Featured All hydrogen fuel cell cars are compliance cars, for now

Cool. So you know the net effect of CARB, appears to be negative, it probably delayed plug-in adoption. Even those paddle chargers it spent money on became useless.

I think there are credit per car changes that make this graph look different. I'm not sure exactly what is going on in the drop of vehicles in 2018, but I think this is when fcv drop from 9 credits to 3. I doubt that will happen though. CARB will likely change it. 2025 looks like a joke if they don't give phevs credit. I don't understand you prius comments. The prius is sold throughout north america. It will remain popular like the civic and Camry even without credits in California.

CNG has many of the same problems as hydrogen for fuel cells. It makes the infrastructure easier,and the fuel less expensive, but you still have those bulky tanks that you need to package in the car. Metal hydride storage or methanol with a reformer solve that problem, but metal hydride is even more expensive, and methanol makes the fcv seem a little silly as you can burn it in a hybrid about as efficiently. Who would buy a methanol mirai or clarity, when you could get similar mpg in a flex fuel camry hybrid or a accord hybrid for less money, and still refuel in parts of the country that didn't have methanol yet.

If most of your miles are electric is the 42 mpg of a volt or 39 mpg of a i3-rex, or the 38 mpg of a fusion energi so bad when you need to use gasoline. It is a lot fewer gallons per year. Besides the prius phv with prius like charge sustain mpg promised to be higher than the gen III prius. Hyundai also has a 40% thermal efficiency engine that should make it into phevs in 2018.

They still sell a lot of prii in my state, non-CARB. Those incentives just go into the pockets of the corporation. Prii won't get any cheaper or more expensive without them.

 

Tesla owners only use the Supercharger network for 10% of their charging on average. If those chargers were needed for all charging, the cost would easily go over a billion dollars.

If hydrogen stations got as cheap as Superchargers, they will still also need the production and infrastructure to supply the hydrogen.

 

They're all ready out there!

 

Without CARB credits, there is no reason for making the Prius any more compliant with future CARB regulations. In effect, the CARB carrot is gone in 2018. All it needs is to meet the minimum CARB compliance for any sales and that could lead to some 'cost savings.' For example, does the 3-way catalytic converter have to be that clean?

Bob Wilson

 

Well yes the prius doesn't have to be more clean than the camry, but one way they are working on boosting efficiency in the gen IV is agressive cooled egr. this knocks down NOx. Particulates are very low in the atkinson simulated cycle, and 3 way cats are now cheap for oxidizing NMOG and carbon dioxide.

The only thing that might be "dirtier" is the strange start up dance to get the Catalytic converter to working temperature before many emissions are made, and I suspect it hurts start up performance and efficiency especially in cold weather. They may get rid of that, but ... 2015 standards are very high, it should still produce significantly less average emissions than the gen II. Camry is bellow 70 mg of NOx/mile, Prius bellow 30 mg. Pre 2000 cars were allowed 300 mpg NOx/mile.

 

Don't overlook the effect Prius sales have on Toyota's CAFE.

 

The rest of us have been riding the CARB coat-tails. But take away the CARB incentives a Prius vs a higher profit margin car, might as well sell a Tundra and pocket the profits.

Bob Wilson

 

Good point. Perhaps you might propose a model showing the Prius effect versus the non-Prius vehicles?

Bob Wilson

 

Toyota is trying to stay the worlds biggest car company. They are selling all the Tundras and Tacomas they can, and in the much more efficient texas truck plant they have very high profit margins than they did before in Indiana and California when the trucks were made there.

The prius is a strategic car for toyota. They want to sell as many as they can. Sure if they could sell a turndra instead they would, but they would much rather sell a prius than a yaris or corrola, and they aren't killing those cars. Why would they slow prius sales? They help with cafe, and Japanese employment.