Mirai pricing announced

I don't think bisco or anyone here has said they are mutually exclusive. What some of us have done is poke holes in the fuel cell lobby's case that hydrogen is inevitable or even competitive.

Remember the biggest problem with fcv is cost, the second biggest is infrastructure. As long as cost is this high, it is unlikely tax payers are going to pay for the infrastructure for more than a token amount of cars. That is the challenge for hydrogen.

 

that's correct. i did not say it, nor did i mean to imply it.

 

i simply asked what was wrong with electricity. i have not seen a reasonable answer yet.

 

For the fuel cell lobby which includes automakers and fuel companies

1) Dealership model must change. If you are selling phevs and bevs maintenance costs will be lower which means dealers need to make more money on the sale and less on service.

2) Fueling infrastructure must change. People will be able to refill mainly at work and home. That means much less profit opportunity from fueling stations.

3) Barriers to entry fall. It costs a great deal of money to produce high hp engines, keeping number of automakers small. Lower R&D costs may mean more competition to big automakers from start ups like tesla.

 

Your comment about the source is extremely valid. But it avoids some key points. Key point one is electricity can be made directly from wind and solar. H2 cannot be made directly from wind and solar plants. Key point two. Solar electric generation can be widely distributed in generation, like right at the home. H2 generation must be done at concentrated facilities. Key point 3 - Efficiency and economics matter. At the end of the day, how much a "sustainable" mile cost the user matters more than the energy carrier used. All these points are downplayed in some of the excessive H2 promotions taking place in political and corporate centers of power.

There is a place and location for H2 energy based systems. The entire future vehicle infrastructure of Toyota and California is not one of them.

 

i don't know what policy has taken place in ma, but i'm seeing a ton of solar panels being installed at highway intersections.

 

Mirai price is less than Model S and still has more range. I think cost maybe a problem for Hyundai, Honda and GM but Toyota has already addressed it and on the road to mass market plan by 2020.

Refuel infrastructure is the real obstacle but the ball is rolling now that the egg came out first.

Having that said, BEV still lacks fast refueling infrastructure. EV battery that can handle gas-like refuel speed does not even exists.

 

yes, but what will 2020 bring?

 

Hopefully the Tesla Model 3.

 

Quite correct.

However, not going out our way to make that clear... an explicit reminder of goals... contributes to those assumptions.

As well informed and frequent posters, we should all be making at effort to prevent. Leaving opportunity for misunderstandings & misleading has had terrible consequences in the past. We can stop that early on with raised awareness and a continued message of purpose right from the start.

Would you like examples of how failing to do that with previous rollouts resulted in avoidable problems?

 

i agree with you john, certainly doesn't hurt to chase all possibilities. i'm just not sold on h2 as toyota and some others are.

 

Because of the economics, it isn't short sighted to focus on natural gas for hydrogen.
Electrolysis is an inefficient process for making hydrogen. It's only advantage is for on site production in areas with adequate water supply. It may be advantageous to use it as battery for excess renewable electric for later use to provide power to the grid. Making car fuel that way will have ediesel to compete with.
Current available sources of renewable hydrogen, like the cow poo, first involve converting the biomass into methane, aka natural gas. These are just going to be more expensive than fossil NG for quite some time.
Other possible sources of renewable hydrogen are still in the lab. If we are going to consider them in the discussion, then we have to consider all the battery advances that are still in the lab.

California has mandated that that much hydrogen needs to be renewable. They haven't been open about how much this has increased the cost of hydrogen. They haven't been open about the cost period. Then with some of that renewable hydrogen being made by electrolysis, we need to ask what their renewable electric percentage of the grid would be without the renewable hydrogen mandate? Would those PV panels have not been installed, or would they be pumping their electric into the grid?

Several here have been complaining about coal for electricity. GHG aside, it is a very dirty fuel, and we shouldn't have grandfathered in the old plants with dirty emissions. On the other hand, NG is the cleanest burning fossil fuel for power generation. It probably burns cleaner than biomass and trash. So it is a good compliment to renewables and nuclear power for the time being.

Using it to make hydrogen for a vehicle fuel isn't going to have major benefit over just burning the NG in an ICE. Then its edge is further reduced if CNG hybrids are considered. Besides that, it is much easier , for the individual and community, to switch plugins to renewable electric than FCVs to renewable hydrogen. The later requires higher level governments to accomplish, and, going by the choice of E10 and pure gas in most areas, gives individuals little impact by choice.

That simply isn't so. There is no bottleneck now because refueling station capacity far exceeds the cars on the road. Unlike gasoline stations, hydrogen stations have a much smaller number of cars they can handle in a day. A typical town gas station will have 2 to 3 tanks, each at 8000 to 10,000 gallons. So it could fill 800 to 1000 Prii with regular between deliveries. Then it can keep filling up car tanks as long as trucks can delivery fuel to its tanks, and it still has power. Truck stops on a major interstate can handle thousands of cars in a day.

A hydrogen station can handle a hundred cars a day at most. Many of the stations now built can only do half or less that. Supply hydrogen isn't the issue. The bottleneck is in keeping the fill tanks pressurized and chilled. If the pressure in there is too low or the temp too high, a 3 minute refuel can stretch out to 5min, 10min, 15min, or more. If it can refill cars at all.

And they quite quickly use it to make a hydrocarbon. Do we need any more proof on the downsides of handling pure hydrogen?

As Volt crtics like to point out, "price is not cost."

BEVs don't need fast refill displace most of the liquid fuel use of a household. Most households have more than one car; some more than two. A BEV can already replace one of those for commuting now. Without any fast charger at all.

Fast chargers are needed to get a BEV to completely replace the ICE. That isn't the FCV's current competition though. It is the PHV. They provide zero tail pipe emissions for the majority of day to day driving. For longer trips they make use of a fast refill infrastructure already in place. Perhaps not the ideal solution, but one that could have a big impact on California's air quality if it weren't focused on FCVs.

 

That is doubtful. It looks like the cost to tesla for a model S is lower than the cost of a mirai to toyota. Cost to a consumer of a mirai lease in California or Japan is lower, but this is not because of lower manufacturing costs, it is because Toyota and the US and Japanese governments choose to subsidize a very small number of vehicles (3000 in US through 2017, perhaps 3000 in Japan through 2019). If the number of vehicles increased to tesla's production it is doubtful cost to consumer would remain less.

The next question is because of infrastructure and car limitations how many want a tesla S or model 3 or a volt, i3 or leaf, versus a mirai, clarity, or tucson fcv. It appears the market says even at a lower subsidy and cost to the consumer more people want a tesla. That doesn't mean fcv and fueling cant' improve, but they aren't there yet.

2020, as I said we will see if toyota can deliver a car people want at a subsidized price people want to pay. Toyota said that was 2015 in the past. I think they are really talking sometime in the 2020s now for gen I volt type world wide volume. It takes some major breakthroughs to get the costs down.

Its a huge barrier. Even if toyota had a reliable cost effective car, how many people would buy one if it cost 4x more than a prius to refuel. Who will build this infrastructure, and what will it cost. Fuel cell lobby said oil companies would do it. They said no. Now its up to the car manufacturers and governments, and costs are probably in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Yep but plug-ins do. there are phevs that can refuel at any gas station. Why should all plug-ins need to fuel as fast as a handful of fcv in a very geographically limited part of the world. Maybe tesla and volt refueling is fast enough. in 2019 most of car markets of the US and China will have fast chargers. Slower than hydrogen, but if they are only used for 10% of miles, and are more convenient it is a disadvantage to hydrogen.

 

Which is why we should look into both potentials.

We'll see if Model 3 would have 300 miles range with 3-5 mins refuel time.

I don't think so but then BEV and FCV are for different markets.

 

That's the wrong question. It should be why not?

Look at the current grid spaghetti. Who would have thought we would built it? In fact, Tesla thought everything would be wireless.

H2 is pobably the only plausible way to store and transport renewable energy. We should build it, it doesn't matter who.

Powerwall or other battery storage to realize renewable EV is expensive, bulky and unreliable. This aspect is easily overlooked when H2 and FCV inherit that feature.

PHEV still need to recharge at slow residential infrastructure EVERYDAY.

The goal is to refuel renewable at gas-like speed. No compromise and no change of habbit. This is Toyota's vision of the ultimate eco-car.

 

Because it requires money taken out of my pocket with no vote on my part. Why should anyone be forced to pay for inefficient or just flat wasteful government decisions making no progress towards sustainability? The more proper function of government is to set overall pollution and sustainability regulations without making a continuous string of bad technical edicts requiring public financing to prove they were the wrong edict.

Statements like this require real technical substantiation. Especially since the EV numbers are considerable stronger. Don't make this type of statement to a technical crowd without serious evidence.

Compared to what? Is is less expensive, bulky, and unreliable than H2 storage and distribution infrastructure? Again, this is a discussion addressed with numbers and specifics.

So do human beings. That provides plenty of time to recharge.

Whose goal? Certainly not mine, nor quite a few folks I know. Again, general statements with no backup are easy to state. I need more than just statements to be convinced.

 

Seriously? Where have you been living?

We've been dealing with that for a very, very long time. Drill baby, drill.

 

That's the question to plugin incentive.

Solar incentive is fine as it guarantees lower carbon footprint. Plugin investment doesn't.

Inefficiency? FCV well to wheel using domestic fuel (natural gas) beats BEV.

Are you against power plant inefficiencies? How about transmission and distribution loss? Charging loss? Vampire drain (1-3% per day).

FCV will allow us to become energy independence from OPEC and pave the way to renewable energy without a change in habbit or infrastructure (transition from fossil H2 to renewable H2).

I don't understand why people are opposed to it. You can continue to buy your plugin and keep charging from the slow, fossil fuel dominated grid.

I have a plugin car and I am happy with it. My solar panels will power my house and my car.



I am not opposed to FCV or hydrogen. I truly believe it will be the future. It is not for me yet but it will be soon.

One day, I vision my roof with 90% efficient artificial photosynthesis panels generating hydrogen allowing me to go off grid completely. Fuel Cell CHP will give me electricity, hot water, heat for home and power my car.

 

that all sounds good, usb. i hope you are correct.

 

nice hedge.