Mirai gets 67 MPGe - official

That doesn't make sense to me. Would you then say putting solar on the roof doesn't make sense? You already have electricity coming to your home. And yes if it was inexpensive enough for us all to have gas stations at our house that might be very practical.

I think the idea of putting a hydrogen generation station in the house makes a lot of sense, especially when it can also produce electricity and heat for the house. There are many home hydrogen systems available today, and many more in the design phase. Some are pretty exciting and the costs are coming way down. One predicts the price dropping to $4K. We all know natural gas, used to produce hydrogen, is abundant and cheap.

The forces are there for FCV to take over the future. Battery technology is at it's epic. The only way I would change my mind is if batteries could be charged in less than 10 minutes, and would not deteriorate so quickly. There have been some advances in capacitors that might be replacements for today's batteries. That would be a possible diversion.

What I think is silly is rejecting a product that is already in production, gaining traction, with a bright future, and hanging onto old technology like batteries.

 

sure put $50,000 of equipment in your house so that you don't need to drive to the gas station. Might want to drill an oil well and refintery in your house if you want to make it. That would be the equivellent of solar + interter + grid tie.

The phil which was just a compressor and dispenser for 3600 psi cng cost $5000. How are you going to even make a 10,000 hydrogen for $4K?

 

I wish we all could just go back to 1997, when it was simple, Hybrid or V8! In the late 90's who was in support of Hybrid, it was looked at with disdain. Seems the same is happening with Fuel Cell. Well look at Toyota today and the 4th gen Prius on it way from Japan. Toyota is sure glad they went with their gut feeling. Tesla is glad as well, since without Toyota's support $$$$ and Mercedes as well, Tesla may not be the company it is now.

 

It was in this article Home Hydrogen Fueling Stations - Overview | Hydrogen Cars Now

 

Actually, we had a gas station on our farm. It was a big diesel refueling tank for the tractors. The gas company did not deliver it for free however and did not give a discount for volume purchases. Been there, done that. No thanks. Will take EV at first opportunity. I would ask a simple question. How is natural gas generation sustainable?

My "quickly deteriorating" Prius battery (2001 model) has not got that memo yet.

 

Nah, courtesy of constantly refined battery chemistries, energy density has historically improved (and continues to do so), and while it may only come in an exponential fashion (at 5-8% per year), this rate of improvement has proven reliable, as the unveiling of the Model 3 and its battery pack capacity will no doubt reveal.

The first fuel cell was built in 1889. Talk about old hat! Nearly half of the span of time that has since passed has been chocked full with wide-eyed H2 promises that ubiquity is just around the corner. I guess because Toyota has proclaimed it and a few de facto bankrupt municipalities are throwing cash at it, it must finally be true!

 

It looks like I jumped into the middle of a raging argument about FCV. I can see why it is raging.

 

Might want to refresh the post. I made a few edits, though the run-on stature of the first sentence is not much better (sorry, it's late).

Each of these techs has its fans and its detractors. An effective 300-mile range Model 3 will appeal to all but the most long-range drivers, and an FCV in 2017 won't meet these people's requirements any better than a Model 3 will (with the possible exception of travel in CA, and then only in marginally better refueling times).

My position can be summed up as follows: Toyota is on my sh*tlist because of their concerted effort to discredit EVs in an attempt to peddle their fool cells on gullible greenies.

 

One thing I don't understand is why Toyota is laging in PHV department, I mean you just can not skip directly to FCV, it may be the future but a very, very distant one.

 

From just looking at that graph, one might infer that Toyota thinks the non-plug hybrid market will grow much faster than the plugin hybrid market during the next 5-7 year product cycle. They don't really show PHV growing rapidly until 2025 or so.

It will be interesting to see what the next plugin Prius specifications will be. If they put in twice the battery pack capacity that will roughly double the battery power output from around 37 to 74 kW yet the new hybrid transaxle MG2 is listed as having a maximum output of 53 kW.

Does that mean the next plugin Prius will get its own custom transaxle? Or will the performance be limited by the transaxle? Or maybe the transaxle is really more capable than is being disclosed now for the non-plug Prius -- this is my personal guess.

By the way, I noticed that the new MG2 has adopted the Chevy Volt's use of thick rectangular copper wire while still using small round copper wire for the windings on MG1. One of GM's claims around the use of rectangular wire is that the motor manufacturing technique using it is more flexibly adaptable to use different winding variations on the same assembly line.

So, maybe the plugin Prius MG2 will utilize that to simply get stronger windings while utilizing the same motor manufacturing line as the non-plug Prius? Or, maybe it's not necessary since the 2016 Cadillac ELR uses the 2015 Volt's 111 kW "MG2" but pumps up to 174 kW to it while leaving the motor basically unchanged (other transaxle components had to be strengthened).

 

That's not a legit article its hype from 7 years ago, and probably raw speculation that 5000 psi hydrogen compression would get cheap after honda learned from the phil. Honda is the company that said the phil's price could fall, but it was $5000. That's just an easier purifier and lighter compressor for natural gas. It had quality problems at that $5000 price. Creating the hydrogen is not the problem. Then you need to store and compress it (or produce and compress it all when the cars there, meaning much bigger production. I would be surprised if for 10,000 psi it cost less than $50K, unless you have the compressed hydrogen delivered to your house. For less than $20K you can probably add 20 kwh of batteries to the car and redesign it, charger, home charger to a fcv. Latest DOE grants was for a few prototypes for fc as a range extender. Japan is pushing home natural gas fuel cells which cost about $16,000 to produce electricity and heat water, its the size of a refigerator. They hope those prices will drop as the grid is a wreck over there, and they don't have enough power plants post fukishima. In the US this is not competitive with home solar + a gas water heater, but we don't have the grid problems japan has. It might make sense for a high rise building though where there is not enough roof for solar in the US, and the Utility is coal heavy or incompetent.

Not sure where you were but lots of I4s around where I was a kid. The porsche 911, a 6 cyclinder was the best sports car, and many belive it still is. My mom had a honda accord 4 cylinder, that I think is smaller than a new civic. Dad bought a V6 avalon around the time of the gen I prius in the US (his company finally got toyota as a customer, so he could buy toyotas then). The geo metro was on the road, a dismal 3 cylinder with a version that got better mpg than the first 2 generations of prii.

I don't remember even hearing about the prius in the japanese only 1997, let alone disdain. This is probably the first I really heard of it.
2001 Toyota Prius - Instrumented Test - Car Reviews - Car and Driver
Not complimentary, but certainly no disdain. I was enthused when I learned about the car from other sources. The reviews of the gen II which addressed many of these car and driver complaints were much more glowing. Car and driver even made it a 10 best. The gen II prius was less than 10 years after the first prius prototype. The Govenator (governor of California) had 2 toyota fchv, the first fuel cell vehicles toyota leased, when he anounced the hydrogen highway would have 100 fueling stations. That was 2004. Hundreds of thousands of cars on the road in 2020.

I think that is the problem. We aren't complaigning about the car. We are combatting the hype. Less than 2 years ago, toyota was going to be making 5000-10,000 fcv a year starting in 2015. Now its 700, 2000, 3000, 3000. So when we hear hype about cheap home fueling, or cross country hydrogen highways in only a decade, its just so, so, sad. Hydrogen stations take a lot more money than they were claiming even a couple of years ago. The price to make the cars hasn't gone down nearly as much as claimed.

Let me be clear, I'm for toyota developing this tech. I'm against them bashing plug-ins, and lobbying against plug-ins, as they ask for more and more american tax payer money (bill in congress right now to give fcv another $8000 tax credit plus more fueling support, even though they already get more subsidies than plug-ins). Mercedes did help keep the model S on track, Toyota simply helped the IPO price be higher. Toyota made over $700M on their $50M investment, and made a profit compared to business as usual on the NUMMI/Rav4 EV side of the deal. My guess is they invested about $50M in cash and got over $1B in bennefits, including removal of a PR headache with UAW and the state of California. That wasn't charity it was a great investment. Mercedes made over $1B.

Let's finish the test. Build the stations. See how the car goes. I'm routing that its better than I see in the next generation. I don't see the promise of the tesla roadster or the gen I prius in the clarity or mirai. The problem is infrastructure costs. Now if Toyota wants to invest say $2B of their $60B they say they have on building 1000 hydrogen stations in the US, and Honda does similar, maybe I'll believe they think these stations don't need to be built with tax payer money. I mean that should be a good investment like tesla in the superchargers right? Hell, let them take $500K in tax payer money a station, that's a lot lower than we are paying now.

 

no - it was looked on with curious indifference. But folks like my neighbor bob larson would "explain" his 2003 gen1.... show off the crazy high epa numbers, and it made converts like me understand its benefits, then go buy the 2004 as soon as I could find a used one that very same year.
Hydrogen car drivers on the other hand - several are telling others how disappointing their experience is .... that coupled with knowledgeable people who remember back when the "in just 10yrs" hydrogen hype started - back in the 1970's - as it kept continuing on, every decade. Now that fracking has temporarily reduced natural gas prices to the point where (CO2 releasing) reformatiom brings hydrogen costs down to "only" being way-too expensive .... instead of insanely expensive .... suddenly Toyota thinks that we'll buy into the hype. Even many of the Toyota insiders don't buy into it.
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if you mean because CA is pissing away perfectly good R&D $$ that could better go to more viable projects - i feel your pain
.

 

Not sure why would you count nuclear, hydro and other renewable as 100% efficient.

For example according to EIA thermal load of nuclear plant is 10449 BTU/kW, which compares to coal 10459 and petroleum 10713. So it is ~33%. Source: SAS Output

Hydro efficiency supposed to be much higher, but it is also a major source of methane emissions, so short-term it can be as dirty as coal.

 

Me personally on Nuclear. we need to close 5 more plants in the US, research new ones, and let the old ones run until they are done with useful life (maintenance, but no big upgrades). It was 6 plants but san onofre killed it self. Diablo canyon and Indian point in california and NY are the most likely to have a catastrophic accident, but the politicians and regulators in California and New York keep them going. I don't consider Nuclear green, but the ghg hounds think low ghg and no fossil is important.

If you are talking about ghg or fossil footprint, nuclear has none. If you are hell bent to reduce these despite the cost, radioactive waste, possible terrorist target, safety, etc, then why not. That is why I'm not counting it.

Efficiency is a funny thing. On the spent amount of nuclear, we get about 33% efficiency from the heat. This is similar to similar steam power plants. But most of the energy of nuclear fuel ends up in the nuclear waste. This can be used, perhaps in a thorium reactor, but ... safety, waste, cost are still there. Chu wanted smaller nukes, which are safer and less terrorist targets. The waste is probably safer too. Fukishima probably detered US nuclear for a decade, which IMHO is probably a good thing. France, China, and Japan may find safer nukes.

Again Efficiency is a silly metric when the fuel sources are so different. If wind was 1% efficient, but cost 0.001% as much as coal to produce, and had only pollution in constructing the turbines and dead birds (more birds are killed by coal pollution, and humans die too, cats kill thousands of time more birds than turbines in the areas the turbines exit), then who cares about efficiency. That is why I gave wind, hydro, geothermal, solar a pass as far as efficiency. Cost that's another matter, but wind and solar are now cheaper than a new nuclear plant in the US.

 

That's uncertain. Hydro methane emissions and the overall lifecycle of "CO2 equivalent" emissions from hydro is not clear and has not been thoroughly studied. For example, are reservoirs a net sink for CO2 like oceans are? Nobody has really studied that.

A recent chapter on hydro from a 2012 academic climate book says this:

http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/32342.pdf

More recent studies found higher than expected methane emissions where rivers enter into the reservoir and this has not been carefully measured in previous emission studies.

Most of the methane is released in the air due to water turbulence, especially in the turbines and water downfalls emitted downstream during generation. Methane from the reservoir itself that bubbles up from the bottom tends to be converted into CO2 by chemical reactions before it gets to the surface (this is true in the ocean as well). Methane released from turbulence doesn't get a chance to go through this CO2 conversion process.

Because most methane emissions come from the turbine and release areas of the dam it might be plausible to build a methane capture facility in those areas and then use the methane to generate electricity.

 

I am not disagreeing with any nuclear related points you make, actually coal plants emit more radioactive material then nukes, but how is it related to Murai well-to-wheel efficiency?

Are we rating cars on thermodynamic efficiency? on CO2 output (g/mi)? NOx emissions?

And by the way while nukes do not produce direct CO2 from operation, they are not CO2 free through the lifecycle. But this is a different discussion; let's stay focused on Murai.

 

The claim by toyota implied by those old slides is the grid is 100% fossil. They seem to think gasoline and natural gas are equal, and hydro, solar, nuclear, etc don't exist.

My attempt was to show the fossil efficiency of the grid, which is much higher today than toyota's old claims for it. But deffinitely efficiency is a dumb metric. Here I think we agree.

They seemed to be rating them on fossil fuel efficiency. Bad assumption not to talk about non-fossil. Just a misleading slide in general.

But yes ghg/mile (or km) or $/mile or unhealthy pollution per mile (land, water, air well to wheel, including NOx) seem like much better metrics. CARB has not updated their metrics assuming unhealthy emissions from a car like the prius or volt are high, but either car is probably not contributing to LA's polluted air.

Agree here, and IMHO they aren't green.
I just wanted to take away that old misleading toyota slide, making fcv seem greener than they are.

IMHO nat gas is greener than gasoline (more is coming from oil sands, lots leaks, lots of refinery pollution). That makes the mirai cleaner than similar gasoline cars IMHO, but ...
In terms of ghg emission if we were to build out the infrastructure, I doubt the mirai produces less than a prius phv, if we look at ghg in building the cars, new infrastructure, and fuel. The i3-bev using the california mix, and toyota's reported ghg in producing the mirai, produces less ghg in every aspect. Both cars use expesnive carbon fiber, but the beemer produces it with very low ghg, and uses it in more efficient ways ;-)

 

They are, if you produce hydrogen from renewables. Than they are 100% CO2 neutral.

Sounds familiar? this b/c BEV opponents use the same logic: "I am getting all my electricity from sun, so MY BEV is 100% CO2 neutral".
"So why wouldn't you give your electricity to your coal burning neighbor? wouldn't it reduce neighborhood CO2 footprint?"

BTW my old TDI was 100% CO2 neutral, as long as I could scavenger used veggie oil from dumpster.

 

IMHO Toyota is just playing a mind game with Murai. CARB wanted it, they gave it to them. It will never be mass-produced, and infrastructure issues will be not resolved for decades.

So what do you think is their end game? pump up battery size and replace fuel cell with free piston engine?
Toyota develops high-efficiency "free piston" no-crankshaft combustion engine to power an EV