially can be applied to every single vehicle, any vehicle that you have, how old it is, no matter what, because the emission comes from the fuel from the engine, right as you said, so, But now the butt here, why aren't we seeing it money. We still have not become to a point that
we have the cost parity between these e fuels, As you said, with the fossil fuel based hydrocarbon, do you see a glide path to get and last I read the fuel that Porsche's developing down in Chile, South America was forty five dollars a gallon or something like that. I think their goal was
to get to eight dollars in just a few years time. Do you see
a glide path to making this e fuel affordable in a short amount of time?
I am going to pivot back to the hydrogen. The reason for that
is all of the fuels that we're talking about are hydrocarbons, and you need hydrogen. So if you can scale up production of hydrogen and reduce the cost
of hydrogen, you will reduce the cost of hydrocarbon, because of course there is initial hydrogen and then you need to get through other chemical processes to hydrocarbon.
Yes, plausible reduction of those fuel costs is in the horizon, especially as we are increasing the rate of renewable energies and they're decreasing the cost of renewable energy and decreasing the cost of hydrogen. So if we look at an
internal combustion engine, right, so one alternative is the efuels, the other alternative is hydrogen. But essentially, what changes need to be made to those
engines that we have right now in order to make them capable of these different fuels? I mean, so you know, the the you know, European
Union said twenty thirty five, no more internal combustion engines. In Germany said
wait a minute, you know, we really like internal combustion engines, and so they've got to carve out that they can use E fuels in internal budget engines. But what changes need to be made at a system level? Yeah?
Yeah, theoretically for the E fuels, you don't need to change anything.
You can change because now you have a tailored fuel and you can now finagle the properties of the fuel that makes it more knock resistant, which means that you can increase your compression ratio, which means that you're going to be more efficient or higher performance. But even without doing that, most of the
fuels, and this is something that the industry is working, is blended fuels that you can blend it without having to modify the specifications, having to modify anything. So from that perspective in terms of the other side of the equation
that you asked, what it would take hydrogen to become the fuel. In
terms of let's call an engine, I'll talk about the engine, and then of course hydrogen storage is another element that I need. In terms of the
engine. The overall structure of the engine, engine looks identical. It's basically
a different cylinder head that you can put and this is fabulous work that Cummins is doing and what they're calling fuel agnostic engine that they're using literally the same production line. Your short your long block is identical, and you just put
the cylinder head for natural gas, for hydrogen for diesel, and so on and so forth. But hydrogen storage is another thing. Right, So now
for the hydrogen be it hydrogen fuel cellar, hydrogen engine vehicle, you need a hydrogen storage system. And hydrogen storage system is of course may different than
your diesel gasoline good higher pressure and different temperature requirements, things like that, pressure requirements. It's way more expensive at this point, it is, right,
you know, a gas tank, I don't know what a gas tank cost fifty bucks six right, I don't know what a hydrogen tank cost.
But it's way more than that, but it's doable, yes, And you know, we've seen a lot of people working on things. So I was
at CEES earlier this year and for Via, the French supplier company showed a rectangular hydrogen fuel tank. You know, everybody knows it's got to be cylinders,
right, and they've come up with a rectangular one. So from a
packaging standpoint, all of a sudden, just from a packaging standpoint, from costs, that solves a lot of problems. I don't know if it's going
to need to work or anything like that, but there's a lot of intriguing work being done on how you do this. But my question comes to would
you go liquid hydrogen or gaseous depends on the use case. If you're using
in a commercial vehicle that is basically running constantly, liquid hydrogen would be a great solution. The issue with the liquid hydrogen is the boil off. Hydrogen
would boil off like hydrogen is gaseous at the room temperature. In order to
have it in a liquid form, you need to cool it down and higher pressure. But no matter what, you cannot seal it that well. You
will have the boil off boiloff is not an issue if you're constantly using.
But for passenger car that you take your hydrogen vehicle in a gas in an airport and fly on vacation three weeks later when you come back, you might not not even be three weeks you know, exactly. So gaseous high pressure
hydrogen for long haul trucking, you know, or fleet operations where you're on the go all the time, locomotive right chips exactly. And we should add
another part of bosh. Rexroth has developed what they call a cryopump that can
pump in liquid hydrogen at very high speed to fill a tank in about what about the same time it takes to fill a semi with DS exactly exactly.
And we are active in that role. Thank you for mentioning that, Yes,
we are active in that role. And that's also one of the pieces
of the puzzle. And I said, for hydrogen, you need the production,
you need the distribution dispensing, and you need the off take. And
we are active in all three segments of it. So why doesn't hydrogen get
more attention? I mean, if somebody's going to talk about a alternative fuel
Class eight trucks, that's say oh, the Tesla Semi, you know.
I mean, it's never a hydrogen vehicle. It's always something that has nobody's
wearing ads for hydrogen. There's no no one's making money on it yet always,
as Mohammad pointed out, the Department of Energy is actually doing a lot of work in this regard. It's all unless you're really into hydrogen and following
what's going on, it's invisible. We hear everything about evs now we're hearing
more about hybrids and pvs and all that. We don't hear much about hydrogen.
But those in the industry working on it know that it's moving at a very fast really moving at a very fast and there is a lot of things that are happening globally and in the United States, Inflation Reduction Act has hydrogen production tax credit, right, so these are the things that it is incentivizing production of it. As part of the elements of IAJA, you had to
manufacturing tax credit. You had all of these incentives in US, and then
globally, Japan and Korea are spending a lot of money. Europe is spending
a lot of money. I hear it, I know it, but I
agree with you that that the public doesn't. Do you think that the credits
that are available are being taken by companies or our companies basically, you know, again in the automotive space, in the mobility space, saying oh, we're gonna build a battery plant. We're gonna build a massive battery plant.
Get the money from doing that, rather than doing something in the hydrogen space.
I mean, we had Charlie Freese from from GM Hydrotech on right.
I mean, if GM was really really serious about hydrogen, they wouldn't have put it over with Hydrotech. It would be part of the mothership, right.
Evs are not in a separate part of the business. They're in the
main part of the business at GM. They are, right, But look,
it's like there's multiple pieces on the board and they're moving forward and slowing down and speeding up, and there's all these different technologies and it comes back to what you know, Jason was saying. You know, there's no killer
app in this regard, Mohammad, You've been talking about this. It's a
smartasborg of things, and the consumer is going to drive ultimately what it is, and it can be you know, retail consumers like us or it can be fleet consumers, but it's all going to come down to can we afford it, does it fit our needs? And if it does, sure we'll
go buy it. But we're not there yet. For the most part,
I have a question from the consumer point of view, because this is something that I hear from consumers all the time. They want to know, I'm
driving an ice vehicle right now, but I really want to be sustainable.
I really want to have the least impact on the environment. What's my best
solution? And my answer to them is always walk. Well, besides that,
if you have to drive your car. If you have to drive a
car, keep driving the one you're driving and maintain it to the best of its ability, to keep it in tune, drive it as little as you can. That's the most sustainable solution right now, and wait and see where
the technology goes. But buying a battery electric vehicle, for instance, you're
not taking into account all of the material costs and the economic impact and the environmental impact of building that car. You're driving a car that was already built,
the impacts you know, baked in. In general, if you're only
looking at the CO two, I would agree with that. The issue is
the criteria emissions with that. In the past ten years, in terms of
criteria emissions, we have gone orders of magnitude lore in terms of particularly explain criteria, you're talking NOx oxides and nitrogen and hydrocards and particular matters. Right,
So these are the basically you have the smug you have all of the allergies and blah blah blah carcinogens that these are. They're called criteria because this
is what always this is why we have catalytic converters. That's the kind of
emissions that we've been treating for decades and decades. You know, we've never
had rags until very recently regarding CO two. So I'm just explaining that for
the audiences. When you say criteria emissions, that's like the old stuff we've
always been working on. And I know the point you're going to get to.
Boy, yeah, we cleaned that up exactly. So and again I'm
not gonna like it's I'm sounding like a broken record. I'm saying that there's
no silver bullet. But I agree with you if you're looking at the CO
two perspective or greenhouse gas, but if you look at the other pollutants and impact of that on the health as well as the environment. There are improvements
that have happened. And then I'm gonna have a plug here if you're interested
to see the cost of when I say costs both monetary as well as the carbon footprint costs of various vehicles and technologies. M T has a website carbon
counter dot com, and if you go there, you can select your vehicle and you can see for specific vehicle and different uh different uh like always drive real will drive options and all of that. How much carbon does it cost
for you to to make the car, how much it would cost you to run the car, and then you can even optimize or customize it for certain states. If you are using an electricity that is coming from West Virginia plug
versus a Washington plug, the sources of electricity is very different. You can
really nicely visualize how how that impacts and for the end consumers. I really
if someone is really cautious about their impact, I would really highly recommend visiting it and say that website again, carboncounter dot com, carboncounter dot com.
Okay, I'll check it out, Jason. You can just tell them to
go there, just like stop you alone, Stop visiting my site and just go go somewhere else. Yeah, but you know, one of the things
that you mentioned earlier on when you're talking about the different types of propulsion systems and power trains you guys are working on, you said diesel, And I mean, it shocks me that sixteen percent of passenger cars in Europe right now are still diesels. What are some of the sorts of things that you guys
are doing to make them more benign? Now it goes back to compression ignition.
Diesel engine in terms of the efficiency of the engine is more efficient than gasoline engine. And if you're pairing that diesel engine with hybrids, it might
sound talking to you, but it is very successful in Europe. Now you're
getting further, let's say, improvement in the efficiency of that. So diesel
engines will be also a solution, part of the solution. Biodiesel is something
that is also getting up and running. And so we talked about e fuel,
so synthetic ones, but diesel engines you can introduce the bio versions of them much earlier at higher blend rates without having a compromise. So diesel certainly
is part of the solution into the let's say twenty thirty five and maybe beyond that optimizing that criteria emission, so the other some kind of pollutants needs to be there. And in the past decade or so, we have we and
our partners M partners have really looked into that. So diesel propulsion is also
a solution for passenger car and light commercial So maybe the golden ticket is to get a diesel e rev or maybe a fuel cell as a range extender, you know which Stillantis is talking about that they're looking at. That's what's so
exciting about this time there. I mean, anything can happen solar panel as
you're yeah, maybe maybe we'll get there, But we're getting close to the end of the show there, but ice internal combustion gasoline spark ignited? Is
there much more left than there? We just saw two Chinese companies this month
come out was it g L and BYD claiming forty six per thermo dynamic efficiency, beating Toyota and Hyundai with their engines exactly. And there is a lot
happening in China, a lot happening in China. Everyone talks about the the
ev topics that are happening at China, and they are and it is very good and very successful, and they are reducing the cost of the evs, but they haven't stopped investigating the improvements and the combustion engine. And that's the
reason when you're looking at now the growth rate of the range extenter evs in China, it is going at a higher pace because they need to put a very efficient engine there. And then the more efficient your engine is, the
more power and energy that you can produce without having the need of putting a battery to compensate for the inefficiency of the engine. So basically the efficiency of
the engine is translating to the smaller size of the battery. And they're working
really well and phenomenal numbers that they came out last couple of weeks. You
know, I never thought of that. Up until now, We've been using
electrification to enhance the efficiency of an internal combustion engine. But with e revs,
you're using an internal combustion engine to enhance the efficiency of an electric vehicle.
Correct. So is there still upside to developments that will enhance internal combustion
engines, Yes, and they are developing. They are like the compression ratio
of that engine is sixteen or sixteen and getting Yeah, so they are developing these ideas. These are very long stroke engines with the EGR, and they
are like really developing fundamental developments of the engine. And they're not alone.
We are discussing it with the OIMS globally and everyone is working on these topics.
So the developments of the combustion engine is happening and we need to do it as providing solutions. Okay, here's the last question, because we're going
to end the show. I'm going to ask you the most ridiculous question,
and you can laugh in my face. I don't have a problem with that
at all. What about rotary valves instead of poppet valves that go back and
forth? What about rotary valves? You know, there was a lot of
experimentation in the nineteen forties on that during the Second World War, and and a lot of it was promising, but they couldn't get ceiling or anything like that. And I've asked people about this forever and ever and they laugh and
they say, it's never going to happen. Is it never going to happen?
Criteria emissions is issue. Okay, so it's not going to happen because
boy, think how you could reven engine power output. Yes, and that
was the reason for aviation. It was a perfect solution. But aviation didn't
care about emission, that's right, right, So if you're just concerned about the power output, that that's a solution. But okay, I said that
was the last question. And then in the nineteen eighties there was a lot
done with adiabatic engines where you could get rid of the cooling system using ceramics, ceramic piston caps, combustion head caps made out of ceramic. Is there
any interest at all in adiabatics? Still some academic investigations are happening, but
I'm not aware of anyone seriously thinking about mass someone drops a wrench in the repair center on that engine. These were very robust ceramics and look, sometime
in the nineteen eighties, Isuzu said it was going to come out with a ceramic engine, ceramic block and head never happened. But I've always thought there's
there's still some outlying crazy ideas that maybe somebody can figure out some of those ideas. And I've been long enough in the industry. Did you see the
life cycle of these that the ideas that we thought that they are not ready yet. Now we have the improvements in controls and computations and all of that.
Now we can sense them and we can control them more precisely. So
some of those ideas are coming back real good. The post Pistons, the
post Piston Times. Oh yeah, right, No, I mean, look,
there's there's lots of ideas out there. The only problem is the industry
has billions invested in what it's already got and it literally cannot afford to walk away from that investment. That's the issue. Bobe money money, Like Avan
Johnson said, it's a money thing. It's a money makes the world go
round. Mohammed, thanks so much for coming on the show today. A
really interesting discussion. Jason, great to have you back on. Thank you,
and Jerry, you and I will continue doing this next week. I
want to thank of all of you for having tuned in. I'll don't Line
after Hours is brought to you by Bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your Journey
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