Elon Musk knocks hydrogen, ruffles feathers

Many (most?) Prius owners soft pedal their cars for maximum mpg and thus never use the powertrain at maximum power. Therefore by your reasoning, Toyota overbuilt the powertrain and thus overcharge the consumer for horsepower they don't use everyday.

You also don't factor in heavy EV use days (heater use during cold weather or long highway routes, stuck in a traffic jam, etc) that necessitate more range than typical.

 

I like Elon's style of interaction. He's all about inspiration. When he makes these kind of statements, they should be taken as a challenge. The response should be exactly as expected... "challenge accepted!"

Toyota should look at this as an opportunity to rub Elon's nose in their successful implementation of a hydrogen automobile and fuel system. Getting upset about his response -- wining and crying, no one admires.

 

Toyota city we have a problem. Affordable mass produced 10,000 psi hydroen fuel cell vehicles running on mainly renewable nation wide hydrogen fueling stations that are priced competitively has huge political and technical challenges. Musk said the quote Toyota was responding to in this piece in January of 2014. Will we be there in a decade? Of course not, the government most friendly says they may build a nationwide skeleton in 2030, but they are behind schedule for what they plan to build for the olympics in 2020. British columbia just dismantled their fuel cell dreams from the 2010 olympics, the fuel cell busses are no longer running. That only a decade in 2014 (2024) now has slipped to maybe 2030 in japan and not likely in america just these 2 years later.

Toyota has been walking back there fuel cell hype. The promises they can't come close to meeting, which makes this piece in Nikkei sort of suprising. First rule when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Toyota needs to stop putting their foot in the mouth here. Do the best they can for the 2020 olympics. Then if its sucessful they can talk. The powered by bs internet advertisements they put out in response to musk, have resulted in 0 renewable retail stations in america. Sure you can dream, but when you easily can put up solar panels and charge a plug-in, let us not pretend its easy to build a network of renewable hydrogen stations.

There is a big head wind toyota faces with the mirai. Gas is cheap and the bmw, tesla, and chevy offerings look much better than the mirai. Its as if they thought they would only be copeting against the leaf, and it would be stagnant. Time to burn those 7 year old slides and talking points that plug-ins can't be long range, and fuel cell vehicles are the solution.

Could fcv work in 20 years? Sure why not. But it will take technical breakthroughs not snipping. Honda, GM, Ford, and Toyota started this fued of fcv are better and closer to reaility than plug-ins back around 2001. Ford and GM changed their tune. Honda just entered into a technology sharing with gm so that they can catch up on plug-ins, lets say they have moved from hydrogen will win to they don't know. Toyota is out on a limb by themselves on hydrogen will work and plugs are for short run vehicles. Time for toyota to stop digging.

There are 2 good choices. They can shut up and show us, and the mirai is not it. Mirai is showing us that musk was right. Or they can flip it like honda and start working hard on plug-ins as well as fuel cell vehicles. With $2 gasoline it will take even more government or corporate money to build refueling infrastructure. Toyota can show us by going into this business, but it looks like a much worse business than building cars.

I think this thread moved far beyond long run plug-in (and here I include the erev volt and i3, as well as tesla X, S and future 3, future bolt, and future gen II leaf) versus fcv, and into some strange too expensive. In reality all these new tech vehicles are expensive compared to traditional cars. Still a tesla model S when fuel is included is close in price to the lexus, bmw, and mercedes competitors, and it should be able to under cut them when battery prices go down. The mirai on the other hand is much more expensive than say a lexus ES even the hybrid
Lexus - Comparison Report
After $13,000 of state and federal tax credits that ESh is still $4000 less the mkz hybrid even cheaper, and after 3 years the fuel will cost more. The ES is more luxurious, has room for 5 instead of 4, and more cargo room in a trunk, and the biggy can travel all across the country instead of small areas of california. If you are talking about stuff you don't need, a camry hybrid gives you all that for about $20,000 less than a mirai. After waranty, who knows that fuel cell stack might cost $50,000. No wonder people are only going to lease the vehicle, for a short period of time, where toyota buys the gas (3 years).

So yes no one needs a tesla, but that is not a reason it will do worse than the mirai, who no one also needs. People may only need a mitsubishi imev, but initial adopters want more. They want the super chargers and the ability to travel even if they don't use it. THey like the speed and the luxury. That is why tesla at the end of last year became the best selling plug-in world wide, and nissan is working hard to add range and refueling.

 

The Japan credits for hybrids are over, and some of those programs also included plug ins. The majority of their hybrids are also NiMH. Nickel will always cost more the lithium, and patent issues have kept their use for plug ins a no go for most of the time of the federal tax credits. Toyota has pretty much gotten NiMH as cheap as it can get. So selling more won't help spur lower prices, and does nothing for the battery chemistries needed for plug ins.

Sounds like he didn't have it in power saving mode, but this has been discussed in other threads. All batteries self discharge, and ICE cars also have vampire loads on their starter battery. The Model S chooses to sacrifice range from the traction pack in order to keep the 12 volt charged so there isn't a worry about the car simply not starting up.

A hydrogen fuel tank cost is also measured in the thousands.

The smaller battery is more efficient for cost and weight is the design philosophy of the Prius PHEV. It didn't do poorly, but many were left wanting more battery.

 

Wants and practicality don't always go hand in hand... It also demonstrates the state of our economy at the moment, with a growing economic upper class able to afford Tesla's, while the middle class shrinks and still argue over the merits of hybrids...but that's another topic altogether.

I read there's still some low emissions tax breaks at least... Anyway, my whole argument is that both pure EV and fuel Cells are wasteful with huge drawbacks, and shouldn't be supported with tax incentives like they are now. Supporting cheaper PHEV's like the Volt and hopefully Gen IV Prius with their smaller batteries in the 30-50 Mile range to cover most daily commutes, combined with a gas engine for added range, is our best option at increasing Nation-wide average fuel economy.

 

That safety advance technology package is pretty sweet. I have a friend, 28, medical researcher that wants one when they get to the more affordable model 3. She is often exhausted after a day of work, and thinks she will get in an accident one day soon. Rich are always part of the initial adopters. It was the top 25% that bought the first prii, but now it trickled down. She still is paying back her student loans but a tesla might be worth it.

Middle class is shrinking as the upper class and lower classes grow. I don't think we should be upset that the upper class is getting bigger, but stagnant wages and a growing lower class is a problem that has nothing to do with cars.

The idea behind the plug-in program is to drive down cost, following MITI's example in Japan to help toyota with the prius. Both tesla and tesla/panasonic seem to have done that as has lg chem (supplier of the volt, bolt, ioniq, sonata, and ford focus ev battery, and some renault and possibly the gen II long range leaf) and samsung (supplier of the bmw i3 and i8). If you support tech for the poor, well then MITI showed it doesn't really work.

Really without tesla being there, I don't think we would really have pushed the market. They inspired gm and nissan, and bmw hired a lot of people from the gm program to get theirs going.

On fuel cells, well I agree with you, but there really aren't many people buying them. Even though we give them more money per vehicle, what with less than 200 vehicles last year from mirai and tucson fcv its only a trickle. I doubt there will be more than 3000 in 2017 with the clarity, mirai, and tucson fcv fighting over scraps.

Today OPEC is broken, with Saudi trying to hurt Iran, instead of help its people, but who knows in 5 years they may put oil blackmail back on again, and Iran and Saudi might put the squeeze on the US. Its good to be investing in some future tech. I think plug-ins only need a few billion more, which sounds high, but much less than oil subsidies every year, or what the ethanol mandate is costing this year (some years with expensive oil it helps instead of hurts).

 

Eh...I would say economic issues has a little bit to do with cars, Hybrids, plug-ins, etc carries an initial upfront premium that is hard to justify for a typical middle-class consumer, even if they'll save more over the long run, but I concede your point, cars are more about wants than practicality, as evident by all the SUVs on the road.

Not sure about what you're referring to about MITI and Japan, but the Prius is the best selling vehicle over there, and hybrids and ultra-efficient mini-cars make up the majority of sales, their long support for Hybrids and efficiency goals must've played some part of that. To reach a mass market, sub-mid $20K price range is still what a majority of car owners can reasonably afford, and is the reason why I would rather continue subsidizing hybrids than electric cars...also, a lot of people live in apartments (me included), so even if they could get a Nissan Leaf in the low 20s with tax incentives, they may not be able to actually plug it in.

Electric cars are the future, but I still say they're decades away from being practical, and we shouldn't burn down the bridge of Hybrids and PHEVs along the way to try and get there, by not supporting them too. Anyhow...I'm glad I have my Prius, even with low gas prices, it's my hedge against an uncertain future, if the Middle East goes to sh!t again, who cares, I get +50 MPG anyway.

 

The federal tax credit was written for PHEVs. The smallest battery that qualifies was in the Prius plug in, and the largest amount maxes out on a Volt sized pack. BEVs with packs over 16kWh don't get anymore money, but including them in the credit helped lower the prices on the PHEV batteries.

The Aqua/Prius c is the most popular car in Japan. Incentives helped the hybrids in the beginning, but the fact that their current low gas prices is over $4/gal likely has more to do with it now.

 

Volt has a mass market? Please expand on your statement.

DBCassidy

 

Coal; It's the fuel of (Japanese) hydrogen. Now - if Toyota can only figure out what to do with all the 100's of millions of tons of coal's toxic byproduct -

 

yucky mountain?

 

Maybe usb won't mind if it's stored in his backyard
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I think the problem as has been mentioned in the past is Greenercars does some very funky math. When I asked how they compare, they would not answer. It certainly is not comparing like for like vehicles. Did they for instance decide the fuel cell usefull life was longer than the teslas battery? That would not make much sense, but that's exactly how CNW found the hummer was greener than the prius.

But ofcourse Greener cars screwed up methodolgy mainly is for apologists not liking plug-in cars, and even here, greener cars can't keep the ruse. They claimed some other car was top, but in there own labs found the i3-bev best.

How about them fuel cells? Musk was saying it is very difficult to build a competitively priced green fueling infrastructure. CARB said hogwash, at the end of 2015, there will be 44 stations, at least 35 of them retail, and 46% of the fuel will be renewable. How well did they do? 6 retail stations at the end of last year, 0% renewable. You got to build it, and get cars to fill from it, without them braking for you to make the claim, and well carb has admitted they were overly optimistic in green hydrogen promises. Because of that failure to build stations by carb and toyota's favored vendor first element, its no suprise that both hyundai and toyota did not ship the promised cars last year. Easy to understand that its hard to build affordable, reliable, renewable hydrogen. Connecticut has decided they can legislate around the problem. Brown and black hydrogen are now labeled renewable if it is oxidized in a fuel cell. The truth is over 95% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, because it is much less expensive to make it that way. Any mandates to make hydrogen stations renewable, are going to mean either they don't roll out, or the tax payer is going to pay more than these organizations claimed to get them going. That seems more foolish today with $2 gas and proof CARB can't just build these things cheaper, than when Musk said it 2 years ago, and some people still believed it was easy.

Toyota's idea is to leave them in australia and only ship the hydrogen to japan. That way they can pay the Australians to deal with the toxins with Japanese tax payer money.

Somehow magically we will go from step 3 to step 5

1) build fcv prototype
2) build expensive serial production fuel cells in series
3) get the Japanese government to import coal hydrogen from australia, and pay for nationwide fueling stations
4) ?????
5) Switch to renewable hydrogen since everyone has bought the cars they will pay what it costs for the renewable fuel.

 

we've already covered the dishonesty of spouting how coal-heavy the US grid is - when in fact it gets less & less dependent on coal each new year. On the other hand - maybe that's good for Japan - more and more coal for them to wramp up their coal fired "clean" car.
... 'oh what a feeling' ...
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The times, they are a changin'......

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