Tech breakthroughs that could steer the industry toward net zero

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On the last episode of Driving to Zero, we talked about the government's role in decarbonizing

the auto industry and spurring investment in clean energy.

Well, since that episode, there was news on that front.

I'm here to announce one of the largest advanced manufacturing investments in the history of

this nation.

$7 billion in federal investments has been attracted to $40 billion in private investment

in clean hydrogen and power.

In Philadelphia, President Biden and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm unveiled

seven projects selected to split $7 billion in funding to create regional clean hydrogen

production hubs across the U.S.

Biden talked extensively about the role the projects will play in getting the United States

to net zero by 2050.

He said the technology is important because, while renewables such as wind and solar are

cheaper, easier, and will play perhaps the biggest role, they can't replace fossil fuels

in every application, including for producing products that the auto industry depends on

heavily.

It comes to manufacturing things like steel, aluminum, and other materials.

Factories need to process materials at over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to get that done.

You can't, you need to burn fuel to get that done.

You can't get it done with wind and solar products.

You cannot generate that much energy.

That's where hydrogen comes in.

But how big a role will hydrogen end up playing?

As we'll hear later in the episode, not everyone is a fan.

I still think that anything that can be directly electrified shouldn't be done with hydrogen.

Of course, clean hydrogen is just one of many technologies that will play a role in the

energy transition.

On this episode of Driving to Zero, we are exploring and evaluating some of the tech

breakthroughs that could propel the auto industry and the world toward a greener future.

I'm Jake Neer with Automotive News.

What are we looking at here?

So we've got a couple different hydrogen storage solutions that you're looking at.

Charles Chapelle is the engineering director for Forsea Hydrogen Solutions, which is part

of global auto supplier Forsea.

We're at the company's clean mobility division in suburban Detroit looking at a couple of

cylindrical tanks.

The closer you look, the more clear it becomes, these are not just your everyday run-of-the-mill

tanks.

There's a tremendous amount of technology that goes into our hydrogen storage system.

So if we start just with the tank technology, which is what you're looking at here, this

is what's called a Type 4 hydrogen storage tank.

So it has a plastic liner, and then we wrap that plastic liner with a composite with carbon

fiber.

And so this is what allows us to get to such extreme pressures that you see in today's

modern hydrogen storage systems.

So this system operates at 700 bar, which is just over 10,000 PSI.

You know, if you were going to try to do this with, I don't know, a steel tank or other

materials, you know, maybe more conventional tank that you'd see in a car or another system,

why would that not work for something like hydrogen?

So it's really all about weight, and the weight of the system is critical.

So if you were to try to store hydrogen at 700 bar in a steel tank, what you would end

up with is a tank that was extremely heavy and only stored a small amount of hydrogen

because the thickness of the steel container would be so thick, right?

We're talking even just to store a couple of kilograms of hydrogen, you would be talking

like six or eight inches thick steel in order to contain that kind of pressure.

And that's why we use the carbon fiber is really to get the mass down and enable these

types of systems to go onto vehicles.

These tanks are just over seven feet long and 27 inches in diameter.

They'd be used in class eight over-the-road trucks.

We're talking the biggest of big rigs.

And they'd fit right in the space where the diesel tanks would otherwise be.

This is the exact kind of application you hear a lot about for hydrogen in the auto

industry these days.

But Forcia is also working on smaller tank systems for light vehicles as well.

The system that you see here is the system that we make for Stellantis.

And one of the interesting things, and I always tell people this, you know, it's not

that hydrogen is coming, hydrogen is now, right?

It's happening right now.

So these systems are in production in Europe.

You can buy one of these in a small light commercial vehicle application.

And in this case, it's a really interesting design because what we did here was to design

this system to fit in the same space as the battery does.

So Stellantis has two variants of that same vehicle, one that is a fuel cell vehicle,

another one that is a pure BEV.

Charles says that decision between a battery or a fuel cell comes down to how you're using

the vehicle.

Imagine if you are a utility company, right?

And you've got a lot of these Class 5, 6 type trucks out there.

These trucks also are oftentimes towing like a huge spool of wire or a trailer with some

kind of excavator on it.

And as soon as you hook up a trailer to one of those battery electric Class 5s, for example,

you lose about 50% of your range.

And so this is where we're seeing the OEMs and fleet operators having strong interest

in hydrogen because what we can do with a hydrogen system is allow that vehicle to have

a very, very similar range to what you get with a diesel vehicle.

Of course, here's where money really comes into play.

The economics of hydrogen are fairly complex, so we'll have to stick to some generalities

here, but safe to say beyond the cost of the vehicle and the infrastructure, which

is a whole other issue, the cost of the fuel itself is a major consideration with hydrogen.

In heavy transport, for example, hydrogen starts to make a lot of sense even at current

diesel prices, assuming that that diesel doesn't go up again at around $5 per kilogram.

Although it depends heavily on where you are in the world and what kind of production source

you have, most hydrogen today is already below $5 a kilogram.

Well cool, problem solved for heavy transportation, right?

Well here's where things get a little more complicated.

Although hydrogen is a zero emissions fuel, making hydrogen in the first place requires

some kind of energy.

And most hydrogen today is made using natural gas or other fossil fuels.

That's typically cheaper than what's called green hydrogen, which is made using renewable

sources.

Green hydrogen usually costs anywhere from $3 to $7 per kilogram.

But Charles says the economics changed significantly with the Inflation Reduction Act last year.

For a lot of people, that was a tipping point, right?

Because now they can see a pathway if they were on the user end, for example.

Now they see that there's a lot of investment happening in green hydrogen production and

transport.

He says the production tax credit for hydrogen in the Inflation Reduction Act can reduce

the cost of hydrogen production by up to $3 per kilogram, depending on the carbon intensity

score of the hydrogen you're making.

If you talk to anybody who's in the hydrogen business, they see that as the most important

piece because what that's doing is enabling a lot of companies to get into the hydrogen

generation business, right?

Because they see a picture where they can make a profit.

And to me, that's the most important because nothing happens without the ability to have

enough green hydrogen in the market to enable this.

Plus, remember President Biden's announcement at the beginning of the episode?

The one about the hydrogen hub funding through the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act?

So what does that all mean for Forvea's business?

It just so happened that the day I spoke with Charles, Forvea was officially open

to the public.

It's a major development in terms of capacity and resource allocation for the supplier and

it says a lot about where it sees hydrogen going in the near future.

Okay I'm here with Jamie Butters, executive editor of Automotive News.

Jamie, I remember talking about hydrogen maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

I actually had a debate tournament where I was the one in 2008 or something like that

to defend hydrogen against all the other renewable energy sources.

I did pretty well too, even all the way back then.

But I also remember that when you brought up hydrogen back then and even more recently,

often received almost as a joke, right?

Like you were talking about decarbonizing with flux capacitors or something.

But now, as Charles Chappelle said with Forvea, the investments are really starting to ramp up.

The cynical view has been that hydrogen is the technology that's always a decade away.

There were people talking about it as far back as the 90s when the Prius first came out

as something that would eventually be a solution.

General Motors was certainly a big advocate for pulling that ahead.

And maybe that got people thinking it was closer to a reality than it was.

But it is exciting technology and it is starting to come to more fruition.

I think one of the biggest remaining question marks now is about the infrastructure.

I mean, boy, we talk about EV charging infrastructure like it's Mad Max out there.

And you know, I know I'm overusing.

You're getting all Siskel and Ebert on there.

Right, all the 80s movies references.

But really, I mean, it's like, you know, the way we talk about EV charging, it's like,

you know, we're in the Stone Age and maybe that's changed a lot.

But hydrogen doesn't even seem like it's anywhere close to that.

Right. No, it isn't.

Of course, my most recent experience with hydrogen was driving through the desert,

trying to find a way to fill up.

So I definitely have a Mad Max vibe around hydrogen right now.

And look, I mean, hydrogen is really only in coastal California.

Even just getting into the middle part of the state, you can lose access to hydrogen in a big way.

So yeah, I mean, if the EV infrastructure is, you know, one to 10% to where it needs to be,

you know, hydrogen infrastructure is 0.1% of where it needs to be.

But it's also a technology that can be built out strategically where it has the best chance of

having an impact, which is along highways for big rigs.

And that can allow the long distance driving that, frankly, EVs still struggle with.

I think the other big question in my mind, and we'll talk a little bit about this later

with someone who is much more in tune with mechanical engineering than either of us are,

but it's how green is hydrogen really?

And when we say hydrogen, we're talking about a wide mix of ways to create this fuel.

And some are green, some are really not green.

Some are basically just a less efficient way of using fossil fuels.

So I'm curious what your thoughts are about the benefits of hydrogen overall to the climate

and, you know, why it's so contentious.

Yeah, I mean, and there are people who will say EVs aren't clean, you know,

if you're getting power from burning coal, the origin matters.

The full life cycle of the product matters.

But these are not problems that can't be solved, right?

So most hydrogen that we've had, say over the last 50 years has come as a byproduct of refining

petroleum. That's not obviously the way that we would want to power all the vehicles in America

or in the world. But we're going to, you know, we have a lot of wind energy, a lot of it gets lost.

If it could be captured and stored in hydrogen that's made in that green way,

we talked earlier with utilities and they see an ongoing need and probably even a growing need for

nuclear power. Well, it kicks off a lot of heat.

Some of that can be used to help generate hydrogen.

I think sometimes they call it purple hydrogen or red hydrogen.

So I think we're going to need all the solutions we can find and figuring out how to make hydrogen in

a clean way that effectively, you know, powers our vehicles through the water system, the water cycle.

That could be very exciting, but it's still a long way down the road.

So this episode isn't all about hydrogen. We have other technologies to get to.

And the other big one is solid state batteries.

This is something that we talk about a lot in the newsroom here at Automotive News.

And we talk about it as it could really be a game changer.

So, you know, I know that you have a lot of thoughts on solid state batteries.

What are your thoughts on the promises of that?

Well, because here's the thing, right? EVs seem really important.

They're exciting in the market and they have the potential to let us drive around

without polluting in the driving process, but they cost too much to make.

And they often can be dangerous. You know, we have when there are fires in EVs,

the battery packs are, you know, burned super hot.

So then there's danger to the vehicles, danger to buildings around them.

And solid state technology has been held out as a really terrific solution

with the potential to be, you know, safer, cleaner, you know, charge faster.

Of course, we still have the cost problem and a scale problem.

But it does seem like there's a lot of really exciting things starting to happen

to bring that into reality and out of the lab.

And we should note the technology itself achieves these things.

You know, if you look at a lithium ion battery that's in EVs today, most EVs today,

that's using a liquid or polymer gel electrolyte in the battery,

whereas solid state battery uses solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte.

At least in most cases, we'll hear some variations on that in just a second.

But that is essentially the technology.

And if you want to learn more about that, there's lots out there.

But this is another technology like hydrogen that has sort of always been talked about

as if it's sort of just beyond the horizon, never really coming into view,

as you said, scaling the affordability of it.

Do you think that now it is coming into view sort of as we're seeing the hydrogen industry doing that?

Yeah, we know that there's a lot of government funding toward research,

you know, fundamental research, which is necessary.

But just recently, we've seen some news from Toyota working with a partner toward actually

scaling up production for vehicles to be used in as little as half a decade.

And that as a step toward true mass production, Toyota sees these batteries as being able to

have a range of about 750 miles and being able to charge in only 10 minutes.

So that really blows out that sort of range anxiety.

If, of course, you have the right kind of charging infrastructure out in the world,

people could be really set to go.

You know, for me, Jamie, just from a consumer perspective, I feel like

the range is becoming less and less of an issue with EVs.

And the time for charging might be one of the biggest game changers, right?

Instead of having to sit at a charging station for a half an hour or an hour to let your car charge,

if you can get a battery like a solid state battery to charge in the same amount of time,

or maybe a little bit longer than a gas station, man, to me, that changes the equation

more than anything else.

It could. And, you know, consumers in America and probably throughout the world really need to

get a lot more sophisticated in how they analyze their driving and how they use their vehicle.

You know, as I keep saying, you know, for a lot of us who own a home with a garage,

frankly, 90% of our driving can be stress free.

And it doesn't even matter how slowly the battery charges as long as it has enough

to get you through the next day's drive, which, you know, for most Americans is 50 miles or less.

Yeah, right. It's just when you're on that road trip, if you want to stop and just

charge up the battery, if you can do it in five minutes, hey, that kind of takes away

one of the biggest arguments or concerns about EVs.

Five to 10 minutes is so much more manageable than 20 to 40.

Yeah. Well, I recently got a chance to talk with two folks who are really looking to play

a big role in that transition to solid state batteries and who say

they're coming actually sooner than a lot of people might think.

We want this technology to change the world. That's the fundamental vision for this company.

CU Huang is the founder and CEO of Factorial Energy, which is developing what it calls

breakthrough solid state batteries that offer longer driving range for EVs with an emphasis on

safety. Huang says the company's ambitions for solid state trace back to major recalls of

traditional lithium ion batteries, including the Chevrolet Bolt EV.

We have been incubating this technology since like 2015-ish time in our company.

And around like 2018, when we saw that, those bunch of recalls happened.

That was a hard moment when we decided we need a full speed ahead to launch this technology.

The day that Factorial announced the 40 amp hour battery, I was at my desk and I saw it and I'm like,

uh-oh, this is the thing that takes out lithium ion batteries.

JJ Livingstone was working for Samsung SDI at the time, one of the top three battery makers in

the world. He's now head of sales for Factorial.

Incidentally, the executive chairman of the company was a former boss of mine and he called

me a few days later after that. And I joined the company shortly after that. But the cell

state delivers on several of the things that I think the industry needs, which is safety.

Number one, I think the weight savings is number two. And then finally,

the power discharge is actually another one as well, which delivers performance.

So if we can go ahead and change or improve those metrics for the average person buying the car,

they won't see a change at all in the performance of how they drive,

which I think is really important for them. You can't change how they drive.

You have to make it seem similar or better than what they had before.

And I think we're able to deliver better, which is really cool.

Factorial's technology is actually quasi solid state,

meaning it uses solid electrolyte components, but also includes some liquid as well.

CU says that helps with scalability because manufacturing can be done with the same equipment

that's used to make lithium-ion batteries. One of the greatest advantages for this technology is

this is highly compatible with lithium-ion manufacturing process. I would say it's very

much intended when we initially designed this technology because we realized that with all

the change in the material, with the cell design, and if you completely change the equipment,

that's a huge barrier to entry.

She says the company doesn't view quasi solid state technology as a stepping stone either.

When you see this will play a role far into the future,

just first of all, you don't need to change the manufacturing process.

And there are a lot of existing value coming out of that manufacturing process in terms of the speed

and cost, etc. And the significance in terms of the energy density is substantial compared to

Factorial has entered joint development agreements with Mercedes-Benz,

Stellantis, and Hyundai Motor Company. This year, it unveiled a 100 amp hour battery cell at CES

at the Stellantis exhibition space. CU says there's much more to come from Factorial

and the emerging solid state industry as a whole.

I do see the ambition for this business is huge, like it can potentially change the

landscape of this entire industry, as I would say the battery industry has been awaiting disruption

for 20 years. We think we're on track to deliver even higher energy density in the future and be

able to provide a viable product to our consumers. So how close are we to a tech breakthrough that

could really blow the lid off the industry's decarbonization efforts? And what are the most

likely technologies to make that happen? When we come back, we'll hear from Rosie Barnes,

a mechanical engineer who has spent lots of time evaluating these technologies

for their climate saving and economic potential. People get really excited about, you know,

shiny new technologies that might be ready in 20 years. You know, I think people don't focus as

much on how to quickly roll out the technologies that we already have. And so I guess I would

encourage people to think more mundane in a lot of cases. That's next on Driving to Zero.

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efforts to boost electrification and hydrogen technology in vehicles. By working across the

entire value chain to improve manufacturing processes, transitioning factories to renewable

energy and supporting suppliers, Hyundai's goal is to be end to end carbon neutral from production

to operation. Because Hyundai's overall competitiveness starts with outstanding

parts provided by its partners, the company is supporting suppliers in many ways to help them

improve their capabilities and competitiveness and work towards carbon neutrality. Hyundai works

with its supplier partners to monitor and offset emissions, use recycled and certified

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There's a long list of technologies and strategies that we could evaluate for their

likelihood to make the auto industry and the world more green. But we only have so much time.

If only there were someone out there who did this kind of thing full time and was fantastic

at talking about it. Rosie Barnes is a mechanical engineer who has been working in the renewable

energy space for about two decades. She got her PhD in mechanical engineering from the

University of New South Wales Canberra and now runs a small consulting company which develops

green technologies and helps investors understand them better. She also has a fantastic YouTube

channel called Engineering with Rosie which is just loaded with amazing content about the

climate saving potential of all kinds of technologies. It's accessible, fun, really in depth and it

also takes into account the economics and practicalities of these technologies beyond

just their ability to cut carbon alone. Full disclosure, I'm a subscriber, I'm a huge fan.

Rosie Barnes, thank you so much for joining me on Driving to Zero all the way from Sydney,

Australia. Yeah, no worries. Thanks for asking me. And by the way, we should note you've got

your toddler in the room with you, you know, hashtag working parents. I feel that myself.

But I want to talk a little bit about the technologies that we're exploring in this

episode and maybe some of your own personal favorites or some of the ones that you're

personally skeptical about. Let's start with solid state batteries. In the auto space, we hear

about solid state batteries as sort of the holy grail of battery technology and something that

could essentially revolutionize the way that we use energy. So what is your take on this technology

and how big a role do you think could it play in sort of the bigger picture of, you know,

saving the planet, I guess you could say? Yeah, well, I think solid state is definitely

something that's exciting. For sure it's coming in the next few years. I know there've been some

good announcements recently and, you know, prototypes are being deployed and products

are being planned for release in the next few years that feature it. And I think actually,

I was reading up on this recently and I read that Toyota actually had a little car in the

Olympics that was, you know, maybe had a solid state battery in it. That particular car I don't

think is going to revolutionize anything related to transport. But I mean, the advantages are,

you know, better energy density. So you have lighter batteries, smaller batteries, faster

charging, all of that is really good. I personally don't think it's going to revolutionize cars.

I think that the revolution in cars is already underway, you know, it's just electric vehicles

in general. And, you know, these are all kind of incremental changes that are kind of nice to

have. I think anyone that's driven an EV for more than, you know, like a couple of hours

realizes that bigger batteries isn't actually the answer to any of the main problems with EVs.

From my perspective, the cars are already really, really great. The problem in Australia and probably

elsewhere is the chargers, you know, that they're a pain when, you know, downloading all those apps

and getting payment to work. That's my most frequent annoyance with EVs. And then in Australia,

we have a problem of a really, you know, low population density. So the charging stations

coming quite far apart. So I found when I did a couple of road trips in an EV, you don't have

range anxiety, you have charger anxiety, because, you know, you show up to a charger and you're

like, is this going to work? And if it doesn't, then I'm pretty screwed because the next one is,

you know, 250 kilometers away. So I'll be here overnight, you know, plugged into a wall outlet

if that's my backup plan. Right, right. Yeah. So I mean, I see, like, who doesn't want a car that

can charge in 10 minutes or any of those other advantages, but I don't think it's going to be

a revolution, more of an evolution. But where it could be revolutionary would be, you know,

applied to air transport, I think, is much more likely that that's where you're going to see,

you know, if you can double the range of an electric airplane, then you're really starting to see,

you know, some useful routes that can be covered by battery airplanes. So I think, yeah, that's

probably more the scope for revolution there. And we're going to talk a little bit about hydrogen

in a second, which kind of there's some crossover here in the industry applications, I think. But

what about long haul trucking? Do you think that solid state batteries could also play a big role

in these sort of harder to decarbonize applications for road travel?

Maybe. With trucking, I think I have looked into this a bit and spoken with some experts,

and I think the best expert to talk to on that is David Sivan from Cambridge. I think when you look

into the details, there isn't that much that an electric truck can't already do. You know,

when you look at the way that they're actually used and, you know, the way that they're actually

staffed and when they have to have brakes and all that sort of thing, it isn't so often that you

need to get in a truck and drive, you know, 8, 10, 12 hours without stopping. So I think that the

vast majority of trucking needs can be met by electric trucks pretty easily. So then, you know,

there's a little bit left over after that. And what's that going to be? Is it going to be solid

state batteries? Is it going to be hydrogen? Yeah, or is it going to be biofuels or e-fuels?

There's a few options, and I think it's just going to come down to how it plays out in terms of the

cost of those technologies and the logistics as well. Logistics is really important for anyone

that's running commercial operation. I guess the bottom line is how much it costs, but then you

have to be able to operate your business in a profitable way as well. And I think because it's

just that quite a small little chunk that's left over that can't be served by existing technologies

or technologies that are coming out in the next few years, I think that it's too early to say

how exactly all those trade-offs are going to work out as the technologies develop.

Yeah, I wouldn't call that one yet, but I would say maybe to any of those technologies that I listed.

Sure. Okay, now you have some interesting skepticism when it comes to hydrogen technology.

I was just watching one of your videos where you talk about, and I believe this was a couple

of years ago, so I'm interested to see if anything has changed in the last couple of years, but

just the challenges that exist for hydrogen. Talk about sort of where you are right now on

how big a deal hydrogen will be in the coming transition towards zero emissions fuels.

Yeah, so when I started looking into hydrogen, it was just as someone that didn't know anything

about it. All I knew was thermodynamics. Every time you change energy from one form to another,

there's losses. And so if you want to take electricity and make it into hydrogen and then

turn it back into electricity, you end up losing a good chunk of that.

And so my question was just why would you do all those extra costly, inefficient steps when,

for anything that you can directly electrify? And I still think that. I still think that anything

that can be directly electrified shouldn't be done with hydrogen. And so that includes passenger

cars. It includes the vast, vast majority of trucks, includes short-haul aviation,

definitely home heating is, I should have said that one first, because that's by far the most

obvious that you would never do with hydrogen when you can do it with a heat pump and use like,

yeah, like a fifth of the energy. On the other hand, we already use a lot of hydrogen at a big

source of emissions. I think it's like about 2% of the global emissions come from hydrogen

currently. So today, hydrogen is an emissions problem, not an emissions solution. I definitely

believe in the huge role that clean hydrogen is going to play for getting rid of that 2% of

emissions. And I guess when people focus so much on problems that have alternative solutions and

don't focus on that existing big emissions problem, I'm really skeptical about their

motivation for that. And I do think if you trace that back, you can usually find a fossil fuel

lobbyist somewhere. So yeah, we'll definitely say that. Yeah, I mean, that's basically it.

But I think hydrogen is taken off as this kind of, it's not only fossil fuel lobbyists that

believe in hydrogen. There's plenty of regular people and politicians and who have truly believed

that we should do something about climate change. And I think that the reason why it's taken hold

so much is because it's such a simple idea. You can say, what are we going to do about this

large list of industries? And you can just give a one sentence response, hydrogen can do that.

And it's true that hydrogen can do any of those. But I think this is a good time to like think

like an engineer where you don't go from a solution to a problem, but rather you go from a problem

to a solution. And so, you know, like it's easy to say, okay, hydrogen, we've got hydrogen, well,

where can we put it? But that's the wrong way to think about it. Because in actuality, every

little application is thinking, what's the best way to decarbonize this? And so, you know, they're

not like, oh, can we use hydrogen? That's not their first thought. They're thinking,

what's the cheapest, fastest, best way that we can decarbonize this particular application?

And it's pretty rare, actually, that hydrogen is going to win out on any specific problem,

even though, yeah, in theory, it could do a lot of stuff if you didn't care about

cost and didn't care how many wind turbines you had to put in the ground. If you have to put

three times as much to run everything off hydrogen instead of directly electrifying it.

Yeah, so that's why I don't say extending far beyond the applications where there's no other

alternative. You know, we hear so often that even the industry seems to have come to a point where

basically, you know, anything that you're running on gasoline right now should be electrified.

And anything that's running on diesel should be hydrogenized. I don't know if I just made up a

word, but it should be replaced with hydrogen. Is that an oversimplification? Are there better

alternatives to diesel as well? Yeah, I don't think that that's a very useful kind of rule of thumb

at all. I don't see things being categorized that way. I mean, maybe to a certain extent,

and I don't think much about diesel. So maybe that's why it doesn't make sense to me. But,

you know, some of the things that I, maybe was initially skeptical about hydrogen that I've

come on board with more so recently would include like long, like really long duration

energy storage when you're trying to store energy from year to year in case you have like a really,

really windless winter or something. Then hydrogen can be, you know, it's one of the

last technologies standing when you try and figure out how you're going to do that. And I guess that

would potentially replace diesel generators. So in that sense, maybe. But for any of the transport

applications, I just don't see hydrogen winning out. You know, I think another interesting

aspect of this that I hadn't really thought too much about before embarking on this project was

about storage, just storage for the grid even. You know, we had a, we talked to someone with

the local utility here in Southeast Michigan in the US who was talking about how, you know,

one application could be because they're trying to figure out how to transition to a world where

you need baseload energy and you don't want to be using natural gas or coal for that baseload.

You could essentially have windmills or, I mean wind turbines, I should say, or other

generation methods creating hydrogen that you could store and then use that basically as a

baseload whenever you need it and the wind's not blowing or the sun's not shining. What's

your reaction to that idea? Yeah, it's another one of those things that just, it sounds very

neat. And then a lot of people were planning projects like that. And if you watch how these

projects have evolved over time, they're experiencing a few, you know, reality checks once

they start actually doing the detailed design. The issue is that, you know, any piece of expensive

industrial processing equipment, you're generally trying to run it 24 seven to get good, you know,

financial results from your project, right? You want a good capacity factor. And yeah,

so you've bought a really expensive electrolyser. You don't only want to use it when you've got

intermittent energy source available. And so, I mean, it's one thing to have it off grid and

powered by like a really good wind and solar resource together because, you know, you can

get pretty good capacity factors like in the 60% ish from that combination. But often or usually

when people talk about this, they're talking about power system balancing. And they think that

we're going to use a surplus renewables from the middle of the day when, you know, everyone is,

everybody's rooftop solar panels are generating and we've got too much electricity. And they think

that's the time you're going to use this negative price electricity to make hydrogen. And then you

have to put it back in the grid in the afternoons. But, you know, like even in the just most extreme

cases, like in Australia and South Australia, I think every day for the last month, you're in

spring now, and it's a lot of solar power, but people don't yet need a lot of air conditioning.

And so they've had negative electricity prices for eight hours a day. And, you know, that's like

record breaking. And it's just one month of the year, you know, you can't can imagine that you're

going to get a very good financial return on your electrolyzer if you're just running it

a few hours a day. And then, you know, and then you got to get a good good price for it in the

evening as well. I also think we should probably touch on the fact that when we say hydrogen,

that can mean a lot of different things from a zero emissions perspective. There's a whole color

scheme of hydrogen. Can you explain a little bit about what that color scheme is and sort of what

it means for hydrogen's role in decarbonizing? Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't think I don't hear

people talk about it as much. You know, at one point there was like 20 different colors in the

hydrogen rainbow that was getting a bit ridiculous. But there's a few main ones you need to consider.

The first one, which people don't usually talk about is gray or black hydrogen, which is like

98% or maybe even above 99% of hydrogen made today, which is made from fossil fuels, mostly from

cracking natural gas. Worth repeating, 99% of the hydrogen today. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a

big, big reason why you don't want to, you know, expand your demand for hydrogen before you expand

the supply of clean hydrogen because, you know, you're just making an emissions problem rather

than solving one. Yeah. So that's the first color. And then second, similar to that is blue hydrogen

where you still use methane to make your hydrogen, but instead of just letting the carbon dioxide

out into the atmosphere, you capture it and store it. And that's something that mostly exists in

theory rather than actuality. And then the final one that is one that most people talk about is

green hydrogen, which actually it's a little bit fuzzy, the definition of it. In theory, it should be

hydrogen made from renewable electricity, but in reality, it's often, you know, grid connected

electricity. So it's whatever, whatever the fuel source of the electricity at that time is,

that's what you'll get. And yeah, sometimes people try and put a different color on hydrogen made

from grid electricity. Sometimes people put a different color on hydrogen made with electricity

from nuclear power. There's no real consensus on what those colors are though. So yeah, I think

pretty much everyone just shoves that all together as green hydrogen.

All right, Rosie, you're bursting my bubble here on and on everything. Give me something to be

optimistic about. What are you, what are you excited about technologically when it comes

to decarbonizing, especially if there's anything that you think has good applications in the

auto industry? Obviously, battery technology and EVs you mentioned already. What's got you

excited for the future and our efforts here? Well, I mean, I'm excited for the present with

electric vehicles. I mean, they've gotten great way faster than I would have expected five years

ago. I would still like them to be a bit cheaper. The last time we bought a car, I really, really

wanted an electric car. But in Australia, at least, you know, a year or two ago, it basically

meant a brand new like luxury car. So we didn't go for that. So I'm really excited for the next

couple of years when they come down a bit more in price. And when they start getting passed

on to the secondhand market, that's probably the most exciting thing, not a very shiny new

technology to be excited about. But I think that's going to make a big difference. And then I'm

actually most excited probably about vehicle to grid technology, using your car's electric

battery to help support the electricity grid. I know that the potential has been talked about

for quite a few years and people probably feel like there's a lack of progress. But things are

actually starting to happen. I was recently in Adelaide in South Australia and visited a couple

of small business, a winery and just a guy in the suburbs who had vehicle to grid technology and

had been using it for a while, making, you know, a little bit of money. And so I see, I think we're

really on the cusp of that being something big. And in places like Australia, where we've got

really great rooftop solar resources, you know, between your rooftop solar panels and your car

battery, you're not going to be buying electricity from the grid very often. And it also has implications

for everybody else that's connected to the grid. Because, you know, if you've got all this distributed

energy, then you don't need as many transmission upgrades. Everybody doesn't need to pay for these

big spikes in demand in the evening. If a lot of people are just supplying that from their own car

battery, then it's going to lower the price for everybody. So, you know, I think if that's managed

properly, then that has huge potential and probably what I'm most excited about.

So there was a video that you did on another channel called Climate Atom and you and Adam

gave letter grades to a bunch of different technologies. I believe that EVs actually fell

around maybe the C range on that. So we're still not talking necessarily about a panacea on a global

scale. Maybe talk a little bit about that and sort of what on a global scale again gets more of an

A or a B in your list, at least. Yeah. Well, we'll say, you know, Adam and I came up with a joint

grade. So I would have put it higher. He would have put it lower. Got it. And that's primarily because

you know, there's more, more to be gained from, you know, like better walking walkability in cities

and bikes and stuff like that. So that's, that's the reason. But yeah, I mean, so I've already

said one of the technologies that I would put at a much higher letter grade, that's vehicle

agreed, but also any kind of demand response system where you can better match electricity demand

to supply. You know, in the past, we based our whole kind of electricity usage models around

fossil fuel generation profiles, fossil fuel power plants and nuclear as well.

Just want to generate just constant 24 seven. And so we adapted to, you know, to facilitate that.

So we had off peak power prices in the evening, because otherwise no one would be using electricity

then, but you can't turn those generators off. And so, you know, you encourage people to use it

when it's there. We just need to, to change that. So, you know, in some cases, it might be as simple

as saying, okay, now off peak is in the middle of the day. And, you know, some places are already

doing that. But the thing is that renewables are variable. So it's not predictable a year in advance

what, you know, what periods are going to have the most oversupply. It is definitely predictable

days in advance. But I think that you would get a much more efficient system, which will mean

less generation needed, less transmission needed, less cost for everybody. If we could allow people

to use electricity when there was electricity available and to not when there wasn't. So I mean,

there's a whole suite of technologies that are enabling that. And in industry, it's stuff like

thermal batteries, you know, so that any kind of manufacturing that needs a lot of heat doesn't

need to, you know, turn it off when electricity prices are high once they electrify. So, you know,

you can have a buffer, stuff like that. It's in general, I mean, thermal batteries are super

old, you know, technology, anyone that's got a hot water tank in their house has a thermal battery.

But yeah, just the way that they're being used to, you know, get the most out of our electricity

grid. I'll give you the last thoughts here. Anything that you think our audience should

know as they're thinking about the whole scope and picture of where we go from here. And especially

for people who have the power to invest money in these technologies, what should they be keeping

in mind? Well, I think with EVs, it's charging. And you know, if I had one one wish for EV charging,

it would be some sort of standard for the apps that are involved. I mean, it's just crazy. Sometimes

recently, I had an experience where I spent half an hour and was not able to charge my car at the

end of that. So, you know, we need to eliminate that they can't go mainstream when, you know,

people aren't sure if they're going to be able to charge their car when they want to or not.

So, yes, please, please take care of that. Anybody that, you know, has any responsibility vaguely

related to that. And then the other thing I would say is to think about speed as well as

people get really excited about, you know, shiny new technologies that might be ready in 20 years,

which, you know, technically be ready in time for 2050. But it actually matters how quickly we

reduce emissions. So, you know, I think people don't focus as much on how to quickly roll out the

technologies that we already have. And so, I guess I would encourage people to think more

mundane in a lot of cases because, you know, the more we reduce emissions now, the more time that

we actually have to take care of the really hard stuff. So, yeah, that would be the main thing

that I would encourage policymakers in particular to, yeah, switch their thinking up a little bit

like that. Well, if you want to hear so much more about Rosie's thoughts on these technologies and

climate and all the things that need to happen in the next few years, you can check out her channel,

Engineering with Rosie, so much great stuff there. Rosie Barnes, thank you so much for

joining us. I really appreciate you taking time out of your morning. I should also mention that

you have extra insight into the future because I'm talking to you here in Michigan and it's

tomorrow in Sydney where you are. So, I'm literally talking to you in the future. So,

you know, you couldn't ask for a better source. Thanks again. Yeah, thank you. It's been great.

So, now that we've covered the technology, the incentives, and the will to move forward,

what happens now and into the near future? On the next episode of Driving to Zero,

we'll look at the road ahead. These automakers have made good pledges about decarbonization,

but they're not quite saying we're doing everything we can right now before they get there.

Driving to Zero is a podcast from Automotive News. Original music and sound design by Sam

Bobian. We got additional help from Kellan Walker and Alicia Anderson. Another big thanks to Automotive

News executive editor, Jamie Butters, for his insights and his contributions. I'm Jake Nier.

As always, we would really appreciate it if you give us a like, leave us a review,

and of course, follow the podcast to make sure you catch the next episode of Driving to Zero.

Tech breakthroughs that could steer the industry toward net zero

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700 bar

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hydrogen fuel systems

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solid state technology

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