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

ha. Well merecedes and hyundai are calling their fuel cells electric cars just as you asked.

Hill who would possibly support inefficiently produce the hydrogen by electrolysis, why the california tax payer.
News Release - California Investing Nearly $50 Million in Hydrogen Refueling Stations

One reason for the failure of the hydrogen highway in 2004 was the all out corruption in bidding and requirements for renewables. We see here 6 of the 28 use electricity to produce the hydrogen. IIRC 3 of the 9 existing stations also use electrolysis. The only station in northern california uses remote electrolysis then the hydrogen is transported on a diesel truck to the refueling station. That should bring us to 9 of 37 stations in 2016 will use electrolysis. I don't expect that the inefficiency will really matter, as I expect that very few fcv, less than 10,000 will use the hydrogen.

39% of plug-ins in surveys in california use renewable electricity today. That is about 70,000 vehicles, IIRC.

Sonoma Index-Tribune | Sonoma News, Entertainment, Sports, Real Estate, Events, Photos, Sonoma, CA

 

Its not false its misleading. The study actually says that bevs charged in california have lower ghg emissions than fcv will have, but they provided a graph that did not show the real data. Why CARB endorses misleading statements for fuel cells is likely a matter of corruption, since they are part of the fuel cell lobby. So here is the full statement where we can analyze it.

Ok the first thing we see is it was produced by UCI, you know the university where the CFCP (the fuel cell lobby) paid for research that was favorable to them, then gave the professor that did the research the bulk of the money to build hydrogen fueling stations, even though it was clear he used his inside information and had never even worked at a gas station, let alone built a commercial hydrogen station. That just lets us know there may be questionable practices, not that we should discount the information if done right.

First problem is with the second note. APEP used the average US grid to compare to new natural gas produced on-site hydrogen. This is a major problem since plug-ins don't go on the average grid, and fuel cells will only be at least until 2020 (5+ years) only be sold in small areas of california, and plans seem to include much more energy intensive trucking of some of the hydrogen to get it to stations.

Here we have the second chart.
http://www.apep.uci.edu/3/Research/pdf/SustainableTransportation/WTW_vehicle_greenhouse_gases_Public.pdf
If you open it, you will find if you use the california grid instead of the national grid, the plug-ins bev has lower ghg emissions that hydrogen, and a phev40 is only slightly higher than hydrogen if charged from the grid. If you understand that 39% of plug-in owners in california actually use solar, the ghg reduction in a phev or bev is even greater.

The answer is plug-ins in california according to UCI produce lower ghg emissions than fcv, unless california pays even more and gets a large percentage of its hydrogen from renewables. They did this work for members of the fuel cell lobby, and provided a misleading graphic that they could use for people that didn't actually try to read the report.

When fcv are actually sold in california and someone actually tracts the trucks and reforming its likely to get much worse, as this letter suggests.
Severe Issues with Fuel Cell Vehicle GHG Emissions Claims and Hydrogen Refueling Infrastructure Grants | CleanTechnica

 

Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell powered car ready for sale this December | RocketNews24
The good news is we finally have some pricing and production figures from toyota, the bad news is this is for japan US pricing may be very different.

So much for the toyota fcv being priced much lower than the tesla S as Lentz said in the fortune interview. In California though they may price it at $499/mo like the hyundai, but if only 50 are produced each month for the entire world, that means toyota won't lose much money as they won't really sell very many in california.

 

How many fuel cell vehicles do you think will be sold in the next 20 years in states that use coal for most of their power? If you said less than 1000 you are on the right track. In fact NY is not even a hydrogen state, they have no public fueling infrastructure.

Now these surveys used 2006 for the national grid, but if the new EPA law works the US will produce 30% less ghg from power generation in 2030 than 2005, which should be easy since the grid is already cleaner by 14%,hell we are probably halfway there that figure was old. So is it proper to use an old national grid to predict the future emissions? The fuel cell lobby told us so in 2005, it said the grid was not getting cleaner.

Now Mary Nichols, in sucessfully fighting the DOE cut, said hydrogen was ready for commerialization, and CARB predicted 53,000 fcv on california roads by 2017. She also said it was because fuel cell cars would be much cleaner than Indiana. What she didn't tell you, is CARB never hits a sales goal, and today estimates are less than 10,000 fcv in california or less than 20% of the prediction 3 short years ago, and Indiana, they definitely don't want fcv, and are not going to tax their citizens to put in fueling stations. Most believe, and that includes executives in GM, Ford, VW that fcv are at least a decade away from the technical breakthroughs needed for widespread sales. So what should the comparison set be? Should it be where fuel cell cars are likely to be, with a wrong assumption of how fast they will be adopted? Or should we say that fuel cell vehicles produce more ghg than plug-ins in California today, and will continue to burn more fossil fuel, and create more ghg than plug-ins in the future.

Now UCS is right one of these efficient diesels or hybrids may produce fewer ghg in some states than plug-ins. A lot of the idea of plug in was to reduce dependance on foreign oil, and to reduce tail pipe emissions in our polluted cities. fcv also do these things, but there really isn't much of a chance they will sell in any kind of volume those states in the next 2 decades. If they won't do any good for 20 years, perhaps the US tax payer doesn't need to pay to force commercialization. Once they are ready and we have a price ($96K for a toyota fcv in japan, its a 4 seater that doesn't accelerate as well as a volt) that is at least doable for some volume, then maybe we should talk about big subsidies, but by then plug-ins likely will need no government help at all.

Shouldn't they get counted by the energy they actually consume. These mainly sell in the states with at least average electricity, and people in California (39% poll) and Florida buy solar, and in Texas and Colorado buy wind, Oregon and Washington are so low in fossil fuel electricity it doesn't even matter. Now how are you going to compare that to the small number of fuel cell cars in California, and tell me that even though they produce more ghg than what plug-ins actually do, we should handicap those plug-ins because they need to run on the dirtiest oldest coal, and fuel cells with have perfect natural gas or renewables on site for generation. It just makes no logical sense to say plug-ins are worse because we have sold some in Indiana, but since we are keeping all the fuel cell vehicles in california they can be kept from electrolysis on the dirty grid. Its just terrably misleading, when you don't spell out that real plug-in owners actually buy renewables, and don't live on the national grid.

Yes its a book keeping thing you are asking. Solar customers to get full credit for their system are not living off grid. They displace natural gas, often from ocgt out of state during the day, then charge off of natural gas often more efficient local steam or ccgt at night. If they set timers to not charge at peak (3pm-7pm in texas, noon to midnight in california) they add reliability to the grid.