Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

it costs 1,000,000 right now for hydrogen gas station and Japanese power companies are working to bring it down to 300k by 2015 when they plan to build them (same price as LPG stations).

i think regular gas station is 100k.

but surely we are not arguing that we should be using petrol and coal because it is cheaper? that means no EVs, right? ;-)

 

Actually gasoline/automobile competition was the trolley and bus systems and the auto industry lobbied heavily to have the government switch from supporting public transit systems to massive subsidies for building out an automobile infrastructure.

EV vehicles are much more expensive and for the minority that have garages, the range and refueling issue apply to all with and without home charging.

It's why the two concurrent headlines are:

Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

and

Toyota Drops Electric Car (eQ) Sales Plans

 

No evidence of that since what Honda and Shell did was simply add a hydrogen pump to existing gasoline station.

More like $3M for all the underground tank systems with vaults to prevent leakage, not to mention the higher overhead yearly insurance costs in case of a spill with liability in the millions, all non issues with hydrogen.

 

Those are some really bad figures for Japanese costs
Japanese Government to Ease Rules for Building Hydrogen Stations, Offer Subsidies

We should at least be in the ball park of figures when discussing things. The Japanese government wants to bring costs down to ¥200 million or about $2.5 million, not $0.3 Million.

PHEVs need little or no new infrastructure and should cost much less to produce in 2015 than fcv. This should greatly limit the sales of fcv and the experiment will cost between $222M-$666M on the 89 new hydrogen fueling stations in Japan. If the price was only ¥23 million than the stations would already be built.

 

It isn't an argument for going cheaper. It's an argument not leap before looking. If Toyota and others can put a FCV out the door $50k without a substantial loss, good for them. But selling a car to the wealthy would suddenly solve the issues of getting hydrogen from the plant to the car. Hydrogen fuel in gas form isn't even a done deal yet at this point. So this stations might be obsolete when the FCV is ready for the masses.

Japan and some European countries are willing to pay for the on road testing of the hydrogen system. The US doesn't have to get involved now. Better to wait, and learn from any mistakes the others make. It will also cost us magnitudes more to get the infrastructure built for the country. So why potentially money now or get stuck using a poorer system?

 

If a regular gas station cost $879K to $1.3 million, H2 station ($2.5 millions) will be just 2-3x more expensive. One H2 station can refuel each vehicle in minutes.

How many EV superchargers will you need to handle the same amount of traffic? And what will be the cost?

 

The same could be said about EVs and plugins. Tesla's supercharge won't work with the existing plugins. You'll need a converter to use Tesla EV with the existing chargers. The current plugins don't work with EV1/RAV4EV chargers. Etc..

If you can refuel EVs in minutes (with hydrogen fuel cells), gasoline range extending quasi-EV will become obsolete. I can see why Volt supporters are against H2EV.

USA made a lot of investment in fuel cell. Should we just let the other countries overtake and successfully deploy it first?

 

I agree that the government would be wasting money if they were spending over $180M on L3 chargers like they plan to do for the california hydrogen highway. Good thing we are not building loads of unnecessary L3 chargers. The push has been L2 which has been standardized, and can be used with the current crop of plug-ins. The old paddle chargers in California illustrate the point on jumping the gun before there is any standard. Let's not spend more than this extra $200M in california until cars have actually been developed and work. Methanol, cng, or low pressure metal hydride hydrogen may be what fuel cells run on in cars, if fcv ever actually make a dent.

Why would that be? If a fcev costs $20k MORE than a similar phev, and the fueling stations are harder to come by, and fuel more expensive, will the market go for hydrogen fuel cells? Seems obvious that until costs come down and fueling infrastructure is established the fc cars have an uphill climb. My guess is they will grow a plug so that people can at least partially refuel on electricity. Toyota has been investing in fc for 20 years, and looks like they are planning to lose money on them for at least the next 10. Japan exepected 5 M fcv on the road by now, the hopes have been scaled back drastically.

Yes. There is no first mover advantage in fuel cells. American companies can test their cars in Europe. If some technology is established they will flow here. The government is paying for R&D. There is no reason to pay for premature commercialization. The hydrogen hype is all about getting more government money.

 

At the speed L2 recharges, each plugin would need a dedicated parking spot. Include that in the cost as well. From the cost and real-estate perspective, L2 won't scale well. Vehicles won't be rolling in and out like H2 stations.

 

We have a lot of natural gas to create hydrogen cleanly and efficiently. We don't have much renewable electricity yet (mostly from coal, natural gas and nuclear).

With the superior refueling speed and driving range, we should be supporting more for FCEVs.

 

how much energy do we need to waste extracting, converting, storing, and transporting hydrogen before we realize that same energy can be DIRECTLY and IMMEDIATELY put into a BEV? and that's today! FCV are not the future. they are not. well, if we like to waste energy like we do with inefficient gasoline.

 

That does't give a first mover advantage. What it does is gives the US an advantage versus Japan in deploying fcv, once they have been developed.

The lack of infrastructure, means there is a range disadvantage. fcv can not travel far beyond the little islands of hydrogen fueling stations. PHEVs have no range limitations.

Since a FCV must find fueling stations which are for the vehicles to drive farther than a phev to find a fueling station, it has a disadvantage in refueling speed.

That leaves FCV with disadvantages in refueling speed, refueling convience, range, and cost of vehicle. At today's costs it is also at a substantial disadvantage for both fuel and maintenance costs. The FCV may also produce more ghg than a phev.

Changing the fcv to run on methanol may solve some of the problems - cost of infrastructure, cost of refueling, cost of fuel tanks, but toyota seems to have stopped its methanol fuel cell program.

 

That's a myth. We have discussed this well-to-wheel efficiency starting from post#65.



The conclusion was that if Toyota used a more efficient combined cycle NG powerplants, both FCVs and EVs are pretty much even. However, FCV has the advantage in refueling speed and driving range. EV has an edge with the existing (slow 115v) recharging infrastructure and more efficient use of renewable sources.

 

How about patents and standardizing the hydrogen pump for the rest of the world to follow? Do you see us licensing it from Japan/Korea to play catch-up, an advantage?

The only reason we dropped the H2 support and put 100% of our eggs in the electric plugins is because our Sec. of Energy Dr.Chu decided so. Well, he changed his mind so the fundings are flowing back into H2. Infrastructures will be build.

Circular logic that build around the chicken and egg problem.

Even if H2 stations are 2.5 times more rare than gas station, refueling hydrogen wouldn't be a problem.

 

A gentlemen's wager. In 2015, or whenever the toyota fuel cell vehicle goes for epa rating like the clarity (60mpge) and mercedes f-cell (47mpge), this graphic will be demonstrated to be a gross distortion (lie) for the US market and Japanese market. The big missing piece is phev. Yes, those phevs will be about as efficient as toyota's fuel cell vehicles, wheel to well, and much less expensive to operate. If the owner used a tiny portion of the money saved over the fcv to buy wind or solar for electricity then the phev or bev will use much less fossil fuel and produce much lower ghg. A phev will have higher tailpipe emissions.

Use the grid where the fuel cell vehicles are sold and the real refueling efficiency. Those PHEVs will have more real range since they will be able to leave the islands of hydrogen fueling stations, they will also have much greater refueling speed and convience (refuel at home or at any gas station).

 

I really expect fcv will sell better outside of the US, than in the US. The DOE does fund R&D, it has tried to cut back on commercialization. The R&D is where the patents come from. I don't think the 5000 psi pumps we built put us ahead, they were just a waste of money. There are 3 competing technologies with 10,000 psi pumps. #1 Methanol is the easiest and can use the tech developed in the 80s. To me this is the most likely fuel cell fuel as it solves infrastructure and fuel cost problems. #2 CNG/LNG which already has tech developed. This is more expensive for infrastruture than methanol but much cheaper than 10,000 psi pumps, and provides the lowest cost fuel. Most fixed fuel cells, and hence the greatest fuel cell research is on NG. #3 metal hydrides which save the energy to compress the hydrogen making the fuel less expensive to make and transport, as well as less expensive tanks in vehicles. Then long shot #4 10,000 psi hydrogen, which has the highest infrastructure cost, and highest cost for tanks on vehicles. If #4 is the winner, the hydrogen stations in california have already been developed, so no need to invest to get a lead on foreign competition. All we can do is spend money to build stations that will rarely get used. Many of the California stations previously built have closed for lack of cars. If you are worried about america falling behind it would be on metal hydride hydrogen fueling infrastructure, but since tanks are still being developed building infrastructure today makes no sense.

Congress restored the funds. Hydrogen gets over $100M/year. The german and american companies all think plug-in technology is more viable. Most plug-in money is for commercialization. The california hydrogen highway has been delayed after it was found that there was collusion funneling money to air products and lind from the hydrogen partnership. There were supposed to be 25,000 fcv in california by 2015, and 5M in Japan. There are now much lower expectations, and we have a new date of 2015 when lower quantities are expected to sell per year. What makes you think that if we funnel more money the cars will get built? Why not test these cars in Europe, Japan, and Korea?

There is no chicken and egg problem. There is infrastructure being built in Japan, Germany, and Korea. There is the chicken. We will see if there are any viable eggs. It is an absolute distortion to think that if only we build billions of dollars of infrastructure these vehicles will sell.

The methanol experiment in California said that people got anxiety if there were less than 10% of the stations. That is where the idea of flex fuel came up. It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build 10% of the stations in the US as hydrogen. Let's let them experiment first in other countries before we commit resources to this technology that does not seem viable for at least 10 years.

 

I know the reports are that the refueling average on the street is under 5 minutes. The press releases are light on the research details, but FCVs are actually being driven on California roads. The Honda Clarity and maybe the Mercedes F-cell are the only ones offered for lease to the public.

The thing is both those cars only have 5000psi tanks. Toyota's FCV is going to have 10,000psi tanks. These are going to take longer to fill. Assuming the station has the pumps to completely fill them. How will having all the pumps in use affect filling time, or when the holding tank is low?

BEVs don't need an extensive level 3 charging network to be successful, and reduce oil consumption. The majority of US families have 2 or more vehicles. Most of those families have a member with a commute that could be served by even the current crop of BEVs. Compared to the cost of the car and gasoline budget reduced, a basic charger installed at the house is cheap. Some won't even need that.

The level 2 charger network is nice for extending the BEVs ability for errand running, and extending its general usefulness. It's really there to assuage our irrational need for our cars to do everything. That's why 4WD SUVs ended up dominating the roads. The majority of miles driven annually are for going to and getting back for work. Having one of two cars as a BEV that can just do that will greatly reduce gasoline consumption without the costly investment for infrastructure.

 

EPA's MPGe rating is in the whelm of Tank-to-Whell so I expect EVs or PHEVs to have higher MPGe than FCEVs. This is a partial view and it does not include Well-to-Tank.

To compare the entire Well-to-Wheel, we'll have to look at upstream emission and tailpipe emission together. EPA's beyond tailpipe emission site would be a perfect tool to do that.

WTW emission for Leaf (230 g/mi) is close to that of a regular Prius hybrid (222 g/mi). PHEV varies depending on the design, Prius PHV (210 g/mi) and Volt (260 g/mi).

Going by that chart, I expect FCEV to have about 15% lower emission over a regular Prius. I would say 189 g/mi CO2 equivalent from well-to-wheel.

 

This has already been covered. You can back track to find well-to-wheel, but you can't use one test for miles per kg for hydrogen and an entirely different one for phevs. That is a wholesale distortion that is going on in the graphic. Lets use a epa test when toyota gets a vehicle, and not some theoretical japanese 10-15 test for one, and epa for the other. Fair?

A perfectly bad one. These fuel cell vehicles will be sold in california not indiana. Let us compare the 2015 grid in california when the vehicles come out, against the real california well to pump of hydrogen at the time. The graphic uses a poor electrical efficiency, against a hopefull hydrogen efficiency. Let's use the real figures.

Sure, but since fc won't be sold in all states they don't compete do they. Use the market that they can sell. My guess is that a leaf buyer in california will be able to buy the leaf and renewable energy for much less than the fuel cell vehicle. But lets use the california grid at that time

I would expect the 2016 my prius phv to have much lower emissions than this fuel cell vehicle in california well to wheels. Let us see in 2015 when we have more details about both cars.

 

All I am saying is that the competition is working on (and progressing in) both plugins and FCEVs. We need to be as well not to fall behind. In order to do that, we need to build the infrastructure first and then roll out the vehicles.

Are you saying we shouldn't build the H2 infrastructure in the US so the foreign FCEV won't penetrate in the US market? Leave them out and let them test outside the US?

H2 refill time is in minutes. The driver will not park the car and walk away. Plugin drivers will do that so the charging station needs to be a parking spot.

There are pluses and minuses for both. There is no need to be bias against fuel cell.