The Toyota Mirai (FCV) Thread

Tesla's business plan was to start with a high end sports car because they could sell it and make a profit for their next, lower cost model. Many of the ICE cars in that segment cost six figures, and some also don't have power steering, along with what most would call bare bones interiors.

The Mirai price is lower, but it isn't covering the car's cost. It is more refined than the Roadster, but is it more refined than the Model S, or Lexus ES, or Camry? The S is the only one of those three, even counting hybrids, with a higher price than the Mirai, but it also delivers sports car acceleration and performance.

Why was Toyota unwilling to underwrite the Prius PHV's price a little on the first gen?

Because when public money built hydrogen stations in the past, the cars didn't materialize. So now the more prudent involved now need a little more than the car companies' word.

Back ICE cars were still mostly toys for the well to do, getting fuel wasn't an issue. Local hardware stores was selling gasoline for paint brush and hand cleaning. I guess a potential FCEV owner could buy hydrogen from the local welding supply. Assuming that the gas was high enough purity. The large 50L tanks you maybe could get there only hold 0.4kg of hydrogen though.

So, if there isn't a hydrogen station nearby, people are just going to buy a gasoline, diesel, or electric car. Since the FCEV car companies aren't building hydrogen stations, and it is too risky for other private companies to do so, it falls to the government to build and support these stations until FCEV prices drop and their numbers on the road increase.

And its $57.5k price may make Toyota some money.

No, not threatened.

Some don't want to see their tax money being spent on a technology that doesn't seem to be ready for the market. Nissan didn't build the Leaf, a first gen BEV, with the plan to only sell a fewer than five thousand through the first couple of years. Neither did Toyota and the Prius. And while both these cars got government help and support, neither was priced above the middle market. They cost more than the equivalent ICE, but still in reach of the majority.

Others just want equal treatment for all technologies. In California, FCEVs and plug ins will have near equal impact on GHG and improving air quality. Why count FCEVs higher for ZEV program? Why exclude battery swapping from the fast refuel definition? How about spending equal amounts on hydrogen stations and public chargers. How many Supercharger level units could the cost of one hydrogen station install?

 

the more frequently people hear that mantra, the more dishonest it continues to sound. "Cleaner, domestic fuel" primarily means natural gas.....
a non-renewable ..... strike two. " ability to run on 100% renewable" primarily means solar or wind generated electricity. Please don't make me repost the link again that refutes this as substantially being BS. Hydrogen distillation via electricity essentially wastes between 3 & 4 times the electricity that could otherwise go into a bev. Again - just because it's a theoretical plausibility doesn't mean that it ever will be an actuality.
Strike three
We're all free to live in lala land but let's not pretend that we all should live there. Present day realities don't mean maybe someday hydrogen might not be practical. But for now - it just doesn't look like hydrogen ever will be there. Here's to hoping common sense will be wrong, & hydrogen cars will work, somewhere in the distant future.
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hydrogen from organic waste does not require solar and wind and is 100% renewable, RiBeye

 

And how many years will I have to wait before I can fill my car with this kind of hydrogen?

100% renewable electricity to charge my EV is available today.

 

Like mine. I'm running on 100% renewable electricity

No smog from me.

 

By reforming the methane from it.
Methane which could be burned directly in a power plant or CNG car.
"Although municipal solid waste (MSW) may not be very picturesque, 14 percent of renewable electricity generation (not including hydroelectric dams) comes from operations that recapture energy from discarded waste." - Energy from Waste: Burn or Bury? | Science Matters | US EPA
Or about 2% of total electric production. How much hydrogen would that make if reformed instead?

 

What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

13% of US energy comes from renewable, of which almost a half (6%) comes from dirty renewable - hydropower. The energy put in EV could be used to reduce coal percentile. This is exactly your point, right?

 

My point is that renewable sources for hydrogen is either diverting renewable electric from the grid for whatever in the case of renewable electrolysis. On that of that, the process is wasteful in terms of car miles per watt generated. Perhaps there is some benefit is using it to store energy storing times of excess renewables. Considering the hurdles of getting the hydrogen to the cars, it is probably better to use the it to power stationary fuel cells during low renewable production.

Or it is made from something that could just as easily, and likely easier, be used for renewable electric or direct heating. Take Toyota's cow poo hydrogen; that involves digesting the poo to get methane, which is then reformed for hydrogen. Instead, it could be digested, and the methane used for electric and/or heat. In fact, many farms already do this, and it takes less energy than making hydrogen out of the poo since it is used at the source, and nothing needs to transported from the farm to the cars. In the case of higher production waste for energy source, it is just simpler and cheaper to make electricity, and put it on the grid.

Photolysis, using catalysts to directly break water apart with solar energy, is the only current renewable hydrogen production method that doesn't renewable electric from the grid, or can used to supply it. However, it is in the lab only at this time. Then counting lab only possibilities, we can make isopropanol for fuel by combining photolysis with a GM bug, and have numerous battery break throughs.

 

And how is it different from diverting renewable electric from the grid and have coal fill the void?

Here how it works: You take 1kWh of renewable electric off the grid. 1.05lbs of additional coal is dug out and burned to replace loss. This generates 3.85lbs of CO2. End of story.

 

The difference is, to propel an FCV 100 miles you need 1.5 gallon equivalents of energ.
To propel a typical EV 100 miles you need just under 1 gallon equivalents of energy.

Edit--- corrected units

 

That entirely depends on process used. Hydrogen generated from the fermentation of household waste by a mixed anaerobic bacteria needs much less electricity.

 

Or a currently unused renewable source gets put to electric instead of hydrogen.

 

Anaerobic fermentation doesn't make hydrogen. It makes methane, and then energy is spent to reform it into hydrogen. It is less energy than electrolysis for hydrogen, but it can't scale up as far as electrolysis.

 

Or plastics. It is more efficient to turn biomass into plastics than burn it to make electricity to make the plastics.

As long as you realize that w/o looking at actual technology and calculating efficiencies this is "my daddy is bigger than yours" debate, we are on the same page.

Here is some info from NREL on hydrogen production:
NREL: Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Research - Hydrogen Production and Delivery

Oil industry had many years to perfect refining process, it will take some time to make hydrogen more efficient.

 

NREL begs to disagree:

 

Interesting, but like the photolysis, it sounds to be still in the lab.
Biohydrogen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think it has some lower hurdles; just find the right bug and right growing conditions. Genetic modifaction can be a PITA at times, though.
While the direct production of hydrogen production saves the reformation step, you now have added the preteatment step of breaking down lignin and cellulose into sugars. That technology is progressing, but when perfected, will biohydrogen production make FCEVs more feasible, or classic yeast fermentation do it for ethanol ICEs and various hybrids of?

 

Are we talking about the Mirai (title of this thread), or FCVs? Because the Mirai can only be refueled in Los Angeles, where the renewable percentage is over 25% today.

You guys keep bringing this up. The places in this country where the Mirai is somehow magically cleaner than a BEV are places where refueling infrastructure won't exist in 10 or 15 or even 20 years. So it's a useless comparison.

On the other hand, in the markets where anyone would even consider buying this car, where there still won't be infrastructure in even 3 years, renewable energy is a sufficiently high proportion of the power mix that the Mirai will never be able to come out on top in terms of environmental impact. I don't know why this is so hard to grasp.

 

I would put it a different way, and have in this thread 33% of electricity comes from non-fossil sources in the US, and that percent is likely to grow. Big hydro is not "dirty" but all of the good places in the US have been built, only small hydro projects can go forward. Steam natural gas and coal are also retiring. In 2013 74% of coal was thirty years old or older, and eia says useful life of a coal plant is 40 years. Many old plants are kept going because they are grandfathered so in 20 years we may have a bunch of 70 year old coal plants, but a much smaller percentage of the grid. ccgt natural gas (which is almost twice as efficient as those old coal plants) and renewables are what has been built for the last 20 years.

No one is building coal for plug-in cars.

I'd separate it out.
Total Electricity System Power
10.3% wind and solar
7.8% big hydro
8.5% other renewable
8.8% nuclear (diablo canyon)
---------------------------------------------------
35.4% non fossil
7.8% coal
44.3% natural gas
12.5% unspecified (mainly natural gas or renewables after their renewable certificates have been sold to someone outside of california)

Not only that but what are the odds that people are willing to buy fcv in inidiana or west virginia even if toyota sold them? Would they suddenly join carb and require renewables?

By 2025 wind and solar will be a much higher percentage of the california grid. Those are the power choices utility customers can make. I doubt there will be even 5000 fcv in each of those bad coal states by 2025. What is the fcv pretending to say?

No there is not a coal argument here.

I don't quite get this. Where is coal replacing renewables on the grid. As more BEVs get on the road, coal is leaving not increasing on the grid. California is number 1 at new plug-in adoption, yet in by 2025 when coal contracts end, we can expect the roughtly 8% of coal to drop to 2% as plug-ins take more and more electricity.

Many of the plug-in purchasers build or buy renewable energy for their homes and cars. When this renewable is wind, it puts pressure on coal operations to shut down, as night prices of coal electricity drop.

 

yes - and also waiting for a fountain of youth - so we might live long enough to see affordable hydrogen happen, if ever;

Toyota’s Fuel Cell Car: Pay Twice as Much per Mile Than Prius Hybrid | Transport Evolved

The way Toyota puffs up their "not practical or affordable for nationwide use" hydrogen car via ads (while slamming plugin's) - you gotta wonder how long Toyota's VP Bob Carter will be employed, if he keeps telling the truth.
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Wind to Hydrogen in Germany:

For USB:

German engineering giant Siemens has launched what it calls ‘the world’s largest electrolysis plant’, designed to store excess wind power in hydrogen for use in cars.
Siemens launches largest hydrogen energy storage plant - E & T Magazine