Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

Thanks usbseawolf! this really helps!

 

I'll agree with you if you show me a picture of its rear seats and trunk.

 

I guess we'll have to wait for the production version.

In the FCV-R concept version, this was included:

The twin hydrogen tanks and the FC stack are located beneath the vehicle floor, maximising both cabin and luggage space to create an entirely practical family sedan.

Make sure you go back and read some old posts. LOL. Austingreen had pointed out that today's natural gas power plants are more efficient than 39%.

 

Unfortunately, however, the graph only shows fuel energy conversion costs. It doesn't include additional energy costs of the vehicle propulsion systems or fuel infrastructure.

As noted, they have to overcome both cost and durability issues. HFCVs are still just a research project. Even though they continue to make improvements there are fundamental market problems for HFCV:
- it's largely an all-or-nothing technology: because it needs a new, dedicated infrastructure it needs price parity.. That contrasts with PEV that already has the essential supporting infrastructure (electrical grid and gasoline pumps) and so can gain market share incrementally as battery technology improves.
- it depends on natural gas infrastructure: that means CNG can always compete with HFCV and CNG vehicles will always have lower initial costs.

 

Honda Clarity has 13.1 cargo volume.
Honda FCX Clarity picture # 49 of 63, Boot / Trunk, MY 2009, 800x600
Honda FCX Clarity - Vehicle Specifications - Official Web Site

 

That's no where near as much cargo room as the Space Shuttle - and it runs on hydrogen too. Like I previously said, Making them verses making them in volumes for sale is 2 completely different things.

 

Home | maps.nrel.gov

 

It is not just conversion loss. Well-to-tank includes drilling, refining, transportation, etc. Tank-to-wheel includes all the loss in the propulsion system.

As for building hydrogen infrastructure, we'll have to compare it to how much it cost to build our gas stations and electric grids.

Austingreen provided a great article in post #409 for the current situation of fuel cell.

Come on, hill. You can't seriously be comparing a car to a space shuttle.

 

Agree, Toyota has pretty much takened the long view with development, testing, and implementation of new products and hybrid systems over the years. I do not think they will change their strategy. Steady and slow, moving forward, and capturing market share from the likes of GM. Ever since the 1980s', I kept watch on the growth and market expansion of Toyota not only in the U.S., but on a global scale. The company has the deepest pockets to devote resources (R & D, labor, and capital) to such a deep depth, that no other car company can come close to in matching. The Japanese government also supported Toyotas' growth at a time when the domestic "big 3" manufacturers turned a blind eye to what was happening, pushing gas guzzlers (profit makers). This was painfully evident after the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo (remember that?) The U. S. manufacturers kept churning out gas pigs with poor quality control for customers. Toyota improved their quality control and pushed into the U.S. market. The FC technology has the best opportunity of coming to the market place for the masses thru Toyota and BMW.

Of the domestic 3. Ford, Chrysler, then GM is ranked in that order (1st, 2nd, 3rd) in being able to react to the ever changing markets. It remains to be seen if the domestic 3 will go into FC development. Hey, this counld be the Supercar, Part 2 saga.

DBCassidy

We all owe a great amout of thanks for the space shuttle and the U.S. space program for technology development over the decades. Materials, fuel, propulsion systems, electronics, software, medicine, computing and info systems, and communication. This is just some of the items the space program has intergrated into our everday lives.

So, DREAM BIG, Hill does have a valid point of comparing a car to the space shuttle. Actually, IIRC, there is more computing power in todays cars than in the space shuttle.

Food for thought.

DBCassidy

 

Agreed. A lot of space age technologies are now in everyday use, like the GPS navigation, memory foam, etc.

 

Although that is a pretty graph, it doesn't really match existing vehicles as has been pointed out previously.

Toyota uses an idealized version of current hydrogen refueling stations and assumes future ones will become much more effient. It then assumes a more efficient than currently available fcv. For BEV and PHEV though doesn't give today's tech but yesterdays. This is an old chart.

So what can we do? We could use EPA for real world things.

Prius phv 50 mpg gas, 95 mpge electricity.
Tesla 60kwh 95 mpge electricity.
Clarity 60 mpge hydrogen
Compare Fuel Cell Vehicles Side-by-Side
make assumptions on well to pump and to wall. If you are using the 2025 hope of hydrogen use projections for the grid for them, or you can use today for both.

On the California mix of hydrogen stations and electricity that Tesla should be at least 20% more efficient than the clarity. Lots of folks willing to pony up 50 large for a fuel cell car will also be likely to put in solar or buy wind. On newables the Tesla is more than twice as efficient as a clarity. How many people do you think with choose a $50K fcv over a $60K Tesla S 60kwh, that likely is much more luxurious, faster, more comfortable, and they can refill at home for less money. Most people won't be able to afford that tesla, but will be able to buy a gen IV prius phv or other phev car. It should also be more efficient on electricity than a fuel cell vehicle. That is why I would not expect fuel cell adoption until they also have at least 15 miles of plug in range.

Drop in your own assumptions for grid efficiency and improvements in phev, bev, and fcv efficiency. I would bet the gen IV prius phv gets an efficiency boost as well.

 

First, Clarity is Honda and it doesn't have HSD.

Toyota FCHV-adv has HSD but we don't have the official EPA MPGe for it. But a test from DOE got 68 MPGe so that's pretty good for a Highlander equivalent SUV. FCV sedan should get around 75 MPGe.

Again, MPGe only take account of tank-to-wheel so EV should have the bigger number. Well-to-wheel is what we should look at.

 

Well to tank does NOT include drilling or exploration.. it includes puming from the well, refining and tranport to stations. It also excludes the energy for the fueling stations.

What are the assumptions in the H2 production.. I can find no data with that level of efficiency Here is the most recent data from NREL on well-to-pump efficiencies of different H2 production Pipelines.


From this report
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/46612.pdf

Which is at best 59% efficient for NG reformation.

With respect to infrastructure.. we already have Elect infrastruture.. so its marginal energy investment is very small. H2 is all new costs.

 

That's absolute gibberish. HSD in the prius about mixing engine power with motor power. Do you think the Toyota fuel cell vehicle will have a gasoline ice. Ofcourse you don't. You expect it to be pretty much laid out the way the clarity is.

Second the DOE clarly did not say the fchv-adv would get that milage in a EPA test. The Tesla would greatly exceed its 95 mpge on that easy test.

On the 75 mpge prediction that seems very high to me given what Toyota has told us, but I hope it is right. There are only two fuel cell vehicles that have even tried the epa test the clarity with 60 mpge and the f-cell with 52 mpge. Toyota may be able to improve on these in the next 2 years they have, but they are not there now. Similarly I expect a smaller telsa, closer to the bmw 3 size which will be just a little bigger than the clarity by 2016. That newer smaller tesla is also likely to improve on the teslas 95 mpge. The bottom line is that in 2012 that chart is wrong, and it is likely to get more and more off as time goes by.

Yes, but we can just look at the chart and see the relative mpge - car efficiency is already off.

The well to pump/well to wall is also off. we have real hydrogen station and they are not as efficient as Toyota shows in that chart, while the grid has improved since the chart was made.

Tesla is putting in a number of solar powered quick chargers. Should we be like Toyota and only look at those the most efficient to fuel the fuel cell. If we look at solar to 10,000 psi hydrogen it is only half as efficient as solar to electricity in current implementations. I don't think that should be the only data point, but if Toyota changed their minds and created the same chart, that is the number they would use - 10% efficient solar to plug, 5% efficient solar to hydrogen pump - or they might use 90%/45%. Again the chart is bogus.

I don't know the California energy use mix for 2012 yet, but in 2010 it was 42% natural gas, 7% coal, the rest was nuclear, large hydro, and renewables. Let's say the coal is 30% efficient, natural gas is 40% efficient and the grid losses are 8%. That gives us an efficiency of (1/ (.42/.4+ .07/.3))*.92 = 71% efficiency mainly boosted by the nuclear, large hydro, and renewables. Hydrogen from natural gas in California is about 50% efficient but that doesn't count ineffiencies in the electric used to pump, compress, and do other things in the process. Say 25% comes from renewables. (1/(.75/.5)) = 67% on natural gas getting boosted by the renewables or hydrogen is only a little less efficient than California electricity in 2010. Play with the numbers on your own. Choose another state where you think fuel cells will happen. The bottom line is these things are not more efficient using hydrogen as an energy carrier unless you make some bad assumptions about the grid. Now if you do care about the efficiency of the non fossil electricity numbers for fuel cells look even worse. That's why I can only see them becoming viable as range extenders for plug in vehicles. It just doesn't make sense not to plug in for part of the mileage.

If we start thinking of these 2015 models as demo cars, then you might see Toyota and bmw putting out more of a complete competitive car in 2020. How that will sell greatly depends on progress in fuel cells versus progress with phevs. I am guessing these 2020 beasts will have large plug in batteries to allow for at home plug in refueling and smaller less expensive fuel cells.

 

The Accord is also a midsize. It has 15.8 cargo volume. It has more passenger space. It has more headroom. It can seat 5 instead of 4. It can travel farther on a tank of fuel. It's faster to refill.

My point is that you can't look at the outside and say it's just like a conventional car. You have to know how it affects utility and it clearly does, in the same way hybridization does.

 

And there's the fundamental problem with CNG for smaller vehicles, it's effect on utility. Of course the Civic CNG is built on an existing compact platform rather than having a dedicated mid-size platform like the Clarity, so it's really hard to compare utility.

The Civic NG has an 8.03 gallon equivalent fuel tank and a 31mpg combined rating. The Clarity is rated to have a 240 mile driving range. And again, the Civic CNG doesn't have a dedicated platform.

The Clarity takes 5 minutes to refuel compared to a couple of minutes for the Civic NG.

While I have doubts about CNG in the USA, particularly due to favoring utility over cost, part of it is the lack of current refueling infrastructure. But the problem of infrastructure is a barrier in comparison to gasoline and plug-ins. As I mentioned above, CNG infrastructure could be added more cheaply anywhere there's HFCV refueling so any growth of HFCV should automatically lower the entry barrier for CNG. And there's the rub: it'd be a high-cost technology against a reliable (the engine should be more reliable than a gasoline engine), low-cost (don't let the Civic's high price fool you, that's largely because of low volume) technology that's using exactly the same fuel.

A high-cost technology that improves efficiency is of more value to those who put more miles on the car. But most high-mile drivers are driving those miles are highway speeds. On the highway the CNG vehicle would perform relatively better than average while the HFCV would perform average or worse.

HFCV is really going to have to get cheap to compete. $50,000 isn't anywhere near cheap enough.

 

You may not have noticed but the electrical grid exists and will continue to exist without plug-ins. The incremental infrastructural cost of PEV is close to $0.00/kWh as long as people don't something stupid and inefficient like buy a 1/2-sized battery and charge during peak hours, which they won't do if electricity is priced properly, the tax system treats charging as a taxable perk and employers are not encouraged to install facilities for employees. In fact, with proper off-peak charging it could actually have a negative net cost as there would be higher utilization. Plug-ins have synergy.

The cost of creating the infrastructure compared to gasoline isn't about the worth of HFCV as a system, it's about barrier to the success in the market. Only maintenance cost matters.

And, I'll repeat, NG refueling would be in parallel and cheaper to build and maintain.

Success for HFCV would be great. But let me know when they can make money getting thousands of people to put down money and wait for years to buy the car. In the meantime I'll be following the progress of plug-ins and solar PV, success in which would have a far bigger global impact.

 

Talk about exessive verbage.

DBCassidy

 

why would Toyota, BMW or any other FCHV company ask thousands of owners to put down money years in advance?