FIRST DRIVE REPORT: 2016 TOYOTA MIRAI

That statement needs supporting evidence. In Germany, the Mirai is priced higher than the base Model S

If CARB continues to favor FCEVs through ZEV credits, I'd be surprised to not see more compliance FCEVs

PV is commercially available, and more efficient for home electric production than the photolyzing water. With the required compressing, it is even more efficient for a car. Home refueling hydrogen, if it happens, will take as long as charging a BEV.

I believe he has a lot of hydro there.

No one is denying fossil fuels are on the grid. It is getting cleaner, and should continue to do so whether or not cars are plugging into it. We use electricity for many things, so it is important to clean it up. Then we have hydrogen. In order for it to get established, and spread across the country, will require it to go cheap, and thus dirty fossil fuels for it.

As you said, it's from 5 years ago. Just because they stated production cost should be covered by the price of the vehicle as goal then, doesn't mean they accomplished it.

The Mirai will cost 66k Euros, not including VAT, in Germany. The Modle S now starts at 65.3k Euros, and I can't determine if that is pre VAT or not.
http://newsroom.toyota.eu/newsrelease.do;jsessionid=A5B8570F2405EE884A04FC1A12FE7640?&id=4124&allImage=1&teaser=toyota-ushers-future-launch-mirai-fuel-cell-sedan&mid=
Tesla Slashes 7,000 Euros Off Model S Price in Germany And Throughout Regions Of Europe | Inside EVs

"Pat Cox does not work for Toyota and we don't think he has any secret inside information. Still, he's the former President of the European Parliament and the current high level coordinator for TransEuropean Network, so when he says Toyota is likely going to lose between 50,000 and 100,000 euros ($66,000 and $133,000) on each of the hydrogen-powered FCV sedans it will sell next year, it's worth noting."
Bibendum 2014: Former EU President says Toyota could lose 100,000 euros per hydrogen FCV sedan

 

That link is just speculation.

Toyota has a record of reaching it's own goals. I wouldn't bet against them.

 

They did, their more recent record is that of missing goals, especially when it comes to FCEVs.
They also missed home, and worldwide sales targets for the PiP. As well as the date, twice, for the nationwide rollout of the PiP.

While I wouldn't bet against them, I'll sit out the betting and just wait to see what they come up with.

 

Toyota, Iwatani help Japan's push for 'hydrogen society' - Fortune

 

Interesting piece.

 

Sounds like it is written by one of our regulars.

 

One of the dirty secrets of Japanese hydrogen is it will likely come from new nuclear plants or coal. I believe the government will funnel enough money in to get a percentage of the population on it, and can produce a skeleton nationwide infrastructure by 2030. After fukashima, the japanese economy became much more coal intense. I was suprised though that initial plans are not to do the cheap shipping thing and import the coal from the US or australia, then produce hydrogen near where needed. Maybe they can pretend its clean if the dirty coal is used outside the country.

Just liquefying and shipping has to cost a lot. Maybe that will spur renewable hydrogen, but it does point out how far into the future they are looking.

http://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2014/pdf/0624_04a.pdf

 

The links I have seen is the fuel cell stack and tanks cost toyota about $50,000 in variable cost. The car is hand assembled which means the ballance of the car is probably quite expensive. Toyota is spending $168 M in imporviving manufacturing to get production to 3000/year, that money is not counted toward the variable cost, which means it will drop the variable cost lower, but hand built cost of the rest of the car still says variable loss. They are also paying for fuel, approximately $12.99/kg in california. If you figure 3 year x 200 kg/year that is $7700/fcv.

Toyota has stated that they lose money on every one. Perhaps they are expecting to drop cost if they are able to increase production to 30,000 units around 2020. For now they definitely don't appear to be able to cover the variable costs but with those ZEV credits they probably aren't losing much per car. The big items are the factory upgrade they are going to do next year, and the R&D spending. Say they are losing $15000/fcv and produce 3000/year that is only $45M/year. It isn't very much, but the bill before congress to give them another $8000/fcv ($24M/year if producion is 3000) won't really have them produce any more cars. Why would it. We really have no idea what toyota's cost will be if they increase production. Right now this is an R&D expensive,

 

Does anybody know of an active fuel cell forum on the interwebs? My searches haven't panned out.

 

In 1989 Toyota released a new car line, "Lexus". The LS400 sold in the $40K range. These cars were also hand built. Mercedes and BMW could not compete at this price range. The "Prius" is another example of a car that should of sold at much higher costs to the consumer. Toyota had and has the means to build cars and sell them substantially less then what they should cost. The Mirai is following in the same foot steps as the LS400 and Prius.

 

But, also Volt is sliding in sales. Also go to Consumer Reports down grading on the quality (problems) with Tesla.

DBCassidy

 

This is a cool video of mirai production.

Making 3 a day means you have a lot higher unit labor and power costs. I don't think anyone at toyota would claim mirai production costs are low, the claims of low cost was claimed by marketing before they started making them.

Lexus on the other hand started out with volume production of over 40,000 units a year. It was not made like the mirai. I belive the steering wheels where handmade though, but that is only one part. Manufacturing was not a risk at all for toyota, a skilled fast follower. They knew their variable costs would allow them to price the cars well bellow the competition which had fat profit margins. The risk with the lexus brand was in R&D and setting up dealerships. If they didn't catch on this money would be wasted. Manufacturing costs was never a problem. There were clear reliability issues with competitive cars that toyota rightly thought they could expoit, and they were right.

The prius on the other hand, yes it probably lost money on variable costs in the first generation. We don't really know because we don't know how much money exactly changed hands between MITI and toyota. Definitely if you include some of the fixed costs even with generous estimates of MITI money, these costs were not covered, let alone the R&D. Clearly with gen II variable costs were much lower than sales price, and toyota covered them and fixed costs, and the R&D. The key difference here is gen II was able to sell in fairly high volume since it did not require a whole new infrastructure, or any technological breakthroughs, simply better refinement and better manufacturing and design then gen I. The mirai needs all these things which is why toyota is talking about 30,000/units per year for the gen II (and probably other models are included in that number). The gen II prius sold over 125K units in 2004 and peaked peaked at 285,000 units in 2008. You just can't drive down costs and sell volume in a fcv, until you get breakthroughs and buiild infrastructure. The most optimistic country - Japan - won't even have a nation wide refueling skeleton until 2030.

Sure toytoa may be able to cut costs a great deal with mass production in the gen II, with 30,000 units/year, but it can't grow like the prius without hundreds of billions in infrastructure spending and some technical breakthroughs. That is at least 2 generations and 10 years away.

 

I'm sure some people have better figures, but fuel cell system (tanks + hoses + fc) has been reported as dropped by toyota from $1M to $50,000. I don't know if that is in quantity of 700 or 3000 or something in between. Hyundai reportedly dropped it to $150,000. Then we get to the balance of the car which no one knows but hand building costs a lot.

Mass produce the car in quantities of 30,000 instead of 700 and you can probably cut costs down to $20,000/car for that balance. Camry hybrid sells for $25,000 and includes motors and inverters, etc, I assume the gen II mirai will be premium to the camry but not as nice as a Lexus ES. DOE says just going up in quantity from 3000 to 30,000 will drop the cost of fuel cell and tank by 20% because of economies of scale, that drops us from $50,000 to $40,000. I get $60,000 just using today's tech, but toyota is spending a lot of R&D, and I expect that its costs will be lower than that. The trick is selling 30,000/year not dropping the costs in 2020, simply volume does that. I can see them having the price of the hydrogen bits, which brings us to $45,000/fcv. If japan pays for the stations and gives them a $20,000 subsidy per car, then yes we are in that $30,000 range there.

Say Japanese subsidies for fueling and direct are $30,000/fcv and Honda + Toyota + Nissan do 40,000/year that is $1.2B/year really not that big for the Japanese budget of over $800 B.

Oh its high risk. Toyota in their slides project going from 30,000 fcv in 2020 to 3 M fcv and bev in 2050 That is a 100 fold increase. Yes BEVs are on the slide, but in the talks they proejct it all fcv. I think Japan is on board to spend the money between now and 2025, but then its spending needs to increase greatly to keep toyota on track, or the US/CHina/ Germany some other government needs to expand fueling infrastructure rapidly. Breakthroughs and high gas and electricity prices may make that happen though. I would bet against it if there was a pure play.

 

Lexus was a 10 year development project. The LS400 Gen 1 engines were hand built along with many other components of this car. Gen 1 cars were not exploiting on reliability, they just created the finest automobile the world had ever seen. This was an embarrassment to the establishment of the luxury automotive industry. It took many decades for the Europeans to catch up. Even Nissan and Honda and Mazda could not complete with Toyota's luxury brand.

 

I'm not sure why you are trying to fit this square peg in a round hole. Quick google says the Flag ship project started in 1983 and cars left manufacturing in 1989. A great deal of the project was focus groups on what people liked and disliked about their luxury cars. This really is around the same time it took from gen III to gen IV Prius (new project started in 2008, first shipped 2015), not really long for Toyota. two things those focus groups found were initial quality and reliabillity. Lexus obsessed over new manufacturing processes to build this in. It did not happen later. They measured gaps, they bench tested every engine. The car + manufacturing tech R&D is reported to have cost about $1B. Much of this R&D contributed to the higher volume ES (2nd gen) and RX, higher volume cars. I don't think that figure is out of line with toyota, and was similar to nissan's spend on infiniti, which did worse on their flagship, but was also highly profitable. The first luxury Japanese was honda's accura, which sucess had both toyota and nissan create separate divisions. Not risk there. I have no idea if each lexus engine was hand built, but rebbuilding including disasembly and rework is only around 12 man hours, just assmebly of an engine, is not like hand assembling an entire car. The lexus had a very weak yen at launch not money losing investment. When the yen strengthened they raised the price.

Now lets compare to the maira. Fuel cell stacks and entire cars are hand built. This is like a rolls royce. The R&D has been going on 22 years on this project. R&D is much higher than the Lexus LS. Unfortunately when focus groups are found, they don't say they want a 4 seat fcv, that has weak infrastructure. THis is not the LS or even the Q45 program (infiniti didn't focus group and advertised without showing the car, missing out on the big grill and comfy seats lexus found people wanted). That adds a lot more man hours than a LS ever had. It is also the opportunity for toyota to quickly lower costs. Do you think the balance of the mirai is as cheap to build as a mass produced camry? With Toyota spending $50,000 on each fuel cell and tank ombination, and probably $7000 for 3 yaars of fuel, how can they possibly be profitable selling them at $57,000. They lose money on every additional one. That is why they are more expensive in Japan and Europe. They aren't making a profit there either.

If you know the costs of the ballance of the car. What are they?

I would disagree with many decades. But it was highly sucessful. This was not because they were selling bellow cost. Where is the parallel to the mirai.

Lexus, looked like focus groups found luxury buyers would like, but lower cd, so fuel economy would be good enough to avoid the gas guzzler tax. The mirai on the other hand, reversed Toyota's previous statement that people want a fuel cell SUV, and followed the clarity, as this would be less expensive to build and more efficient than a fuel cell SUV. No focus groups involved. If they had done the they would have said a car this expensive needs faster acceleration and better looks. Universally the look of the mirai is divisive, more reminiscent of reactions to the edsel. The best I have read in reviews is its not as ugly in person as it looks in photographs. But good news. Infrastructure is weak so there is a good excuse to not sell many.

I really hope they can pull a lot of cost out of the car. Chevy pulled out $11K between gen I and gen II volt. Toyota should be able to pull a lot more than that out of this car, and they can make the next one less ugly.

What do you think the variable costs are? You seem to be claiming they are much lower than toyota is implying. Those low cost estimates were when they were talking about 5000-10,000 per year.

 

Never heard of it before. Source?

 

Powdered concrete. The car tore through some sidewalks, ripped a pole or two out of the concrete, and tore into the side of a building.