demultiplexer's comments

(author here): this is part 1. I will go into other types of fuel cells in a future part. Hydrogen is the focus of the first two parts just because this is the most mature technology and has actually been used in a couple of (kinda..) production cars.

It's a... student project ;)

However, the actual amount of energy in those ultracaps isn't that much. We're talking a couple tens of kWs or, in other words, all those caps together don't even hold the same energy as one single li-ion cell (18650 size). The energy density is low, thus, the actual safety issue is fairly minor.

That being said, they are in a special Nylon enclosure with polycarbonate sides which provides an effective shield in the case of rupture. But, at the moment that picture was shot we hadn't actually tested that yet :D

Again, students.

(writer of the blog here): Eh... hm.... I really don't want to get into conspiracy theories here. To be honest, during the whole Formula Zero championship we got absolutely zero interest from any fossil fuel companies. I haven't posted a good picture of our kart yet, but our biggest sponsors? - Greenchoice (a grid energy provider with a focus on renewables) - DSM (plastics manufacturer, mostly because of our innovative use of composite body parts) - University of Delft - A whole bunch of mechanical suppliers (Rodac, Swagelok) - A whole bunch of electronics suppliers (Chroma, Cyner, Betronic) - A logistics company (van Kaathoven)

Even the organization of Formula Zero, who had a pretty strong foothold in the fossil business through their renewables programmes, didn't get any attention from fossil fuel anything.

And this barely changed when the competition dissolved into Formula Student. Even though this is one of the biggest student competitions in the world, it doesn't get nearly as much sponsorship from big oil as e.g. the Shell Ecomarathon. If they were really interested in getting enthusiastic, almost evangelistic people on the case to promote hydrogen as the next big thing, they would sponsor Formula Student.

(writer of the blog post here) Interesting, can you divulge a bit more about where and when you did FC research? Was it academic or for a manufacturer?

You are absolutely right; PEM FCs - and I glossed over this in the blog post, might want to readdress it in a future part - are the only portable-enough technology for fuel cells and they inherently come with this ion transport problem and by extension cooling problem that is just unsolvable. Which is essentially the root cause of the complexity of an FCV.

Anyway, I feel your jadedness. Until I actually worked with fuel cells, I had absolutely no idea. Nobody had adequately conveyed to me how these things work and what goes into actually building FCVs. Things finally started to click in my head when we had an electric kart on batteries done within days after completing the frame, yet it took many months until the fuel cell worked. And this was a pretty ready-to-go fuel cell in most respects (Hydrogenics HyPM8).

I was too young back then to appreciate how long FC tech has been 'just around the corner' in the media. Now I understand. I built an FCV 7 1/2 years ago! And they're still pretty much at the same point. I wish things were different because I love the tech, but nature wins this time.