Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

I posted this before. Here we go again.

 

If I offended anyone trying to get my points across, I apologize.

I guess, in a discussion of pros and cons, you can accuse anybody of using ad hominem. I believe I have used facts (recent, not old) to paint fair pictures of both BEV and FCV.

 

Sure looks like an old debunked chart. Can you show us the source of those bad figures again? I've asked twice nicely. I showed you numbers with sources, and allowed you to modify them.

Do you agree that a phev running on renewable electricity, is going to go further on that same amount of electricty as converting it to hydrogen, getting it to high pressure, and using it in a fcv?

Do you agree that it is not proper to compare an old grid made up efficiency number against some new made up hydrogen conversion number?

Nice, then maybe we can get rid of that old chart.

At least use the fuel cell lobbies numbers, they are much more reasonable than toyota's chart.
http://cafcp.org/sites/files/20091026wells2wheels.pdf

 

Thank you. I was not arguing, just asking for data.
The hydrogen pathway shown above requires new reformation plants. What would the well-wheel efficiency be if NG was combusted to electricity and then the electricity used to make hydrogen ?

 

It depends on the type of PHEV. If it is like Volt, PHEV will weight more. If it is like Prius PHV or C-MAX Energi, PHEV should weight about the same.

I am not sure how much the production version of FCV-R (sedan) will weight but the FCHV-adv (SUV) prototype weights less than the gas powered Highlander.

 

My most basic objection to a hydrogen economy is that it comes at an unacceptably high opportunity cost of not upgrading the US electric grid infrastructure to support wind development.

 

Sorry, must've missed your requests. Here is the source.

 

There are no citations of where the numbers come from. You only have toyota's name on them. The numbers don't add up.

Why is the full cell in toyota's chart so much more efficient than the numbers in the fuel cell partnership. I assume that toyota just used very bad numbers. They don't correspond to other sources like the doe.

This is a very pro fuel cell group, that at least uses official government figures.
http://cafcp.org/sites/files/20091026wells2wheels.pdf
Take a look, read the explanations and then take another look at toyota's old numbers.

 

Toyota assumes SMR. How likely is that, at what cost ?

 

Yes, I agree. For renewable energy, nothing can beat BEV or PHV. It doesn't make sense to use electricity to make hydrogen. That's probably the reason why 95% of hydrogen is reformulated from natural gas.

Our discussion was about using natural gas as a source because US has plenty of them.

In my opinion, that chart from Toyota is more fair the Best case vs. Worse case chart you posted from Tesla.

The 39% well-to-wheel EV efficiency does reflect our grid using all different fuel sources. According to EIA, about 2/3 of the energy used to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity is “lost” at power plants and in power lines. We'll have to see if hydrogen production will be as efficient as Toyota claims to be in 2015.

 

Because hydrogen has all the advantages of electricity and none of the disadvantages.

Hydrogen can be produced via the same sustainable energy generation means from solar to wind to wave. Hydrogen had none of the disadvantages of electricity in transport, the additional cost and weight of batteries, the long time needed needed to recharge batteries. Hydrogen can even be used in aviation.

 

The chart said it uses Membrane Separation Reform (MSR?).

This paper concludes $1.82 per kg of H2. That should go about 60 miles.

 

If you need hydrogen in small quantities, electricity may be the least expensive way Otherwise we agree so far. Lots of hydrogen made in California though from naphtha, a fraction of the oil, and exxon is talking about reforming it from gasoline for these trials.

And here I thought it was on the chart, because it is the most efficient way to make hydrogen. It is the source that if you choose it makes hydrogen look the best. The use of natural gas on these charts goes back before there was a surplus of natural gas.

I call any chart with clearly bogus numbers without a source bad. The Stanford piece had sources and you could substitute. The only bad number I saw was efficiency, where that paper rated the tesla with more mpge than the epa gave it, and gave the fuel cell worse than the clarity. It predated the tests. The well to tank portion was much better.

How do you square that toyota's numbers are so different from the fuel cell partnership, even though it is a member? Its numbers disagree with argonne, CARB, and the DOE. There isn't any discussion on how it came up with these numbers.

hmm, then here is question one - how did toyota only get 33%. Question 2 is why don't plug-ins get to use natural gas and renewables like fuel cell cars. Can't we build the new power for them as easily, or actually more easily than for the fuel cells?

I'm sure toyota will refuel at that solar hydrogen station in Sacramento and claim to be fossil fuel free. No excuse for toyota to use such obviously wrong and misleading numbers. I suspect they will bury that chart in 2015.

 

Perhaps, Toyota's calculations are based on this source. Just a guess. I have seen C.E Thomas referenced in one of the chart on the Toyota Hydrogen ESQ site.

 

According to DOE, 95% of hydrogen produced today is from natural gas. I don't think the chart used NG to make hydrogen look good.

If we should keep the same standard (use the majority source), we should use Coal for electricity. Of course, that wouldn't be fair so I use the national grid average according to DOE.

 

Thanks,
problems with this are easy to see, numbers are quite outdated.

If we look at today's tech ccgt are 60% efficient not 48%. On site steam reformers are much less efficient than the author guesses, but those large off site SMR maybe that efficient. But if you are using an off site reformer you need to add in losses in transporting the hydrogen. Finally he uses 93% efficiency to compress the hydrogen, but it takes 11% of the energy and this is typically electrical. Easy to see why the well to tank is so far off argon's number of 50% for electrical, and 61% for SMR H2. Correct those things and things get more in-line with reality.

Then looking at tank to wheels, the bev 250 is about 17% less efficient than a tesla, and the fcv250 is 2% more efficient than a clarity. That's fine, maybe when the fcv-r comes out it will jump up 20% in efficiency to make up the difference.

Figure 5 is fairly interesting, it has the Battery goal of 200 wh/kg. The batteries in the tesla S and Rav4 ev are already at 240 wh/kg. There have been press releases going to 400 wh/kg on tested but not commercialized batteries in the lab.

 

Where are you getting this info?
Toyota lists the curb weight for it at 1880kg or 4136lbs, which puts it a little over the 2012 base 2wd highlander.

 

Sure it did. The ZEV mandate talks about renewable, and that is what is paying for all of this.

Natural gas makes the most sense though, so go ahead and use it.

I assume you will continue to think plug ins use mainly coal. It is a very bad assumption.

Many plug-in users use renewables.

Now you want to put in a new higher tech SMR production facility, why would you not modernize the grid for phev and bevs. It is happening now you know. More natural gas and wind, less coal.

Let's be expensive for a moment, a tesla charges at a 10 kw rate, which would require 10.8 kw added to the grid. For $10K, 10kw of ccgt and 2.5kw of wind to the grid in today's dollars if you add it for 50,000 cars at a time Say the gas was at 80% utilization and wind at 30% utilization, then after grid losses it would take 1.6kwh of gas for every 1kwh at the plug, or we could say the power was 61% efficient with gas since wind is helping out. The wonderful thing is the investment lasts 30 years, and costs for the electricity with today's interest rates and natural gas prices will be about 5 cents a kwh wholesale. Levelized capital costs for 30 years are 0.4 cents /kwh. No need for the state to pay anything at all, it should actually reduces prices utility customers pay. In a year it will produce 76.5 Mwh of power, of which the bev owner going 15,000 miles would use 5.7 Mwh. You could choose to balance and install less, especially if the driver is charging off peak. California could use that extra 70MWh to shut off less efficient power sources.

 

Lol... no, it is not BMW's technique, BMW stopped developing their own hydrogen car and will buy system from Toyota... if that makes it BMW systhem, then I guess thats it .

 

Do you know what the cf technique is? If it is not for the tanks, is it for the body?