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It's official Toyota is full speed fuel cells for compliance after 2014

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by austingreen, May 13, 2014.

  1. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Well you are most definitely wrong. If you are going to fuel cells, it makes a great deal of sense to plug in. The Bus here is part of reseach at JJ Pickel research center of the University of Texas. As such it is available it is used as part of educating government officials about alternative fuels for transportation. Now if you are going to use electricity to create the hydrogen, it is much more efficient to put it directly in a battery, in fact it should take about 1/3 of the electricity. The fueling station which also despenses electricity, hydrogen from reformed natural gas, and cng. The buildings roof's solar panels produce 400,000 kwh of electricity a year, also educational and practical. If you are doing a combination of renewable electricity and natural gas to power these fuel cell busses PHEV is the way to go, and allows a much smaller and less expensive fuel cell.
    Its all about prices coming down. The cng busses could not compete really until 2012, and if natrual gas prices go up, well they also can't. If you were designing today think about it. An entire 85kwh performance tesla costs $93K before any tax incentives, those batteries are not very expensive versus a diesel hybrid or a cng bus. Build it right that phev not only be less expensive to run, but more effient. No reason to go fuel cell small battery on a bus. A small battery can not hold nearly as much regen breaking, so put in the big battery and a plug.

    Do you know what a cng bus engine costs? Right now it only makes sense if you don't make it a hybrid.


    Yep. no reason to build a big infrastructure. If your city does have fuel cell busses, they should be able to switch or add the other fuel easily.
    huh? How much gas does a prius use versus a bus? If you put a fuel cell in a prius, it is really hard to recoup that money on the much smaller fuel used, plus you have that infrastructure problem that does not happen with busses. If you have 30.3 kw even with the 27kw prius battery, you are going to drain that battery realy fast, then only have 40hp on a 3000lb car. believe me it will be a total dog. No one will want to pay more than a versa for that.

    These folks at pickle research are not idiots. Perhaps you would like to compare it to the fuel cell busses in emeryvile, CA (trucked in hydrogen done with solar electricity), non plug-in busses. If you were to build from scratch the phev fc bus would cost less to refuel and to buy.
     
  2. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    First I admire your enthusasm, and agree cng makes a lot more sense today than hydrogen. But lets get something back to reality. There is no 10,000 psi infrastructure for cng so if you want to do it with today's infrastructure(3600psi 15 GGE of cng) is probably 19" in diameter by 50" long and would cost around $3K if its a type 3. Add more money if you want it to be rated for 10,000 psi. A 3600 psi is rated for 4500 psi from the pump so when it cools down you still can end up with 3600 psi.
    CNG Car Conversion Tanks, perhaps they will get that price down, but tanks add cost today. 10,000 psi is going to require more electricity so the fuel would be more expensive at those stations.

    Ok sure, if you can figure out where to fit the tanks. You probably are going to pick a smaller tank with a little less range. In order to get it adopted you need to get home refueling station down to $500 or something small. Otherwise its a problem and you need bifuel which is even more expensive.
    I don't see who is going to make a lot of money on that. Ford and GM are working the more lucrative market on cng bifuel trucks. I don't think anyone but the fuel cell lobby, hyundai, and toyota think fcv look great for today. I don't think any automaker is smart to pay for them to look bad. I mean if they are successful, all the big autos gain. If they fail, which is likely, let them fail on their own. There is no reason to push.
     
  3. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    I'm not wrong because I'm not the one building the cars! I said earlier I thought it's retarded that none of these FCVs comes with a plug.....not the Honda, Hyundai or the Toyota. So they are the ones who are wrong here


    Upgrading all CNG stations in the U.S. to 10,000 psi is expensive, true
    The electricity to operate 10,000 psi pumps is also very expensive, true.
    Ditto on both counts (and perhaps more so) for H2.

    I think that's why Toyota chose compressed H2.
    They're going to have a lot of filling stations out there sitting around, perhaps months, waiting for the first FCV to show up, since there are so few but Toyota would still want brag about 'coast-to-coast' drivability.
    Liquid H2 would boil off within couple weeks, but compressed H2 should be good until the annual tank inspection.
    I wonder if these tanks are sized to 10,000 gallons like gasoline tanks.?
    I'll be following very closely to see how this is all going to be paid for, and by whom.

    IIRC, premium can be up to $10,000, but beyond that a CNG HEV is less competitive with FCV or PHEV

    Agreed 101%
    I think Toyota's failure here is fait accompli.
    Still, I applaud them for trying and building upon HSD.
    Not quite at the same level of GM crushing the EV1 and introducing the Hummer H2 a decade ago.... but it sure will be interesting to look back at these comments in 2024 and see what's what
     
  4. Robert Holt

    Robert Holt Senior Member

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    Huh? I understood home heating oil could be used to fuel many diesel vehicles. In Germany the use of home heating oil to fuel diesel cars was such a problem that the German government aided a special colored dye to the home heating oil supply (iirc) so that the police could simply insert a dipstick into the fuel tank and check for the dye. If the color indicated the use of home heating oil instead of the federally- taxed diesel fuel, the driver was given an immediate citation. My German relatives implied the fine was quite high as the government would assume you had been doing this for the period of ownership and fine accordingly. Oh, and the Polizei can stop you randomly on the road at any time and check such things.
     
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  5. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    That happens here too. We have what is known as 'red diesel' which is agricultural diesel and not taxed anywhere near as highly as road diesel. As it's name implies, it is red in colour as it is dyed to show up in your tank. Many taxi drivers would use it and the Police/Customs would suddenly pounce on you at the airport - blocking off a dozen taxis at a time. If you were found to have any in your car (and the dye would stick and could be detectable in very small traces months or years after it was last used!) tank, then you were in BIG trouble, impounding your car and insisting on paying back tax.

    The red diesel has a higher sulphur level and could damage emission control devices on new diesel cars.

    Many taxi drivers now mix vegetable oil with their diesel. A 5 litre tub of this costs about £2.50, compared to normal diesel costing about £1.35 a litre. Using pure vegetable oil causes issues in modern diesels, but most drivers would just use it in small quantities. Whether it was worth the hassle is very much debatable.

    Hundreds of drivers pulled over in Huddersfield spot checks - Huddersfield Examiner

    http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Taxi-firm-caught-using-red-diesel-police-Customs-swoop-town/story-12578334-detail/story.html
     
  6. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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  7. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    I was tempted to reveal Toyotas next step past fuel cells would be car sized fusion chambers, hence the H2 commitment...
     
  8. 70AARCUDA

    70AARCUDA Active Member

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    Cold Fusion...in a keg?

    [​IMG]
     
  9. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    I was going to reply with some comment, but all I can thing about now is having a cold beer.
     
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  10. movingforward

    movingforward Member

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    Using lithium batteries from laptop computers to power a 1 tonne+ vehicle is just simply absurd and I'm glad Toyota has finally pulled out of this concept and moving forward to something else that the market desires. The issue with BEV is the battery, everything else about the concept is perfect.
     
  11. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    So how do you suggest a vehicle is powered? One that doesn't pollute the air we breath in our cities?
     
  12. movingforward

    movingforward Member

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    Well, I'm not smart enough to come with the solutions but I do know enough that pure BEV is not the answer and it looks like Toyota does as well. Maybe an evolved PHEV hybrid with integrated super capacitor to achieve 100mpg+? FCV? Gasp, maybe Nikola Tesla's Wardencliffe project?
     
  13. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Toyota isn't building upon the HSD as we know it. To them Hybrid Synergy Drive is just a branding slogan. The HSD in their FCV has as much in common with the one in the Prius in design and operation as the Prius with the RAV4 EV.
    Same in the US in regards to the dye.
    Home heating oil has a higher sulfur content than than the pre-USLD road fuel. It will wreck the catalytic converters for NOx control on a clean diesel. The increased sulfur content will also increase particulate emissions. Which will lead to to more DPF regenerations and clogging. The cetane rating of the heating oil may not meet the engines requirements also.

    Old diesels could run it without a problem, but they could run vegetable oil, biodiesel, transmission fluid, used motor oil, etc. without much trouble too.

    The German clean diesels here can use B5 and the American ones B20. Vegetable oil is thicker than biodiesel, so the cars might be able to handle less of it than the biodiesel if it weren't thinned with gasoline or something.
    Hyundai is just leasing them. Toyota plans to actually sell theirs. Of course, the lease only path is an easy work around the fact that California hydrogen stations can't legally charge the consumer for the gas they dispense. Toyota hasn't answered on how they will get around that.
     
  14. Rxgolfer

    Rxgolfer Member

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    We can have the grand debate on EV vs fuel cells all we want. The bottom line is electric vehicles didn't sell. Sure, we got all the hipsters (with money) buying in. But that is a verrrry small market. The general public hasn't plugged into the same belief. It's true, most of my friends who aren't as hipster as the guys at priuschat are hesitant on buying a hybrid alone, and you want to convince them on EV? Good luck.

    The bottom line is Toyotas let the numbers do the talking. EV just didn't sell for Toyota. If the public didnt buy EV vehicles despite year long marketing campaign then there is no sense plugging more money into it. If Toyota, the car manufacturer with an identity for making the greenist vehicles, how do you think the public will respond to say Lincoln attempting to make an attempt at an EV line? Marketing data probably suggests that it probably wouldn't go too well. I'm sure Toyota thought long and hard about this decision. I'm sure they hired an entire marketing firm to find out what the public wants. And apparently, its not EV. At least not for Toyota.
     
  15. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Toyota is not "moving forward" after discoving bevs aren't good enough. If you listened to the lentz interview, they are continuing on the path of the FCV exactly the way they were in 2009 before the very profitable partnership with tesla. If you checked the slides from toyota before and after the relationship, the only thing you will notice is this fuel cell vehicle will likely be less efficient than promised. Lentz did reverse some of the bob carter attack when asked directly, and said toyota does support big batteries, and believes they are ready for cars.

    Sure I guess hybrids didn't sell either.
    Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard
    wait, 17,000 plug-ins in 2011 is disapointing. Have you noticed 52K in 2012, 97K in 2013, and numbers are still growing. Yes it is only a little bit better than hybrids at this stage, but we do have tesla being wall streets darling. Toyota made more money in the tesla Rav4 + stock deal than they did in europe over those years. The death of the plug-in is highly exagerated, and most of the stories are coming out of congress or toyota.

    sure, but will they buy a fuel cell? I mean sure they are paying taxes to put up hydrogen stations, but do they want to pay more for a fcv than a plug-in, or will they just stand on the side.
    BMW has wait lists for the i3, they don't hide it behind the bathrooms like toyota did with the rav4 ev:( Did you listen closely. Toyota expects everyone, all the car makers to sell 10K cars with 68 hydrogen stations. That won't happen until at least the end of 2017, maybe 2020 or never. CARB thought it would happen by 2015. so as opposed to a bad selling EV built from the ground up that is too expensive (tesla sold over 17,000 bevs in the US alone last year), toyota expects to sell many fewer fcv, but puts out this anti-plug-in marketing.
    That's kind of a problem. The market research firms don't find demand for fuel cells. Lexus did pay an advertising agency to put out material to tell people they don't want plug-ins they want fcv. They did appologize when they were caught using obviously deceptive information. They do pay for a lobbying groups to get fuel cell cars more government money. Perhaps if toyota was doing market research instead of advertising, I would be more impressed.
     
  16. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    Yes, exactly!o_O
    Because taking expensive solar energy and then losing half of it in electrolysis and another half in the cell stack is brilliant!
    25% of the energy will actually result in motive power in a FCV versus 90%+ in a EV......how "absurd" is that?
    And building BILLIONS of dollars of [Natural Gas->Hydrogen facilities] isn't absurd! :whistle:
    Are you ready to pony up your tax dollars to pay for them?
    I'm not......because I already have that exotic technology in my house called a "wall outlet"
    Please tell me about any 'market's desire' for FCV's.
    Then, please compare this 'desire' to that for the Tesla Model S.
    You do realize the Model S battery can be swapped in 90 seconds for a fully charged pack, right?
    You might want to read this:
    Fuel Cell Vehicles: Hype or Hope? : Greentech Media
    If you don't know the solutions, then you don't the answer.
    It seems you'd rather drive around with an extreme pressure 10,000 pound-per-square inch fuel tank, containing a gas that's flammable, explosive and made from rapidly depleting resources.
    I, on the other hand, would rather drive with a "1-tonne" (it's actually less than half that) battery in my car that makes it SAFER:
    Crash test: Hybrids safer than other cars - CBS News
    And, it can be powered by renewables. To each his own; if I'm driving a 10,000 psi tank, it better be filled with CNG and not Hydrogen
    Yes, we here at PC are all "hipsters with money".
    I'm going to tell you what.
    The reason Toyota is pushing FCV's is because they cater to the "Old Fart" crowd. Perhaps this is the demographic you belong to? Because that is the demographic Toyota "studied".
    It's true. There were millions of people born around the world between 1946 and 1964 (Baby Boomers) and they will be around till mid-century.
    I guess Toyota figures that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks". So, these people have to pump liquid fuel into their cars.........it's all they are used to, and they're going to keep it up till the day they die.
    I mean, the amount of TIME and EFFORT it takes to plug in your car when you get home from work........it could take 30 seconds out of your day!
    Oh, the humanity! o_O :rolleyes:
    Please, please Toyota, save us from this tyranny! Yes, we'll spend BILLIONS on infrastructure just to avoid using those pesky wall outlets
    Well, your friends aren't very bright, are they? They're hesitant about hybrids, but they are willing to pump a liquid fuel that's -420 degrees fahrenheit or that's compressed to 10,000 pounds per square inch?
    Do your friends realize that the fuel-cell car still is a hybrid with a battery? Do you?
    The irony here is that Toyota has actually done more to promote EV's (well, plug-in cars) than just about anyone.
    Why? Because of their success of the Prius and hybrids.
    It took some getting used to, but millions of people around the world are now comfortable with the car shutting off the engine at stoplights and coasting in silence on battery power.
    That's why it baffles me that Toyota thinks they can't get used to plugging in. The public readily adopts new technology, especially the younger generations......look how smart phones and tablets took off in just 5 years.
    All of today's hybrid drivers are tomorrows PHEV or EV drivers.
    The minute one gets behind the wheel of a hybrid, one can immediately understand the benefit of plugging in to get even more MPG.
    NO one is begging to pump liquid hydrogen, and FCV's will ALWAYS lose to a PHEV.
     
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  17. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Actually public television station KQED found that guy, and I linked to that segment. He lives out in alameda, and has a 150 mile daily commute. His mercedes f-cell fills up at the emeryvile station. He likes the tech and the luxury. I guess if he was in the market today, he could get a 85 kwh tesla, but that is the only plug-in suitable for his commute. If prices come down there will be prices like him that will buy, but its a small market compared to plug-ins. It will stay small for at least a couple of decades, because most states don't want to pay for infrastructure for the few drivers that will use it. The estimate was around $9B for the smallest nationwide network for hydrogen stations. What if say you buy a fcv from your company, and the company moves to anouther state, what do you do with your car? Never happen right, i mean not many companies are like toyota:( That plug-in will work fine in Plano or Torrance.
     
  18. Rxgolfer

    Rxgolfer Member

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    [quote="austingreen, quote]
    Well, your friends aren't very bright, are they? They're hesitant about hybrids, but they are willing to pump a liquid fuel that's -420 degrees fahrenheit or that's compressed to 10,000 pounds per square inch?
    Do your friends realize that the fuel-cell car still is a hybrid with a battery? Do you? [/quote]

    Austingreen you're a very naughty boy. Didn't your mother ever teach you anything about manners? Did she? I assure you, me and my group of friends are brighter than you. The group of my friends I was referring to hold doctorates, are medical professionals, are engineers, are bankers. My roommate owns a Ford Raptor with huge nice person wheels and he just bought a M3. When it comes to car buying, it comes to personal preference, not how bright you are. I hope your interpersonal skills in real life are better than they are online. Are they? How do you resort to name calling on a post about Toyota simply not selling enough EVs it to be worth their time? Its the second time you have done that. No offense, but I didn't read your post. After a while, it becomes white wash. You're obviously an EV fanatic with the everything I say is right and you're wrong mentality. Cya.
     
  19. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Didn't your teachers teach you not to attribute statements to the wrong person. You put my name up there, but I didn't write that. It was scorpion. Please don't misquote me.
    Sure. Umm its the internet so honestly other than your boasts I have no idea how smart or educated your friends are, and I certainly did not insult them. You seemed to attach my name to someone else's post. I agree completely with the last part. Part of the problem is education. Have your friend with the M3 test drive the i3 and Tesla S, then test drive one of these fcv. Then tell us what they think. Well other than the fcv, which hell I can't test, and I'm guessing you can't either. I haven't driven an i3, but that model S is sweet even compared to an M3. That is if your roommate likes tech.
    Relax man its just a discussion board. You don't win the internet by misquoting someone. I occastionally call names, but only with people I've intereacted with. Please no offense, but read my post, if you want to understand it, don't just go off with half information.
     
  20. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Considering you got the wrong poster, that is open to debate.
     
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