Toyota Mirai receives the Environmental Award of the year in Austria

Are there any zoning or H2 station site issues not applying to gas stations? I'm wondering if an H2 refill requires going to an industrial park or somewhere separate from residential or high traffic areas.

 

Licences are one thing, getting insurance coverage is another.

H2 stations will be in quiet industrial parks or motorways. But they won't be in the petrol station in a busy city center.

 

This is up to local jurisdiction, but in california, they can go just about anywhere a gas station can go. Japan and some other states have tougher zoning though, this is not a simple thing, like popping up chargers, where its all in code and its a matter of red tape. The fountain valley hydrogen station was located by the sewage treatment plant as a demonstration on possible bellow $10/kg renewable hydrogen (before costs of compressors and station ;-)).

By putting it there you save the high cost of building a natural gas or hydrogen pipeline for such low volumes of gas, and the costs of liquefying and trucking the hydrogen. The site was a lot more press releasable for CARB, and DOE, and CFCP as you are converting nasty waste to fuel. Unfortunately the equipment is quite expensive, and believe it or not sewage treatment plants are not the ideal location for fueling stations. Fuel Cell energy says that if you make the fuel cell 6x bigger (600 kg h2/day) cost may fall to $7/kg h2 this compares to estimates of around $2/kg h2 on steam reformed methane which requires a bigger plant and wind produced hydrogen which would cost around $5/kg. Add about $4/kg for a the balance of the station if 15% of the nation is on hydrogen, more if these stations are small with spotty volume. NREL says that steam reformer would need to be bigger, but could be on site, this is the cheapest method. That wind cost is also based on high volume and storage, and would need to be trucked. Both these things add to the cost. Still wind is a lot cheaper than sewage even if trucking the hydrogen isn't as sexy.

Tesla has not made such claims for the company as a whole, as when you did into them they don't make much sense. The materials are very tough to figure out at zero. You can't grow and be zero with today's economy. The closest thing to zero is the bmw i3 production, which uses a great deal of hydro and wind in production, but to get there has high shipping costs but this doesn't take that much diesel. The factories will be net zero and of course there is battery recycling.
Tesla's Closed Loop Battery Recycling Program | Tesla Motors

Tesla Gigafactory | Tesla Motors

Tesla like Toyota will be grid tied. its virtually impossible to get to net zero otherwise. You would have to overbuild power some 3x for changes in production levels, and waste a lot of renewable power.

There is less nickle in a 70 kwh tesla pack than in a prius battery. Remember this crap from cnw. Your gardian article is about grid batteries not car batteries. These may be recycled less as they are not on wheels and easy to get to the recycling site, but on buildings. Still there is a lot of economic incentive to recycle them.

I thought the bulk of toyota's net zero was wind and solar. What percent of plants will run on hydrogen? I can find lots on wind and solar for production, but nothing on hydrogen outside of fuel cell vehicles.
Toyota Global Site | [Main Initiatives during FY2014][Production and Logistics]Pursue Increased Transport Efficiency and Reduce CO2 Emissions in Logistics Activities

 

FTFY

 

This is one I'm wondering about: How will an FCEV match the current (old tech) Prius driving range of 500+ miles? Simple route: even more massive tanks? Higher pressures?

 

I'm not sure how the subject of consumer preference in future car visions shifted to corporate plant design, but I'll shift to match. Step 1-Start planning, Step 2-Execute plan, Step 3-Keep improving. What more can a company do? I don't think either Tesla or Toyota have different strategies here, so it just comes down to supporting both in this regard. Recycling all batteries (and entire cars) is going to happen just like Lead Batteries are now. Too much money in expired batteries to expect they end up anywhere other than recycled.

Think this through. Just extend the PV panels to off the roof. Tesla seem to spread their innovation to more than just cars. They also incorporate excess PV generation into the plant design. I'm able to connect some dots here. They are building utility level storage batteries. They just might (GASP!) test their storage batteries by storing the PV daytime energy for later use. One of the requirements of testing storage batteries is an immense amount of PV power....which is exactly where the Gigafactory is located.

As far as the reports of "environmental impacts", they should be used to specify the right regulations, not infer the human race is going to stop mining. There is a huge difference between doing it correctly versus mining destructively.

What if battery technology actually keeps improving? It is not the energy so much as the cost, size, and weight. A $1000 100kWh pack is impressive in the low cost.

 

I'll respond to your provoke by asking what a "hater" was?

There were a number of us who were looking for an ally in the quest to support plugging in that got pushed away by "vastly superior" cheering.

Rather than welcome the Ford and Toyota offerings, it was ridicule & belittle... despite the "fire" attacks from the anti-hybrid/ev crowd.

 

More efficient stacks.

Motor & Controller efficiency continues to improve too.

 

No exaggeration, the place is always full with cars waiting. I am sure there are more Tesla's in California then in your state.

 

This location is also a CNG pump so maybe it seemed ideal. During the day there is no smell.

 

They needed to clean up the biogas to run it through the fuel cell, so like the SMR in Austin (also more R&D than commercial) there is CNG. It is very cheap once you have the separated methane, all you need is the lower pressure compressor.

The state of california and Toyota spent a bunch of money doing a study at University of California Irvine to figure out how to build the smallet network for hydrogen success. Now you may be right, and this study may be fueled by bull S&%t, I thought there were problems, but it wasn't a surprise that no other stations were proposed in the first 68 with the fountain valley design. My problem with the study is that to me that 68 isn't nearly enough. California didn't think so either, so they are spending $220M to get the number to 100 stations, from the 12 completed now. If you were to copy fountain valley it would probably continue to take $5.5M of the subsidy a piece, so you would only get 40 + the 9 that were existing for the $220M and locations would be worse. no reason to put more good money after bad. Proofs of concept let everyone know the costs, and the requirement to locate in non-ideal locations. I fully support your right to claim it is ideal. CFCP seems to be driving this train and there are only 58 stations with set locations. There should be 86 at the end of 2021, so you can probably influence some of the other 28 stations in plans, and get them moved to dairy farms or sewage plants. The current plan is have most of them in heavily trafficked areas of high income people. High income individuals are more likely to be initial adopters, and have more than one vehicle in the household, so the UC Irvine report says. More than one vehicle is important if the fueling network doesn't provide for long trips.

That professor that led that study, Doc Brown now is Chief Operating Officer at First Element, the lead group building the hydrogen highway. You may want to contact him directly with your plan to follow on the success of Fountain Valley proof of concept.

 

FV apparently has a lot of locals and is not representative of other CA supercharges.
Yes, the can get busy, but none are "always full".
To insist it is not an exaggeration to say it is, simply makes it a lie.

Supercharger - Fountain Valley (went LIVE 08-28-2015) - Page 16

 

I really don't appreciate being called a lier! I am in the area often and it is always filled with cars charging with 2 or 3 cars waiting for a space to open up. See a recent attached picture.

By the way maybe you should read this thread you posted: "I could be mistaken but unfortunately I think this supercharger now has become "locals" favorite. I was passing by today(Sunday) at 4 pm and all the stalls were occupied. I highly doubt all were travelers but most likely Costco shoppers. It would be very unfortunate if this SC becomes like SJC and occupied by locals especially during peak use hours. I am local to this charger and have charged there few times when I was in rush and needed to top off but not during peak hours. I hope I am wrong but this is not a good thing to see especially if you are a traveler and get to this SC needing a charge and all stalls are occupied."

 

Did you click on the link I posted?
It is from that same thread, showing a car charge with lots of open stalls next to it.
Your statement was obviously an exaggeration.

When you protested, and claimed it wasn't even with evidence, that is when it became a lie.

And yes, I read the thread which is why I stated that it has apparently become a popular spot for locals.
And again, this is not typical, even in California, for supercharger stations.
It is also not static. Tesla will continue building these out as needed.

 

Are you freaking kidding me? You live in Minnesota and I live in the area of this charging center, and you are going to tell me what I see is a lie?! Pictures don't lie. Then you don't even acknowledge the comments of a third party who is stating the same within the thread you posted! He even goes on to say he hopes it does not become like another location within the same county. Again be reminded that most Tesla sales are in Califonia, and will impact these charging centers.

 

If they came to the US, they would be called NEV(neighborhood electric vehicles). The segment has been around for decades with GEM, Zap!, and even more powerful golf carts.

SolarCity already sells such systems. I'm sure the Gigafactory will make use of them.

 

You have some disconnect somewhere.
I DID acknowledge what has been brought up in that thread.
I also posted an image from that thread that showed one person charging at that supercharger with no other cars in view.
Yes, that is a busy supercharger.
No, it is not always full, as illustrated by that thread in both images and posts.
Yes, it is full sometimes, but not "always" as you continue to insist, even against visual and first hand reports.

 

No disconnect, It is what it is.