The use of SOFC's run on fossil fuels will result in lower consumption. I don't believe the fossil energy industry supports this. Since the fossil energy industry has infiltrated the DOE fossil energy program, I doubt this effort by DOE is serious.

Never trust the fake liberals of Berkley. They worship the secret police state. Their researchers are weakened with chemicals and "gaslighting techniques". Except the Chinese researchers who are there to take the tech back to China, which might be okay since US companies never do anything new and real. They simply lobby congress to protect old technology from threats. The manipulation of the lab researchers by the federal overseers is one part of that process.

Don't worry about pollution, it is just one measure in the final solution.

Don't worry, population decline is coming. There will be plenty of oil for the people left.

They don't tell us what rate they did the long term cycling at. The 500 cycle graph looks good, if done at c/2, but if done at c/10 then no so much.

Is the brain fart clearing from there heads? Maybe, maybe it's just a PR stunt too.

Cities should form a purchasing consortium and place singular large orders. This would initiate the quantities of scale that will significantly reduce the cost of new EV buses, and provide the type of economic incentive for bus companies to develop the supplier base and manufacturing capability that would assure they can reduce cost further. Unfortunately, many politicians, even city counsels are trapped in cult like loyalties to old and false ideologies developed to help the wealthy and enslave the people. Like thinking that fiscal responsibility can be found in conservativism and that the Democrats help the people.

80 cycles is pathetic. The Stanford PR team does a good job though.

ecic: at home or down the street at the corner fuel station, what does it matter? 10,000psi has safety issues. I am really pointing out that the continued support for FCVs is a ruse to distract from the more likely solutions and that it is acceptable to current industries because they believe that hydrogen will be made from NG and they will still control the profits. If DOE is serious about FCVs they would be focused on water splitting and not necessarily in a way that keeps us paying the people who lobby against change. I simply doubt the sincerity of DOE. I don't think it is coincidence that keeps us paying the same people who have political access.

Good for Argonne. It's nice to see them defend dirty old industries rather than discovering better future paths. They are controlled by congress though, so I suppose if they actually discovered new and better ways of powering the future their funding would be cut.

The DOE should solicit projects to develop a solar powered home hydrogen generation system that can provide hydrogen at less than gasoline prices. This way we will believe that their support of fuel cell vehicles is more than just a way to waste research dollars that would best be spent on EV battery improvements. This won't make the fossil industry happy though, and is probably why DOE would never do it. The people who control congress also control DOE, and they get paid to protect old industries from capitalism.

Hemp fiber would be better, except that it is illegal to grow that in the US. Proof that we are slaves. We must buy the product and use the materials the masters have chosen.

Most of the AFV stuff prior to EVs was fakery by the politicians so that they could look as if they were doing something about high gasoline prices. They never chose what might actually work or even wanted it to work. Ethanol is usable but it is not possible to get the volume needed at this time. Methanol is toxic and bio diesel is a niche. In fact the main issue with the bio derived fuel is that the source is diffuse and dependent on collection of waste materials which vary highly in makeup. The GOP pushed fuel cell cars too, because they knew it was highly unlikely to work and even if it did the hydrogen production and distribution would be controlled by the same people who sell us oil. Meanwhile we would still be using the oil that makes them and their true constituents rich. Hydrogen, it's the fuel of the future and always will be. The media is not independent from the moneyed powers. Their hype is the hype they have been told to perform. They are simply propagandists. Some hype is created by small companies hoping to get funding. They would subsequently pay themselves large salaries and then pretend that they are "just so close" to making the final discovery that will change everything. It's a living that many researchers pursue. It's a good scam because there are also legitimate companies with every intent to make real discoveries who look and sound the same. It's very difficult to know the difference. EVs work. The only thing left is mass production to reduce costs, but this requires investment which must come from those that own oil investments (they have most of the money because that was the single most profitable industry in human history). EVs have also suffered from Obama's support. Everything that Obama supported became the enemy of the right wing. Thus much of the hype about some of the inevitable issues that surrounded the recovery act funding, the loan program and even the R&D work having to do with batteries was a mischaracterization of the actions or at least the severity of malfeasance for political reasons. The GOP cannot let anyone who is not lead by them succeed. They can talk about solyndra and A123 all they want, but an honest evaluation of the programs that funded these shows that the programs were largely successful. However, being 99.9% successful in the government is still failure because opposition focuses on the rare failure and the media sells hype and the people are stupid (many anyway). I would direct you to venomous media hype surrounding LG Chem and their plant in Holland Michigan. They were vilified in the media, but yet, as far as meeting the goals of building a viable US manufacturing base in the US they have been very successful. The hype at the time when the GOP needed to oppose Obama on EVs was very negative toward LG Chem, and while they did have some issues, these were corrected and actually minor in scope given the size and ultimate goal of the project. So, Obama has supported EVs and thus at least a good portion of the population hates EV simply because of that. The loan program is government choosing winners. It is of course a GW Bush program, and prior to Obama it was fine for the loan program to pick winners, it only became problematic when Obama's administration would pick them, and of course they did. The rate of success with the loans is higher than the best venture capitalists and in fact because the interest is not too low, it will actually make money for the government and tax payers. That's a boring story for the media and they are also told not to make that point. So, this study fails to address many of the real issues surrounding the topic they chose. Just more media spin, although, this one looks as if it want to make the whole topic academically boring so as to put people to sleep. They say nothing real and blame most of it on policy makers, which is code for politicians, but they take no side either liberal or conservative and there really is a big difference. You can find instances of failure on both sides, but only one side wanted the tech to fail and only one side wanted it to work. If you think that is not true, you are wrong.

This will be my standard comment regarding buses for a while. Cities who have buses for public transportation should form a national purchasing consortium. This would allow them to collectively commit to relatively large purchases of buses (large for the bus manufacturers) while the individual cities would only commit to a small portion of the purchase. This would give the manufactures the large stable orders they need to assure financial success and to reduce costs through efficiencies of scale. Yet, the individual cities would only need to a small portion of the overall order. This would drive down the price of electric buses and reduce risk for manufacturers. Perhaps the cities could commit to replacing all of their buses with electric drive over a ten year period. A single large purchase of enough buses to replace all buses over ten years for some 10-20 cities should be a large enough order and commitment to significantly lower bus costs and provide a secure financial future for the bus companies. Yes, too idealistic and our politicians are not smart nor care for the people. However, it would work. I know the cities won't do it but it is what they should do. We watch our leaders fail constantly because they are primarily concerned with power and greed.

It would be interesting to know what price these hybrid or full EVs could be purchased at if a very large order were made. I mean there are numerous large cities in the US that use buses as at least part of their public transportation. So, say these city form a purchasing consortium that takes bids for perhaps 2-3 thousand electric buses per year for 5 years. That kind of order could lead to significantly lower costs because of the scale of the manufacturing and the stability of the market it would create. Perhaps choose two companies so there is no bottleneck. I suppose this would be asking too much of the typically adversarial US politicians. They would have to check with the true masters to see if they were allowed.

This is probably well intentioned (hard to tell since CMU is in the heart of coal country) but like other similar studies this will be used to bash EVs. The silly environmentalist are a gullible bunch and can not conceive of how this study may help them. They will simply take it as gospel (to them science is devoid of human foibles-they assume it is an absolute and contains no human opinion or spin)

Thanks Captain obvious. The real issue is cost. It seems that if cities collaborated to purchase high volumes of electric buses then they could put in high enough volume orders to support the building of large plants. Let's say 50 large cities collaborated to buy EV buses in quantities that would overturn their fleets in ten years. Such a long term purchase would supply a stable market for the builders and drive down cost and yet each individual city would not be spending extreme amounts of money. It's funny that the DOE clean cities groups don't influence collaborative purchasing to support the growth of the industries they supposedly support. I suppose there is some ideological view that says government must be benign or inept, otherwise it is picking winners. Although, why government would want to pick losers is beyond me. I think we as a group (humans) have beliefs in ideologies and religion that will prevent us from making rational plans and decisions.

Harvey, Non-GAAP is not misleading, it just requires understanding. It's good that they report both, so that the bean counters can understand some part of the plan. I know it's difficult for those with MBA to comprehend complex issues and plans. Non-GAAP is simply a method that recognizes that growth and investment in real assets has an intrinsic value that is not out the door when it is made. It is a value that will be returned at least in part. Saying that a purchase of real assets has zero value is what GAAP does. It's like saying that even though my house was paid of, it now is worth nothing. Of course I don't have investors or bean counters, so I don't have to pretend that the GAAP rules make sense.

C/10 is not a EV current density. These may be viable as grid storage, but that market requires very cheap batteries. They don't really address either current density or cost in this article. I'll get excited when they say they are cheap, or they show ne the rate capability work.

Fracture toughness can be measured by mechanical means. I fail to understand why a model, even if validated by experimental results, is superior to actual testing. I guess testing is mundane and anyone can do it, but if your a national lab you need to attached some equations to your papers.

Yes, we all know that Li ion batteries are far more dangerous than a tank full of highly flammable liquid with 5 times the energy density.

Where are the protectors of oil and the right wing media that denigrate EVs. Fuel cells never seem to attract the same vehement hatred by the luddites. Perhaps because the moneyed class believes they will still control the profits. I suspect they are uninformed. Home hydrogen production via solar electrolysis will be just as cost effective as either methane reforming or grid power supplied electrolysis. Platinum can be and is recycled. The cost of electrolyzed hydrogen is in the electricity and compression energy. Hydrogen is the most difficult to compress gas in existence. In order to get any real energy density stored it must be compressed to very high pressures and that makes lightweight and low cost containers very difficult. Investing in infrastructure for technologies which are known to have shortfalls is not a great plan. EVs are already viable and only need lower cost which can be achieve by economies of scale and manufacturing efficiency improvements.

It looks like the decay in capacity with cycles slows after 15 cycles. 150 cycles is not enough to know that the performance is stable.

It would be interesting to use a fuel cell as a range extender on a PHEV rather than an ICE.

The US military in general has embraced green technology. I think they correctly assume it is a matter of security in source of energy and a benefit to logistics. The US consumer appears to like the war on terror and thus hates the biofuels, EVs and other things that would free them from their apparent fear. One must therefore assume that the American consumer is a masochist that likes fear and hopes to preserve the terrorist as a means to get the fear that they so much desire. Okay, I suppose that the American consumer could simply be ignorant dummies who have no clue and just buy what they are told. Too bad we have a nation that cannot act in it's own best interest because of the masochistic dummies.