Mirai pricing announced

This is a side discussion. It would be hypocritical for me to oppose one set of incentives and support one set of incentives based on technology. I'm less opposed to technology independent incentives for supporting pollution reduction and sustainability goals. If those incentives favor the end result (less fossil fuel consumption-however accomplished) then that is the best situation where the individual can pick the technology that works best for them.

I don't think anyone posting on this thread supports inefficiencies and losses. There is power grid loss but there is also energy loss from H2 delivery and handling. Any discussion must not play games with them. What does matter is the total end result costing and results. The Well to Wheel efficiencies can either include the entire cost of building up the associated infrastructure or leave it completely out. Very different answers result and both are right for the assumptions made...so the assumptions are critical.

There is no "well" if the discussion is truly sustainable energy, so that sometimes gets overlooked in "well to wheel" calculations. What is unmistakable is the following points; 1) Most renewable energy is generated at the source as electricity such as the solar panels in the picture. 2) Most future vehicle propulsion will be via electric motors. This is partially true with the Prius already and will be complete true of most Fuel Cell Vehicles and EVs. 3) The losses of intermediate conversion of this electricity into and out of H2 will ALWAYS be more inefficient than the losses of grid distribution of Electricity without chemical conversion.

How can you say FCV will allow us to become energy independent of OPEC and discount the exact same truth for EV based vehicles? What makes H2 renewable and solar power/wind non-renewable? I completely fail to see how renewable H2 can be generated without electrical power being involved in it's generation. Please educate me here.

I want to follow in your footsteps here. Your actions are great. Your FCV verbiage does not match what is working for you.

What if a self contained battery system does the same thing cheaper and more reliably? Would you discount that to have the FCV version at more expensive cost, bigger infrastructure, and more maintenance? There are solid technical reasons for expecting the electric storage system to be better than an FCV version.

 

Charging the battery is electrochemical conversion. You need a way to store renewable electricity. A reliable energy storage is not cheap. There is a good reason why fuel cell (Bloom Energy) is dominating.

Why Are Bloom’s Fuel Cells Winning at Data Centers and ‘Mission-Critical’ Sites? : Greentech Media

I wasn't discounting. I did not mention it because it is well known. Just pointing out FCV would do the same and can co-exist.

The reason I believe H2 would dominate in the long run is, electricity lead to bottlenecks - low energy density storage and refuel time.

Regarding renewable H2, perhaps you are aware of only #1?

Renewable hydrogen can be produced in several ways:

• Electrolysis – splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from one of the many renewable sources;
• Biomass conversion – via either thermochemical or biochemical conversion to intermediate products that can then be separated or reformed to hydrogen; or fermentation techniques that produce hydrogen directly;
• Solar conversion – by either thermolysis, using solar-generated heat for high temperature chemical cycle hydrogen production or photolysis, in which solar photons are used in biological or electrochemical systems to produce hydrogen directly.

Hydrogen production from renewables - Renewable Energy Focus

 

For stationary power, fuel cells do have their pluses. One of those is that you don't have to worry about the hurdles of building out an infrastructure network to support thousands of private vehicles. You also don't need need to get the volumetric energy density high of the stored hydrogen when real estate isn't at a premium. Flexible 'balloons' could work then. Space an issue, then steel tanks will work, since they don't need to be hauled around.

Bloom boxes aren't energy storage though. They are primary power sources for installations in which a natural gas supply is more reliable and cheaper than a grid supply. There also may be government incentives for installing them in locations where they produce less GHG than the grid would. They are likely more reliable than a NG genset, but will cost more, and in the case of cogen heat systems, the efficiencies will be close. Note that CenturyLink still has the grid and diesel generators for back up.

Considering water supply can be constrained, using electrolysis outside of a closed system like storage of renewable electric power for the grid, may not be a good idea long term.

Then the other methods for renewable hydrogen production can be used to make a liquid fuel. Adding a GM microbe to the photolysis production of hydrogen has made isopropanol in the lab. Other organisms have already been used by Audi partners to make a batch of bio-gasoline. Audi also has a plant using excess renewable energy to make methane from CO2 and water. Then another making a diesel rich crude from the same sources. Really, anything that is renewable methane can be used to make methanol or diesel.

 

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/02/sun-rises-new-solar-route-hydrogen-peroxide-water-splittingsun-rises-new-solar-route-hydrogen-peroxide-water-splitting

It will only need 5% efficiency for hydrogen to beat the cost of gas at $2.30 per gallon.

 

Because it is much more expensive than other oil reducing or ghg reducing technologies, that is why it is unlikely to be funded in the US as a national network.

Like I said, do a little test, IMHO CARB is making this one much more expensive than it should be. Fund reserach. But if the cars cost more than plug-ins and the energy costs more than renewables for plug-ins then don't pay to commercialize. we are at a pre commercial stage.

I'm not sure what your problem with the grid is, but it is incredibly cheap, efficient, reliable compared to hydrogen distribution for transportation. It needs to be improved especially on the eastern US grid, but that is mainly slowed by politics.

As for transporting renewables, yes the grid is it. It is much better than converting to hydrogen, liquefying it, puttinging it on trucks, and driving it to a station.

Storing is a different problem. Alternatives
1) Batteries. These are expensive and heavy, but i3 and volt weighs less than a mirai, so hydrogen storage is also heavy and bulky and expensive. Perhaps if there are breakthroughs.
2) Liquid fuels. Audi is working on making ethanol (for blending with gas) and diesel from wind electricity.

A power wall is much cheaper than h2 conversion then fuel cell. You need to look at costs. Why do you think electricity is unreliable?

Well no, no they don't need to, you can miss days and use gasoline. People seem to like charging them at night while they are sleeping instead of going to gas stations as often. The renewable phev fuel is much less expensive than hydrogen, which is a problem with hydrogen if it is going to expand to plug-in type numbers (320,000 last year, likely over 1M/year by 2020).

Well if that is your goal, damn the cost, to be just like gas, and to pay at the pump for renewables, then yes hydrogen or synthetic fuels made from hydrogen and carbon dioxide are it. There are other goals and choices though.

The same renewables to fuel a million miles of fcv, can probably fuel three to four million miles of electric miles in a plug-in. Economics of fuel will dictate the fuel is going to stay more expensive for fcv, so the cost of the vehicles or convenience or performance needs to be better. That is not true today.

 

Mirai cost announced, wonderful!
One step closer to seeing them released to the U.S. Public.

Even if there were more than enough infrastructure, I simply don't want to deal with the hassle of fueling at a gas station (be it hydrogen or gasoline).

 

agreed. for those of us who spend 99.9% of our time within range, having a fully fueled car every morning is a beautiful thing.

 

QUOTE="usbseawolf2000, post: 2189582, member: 2754"]http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/02/sun-rises-new-solar-route-hydrogen-peroxide-water-splittingsun-rises-new-solar-route-hydrogen-peroxide-water-splitting

It will only need 5% efficiency for hydrogen to beat the cost of gas at $2.30 per gallon.[/QUOTE]
I found that link dead, but this one works

Sun rises on new solar route to hydrogen | Chemistry World
which includes this

Nice a possible technical advance. You have to remember that 10,000 psi hydrogen at a station costs more than produced hydrogen. Let's see if this R&D can pay off, Our latest coastal wind (real world) tract cost 6 cents/kwh. After transmission lines, and utility profits and fossil maintenance less $0.022 federal subsidy that's a bout $0.12/kwh at a home. That would cost about $2.40 for a tesla S 70d to drive 60 miles ($0.04/mile for wind electricity texas). If somehow this solar hydrogen gets built @2.30 kg, and the state picks up the station building cost, compression, electricity, and station maintenance then hydrogen will be as cheap.

 

Which means increasing the current efficiency by 150%.
It is great news from the lab, but we've also heard great things from the lab for batteries.

Think this is the research paper.
A fantastic graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) material: Electronic structure, photocatalytic and photoelectronic properties

 

There is one big problem with this claim "fuel cells dominating" statement. It is dominating fossil fuel conversion to electricity options at fixed sites. Somehow the sustainability part of the discussion gets lost and the original point of the discussion is totally overlooked.

I have never been an opponent of fuel cells or any H2 application that ends up being the best solution for a particular application. For powering data centers from fossil fuel, maybe fuel cells are the best answer. But we are far from the discussion point. The problem I and others recognize is Toyota and California both claiming and funding fuel cell vehicles as the only worthwhile path to vehicle transportation sustainability...based on internal agendas and not disciplined evaluations. Then that political diatribe becomes justification for opposing EV solutions that are really viable right now.

This leaves out cost as a factor. I will contend that cost ends up being the deciding factor, not a distant incidental factor. I would agree a taxi driver or aircraft suffers a severe cost penalty for low energy density and refuel time. I would then contend that a great many folks would be unaffected by the energy density and refuel time for the vast majority of vehicle use. Again, I'm not declaring the EV is the universal solution....but it is a more viable solution for a sustainable vehicle fueling technology than fuel cells for a great many. For some strange reason both Toyota or California do not want that to be the case.

Only one can be the most cost effective. The problem with number two is the biomass gets it's energy from the sun at a much less efficient process than photovoltaic. The amount of land needed to support the H2 energy delivered as H2 energy versus what PV can deliver directly as electrical energy for the same infrastructure and operating cost is mind boggling. The same efficiency problem also affects number 3. Compared to the cost of direct electrical generation via PV, they are all extremely inefficient.

Any single step of any process can be isolated as being "more efficient" than some corresponding isolated step of an alternative process. But it is also irrelevant. It is the total overall cost that picks the winners and losers.

 

Cost is high, no doubt. FC and H2 is probably where Solar was back in 2000.

Infrastructure needs to expand and cost needs reduction. Mass production would solve the two hurdles. Technical issues are behind and Mirai marks the milestone.

If I oppose to solar back in 2000 with cost being the reason, it would sound silly now.

Easy to say when you have a home with garage and paying for that real estate. Many people don't have that luxury. In order to go mainstream, I believe we need gas station like refueling infrastructure. That means renewable fuel also need to dispense just as fast. Hydrogen paves the way and also solves the storage and vampire drain issue.

 

+1

The reason I and most people think majority of hydrogen will be produced by fossil fuels, is simple, its cheaper, and requires less of a subsidy. Similar to the picken's plan it is less expensive to make hydrogen from natural gas, then add renewables to the grid to remove natural gas from the grid, than to make hydrogen for a high volume station (1000 vehicles per week) with renewables. So those that talk about renewables filling hydrogen vehicles are either talking about bigger subsidies, or that kind of math, or some technical breakthroughs to drop the cost. Now if people are willing to buy fcv and pay $13/kg for renewables great, but few think that will happen.

I don't know about california citizens, I would bet they are not for fuel cells over plug-ins, but California fuel cell partnership(CFCP) of which CARB, CEC, and Toyota are members want fuel cells more than plug-ins.

According to NREL, building extra wind and producing hydrogen at night (netting 0 ghg, but cheap night electricity) is the least expensive renewable method for hydrogen. It would require the CFCP, CARB, and CEC to use net accounting for both plug-ins and fuel cell vehicles, which gets rid of some of their talking points.

Biomass waste is an excellent source of methane, but this is not located where fueling stations should be, and transportation costs make it cost much more than wind for any significant number of stations. It is much more cost effective to burn it in a turbine and add the electricity to the grid.

 

Absolutely, which is why, unlike Toyota, I don't insist there is only one way for everyone.
About half of Americans do have a garage though, and probably more than half of car owners.

Hydrogen is great for buses, possibly fleet vehicles with a centralized refueling depot, and stationary applications.
It sucks for cars though, better to use CNG.

 

Toyota is building plug-ins for china
China To Force Toyota To Build Electric Cars It Loathes

I'm not sure who without a garage wants a $499/month fcv. IIRC all of the currently leased fcv are either i garages or fleets where the government or business could provide plugs ;-) We should see if any of the non-fleet mirai are not leased or sold to people in apartments. That should be interesting.

 

What we have now are vehicles that can be refueled in minutes with a fueling infrastructure available everywhere anytime. Current gas and diesel hybrids and plug-in hybrids work within this system which maintains the freedom of unlimited travel. True alternative fuel vehicles such as pure EV, Hydrogen, LNG and others are still limited by vehicle type, infrastructure and use. As I see it in the "big picture", there is a bigger issue than just running out of petroleum and environmental impact that must be address before any real alternative/replacement can be selected and implemented by the powers that be to replace the current system. Employment and the economy that is petroleum based. Until this can be addressed and changed without shutting down the world, what we have are just toys, experiments and redos of technology that's been around for a long time and played with before.

 

Exactly right. The first cell phones were painful huge bricks and preceded by toy-like walkie-talkies if you are old enough to remember. The first personnel computers were hobbyist toys not very useful for anything. The first machine shops were huge belt and pully arrangements. The first horseless carriages were cranky beasts indeed. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of any emergent technology that did not require a lot of evolution in order to become a revolution. But this fossil fuel dead end is being addressed and it is changing. Instead of shutting down the world, the sustainable answers are what will prevent shutting down the world.

 

...and I am just as anxious to see what long term answers are given to us as the rest of the world.

 

I'm not entirely waiting for "what can be given to us". I'm making lots of buying choices based entirely on minimum energy consumption and noticing I'm a growing economic force with others. The Mirai will never be a purchase of mine. Toyota has decided they will continue to deny selling the PiP in Florida. So I will reward some company making what I want in the direction of sustainability. Admittedly an extremely small step, but one in the right direction.

 

are you referring to the gen IV pip? do you have a link to that decision?

 

If Toyota is not selling the PiP in Florida (or the entire Southern US) then they certainly don't want me to buy one.