The Toyota Mirai (FCV) Thread

Yep, plug-ins were not selling particularly well when gas was $4.00 a gallon. Gas prices could drop toward $1 a gallon

Used plug-ins have another big problem: Used Electric Cars Plunging In Value — And Could Give ...

 

The article you posted disagrees with you.
They state plugin hybrids are a bright spot, while the expect BEVs to take a serious hit.

This is not all that surprising as the second gen electric cars are much better than the first gen.

 

December sales of the Gen III Prius were high and that all had to do with the heavy discounts on them, up to $6K. So it really comes down to what a deal one can get on a vehicle, then what type of energy makes it move. Hybrids are viewed as expensive when they really are affordable for most.

As to the FCV and EV, its seems that the real issue is not so much that Toyota is building a FCV, but that tax payers funds are paying for the development of the infrastructure. I can understand the concern, but tax funds are always being spent on projects, road improvements, bridges, tunnels, so what's the big deal that its being spent to help establish hydrogen stations, for Toyota or any other manufacture who will be building FCV?

 

yep... and that REALLY causes used prices to crash on hybrids & phev's. One of my coworkers just bought a Leaf last weekend with under 30K miles on it ..... fully loaded .... $9,000 out the door.

simple .... you pay for a bridge or tunnel - its value is immediate ..... and the expense can actually decrease fuel used in many instances - because after those expenses you don't have to "drive the long way around" thanks to the new bridge or tunnel. Hydrogen R&D, on the other hand just takes and takes and takes - decade after decade - never being ready for prime time. And that's been going on for what - a half century or more now? Sorry, but sometimes you have to know when to crap or get off the pot. Equally depressing is the fact that even if the tech could get cheeper, it still less efficient than a plugin .... and can still still only be cost effectively run on the fossil fuels coal & natural gas.
.

 

Bridges, roads, electric grid upgrades, etc. have a benefit as soon as they are completed, and they are a benefit to all.
Building hydrogen infrastructure on the other hand, is of benefit only to those selling high priced, but still subsidized, hydrogen cars. That itself wouldn't be such a huge issue if the infrastructure they were asking us all to build was cheap. But it isn't cheap. Hydrogen's properties and the require pressures needed to make it work in cars means the stations and infrastructure will be very expensive. And then we already built some of it, but the promised cars never came then. Now those old stations, if still in place, need to be upgraded.

Hydrogen infrastructure is a costly gamble. It gets built, and the cars never come, again, it is a loss. It gets built, and the FCEV's come, but they run of methanol or diesel, and the infrastructure is again a loss.

 

I'm not sure if you are trying to hop on the false Toyota FUD against plug-ins or are just misinformed, but ...other than last year plug-ins have grown at a high rate. They were only 17,080 in 2011, and grew quickly to 97502 in 2013. As gas prices dropped in 2014 they still sold123,049. Lower gas prices plus the prius phv going on hiatus plus long in the tooth leaf that desperatately needed a redesign and people waiting for the redesigned volt 2015 had 116,533. That means from 2013 inspite of low gas mileage and toyota dropping out the prius phv, and problems with the volt and leaf product cycle, plug-ins still grew an average of 9.3% a year, and are poised to grow faster in a low gas price environment with the manufacturing capacity at tesla for the S and X. The volt redesign done. The prius phv coming off hiatus. etc, etc.

No 9.3% in plug in growth is nice with new products and capacity coming on line compared to -13.6% in hybrids dropping over 110,000 units in the same period.

Your link for resale value being a big problem is also not really true. Leaf prices have dropped. The volt and model S have maintained good resale value. This is a problem for nissan and their leases, as is getting out the gen II leaf, but hardly reflects a bad market for plug-in cars.

Unfortunately sometimes these things are also simply pork make work projects, and there are not real benefits either. One good thing is the highway bill in the last spending bill made it so that these pork projects were less likely but they are still there. I would say 50% of the stimulus spending went to pork projects. There are lots of analysis of money wasted .... just like on hydrogen.

In the last spending bill we have increased pork for hydrogen to the tune of probably another $8000/car and another $60M in federal hydrogen fueling subsidies. This is on top of the roughly $200M spent already and the $180 M California has promised to spend. Toyota says this is about a level playing field, but I see nothing level about it. If we value a zev credit at only $2000 then a fcv is subsidized to the tune of $31,000 + a HOV sticker, plus probably $10,000 of hydrogen subsidies. I think there is a lot of pork in phev and bev incentives today also. A phev in california if the person is not rich gets $9000 in subsidies, a 200 mile bev gets $17,000 + HOV sticker. Its bound to cause backlash. There are probably 70 kwh of batteries in a bolt that cost $275/kwh in the pack or about $19,000 worth of batteries and in california they subsidize just about all of it.

I'd love it if we just would put in the infrastructure to make the fcv test. That is probably 20 stations in southern california, with 2 mobil refuelers to chase down the stranded drivers. Say we instead of making tiny stations made those 700 kg/day stations that were retail, that would only cost the state about $6M a pop. Make it trucked SMR hydrogen. You could do it all for $140 M. Then see if people actually like the cars and would pay for the hydrogen. These tiny renewable stations, the highways to nowhere, I think they are just excuses to spend more money and give more excuses. The US taxpayer has blown $3B on these hydrogen dreams so far. I expect in 2 years toyota will ask tax payers for even more money as even if they get 3000 on the road by the end of 2017, getting the next 10,000 out there gets harder not easier. Lets get a test run before pretending this is not good money after bad.

 

Taxpayer funded electric car charging stations mostly unused | WDTN

 

Sure that $23,000 like lots of infrastructure that was part of the stimulous bill was probably wasted.

Why would you be against that, but for the much more wasteful $220M from california and new probably $60M from the federal government for hydrogen stations? $280M is a lot bigger than $23,000 when it comes to waste fraud and abuse. I don't think there is fraud here, but here are the other 2.

 

Hypocrisy.

 

I've asked you for a source for that before, and still have not seen any numbers close. Can you provide them. The biggest number I've seen is the sham NRG number where NRG is compelled to build a number of chargers, as settlement of a lawsuit, but NRG's costs aren't close, and they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts in states like texas.

I belive those $23K worth that were pointed to were a total waste of money as part of the stimulous. So would those NRG chargers if anyone was paying nearly that much.

There are what 400,000 plug-ins in this country and maybe 400 hydrogen fueled vehicles and a level playing field is called spending more on the 400 than the 400,000 and growing because some foreign corporations say its the future and we will miss out if we don't subsidize more more more. How many hundreds of millions are enough? Like I said for money spent we could have about 20 high capacity retail stations for demonstration fleet in southern California already. Why scatter, make them low capacity. Mistakes have been made in plug-in station subsidies. why can't we admit the same for the hydrogen waste and abuse

I think your baby chicks really look like this and they will never be satisfied as long as you keep giving them more.

 

$23,000 or $1,05 billion? U.S. Government Is Using Electric Vehicle Subsidies All Wrong - DailyFinance

Bob Lutz now says: Chevy Volt 'Father' Bob Lutz Changes Tune on Electric Vehicles | National Legal and Policy Center

 

my name was on here, how could I have missed that. No I didn't. So here is the first $120 M proposed but not yet spent. This is in value that california sees, but it is doubtful NRG will spend anywhere close to it. Why did they settle? My guess is california wanted to pretend they were punishing the evil doers which includes NRG on the black out. We all know grey davis was the evil doer here with PG&E, SCE, and SDE. SO its a pretend settlement. California does get some value but they aren't spending or getting $120M worth. They are getting $100M in chargers they claim, but NRG gets to charge for them. $20M is not for chargers at all, so worst case $100M

Neither of these are for plug-in fueling. We can talk about them if you want but you can't count them here. THe clean rebate gives fcv $5000, while means tested $2500 and $1500 for bevs and phevs respectively. THat is a bigger subsidy per vehicle than plug-ins and counts against fcv/10,000 psi hydrogen.

Well the $220 Million doesn't count toward the hydrogen for busses program. DO you want to inlude that too. The fuel cell bus program was a lot more than $24M.

again nothing about plug-in light vehicles here.

So I see a total of $120M of questionable funding there. MOst of it not yet spent.

You might put the comprable $220 Million in the new plan, or included the old spending. Again $220M is more that $100M NRG deal and that $220M is for a lot fewer vehicles. If california was actually spending that $120 M instead of it being funny money, I would agree.

Get in the spirit of a star wars joke. Unfortunately when congress and sacremento the joke is on us. I think Jabba is a perfect vision of the government waste fraud and abuse. I don't think all that money pouring into fuel cell vehicles is starving the baby birds. IMHO its a lot of money funneled to maybe 6 large corporations.

CARB's goal of 5000 fcv on california's roads by 2014 hit 50,000 fcv on california's roads by 2017 were unrealistic and failed miserably. They got about 6% of that first goal, and I expect less than 15% of the second. They were unrealistic and yet we paid. Will we have 40,000 on america's roads by the end of 2021, I doubt it.

Most of the money for the 1 million plug-ins on the road was contingent on sales, not on these ever increasing subsidies for hydrogen. There were 407,000 plug-ins on the road by the end of 2015 so yes a dismal 40% from an unrealistic goal. That is much higher than your 33% percent though, and high above any hope of fcv on the road in the US by 2025 even with these increased subsidies. `I think the plug-in subsidies have done there work. Battery prices are falling fast. New designs like the gen II volt and bolt are better.

I just think if the mirai/clarityII/and tuscon couldn't do it on 9 zev credits, $5000 in non-means tested cash, and $220M in fueling subsidies, then how will they make it with out asking for more in a 5 years when the model III and bolt and all the new designs from the germans are out there.

That $1.05 B number is probably equivilent to the $3B number for hydrogen. Very little of the billion is on fueling subsidies. Most of the fueling subsidies for electric and hydrogen that were part of the stimulous bill were wasted as you said.

Now the author of that article you quoted, just seems to hate plug-in cars. He is quoting the number from a much better source. Let's use this linked source instead.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/02/economist-explains-21

And you probably do a double take. What? That article seems to not at all support the authors opinion piece.

And you start to think maybe some of that cash wasn't squandered, but given a chance to improve a technology that people actually will want unsubsidized.

All in all a fairly ballance piece. $1B in 3 years give plug-ins a chance does seem that big when fossil fuels have so much higher subsidies.

I think anyone that looks to bob lutz as an authority here, needs to look strongly at history. Remember lutz when he praised hydrogen and bashed the prius? Then later in his book said he never really supported hydrogen, it was wagoner, he just was saying it to be a team player. Yep lying to the public to support gm. And that not investing in hybrids was one of gm's biggest mistakes. In 10 years if the old lier is still alive, I expect that he reverses course after all the evidence he was wrong is in.

Oh, and if you like lutz here, he also says climate change doesn't exist, and to prove it he has bought expensive property in areas of risk, you know with the taxpayer subsidizing his cheap insurance if he is wrong.

 

I don't know, Prius family sales in the US peaked in 2012 and have been down every year since. Tesla on the other hand has gone up every year, and we know their output is limited by production issues not demand. So clearly price of gas isn't the only driver here.

 

This Toyota can get you online from anywhere

 

Cool!

Although if it's anything like my experience with satellite internet when I lived outside of town, the latency speeds (wait times after a "click") were horrible. Even at the speed of light, those sat's are still 22,000 miles away and you're looking at 2 round trips per "click". Up/down loads from those new sat's are going to need to be very fast to help with that.

Intra-car communications for traffic control? What about trees, mountains, tall buildings, overpasses, and tunnels that affect satellite radio now? Interesting tech.

 

Nice concept. I look forward to seeing that roll out.

 

I'm trying to figure out where in california in range of a hydrogen station, there won't be cell towers? Seems like a strange feature on a non-military fcv.