Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

What does 59% mean. A hydrogen car is about 25% energy efficient from natural gas. EPA takes the fuel going in and tells you how many miles you get. If you are 59% and go 1 mile on a gallon equivalent, what in the world does the 59% really mean? It's just the efficiency of going from hydrogen to electricity at 25% load.

Take the amount of natural gas to drive the car 100 miles. You can use the epa for that. You can't use the raw fuel cell peak efficiency for anything. Plug into the house in LA, it will take you less natural gas, then filling up at a hydrogen station. If we play what if those hydrogen stations got much more efficient, and what if the grid was only as efficient as it was 20 years ago, the fuel cell might win. EPA ratings include losses at the plug or pump. Is it 59% efficient in the city, or the highway, or with air conditioning on a hot day? Well none of those things.

Really dishonest chart. Bad job Toyota for putting out this misinformation.

That was some old test, when you adjust it to today's epa figures it is worse. You can't use jc08 versus epa either.

But for your ideal fuel cell efficiency discussion. clarity claims a 60% efficient fuel cell toyota claims 59%. How many miles can the fchv-adv get on a kg of h2 at 80 mph, versus a clarity, versus a tesla S on 33.7kwh of electricity? That is why we have standardized tests instead of chart claims.

We will see the epa figures when we see it, and I'm sure we will have an equivalent phev to test them against. A fuel cell car is not that much less efficient on natural gas than a phev. If you are building them to reduce ghg, the charging that plug in on wind or sun wins every time.

For a phev , its not the worst idea in the world to replace the ice and fuel tank with a fuel cell stack and hydrogen tank. The price has to drop greatly though. That isn't anytime soon. I don't buy toyota's diagram that $1m FC addition is going to drop to 1%, or $10K just by putting it into production. Materials are still much too expensive at today's prices. A Bloom box, 100kw, is dropping to about $300,000. If you don't make it a plug in, you need a fuel cell that big. Now it doesn't need to be as reliable as a bloom box, and it can start with hydrogen instead of methane, but it needs to be smaller lighter, and put up with vibrations. That and the expensive hydrogen tank is not about to drop to $10,000 put together in 2015.

 

Yes but I don't see how a battery swap station can handle as many vehicles as a gas station. How many buffer battery packs would it need to guarantee a full pack. I know Taxis in Japan and Israel are testing battery swapping but not sure about the numbers in existence.

For the bang for the buck, I think H2 stations are better investment. Hopefully there will be only one standard hydrogen "pump". For BEV, there are multiple plug standards and battery pack sizes. It is a mess.

 

At two minutes per car, one car at a time. I would guess it is probably about the same throughput as a 4 four pump gas station with automated credit card readers. More than the same with cash, less than 8 pump stations. However, since most of the time the car will be recharged rather than battery swapped, that would seem to indicate less throughput is needed. Hydrogen stations would appear to be at least 10:00 minutes per fill up.

Yes, clearly it would need 'enough', just like any gas or hydrogen station needs 'enough'.

You have figures for costs for the various kinds of stations?

It is easy to hope that one non-existent standard will be better than current multiple standards. Current multiple standards argue that this is probably a forlorn hope.

 

You seem confused. 59% efficiency from tank-to-wheel under Japanese cycle (under various loads/test loops). Prius gets 40% from gasoline and EV gets 85% under the same cycle.

Under EPA cycle(s), the numbers will be different but the relationship of the three should remain roughly the same.


Well-to-tank is 67% for a hydrogen car and tank-to-wheel is 59% so the total came out to 40%, not 25%.


For EV, I agree that 39% well-to-tank seems low. With the combined cycle powerplant, it should be 47% (60% - 7% transmission loss - 15% charging loss).

Both paths produce about the same 40% efficiency for natural gas. However, H2 will have faster refueling speed, lighter vehicle and higher range.

 

Check this out. Go to "Why Hydrogen" then "Cost competitive".

 

None of the Japanese tests have an efficiency score. Yes I am confused. I assume that it is a made up score for the chart. The prius has an 38% efficient engine. How did it rank more efficient in a test than its engine can do at peak efficiency? Toyota either made a mistake or is making something up completely.

60% *.93 = 56% to the plug

The charging loss is included in the 89 mpge of the tesla S, or the 95 mpge of the prius phv.

Let's see, pg&e grid, which is probably similar to SCE I get 87% (because nuclear.hydro, and renewables don't count) *.93* 89 mpge = 72 mpge (natural gas at the power plant)

Or
60%*.93*89mpge =49 mpge in a combined cycle plant

For the clarity lets use the high 67%
67% * 60mpge = 40 mpge (natural gas going into the reformer)

That new fcv-r or whatever toyota comes up with needs to get at least 73 mpge to use less natural gas per mile than a tesla S running on combined cycle. It further needs hydrogen fueling stations much more efficient than the current ones. IIRC the fchv-adv got about 64mpge in a similar drive to EPA, if we degrade by the epa's 30% it uses for BEVs, that comes to 45 mpge. I expect the fuel cell sedan to be smaller, more aerodynamic, and more efficient, but 73 mpge looks like a big reach. I also don't know which looks more like 59%

You can refuel the fcv faster if there is a station near by. You can refuel your plug-in at home while you sleep. Current fuel infrastructure has much lower for plug-in electricity, than hydrogen, but that could change in a decade. Range of the fcv-r looks to be about he same as the tesla S 85kwh. I would expect the similar range for more cost in a BEV. A c-max energi or prius phv has even greater range.

By the way, these folks showed there work and assumptions.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/greendorm/participate/cee124/TeslaReading.pdf
You can see they used old epa, and used the roadster, but you can plug in your own numbers after reading their assumptions. Toyota's numbers are far off, any way you look at it.

 

Come on, that's just bogus EV bias calculation. If you want to use peak 60% efficiency of CC powerplant, use 80% peak for H2 reformation.

67% for H2 includes pumping to the tank. 60 MPGe also include the energy required to pump again. You are counting that twice there. Nice try.

A typical CC powerplant efficiency is around 50%. Like I said before, WTW efficiency for both paths are pretty much the same. 93 MPGe BEV is as green as 60 MPGe FCV. Who would've thought. Shame on EPA for putting out such misleading label.

The reality is that 25% of our electricity is generated from NG today while 95% of hydrogen is produced with NG reformation. 42% of the electricity from Coal drags the BEV's WTW efficiency down.

That's written by Tesla so it is bias. They used the worse cases for gasoline and hydrogen while using the unrealistic scenario for the Roadster. It assumed 100% of the electricity will be from CC powerplant using natural gas.

Let's cut to the chase and use the official EPA figures from Beyond Tailpipe Emission. Model S emits 250 g/mi while the regular Prius emits 222 g/mi. That shows a regular Prius using gasoline is more efficient than the Model S if you consider everything from the well to the wheel. The site doesn't have hydrogen vehicles to compare but it just shows how wacky and bias EV people are.

 

I used the 67% that toyota used. The real stations are much less efficient.
In reality in the most efficient current stations
(95% well to reformer)x(70% reformer to hydrogen)x(89% hydrogen pumped up to dispensing tank) = 59%. Since many stations in a network will need pipelines or liquid hydrogen shipped this number is a very optimistic number. Both of those methods take a great deal of energy. If it is liquid hydrogen, you don't need to pump it up to 10,000 psi for dispensing though.

But let's use 80 and forget losses from the well
(80%) x(89%) = 71%, that is much better than anyone is doing today. That 11% is electricity so if you want to knock down electrical efficiency you need to increase that loss too. Maybe there is a 20% loss in compressing the hydrogen, since it takes twice the natural gas to produce electricity as its energy value according to you.

(.71)*60mpge = 43 mpge (natural gas at the reformer wall for some future efficient station)
(.50)*.93*89mpge = 41 mpge (efficiency of 1990 combined cycle plant to a tesla S)

I guess we can make the numbers look worse for the plug-in if we really really try hard. Its best not to look at the 118 mpge of a fit ev though, you know the one with the same efficient motor as the clarity.

It includes pumping up for the dispensing tank. The same as electrical losses to the wall. I'm not trying anything.

Well absolutely not. EPA is rating it from dispensing. They are not rating green. You can not use the numbers that way. They do the ratings so that you can't be dishonest, like claim pumping losses in dispensing the hydrogen or other losses.

Shame on Toyota for being so misleading on their chart.

If we are talking 2020 here, I would think we are making new plants for natuaral gas. California where the fuel cells will be sold needs to produce over 10 GW of new power to replace old plants by then, or perhaps import that much more power from other states. Much if it will come from renewables and new combined cycle natural gas.

If you power a fuel cell vehicle by sun or wind, efficiency drops further versus a plug-in. I am not claiming green here, just how much of a power source needs to be used.

A fuel cell is only slightly less efficient on natural gas than a similar plug in. The toyota chart is claiming it is much more efficient. This is wrong.

That is why I put up the california grid. I expect these cars only to be sold in any quantity in california for the next 7 years at least. In california today plugging into the grid will use much less fossil fuels than using a fuel cell.

California will get over half their power in 2020 from renewables, large hydro, and nuclear. Of the rest the bulk will come from cc natural gas power plants. It is a biased paper, use your own figures, but it is much less biased and distorting than the toyota chart. The biggest bias they had was using ideal efficienty from the tesla against epa of the other cars. Hey that is exactly the same bias toyota uses in their charts, except they picked worse than epa for plug-ins.

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Yes, but is beyond tailpipe talking about energy futures in 2020 for fuel cell vehicles. If they were, that figure would drop, and at a minimum they should be using 2011 figures for the grid. The two biggest plug-in states are california and texas, most texans use wind and most californians use solar or the grid. When you do marginal changes EVs use much less fossil fuel. When I put in my old california zip, I got 130 g/mi. hmm. Where are these fuel cell cars going to be sold?

This comparison was not about ghg, it was about how much natural gas would be used in each. Toyota's chart is a blatent lie. When you need that Public hydrogen fueling station in bum finch indiana it will be reforming through electrolysis on cheap coal electricity, they aren't going to pay $2M for a natural gas reformer that the 5 fuel cell cars traveling through need. Recharge your plug-in in Austin, the hundreds of stations are 100% renewable electricity. How much ghg does a plug in produce in CD mode when operated on sun or wind?

 

It's just a test mule


Lexus HS fuel cell test bed (2015) spied | Secret New Cars | Car Magazine Online


Since the toyota fuel cell is going to be a sedan, the the HS hybrid makes more sense as a test mule than the highlander hybrid which was their last test mule. You might want to read something into using the HS versus the Camry though. The HS and concept are slightly smaller than the camry.

The concept for the toyota hydrogen vehicle is the fcv-r, but no one knows what will change between show car and the 2015 car
2015 Toyota FCV-R
It could gain back a 5th seat, it could be a lexus, toyota is being tight lipped other than it will be a sedan, and it looks like it will be mid sized. I would think Toyota will try to look at the good things in the clarity and improve them.

 

In the US today an L2 station costs approximately $5,000, and a L3 station costs $50,000 installed. Nissan says they can sell chademo for $10,000 which may drop prices rapidly. The average existing hydrogen fueling station has cost $3M, but projections put these out at $2M/station.

L2 is standardized, and can charge up to rates up to 19.2 kw. L2 does require expensive equipment in the car to do these high rates, but nissan will soon join ford and honda at 6.6kw. The charging infrastructure can be built, and the cars will come along to upgrade. The honda fit can charge up about an epa 27 miles in one hour at a public L2 station.

L3 quick charging standard is in flux in the US and Europe. It should be settled next year.

Charging networks of L3 for every car crossing the country is expensive, but if phevs are used for trips further than 300 miles, then the infrastructure can be quite cheap. It all depends on assumptions. If you need 5 L3 and 100 L2 for every 10,000 plug-ins, then the cost $750,000 or $75/car. Long range BEVs do need support at home, and this can cost $500-$6000/per car. Many phevs only need a dedicated 110V circuit.

Until there are 1 million fuel cell cars on the road, hydrogen fueling infrastructure can be extremely expensive. After that it may only be about $1000/car.

Public charging electricity is often peak demand and expensive. Hydrogen is also expensive right now, $8-$13/kg. Charging at night at home and at work is relatively cheap. We don't know how cars will be charged. If your assumptions are mainly at home at night, the total fueling costs are much much lower than hydrogen. If we get to millions of hydrogen cars, and most electrics need to be quick charged during the day, electricity will be more expensive. Certainly if there are only 100,000 hydrogen cars or less in this country infrastructure per car is quite expensive.

My best guess is $1B for 100,000 hydrogen cars, and $150 Million for 1 million electric cars above what has been spent already, for new public infrastructure. Those million plug-ins do have $7.5 B in tax credits though, much higher than needed infrastructure. My guess is it will take about anouther $10B in federal fuel cell funding to get those first 100,000 hydrogen cars. The manufacturing and R&D dwarf the infrastructure dollars.

 

How does carbon emissions from different energy sources equate to vehicles' well to wheel efficiency? I doubt an EV shaped like brick that did 0 to 60 in under 4sec and charged directly off PV would be more efficient than the Prius. Likewise, the Tesla S's efficiency won't change with changes in the charging grid's mix.

You just need to chill it down to -423F, and tanks just as expensive and bulky in order to store it for any length of time.

We can't forget that the price for the hydrogen tanks also need to come down. They cost several thousand each right now, and come with expiration dates.

 

Yes, I was just saying you don't need to add the compression energy. IIRC it is about 3.2 kwh/kg to compress hydrogen to 10,000 psi and 12 kwh/kg to liquify hydrogen. In practice its slightly higher, 0.4kwh/kg at a fuel pump. You don't have to add the 3.2 to the 12kwh to liquify. Theoretically its possible to find a way to compress at only 1.4kwh/kg, and liquify at 6 kwh/kg. Either way, if you need to liquify the hydrogen, then truck it to a fueling station, its going to take more energy.

Toyota claims a "breakthrough" on tank costs with some in house carbon fiber manufacturing techique. I don't think that is a big road block. The cost of the hydrogen in both dollars and energy is a large barrier, as is the price of the fuel cells.

 

man, if some of you guys were asked about Prius in 1995, it would be the stupidest and most pointless idea in the world.

 

Is there anything we have said that is wrong?

If toyota was pushing a turbine car, would you be as clueless?

Even toyota is saying this is pre-competition. No one that understands hydrogen thinks they have a chance for at least a decade. Think hybrids and plug-ins in the early 80s. Many things need to be solved. The hydrogen folks seem to think they still haven't been Hydrogen cars need a value proposition better than phevs to gain traction, and a great deal of technical innovation.

 

i am not blaming anyone or anything... just asking questions. For instance, people said grid will welcome overnight charging but at the same time other people pointed out how solution is to charge them everywhere during the day, which will not help the grid at all.

so if solution to charging EVs is to charge them all the time, then it will be clearly bad for local grid.... having chargers that do 25 miles/hour is not going to help anything if EVs become really popular.

 

Hows a decade equal to hybrids in early 80's? Thats more like Prius in 1998.

If Toyota claims that they can offer $50k FCV in 2015, I dont think thats something thats going to be that hard to sell to the masses, with $10k or more in incentives from various Govts, it seems pretty reasonable in price... I dont quite understand why are you so against it, people behave as hydrogen killed their babies.

If someone told you that Toyota (or Ford/GM) will have EV for $40k that can do 400 miles per tank, you would be estatic, right?

Thats because range does matter...

 

Seems like you have not only bought into hype, but you are trying to spread it. PHEVs were actually further along in 1982 than fuel cell vehicles are today. The big automotive companies and governments are all supporting them though. The US to billions of dollars already. So they may make it in a decade, or they may not make it at all. Challenges are not technically easy. The fuel cost much more than gasoline, the fuel cells are expensive and unreliable, and their isn't a refueling infrastructure. Explain how that compares to the prius in 1998.

Well you obviously know more than all the autocompanies. A $50,000 car certainly will sell well to the masses without a refueling infrastructure. What are your credentials again? No one here is saying hydrogen is killing babies. We just have heard the hype before. By the way, the $50K likely is just in the US, and includes incentives. I've never seen toyota price a car like this in europe at the same price as the US. Toyota is going to sell a few cars in a few markets, then claim that it can't sell more until the government buys them fueling infrastructure and subsidies the fuel. Its the same as GM, honda, and Mercedes have said. Tell me why is it different this time? At least Mercedes is helping to pay for most of the new stations in germany. Toyota's what chipped in for 1 in the US.

If they said they would do it using unobtainium, I would not believe them. If they actually had a car doing that sure, especially if it were as nice as a $30K car. It would be quickly profitable to build charging stations, and many more texan's would ride on wind power.

At least for the next 7 years, hydrogen has less range than bevs, and both have less than phevs. My next car will be a phev or bev. The 60kwh tesla S has enough range for me. With fuel cells I would have to talk my way into refueling at 1 station, that is owned by the university. Huge range, cost, and refueling issue with fuel cells if you have been paying attention.

Didn't you just accuse us of acting like fuel cells were killing babies.

Yes infrastructure is much better for off peak charging. If large percentage of people need to charge during peak hours, infrastructure will need to be built. This will cost money, but not nearly as much as fuel cell filling stations.

The average person goes less than 40 miles in a day in the US. If they exceed a plug-ins range it often is not by a large amount. Most days EV drivers will charge at home, but L2 is nice to have for days they are exceeding their mileage. If they are crossing the country phevs are a much better solution. California the home to fuel cells, will likely have a more extensive L3 network than hydrogen in 2017. Lower costs for the vehicle and fuel are what should help phevs compete with ice cars. That will take battery prices coming down, and fuel costs going up. I don't know how fuel cells compete with phevs if they are much more expensive. Have you driven any of the vehicles? I've ridden in fuel cell vehicles and driven phevs and bevs. Get some hands on experience or at least try to understand the technology before you make bad assumptions.

So again, plug in solution PHEVs and BEVs depending on the needs of the consumer. If somehow fuel cells solve all there problems and get better than phevs, bring them on. In the mean time I don't want to build a multi-hundred billion dollar infrastructure for a technology that may never be as good as phevs. There needs to be a value proposition.

 

It's more likely BMW's technique.
BMW and Toyota co-developing fuel cells | The Car Tech blog - CNET Reviews

 

Despite what you've heard about fuel cell, is it so hard to keep your mind open?

Hyundai Poised To Launch Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle This Year | Hybrid Cars