2025/2026 Hybrid Powerunit speculation

[djos]

Adding batteries to fuel cells Is Just adding weight, cost and complexity. This isn’t an issue for very large vehicles, but it is for passenger vehicles and race cars (less so cost in the latter example).

Btw, please tell me how you could fit this level of complexity into an F1 car without building an LMP car?

https://www.toyota.com/content/dam/toy ... 6_V002.png

Those huge tanks are only good for 400 miles under normal driving conditions. I’m all for bringing refueling back to F1, but I can’t see FCEV F1 cars happening anytime in the next 20 years.

You're just reiterating the same BS without even interpreting what I said. Again with the dumb hydrogen cylinders...

How else are you going to store enough hydrogen to be useful?

[mzso]

It's a big difference working with a gas vs working with a liquid. Liquid spil burns, gas leak explodes.
besides the car, there must be some kind of system to fuel the cars, in or around the padock/pit boxes. Some kind of traveling system of 10000 liters, accessible by the team, usable for ten garages and traveling around the world to 23 races.
lets say, there is a mobile "pump" system so every pit crew can fuel their own car. One leak in this system, one fault, damaged hose by a forklift truck or whatever and due to the relative low ignition point of propane and butane gas, you have a gas explosion that will level the whole pit complex.

besides, propane or butane tanks are not allowed on airplanes, some tunnels, boats, etc so... there is that problem.

oh, plus, when a crash like Grosjean would happen again, even when the tank doesn't rupture, there would be only one safe thing to do: evacuate that area and wait until the fire is over and everything is cooled down. A explosion of 200-300 liter propane or butane tank, especially one made to withstand extreme amounts of pressure, would potentially kill so many people, that LeMans 55 looks like a small incident.

You're drifting into hollywood territory, where even an oxygen tank is an explosive device. LPG has been handled with relative safety for a century.

And a tank would be build or allowed to rise to "extreme amounts" pressure. It would have relief valves.
The goal is to make things safe and to create a Michael bay movie.

"besides, propane or butane tanks are not allowed on airplanes, some tunnels, boats, etc so... there is that problem. "

And you can just carry around petrol cannisters, right?

[mzso]

How else are you going to store enough hydrogen to be useful?

I don't want to store hydrogen. You want to store hydrogen.
I've been talking about SOFCs and propane/butane.

[mzso]

I don't like your idea, thought, concept, or world view on anything, including F1. And you need to be comfortable with that. Your angle of privilege is nauseating. Please stop.

You don't get to diminish facts and reality into someone else's opinion to be hand-waved. You can only pretend it's not there. It's nought to me, if you choose to live in fantasy.

[Zynerji]

I don't like your idea, thought, concept, or world view on anything, including F1. And you need to be comfortable with that. Your angle of privilege is nauseating. Please stop.

You don't get to diminish facts and reality into someone else's opinion to be hand-waved. You can only pretend it's not there. It's nought to me.

Appreciation for art is subjective, individual, and inviolable. Questioning "why can't you just agree with me!?" In every quoted reply simply shows an unappreciated narcissistic attempt to suppress a contrary opinion.

Both yourself and your opinion are nought to me. I don't come here for affirmation. I come here for fun. And that includes loud noise and the smell of gasoline.

[mzso]

Speaking of propane in a crash.....
https://youtu.be/FsS3HxrXhsQ

That amount of petrol would have created a huge pool and an inferno of fire. So it's all relative. I don't think cylinders like that have safety valves so some explode, but some of them apparently still just formed a leak and expelled gas in a bit like a flare.

It's not like petrol is fun:
A lot depends on safety measures.

[mzso]

I don't like your idea, thought, concept, or world view on anything, including F1. And you need to be comfortable with that. Your angle of privilege is nauseating. Please stop.

You don't get to diminish facts and reality into someone else's opinion to be hand-waved. You can only pretend it's not there. It's nought to me.

Appreciation for art is subjective, individual, and inviolable. Questioning "why can't you just agree with me!?" In every quoted reply simply shows an unappreciated narcissistic attempt to suppress a contrary opinion.

Both yourself and your opinion are nought to me. I don't come here for affirmation. I come here for fun.

I don't feel a desire to accept things that are wrong.

[noname]

I've been talking about SOFCs and propane/butane.

Or methanol and high-temp PEM FCs.

Methanol is way safer than gasoline or even propane/butane/LNG/etc.
And we can make it from captured CO2 or bio-waste.

From marketing point of view it is ideal candidate.

[Airshifter]

It's not nonsensical at all, as you've answered part of it already.

Actually I was just guessing. That sentence makes no grammatical or logical sense.

So you're saying that the packaging for this SOFC, along with the butane or propane, into a car would deliver the same power for the same distance, all while not adding any extra weight, bulk, or more severe fuel storage hazards than the cars currently have?

That sentence was rather awkward and difficult to interpret for me. I was just guessing what you meant.
But don't put words in my mouth. It seemed you only asked about fuel, and I only answered about that.

Anyway...
I think I get now what you were asking (after re-reading a couple more times)
Eventually it seems possible. That sort of Nasa data seems promising and it's just experimental technology and not a result of F1 development, pouring a billion dollars or more in total yearly to develop something. So there's a lot of unexploited potential.
Keep in mind that the current PU is already pretty heavy and bulky, due to hybridization. You throw out the the ICE you free up a lot of weight. There are already two electric motors, which you would replace with more powerful ones up to a total of around 750kW power. Some amount of battery you would need to buffer power from the fuel cell, during off or partial throttle phases. Also you could recover a lot more during braking, I'm thinking no rear brakes would be required. All of this is far from trivial to design and optimise, so obviously certainty would only be reached if someone did the lifting, but in my opinion it seem very credible to match ICE.

As for fuel. Propane and butane has better energy density than petrol as well as fuel cells and motors should be more efficient than ICE.
For safety I don't see any significant difference pressure requirements are rather modest especially for butane. And the fuel bladder is already made of a carbon fiber composite, more than strong enough. They would just need to redesign it to not leak gaseous phase fuel.

I'm no expert on fuel cells but all initial reports I've seen regarding FCEV's on the market today fail horribly when power demands are up, and even at modest speeds are not as efficient as claimed. Even with alternate fuels and a new fuel cell, getting all that packaged into a race car is still going to at a minimum add weight and decrease performance. Even the current hybrid systems are adding weight, and they aren't making nearly as much power.

Well, you can't judge much of whatever hit the roads. Fuel cells had realtively small development attention. And besides they only ever made hydrogen FCEVs. Which suck, because of hydrogen itself and toa degree because of the limitations of the proton exchange membrane.

I don't disagree at all that eventually it may be possible. I just don't think fuel cells have advanced enough to give us that much power in a compact unit here and now. More regenerative energy could be harvested, but that creates a need for more storage. And since fuel cells need even more storage for quick acceleration events, suddenly the space lost by the ICE is easily gone, and then some.

[mzso]

I've been talking about SOFCs and propane/butane.

Or methanol and high-temp PEM FCs.

Methanol is way safer than gasoline or even propane/butane/LNG/etc.
And we can make it from captured CO2 or bio-waste.

From marketing point of view it is ideal candidate.

Perhaps, I was not thinking about alcohols because of their inferior energy density compared to petrol, meanwhile propane/butane is superior. Though butanol is not far from petrol. (Though I'm sure if it's applicable to fuel cells.)
I also don't think of them as potential "green" fuels. Because as far as I know they can only be produced inefficiently with costly methods, out of food crops.
But I guess it's not much of an issue. If F1 were to develop useful FC technology using them as fuel they could still be used in the real world with more practical bios/synth/green fuels.

Unfortunately methanol is the least usable alcohol due to its energy density. It would require more than twice in both weight and volume compared to petrol.

[Just_a_fan]

It's a big difference working with a gas vs working with a liquid. Liquid spil burns, gas leak explodes.

I give you the BLEVE. Liquid fuel exploding.

Yes, a limited case but not unknown.

[mzso]

I don't disagree at all that eventually it may be possible. I just don't think fuel cells have advanced enough to give us that much power in a compact unit here and now. More regenerative energy could be harvested, but that creates a need for more storage. And since fuel cells need even more storage for quick acceleration events, suddenly the space lost by the ICE is easily gone, and then some.

I see. But I also think that it's possible to develop a viable system if it's set into regulation a few years in advance, even more so in the usual F1 bubblegum time-frame that keeps getting streched.
2026... For a formula that is rumored to be largely the same, simplified even... They could decide to abandon ICE next year and probably still would be enough time to create viable tech...

[mzso]

It's a big difference working with a gas vs working with a liquid. Liquid spil burns, gas leak explodes.

I give you the BLEVE. Liquid fuel exploding.

Yes, a limited case but not unknown.

By the looks of it components of petrol start to boil at around 40°C. So it would boil (and increase pressure) approximately as well as LPG. So not really safer in this regard.

[Big Tea]

Guys, I dont want to drag it anymore off topic, but there is a vid here some may like.
His a 'rabbiter' but the content is often good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNKlHSh0PAQ

Skip to about 5 min to avoid the blabber

[mzso]

Guys, I dont want to drag it anymore off topic, but there is a vid here some may like.
His a 'rabbiter' but the content is often good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNKlHSh0PAQ

Skip to about 5 min to avoid the blabber

But what's your point? It's a news roundup video, with several separate things.
Edit:So I guess you mean exactly 5 minutes? Not off to a good start, with the "a very low energy dense gas can, be extracted from a very high energy dense gas" sentence. The two are the highest energy density gases (which is good), and hydrogen is the higher...

By the way, what does rabbiter mean?