Toyota Mirai receives the Environmental Award of the year in Austria

One of the newest Tesla charging centers has been installed in Fountain Valley California and it has around 8 spots. These brand new chargers only charge one car at a time. And they are always full of cars, so that means there is a need for charging and there will be a wait time to charge your car. Where as filling a hybrid or Mirai takes less time. Some may not care, but for me, I would not have 1/2 HR or more time to spare to charge my car when I am out and about.

 

Well yes of course each plug or nozzle can only fill one car at a time. The 8 cars at a time is for the super charger station. The throughput should be about 200 plug-ins a day. The average supercharger station cost tesla a little less than $300,000, but that one has more plugs and is in california so it probably cost Tesla closer to $500,000. Of course tesla charged this $2000 at a time on 250 of its model S's that it sold. If the demand is higher than the plugs they can add plugs fairly cheaply to the station, as long as there is still real estate to park, or they can build more nearby.

It is interesting that there is also a much press released hydrogen station in fountain valley. It is really a proof of concept for tri-gen combined heat, hydrogen, and power. It was built with a $2.2M grant from the DOE and plus other funding from other institutions ($4.5M IIRC in funding). This is one of the 9 non-commercial (they can't charge because they don't have equipment) in California today. It can dispense up to 100 kg/h2/day which doe says can fill 25 (4kg average) to 50 (2kg average) fcv /day. Unfortunately this is one of the stations that could not even do that, and closed a couple of times this year once the additional traffic from the hyundai tucson fcvs. Improvements have been made and it is back working. I believe it now can fill two cars in a row, before the third car needs to wait for the compressor to get things in working order again. Again not technical problems with building hydrogen, but much less throughput and convienence than the tesla super chargers in the area. To get it to work you simply need to add more money and supply natural gas to make the hydrogen, when there is not enough biogas from the sewage plant. Fuel cell engery, the maker of the fuel cell that makes the hydrogen, said to be economic versus say wind electrolysis and trucking the hydrogen, it would need a fuel cell that could make 600 kg/day, not the 100 kg/day installed, and that likely would mean some not renewable.
Update: I looked up the station and through august 2014 it had recieved $5.5 M of DOE, CARB, and SCAQMD public funding of a total spend of $8.9. Additional money was spent since then but it is small in comparison. I remembered a number $1M too low. The description says only about 1/3 of the methane used is renewable. Note some of that $8.9 M would need to be spent to treat the biogas also. Its not all waste, but it could be burned in a turbine or engine for heat and power on a much cheaper project per kwh of gas treated.
http://cafcp.org/sites/files/H2-Station-profiles_public-compr.pdf
Sewage Could Provide Fuel of the Future - Scientific American

Again not in fountain valley California. If 9 mirai show up at the station in a row, you will wait longer, and there isn't a starbucks or anything else distracting by the sewage treatment plant.

There is not a technical problem to make fueling mirai more convent to fuel, but they are not today.

 

Oh horse-hockey.
Even the busiest supercharges are not "always full of cars".
If your positions is so weak that you have to exaggerate to the extreme perhaps you should reconsider your position.

 

First I'm not cutting down this environmental award,although I have never heard of it before. The only I could find is Peugeot diesel 3008 hybrid won in 2011.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41598

On fountain valley, it is a great proof of concept project, that proved the concept is not so good. These small scale stations are very expensive to build, and a bigger one probably would not be located by a sewage treatment plant. You do save the money and energy it would have cost to liquify and truck the hydrogen, but ... its not a model that can be scaled up and used. It simply makes no sense when you are building expensive infrastructure to locate it in the smelly area of town, as if renewable will be magic and people will want to drive and fuel there.

Austin did get a federal grant to generate power at their waste treatment plant. The plant uses about 500 kw of electricity, and generates about 700 kw from the biogas, feeding 200 kw into the grid. This offsets 700 kw of natural gas generated electricity. IIRC the generator is about 35% efficient, but most power is used on site so very low grid losses on the first 500 kw. The older ccgt plant is about 50% efficient, but it would cost a lot more to clean up the biogas, and pump it back into the natural gas pipes. With the money saved from cleaning up the gas, you probably could build solar panels and wind turbines to more than make up for the efficiency difference. Texas doesn't have the same fuel cell accounting as California or Connecticut, otherwise it would probably be a fuel cell and bigger government grant.

As noted in the linked articles above First element is interested in using the biogas, but in purely accounting way. Instead of burning the biogas on site in a chp generator (engine or turbine) and treat the exhaust, they clean it up more and pump it into the natural gas pipeline. Then california allows First element to buy the biogas, I think with the extra cost paid for by a tax credit, and call the natural gas hook up renewable. This certainly is better than building the stations by dumps and sewage treatment plants and spending a lot more money for a system that won't work well. Still this is more expensive for very little real ghg reduction, why not just burn the biogas, use less natural gas at the power plants this electricity offsets, and use natural gas at the stations. I know I know, extra paper work and bureaucracy to make the stations appear more renewable than they are. IMHO lets do the test the inexpensive way, and cut down on these accounting games and paper work.

You can definitely put a big stainless tank, and 3 sets of the biggest linde compressors and pumps and dispense 1050 kg h2/day at 5 minutes a vehicle. This is not a technical challenge.

 

Stop lying. Many long distance routes available today at the end of 2015:

 

Toyota remain convinced that EVs are for short commutes, whereas it appears they're used much further afield.

If they're wrong about that, what else?

 

Toyota's roadmap is bunk.

 

It's worth saying over and over again: the sooner this FCV boondoggle fails the better off everyone will be. Especially if u pay taxes (wait, that IS everyone!) for useless tech, when EVS are staring us in the face and ready today. give me a break. how much does a dispensing station cost? how much fossil fuel is used to create H2? what's the point again? How far do you truck in H2 before u think it's a stupid idea? The list is endless. NEVER is a really long time for the future of FCV.

 

I don't think he was accusing Toyota of lying...

 

The people saying these things are or perhaps WERE diehard Toyota fans. Toyota lead them down a path of environmental conscience and then ripped up their own rule book and threw it all away.

So it's valid they have their say and their comments are more than constructive.

 

They canceled the EQ. I doubt they still belive in BEVs for short commutes. The volt has about the same electric range as the EQ did, but is priced lower than toyota thought they needed to price it.

From their slides this year, it appears they are
1) pushing gasoline hybrids, but don't think they will grow much. 1.2 M this year with growth to 1.5M in 2020. This is about the growth of they project for non-hybrids as well. Then they expect prices of hybrid components to fall.

2) Edging into PHEVs. The gen II prius phv is promised in about a year, but details and dates are sketchy. Still their 2050 road map had phevs growing from next to nothing this year to about 35% of all sales in 2050. Who knows they may have many other phevs in the works for 2020.

3) Demonstrating FCV. They are getting the mirai out to first customers now. The first ones made it to customers in the US this week. They expect low production, about a cumulative 12,000 in 2015-2019, then they home for a next gen or different models around 2020 to get to 30,000 (about 0.3% of sales) a year, though 2025, then they hope it takes off to get o around 30% by 2050.

All bev cars and trucks appear canceled, but lower powered bevs like the i-road appear still on the drawing board. This are more like kei cars or scooters, that you wouldn't take on a highway. This leaves BEVs to the other companies.

Tesla has a customer in cold norway proving long distance cold weather driving. He did 100,000 KM (62,000 miles) last year in his model S. Many leaf drivers exceed 15,000 miles per year also.

 

yep, 10 more years...sounds about right. repeat every 10 years. it is just so bogus. the untruths are really sad. there are so many red flags that one might go blind. Funny how long distance travel is already being done with an EV. Thanks for pointing that out. not.

They Drove A Tesla From LA To New York In A Record 58 Hours 55 Minutes

and it hasn't been the only time. Practically routine. Can't wait for this to not happen to FCVs...

 

The lack of seeing any sort of flexibility and taking the current technology as gospel...

Reminds me of the early days of hybrids.

 

physics are a kind of gospel. jesus. math, too. thou shalt not break thermodynamics laws. or just ignore them and continue taking tax money for credits for the worst possible transport solution. don't even go there. it is NOT about flexibility, so give it up.

 

Remember how people said mid size and smaller diesels didn't make much sense for north america. That the pollution controls were just too expensive to compete. Then VW proved them wrong, and got a lower priced pollution control system in there and they got great miles per gallon.

Oh, wait. Never mind.

 

An environmental award? For hydrogen? Oh, please.

 

That is exactly Tesla Motor's plan. Let the other companies motivate consumers to the EV leader.