Mirai pricing announced

Now that the US is supposed to be the world's leader in natural gas...why is no one considering that option. Why produce H2 from NG when it's so easy to use it direct.

Natural gas vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

i'm not sure why toyota is keeping the pip, maybe just to keep their hand in the game. i suppose i'm looking at it a bit selfishly, they are making the cars that suit me. i'm not smart enough to know the future of hydrogen. if someone makes a bev that fits my lifestyle, i won't be fussed if it isn't toyota.

 

Consider emissions, efficiency, and cost. Then think about long-term reliability.

 

Did you read the link?

Advantages over gasoline and diesel[edit]
LNG – and especially CNG – tends to corrode and wear the parts of an engine less rapidly than gasoline. Thus it's quite common to find diesel-engine NGVs with high mileages (over 500,000 miles). Emissions are cleaner, with lower emissions of carbon and lower particulate emissions per equivalent distance traveled. There is generally less wasted fuel. However, cost (monetary, environmental, pre-existing infrastructure) of distribution, compression, cooling must be taken into account.

Considering the added costs, loss during conversion and added environmental effects of manufacturing H2 from natural gas, I don't see the advantage. Especially when we already have a natural gas infrastructure in place...as opposed to none, except for a few high dollar units experimenting with our tax money in CA...plus gas and diesel vehicles can be converted to run NG much cheaper than the new vehicle technology H2 requires...at what cost so far? Just a thought.

 

On large vehicles, absolutely, but part of the hydrogen line is that it can be made from renewable electricity. Well methane, the chief component of natural gas can be made from electricity, water, and carbon dioxide. Audi has a demonstration using wind to supply the electricity in germany.

On smaller cars this has problems though, as like hydrogen you need room for the tanks, and you are much lsss efficient unless you make it a hybrid or phev which needs room for batteries as well. It is a problem with midsize and smaller cars which is what honda and toyota mainly sell in japan. I don't see how hydrogen solves this problem, but hey that is what they are pitching, and methane won't cut it here. M85 phev may though, but mitsubishi is probably the only japanese company pushing phev technology in japan.

 

Dig through some of those fuel cell threads, and it has been brought up. Some trucking and private fleets already use it. It would be cheaper to build commercial stations. Cars would also be cheaper. Work on onboard reformers is already taking place. So we can have the infrastructure in place when NG fuel cell cars come to market.

A downside there might be is that refueling is slower than liquid, but I don't think speeding that up has been as much of a priority as with hydrogen. So the technology from hydrogen stations could be applied to CNG ones, for a price, if the fill speed is an issue. There are downsides to personal cars. They will cost more than a gasoline one. NG is high octane, so the engine should be high compression, but any additional costs for that should be short lived. Most engines are already designed for the global market with higher octane regular. There is no getting around the additional cost of a gaseous fuel system vs. a liquid one. It will also require more space on the car. Then a problem for older cars is that the tanks have a set shelf life. It's greater than 10 years, with some as high as 25, but like BEVs with old batteries, resale value will suffer.

The advantage of hydrogen is that the car it self is zero emissions. Unless you count the water vapor, but that can be easily captured and put to use. Central NG reformation has the potential for CO2 sequestering, but you have to overcome the cost of building the infrastructure out before most would consider that.

 

for as many decades as I've heard that we'll all be able to drive hydrogen cars, "in just 10 more years" we should have been here already .... and yet we're still hearing "in just 10 more years" ... it makes me wonder if the next pip really IS in the works. After all - has there been even ONE single solitary feature leak for a gen II pip? Toyota did a WHOLE LOT of 'teasers' ... little pictures that were soon to come, when the Gen I pip was nearing roll out. And where are those kinds of teaser pic's for the PiP gen II ? I'd love to believe Toyota isn't letting the pip wither on the vine. Throwing the pip fan base a bone would sure be a big help. If Toyota can give hydrogen teasers long before hydrogen is ready for prime time .... how long will the pip take to get here ... when we haven't even had any of those kind of 'stay tuned' goodies.

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Doing a quick searh of toyota's PR, the last mention of the prius phv other than the one saying its been delayed until the end of 2016 was this, which includes the mirai so we can stay on topic.
Toyota to Launch 'New Era' of High-MPG Hybrids, Expand Its Global Hybrid Rollout | Toyota

Toyota Tests Wireless Charging Technology for Plug-In Cars - Automobile Magazine

I wouldn't bet against another schedule slip, or for a US national roll out, but toyota does look like it is working on the prius phv, and if it doesn't slip again I would guess we will see it in 17 months.

 

there is a thread with what we know about the next pip. there are a couple of things actually, that some toyota bigwig basically committed to. maybe haters won't believe it, but that doesn't change the facts.

 

Hydrogen, CNG, pig poop, whatever...if business and industry principles of past stand, any solution will have to affordable and available to the masses, and you can be sure that the corporations/countries that own the solution/s will retain power and profit. Otherwise they won't do it. Just my opinion.