Elon Musk knocks hydrogen, ruffles feathers

AT-PZEV did apply to a manufacturer's ZEV score at an earlier date. It's why Nissan paid Toyota to install a hybrid system in the Altima that they only sold in CARB states.

No body used is just an excuse. CARB just thought a fast battery swap wasn't possible when they first wrote rules, and they felt a need to change it when Tesla showed them otherwise. The extra credits Tesla earned during that time didn't cost the state a dime.

That's easy. Use a fuel cell with an onboard reformer that is fueled with sustainable fuel that was made from CO2 already present in the air.

So does hydrogen.

Yes, hydrogen carried in a matrix of carbon. We have already demonstrated, either directly or with built reformer, that fuel cells can be powered by methanol, methane, and diesel; which all can made using CO2 in the air.

There are two types of credits in CARB's ZEV program. The first a percentage of a manufacturer's fleet sold in CARB states. BEVs and FCEVs qualify, but other, not as clean vehicles can also be counted towards that quota; AT-ZEV hybrids used to qualify for it in the past. Then there is the actual credit points that are earned for selling certain cars that can be sold when the manufacture meets their minimum requirement. PHEVs may still qualify for the first credit, but only BEVs and FCEVs earn the second.

Since CARB, the supporter of H2FCEVs, feels giving hybrids extra incentives under the ZEV program, perhaps it is time to drop talk about it more incentives for them?

We didn't get the Rav4 hybrid until 2016MY. Explain how keeping the hybrid credits going would have brought it here sooner while gas prices were dropping since the end of the program. Or did it take Toyota all that time to get the efficiency of the system up, and the costs down in order to make such a vehicle economically feasible. The lack of hybrid incentives hasn't stopped it from coming.

No it wouldn't.

The average price for a gallon of gas in Japan today is around $4.25. It was nearly $6.50 back in 2008. Fuel prices there mean any fuel efficient car sells well there. Micro cars are sizeable segment, and many of those wouldn't be road legal in the states

Then the annual registration, inspection, and taxes on any car in Japan are high, and they go up with the car's age. This forces a quick turn over the personal car fleet. These fees also depress the value of used cars in Japan. So many are exported to South East Asia and Australia. This allows new cars to get on the road quicker.

They are leaving the waste in Australia, and using more resources to ship hydrogen to Japan.

But they aren't open about there methodology.
How We Determine Ratings | Greener Cars
For example.
"Vehicle and battery weights are used as the basis for estimating manufacturing and disposal impacts."
Is the weight of the plug in's battery subtracted from the vehicle weight, or do they leave it in so it gets double counted against the car?
If they were transparent, questions like this wouldn't arise.

No, we knock on the hydrogen lobby acting like hydrogen is sustainable when it is just coming from natural gas and coal. Some plug in supports have done the same, but I haven't seen those knocking hydrogen doing it.

That's fine for a transitional period. Trying to go zero carbon without that will cost more, and cause stronger oppositional backlash.

You are thinking of steam turbine plants, like in old coal ones. The natural gas plants being are basically just big jet engines. While being more efficient than the coal plants, they can also be shut off and on without the issues of the latter. They are used to supply peak loads for that reason.

I haven't seen plug in supporters being dishonest about them. Tesla selled out why they started with high end cars right in their business plan. Then we have long range BEVs appearing soon that are more affordable. All that we can expect from Toyota in that time frame is the next Prius PHEV.

What is more likely to happen, plug ins being affordable to the masses by the time the federal tax credit ends, or the masses letting Congress pay for a hydrogen highway?

I see plug ins with a fuel cell range extender fueled by a renewable liquid fuel as the end goal, with ICE and Al-air batteries being used until then.

Wireless charging is just another loss that can be avoided, but that may be required for an automated car fleet if robotic plugs don't work out.

 

Good post. I just want to correct this little bit.

ccgt plants which are the only new plants allowed in california, and are 90% of new capacity use a gas turbine then a steam turbine. A new fast cycling plant is about 50% more efficient than the old steam natural gas plants, and 100% more efficient than an old coal steam plant.

These can turn on or off on a dime, and can fully come up from cold start in about 30 minutes. In those 30 minutes the water needs to be heated with the waste heat, and the plants are only about 35% efficient, still it is much better to turn them on and off than keep them going. An old coal plant might take 3 days to get to its efficiency. As wind and solar increases and decreases these ccgt plants can move from 40% capacity to 100% capacity at high efficiency 58%-61% on a new plant from ge or siemens.

In california the CPUC is keeping around the old 40% efficient steam plants, and using ccgt and out of state ocgt and ccgt for cycling. In Texas where regulation is different and wind is a higher percentage there are a lot of less efficient ocgt (about 35% efficient) power plants that can kick in when the wind stops blowing, ccgt cycle down when wind is good. In december ERCOT (the grid that covers most of texas) went 45% wind, which is causing coal to be uneconomic in the winter. Coal dropped about 10% in that last 5 years in ercot as wind increased 4%, and gas fired ccgt cycled with it. There is plenty of ccgt and wind in california and texas to supply all the plug-ins at night, daytime southern california imports a lot of power though that doesn't go to automotive. I don't see how hydrogen would help either state manage their electricity, while utilities can build wind and ccgt faster with more plug-ins and make the respective grids more efficient for other uses.

 

A) You don't "support each other like teammates" by hurling insults and deragotory terms.

B)"In order to defend/correct" incorrect calculations, you show where the calculations are incorrect. If you want to deflect you don't address the calculations, but rather make arguments about a different topic.

If you want to defend against arguments, show us the correct calculations.

 

Glass houses...... stones........

This was said over and over again for years by many of us when FUD was spread around here about the new Volt (brownouts, battery fires, etc); while several other things like expensive, SUV class weight and 4 seats that also apply to the Mirai are now conveniently overlooked or dismissed.

I agree we need to be teammates so let's drop the corporate allegiance stance and focus on the big picture.

Right now the big picture for hydrogen is it's a one trick pony: fast refill. Vehicle prices and packaging can come down with experience and mass production but big sales can't happen without the proper infrastructure. How do we economically build thousands and thousands of stations with a reasonably low cost and green fuel supply? We can't as a society agree on the science of climate change. How do we convince these same folks that a new hydrogen society is also the answer to our transportation needs?

 

what a crock. You're blaming the wrong company. Toyota et al build trucks, & yet you want Tesla, who doesn't build any carbon burners, to take the hit for them? You're blaming the gun for killing the messenger. CARB conspires with hydrogen lobby to favor hydrogen over plugin's - evidenced by Toyota's negative '4hrs to waste' advertising. To feign 'fairness' CARB concocted high credit rules for ANY clean cars 'refillable' in 10 or so minutes. Tesla catches onto CARB/hydrogen lobby scheme - & quickly builds swap station to defeat CARB favoritism (but you already know all this) . Game over .... so CARB could no longer feign a rational basis for high zev credits to hydrogen. So - Back to plan 'B' outright favoritism.

a theory - like hydrogen being economical in the distant future
. . . . . snip . . . . .. . .

Ahh - wait - when hydrogen's coal burning asininity is brought up - don't you call it 'transitional' ? ?

a theory - you mean like the theory hydrogen will some day - economically - NOT come from coal or other carbon fuels?

so? the same 'nothing preventing' is true for jet packs & flying cars ..... just needs to cost less .... Hey! while we're on the taxpayers' road to destruction, Let's strip major incentives from Boing, so we can make flying cars more affordable than 747's too !!

As for this false notion that we are all on the same team holding hands, that's another crock. Run that one by again when Toyota apologizes for the negative ads they run against plugins. If honda says we're holding hands technologically, that might be believable because they're not running smear campaigns against technology that flies in the face of hydrogen.
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The credits for fast refuel for fcv never made any sense, it was a fake excuse for CARB to favor them. When tesla blew away this favortism by demonstration they could do it with battery swap, better and cheaper, the fuel cell lobby with mary nichols as chear leader were caught with their pants down.

What did they do? They got mad at tesla, and as an extra sham gave anouther, count them 5 fast fuel credits that coul only be given to fcv. Then they gave $220M to build the hydrogen stations to fuel tham, as they really are not easy to refuel. Game Set Match. Carb got caught cheating, and just rewrote the rules. Its not Tesla, they just used CARBs rules.

Why should fcv get 9 zev credits and the phevs that actually can fast refuel arond the country 0? Well because its not about fast refueling its an fake excuse to favor fcv.

Toyota had a small methanol reformer in one of their fuel cell vehicles years ago, probably a decade,back when california had methanol stations before the fuel cell and ethanol advocates closed them down. The problem is if you do methanol with fuel cells, then its not really much more efficient than methanol in a hybrid. Easy to build fueling infrastructure, but hard to sell fcv.

Thought it was why its unlikely the US builds a national hydrogen fueling infrastructure.

I'm not sure why phevs are transition and not perminatnt vehicles. They can be fueled with renewable ethanol, methanol, and electricity. You are correct they won't have zero tailpipe emissions anytime soon but I don't think hydrogen fuel cells will either. I can't for the life of me see why a fcv deserves 9 more zev credits than a volt and 5 more than a tesla model S. It just seems like carb has raised their middle finger and said we do what we want, screw you guys. Its easy to picture mary nichols as cartman from southpark.

I think you are the only one that thinks a hybrid incentive in the US is a good idea right now. It probably covered too few vehcies in 2005, but certainly by 2010 the usefullness was over, and the tech proven. I doubt during the auto recession many americans would have thought are biggest problem was we had too many US auto workers, and we needed to import more cars from japan.

Doesn't make any sense. Ford said they were canceling the escape hybrid in 2011 because it wasn't efficient enough. Toyota tried to start tearing ford a new one in 2008. Timing is just all wrong. Perhaps there wasn't one in 2007 because of gentlemans agreement, but that was long over. My guess which comes from toyota saying previously they would make all cars hybrid, then backing away and delaying, is that the auto recession slowed the investment, and really its not going to be a hot car anyway so why worry.

Well first you need to give that money to all the prii, ford fusion hybrids, camry hybrids, sonata hybris already being sold. My guess is you won't really sell many more malibu hybrids, but will increase the take rates of the camry's and fussions, etc that have been out their longer. If you double hybrids its really about $5000/vehicle, and with low gas prices when the incentives end, hybrid sales drop, probably further than they would because people bought ahead. Doesn't make much sense today. To go from 2% to 4% you need to spend $5K/vehicle. I really doubt it would tripple.Toyota, Ford, Hydundai simply would raise prices, they aren't fools.

That isn't right, they require all the hydrogen in california that taxpayers pay for when there are enough cars to be 30% renewable. If it ever becomes viable, then the requirement drops out. Its only when tax payer pays. Their isn't any renewable retail in california today. That is fine too, there needs to be a certain amount sold for that to kick in and virtually none really is being sold today.

I don't understand your use of those words.
95%+ of hydrogen is fossil
67% of the grid is fossil (only 7% other renewable, the rest is large hydro and nuclear, texas is 12% wind, california 20% renewable (geothermal, wind, solar, bio) going to 33%)
Plug-in owners are likely to be cleaner than california as they buy a lot of solar and wind and don't sell their recs.

I don't think its a problem that hydrogen is produced by fossil fuel, I find the problem in people lying about how easy and cheap it will be to move it to renewable. Technically no problem, but much more expensive than moving plug-ins to renewable.

I've seen that and lots of scientists. Joe Romm one time hydrogen advocate at the epa has been putting out the science against the cheap hydrogen promises for fuel cells for over a decade on his blog thinkprogress. Its biased blog but lots of real calculations that CARB and CFCP have been lying about.

You posted a nikkei article about toyota having its butt hurt by insults musk made 2 years ago, and toyota was pretending these were new, and it was doing well.

News stories show this is misinformation by toyota. Building of the hydrogen highway is going badly. Its over promised, under delivered, and much more expensive than advocates in toyota want to admit. Desptite all the extra government support for fcv, they can't lease them without infrastruture, and delivery numbers are even lower than low expectations.

 

If it is true that the public needs fast refilling for these alternate fueled vehicles to gain acceptance, then the extra ZEV credits for such are a carrot for the companies to develop it. The original rule was tech neutral, as it should be. The supposed reason of making these new tech cars more appealing to the public shouldn't depend on how it is done. To the end user, whether a battery is swapped or more energy carrier is pumped into a storage device doesn't matter. All that matters to them is that they pulled into a station, and 5 minutes later they pulled out with a full tank. Just because a BEV doesn't need such a fast fill up, and the users are happy skipping the faster way, doesn't change the fact that the fast battery swap option was there to make it more comfortable for people considering the new, tail-pipe emission free technology to buy into it. That was the entire point of having a fast refill option, to get more people buying these zero emmission cars, right?

As to the ZEV credits allowing more trucks and SUVs to be sold, what do you think Toyota is going to do with the extra credits the Mirai gets for fast refueling? Sit on them like an environmentally conscious PV owner with their RECs? No, Toyota is going to sell them or use them to counter their trucks and SUVs sold.

This isn't advanced math. The more ZEV credits a car earns, the less of them that a traditional car has to sell of them to meet their quota, and the less ZEV cars that actually get on the road.

As easy as saying we'd have 300 Mirai on the road in 2015. Volvo does have fuel cell that runs on diesel and can replace the generator on a long haul truck or boat. It has run for over 10,000hrs in the lab. Home fuel cells running natural gas don't have a long start up time. Methanol fuel cells don't need a reformer.

They aren't ready for commercial use in a personal car, but neither are hydrogen fuel cells. We are building a test infrastructure for high pressure compressed gas refueling, when it could be surpassed by hydrides or high pressure water then gas filling by the time the fuel cell prices drop enough for mass market cars in a couple generations. We can't say that won't happen, and we can't say methanol fuel cells will get more efficient, or auto-reforms get smaller.

I was just clarifying the two types of credits there are under the ZEV program.

PHEVs are transitional, but I think CARB has downgraded their worth faster than they should have. Few people drive over a hundred miles in a day. For many people, a PHEV will be zero emission for the majority of the miles driven. Reducing their credit worth can lead to less sold. Meanwhile, the higher credits for H2FCEVs isn't going to overcome the delays in building the infrastructure, and less of them than predicted were sold.

For those that do drive over a hundred miles a day, and can afford the car, the difference in terms of hassle of plugging in at home each day, or going to the hydrogen station every second or third day, is mostly up to personal preference.

At the end of the day, hybrids are still just an ICE car getting all their energy from gasoline. With increasing CAFE targets, we are going to see more blending between the ICE and hybrid car. Pragmatically, if your proposed incentive goal is to get more high efficiency cars on the road, then it should be technology neutral and not exclude high efficiency ICE ones.

How many would take advantage depends on whether they can benefit from the tax credit and how the financing works out between the hybrid and ICE. Yes, more hybrids would be sold, but not enough to get us to the 20% market share that Japan sees. Cheap gas, different ownership fee structures(it goes up with car age in Japan, while staying the same or going down here), and different culture(average US car age is 3 years higher than Japan's), mean that hybrids won't be as quickly adopted here.

Hybrids don't incur higher societal worth than plug ins because they don't make people think about the grid and the emissions there.

There is that BS video, and dated graphs. Then the always bringing up hydrogen can be made sustainably and still in the lab technologies, while glossing over where most hydrogen comes from and higher price of the sustainable.

Pointing out that coal levels have dropped, and renewables increased doesn't imply that the grid is sustainable.

Part of the renewable hydrogen made is counted as renewable because RECs are bought for it. Without that hydrogen produced, the renewable electric would have gone to the grid and some plug ins. Then, there isn't any renewable hydrogen station in operation yet, so it is all NG in California now.

If someone is claiming 100% renewable for their plug in without paying extra or having RECs, you and I can both knock on them.

It isn't a problem, if the proponents are honest about it. You know, making a video about making hydrogen from cow poo, and then dealing with a coal company for hydrogen.

There is lost efficiency, but not the cost involved with idling an old steam plant, which is less efficient at peak than these CCGTs starting up.

If their math was wrong or bogus, it should be easy to counter.

Then you should be bringing this message to CARB.

 

Its good to be able to simply over build wind, german and american studies have shown its cheaper to over build then store it. You may want to have a half hour buffer in a battery for grid management but bigger is over kill. At places that can't go down like data centers and hospitals you might want bigger batteries than that, and natural gas fuel cells as back up. There are those zero people and if you want to spend trillions more.... but I don't think that will happen.

How is this part of the discussion of the high expense of building hydrogen infrastructure? If you go to zero ghg for hydrogen you need to build about 3x as many wind turbines or solar panels, plus the stations, plus the compressors, trucks, back up, etc.

I'm not sure what the valley's have to do with it, but the germans are close here. Absolutely its crazy expensive to hit peak load deamand without cycling power. I don't even think that should be a goal. It isn't of the US government.

As I pointed out in this thread we have new fast cycling ccgt plants from both siemens and ge for about a decade. These can shut down or turn on extremely fast, 10% per minute. It takes about 30 minutes to go from a long shut down to full efficiency, in that time you can only get 35% efficiency and about 70% of the power, but these are not your old coal plants. When they are at 40% or higher they are at least 58% efficient and can cycle well with renewables. They work very well, but you need to get rid of the old coal and old steam natural gas plants to use them properly, other wise utilization is too low to build them instead of peaking plants.. The peaking plants ocgt aren't as efficient but neither has durability problems.

Not a problem for plug-ins really why make it up. Follow the money, and you will see the people making up this problem don't want plug-in cars. There is no need to go to zero. What a 2016 volt on the 2012 california grid (latest data) produces 160 g/mi ghg, a model S 70d 130 g/mi. That is a lot less than the 314 g from even the efficient toyota corola eco. Good enough until they improve the grid more. They should be much lower in 2030 in california, and other higher ghg states will start looking more like california in the clean power plan.

You probably forgot that that reference case is assuming that the country does not implement the Clean Power Plan which is the current law. It was written before that passed. Sure the majority will still be fossil, but coal will drop faster than that projection and renewables will gain faster than those projections, well just as coal dropped much faster than the last projections.

As I see your fight, Toyota is telling us no one is asking them for plug-ins. They are saying fuel cells are the future and US tax payers need to pay more for them than plug-ins. That quick chargers take 4 hours to charge (instead of 15 minutes to an hour) and renwable hydrogen infrastructure is easy to build. Then they make up that the problem is Musk. Come on someone is fighting and its not plug in advocates.

Toyota needs to get some cars on the road, and stop this FUD against plug-ins. Musk gets asked about fcv killing bevs at a press conference and he says the truth fool cells aren't comeing any time soon in quantity. That's just a fact. He's irritated so he makes a quotable moment. Toyota needs to stop putting their foot in their mouth. The Lexus VP said he didn't belive in phevs because people just buy them for the HOV stickers, and don't plug them in. COme on the fake accusations are all on the fuel cell hype side, and it started over a decade ago. When toyota came recently to remove plug-in credits in california, what do you expect advocates to say, thank you.

And oil imports are increasing not decreasing right now. The US will import more in 2016 than 2015. Who knows how much with cheap opec oil flooding the market.

The drivers. They seem to love their plug-ins.

I don't think appropriating hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds to build those hydrogen stations will get any support, especially when you need to subsidize the imported vehicles to the tune of $13K after you have tax payers pay for the stations. Still in Japan it might work. Lets see if it works there, before asking taxpayers to fund this boon dogle. How about simply getting 10,000 fcv on california roads in the test. I mean that should have happened by now if you believe all the hype about how easy it is, and how much people want them.

No problem with that. Just don't believe all the anti-plug-in FUD toyota is throwing out there.

 

One thing I'd like to add: USB, can you provide a source for battery swap stations sitting idle? Because I know more people who have swapped a tesla battery than people who have filled an FCV.

 

lensovet,
perhaps i can answer that (maybe facetious?) question. Here's Elon Musk describing the swap station at Harris Ranch California as a prototype to determine demand vs quick charging.
[QUOTE ] ".... Starting next week, we will pilot a pack swap program with invited Model S owners. They will be given the opportunity to swap their car's battery at a custom-built facility located across the street from the Tesla Superchargers at Harris Ranch, CA. This pilot program is intended to test technology and assess demand.

At least initially, battery swap will be available by appointment and will cost slightly less than a full tank of gasoline for a premium sedan. More time is needed to remove the titanium and hardened aluminum ballistic plates that now shield the battery pack, so the swap process takes approximately three minutes.

With further automation and refinements on the vehicle side, we are confident that the swap time could be reduced to less than one minute, even with shields. Tesla will evaluate relative demand from customers for paid pack swap versus free charging to assess whether it merits the engineering resources ... "[/QUOTE]
Battery Swap Pilot Program | Tesla Motors
Early indicators showed that owners would just as soon supercharge because it took so little time - 20 minutes or less to get charged up to 80%. Whether it was owners not finding the time savings worth the swap - or whether CARB dropping the facade of playing ZEV credits fair ... which occurrence came 1st ... is now moot. CARB revealed their true colors .... and owners weren't that concerned about the few minutes saved on those "not-that-often" uber long trips. Tesla may revisit the owner preference at a later time turning on circumstances - which of course won't be a change in CARB's constipated thinking.

Can you imagine? Aiming for a battery swap time reduction - from 3 minutes down to under 2 minutes? That would make a 5-10 minute hydrogen fill (only ½way when its busy) look downright stupid. But after the taxpayer-funded trillion $ infrastructure is built out, owners won't mind their ½filled-coal powered hydrogen cars being limited to only a 150 mile range limitation, perhaps.
Elon knocks hydrogen? (ok, it was quite some time ago) . . . . not surprisingly, that's what folks do once the whole information picture is painted.
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Let's say you drive 15,000 miles in a year and use 90 gallons of gas in a erev phev on the 3000 miles you are in charge sustain more, and electricity on 12,000 miles. You get 0 zev credits. What if the tailpipes are squeeky clean and the gas is burned outside of the heavily polluted cities? Seems like a really bad system.

Then lets say you use 170 gallons in your other car to drive 5000 miles you don't use your 3 zev credit bev or 9 zev credit fcv.
In one all cases you are using gas for some miles. In the case of california zev credits you get credit if you use a different vehicle when using gas. How do we know that this is how its working for bevs? The volt and leaf are going about the same electric miles in california. The fuel cell vehicles, a lot fewer miles a year, maybe because of poor refueling infrastructure, but that problem for road trips will last the life of any fcv delivered today. Infrastructure won't change fast.

So if you are giving credit for fast refueling, its the phev, and the new volt should do better than the old one. If a mirai gets 9 credits for going 9,000 hydrogen miles, shouldn't a volt get at least 1 zev for going more say 12,000 electric miles?

This is fatacy as far as the public policy I have read. In japan they gave much higher incentives than that and had $6 gasoline, and laws saying you need to get old cars off the road. You need to look at all those policies as a group. If we only double hybrids its $5000 per vehicle, because you need to give an incentive to the one that would sell anyway. At that price and say 2500 gallon of gas savings, the tax payer is paying $2/gallon of gas not consumed. The car companies will like they often do, raise prices before they do much more than double. Toyota really has little competition why not pocket some of that money. When the incentives go away, so do the sales. Now if you can sell a imported oil price floor of $35/bbl (tarrif bellow a certain price) and a oil tax (say $40/bbl which would put us at $75/bbl today with the foor much lower than oil in 2008) then maybe you can get sales to stick after and investment, but with low oil prices forecast investment wont increase with a 2, 3,or even 5 year subsidy. Its not going to happen.

On hydrogen, well I just would like to see a proof test before we keep upping the public money. These keep getting delayed. I'm in favor of the test, not the hype, not the anti plug-in bs. The test was supposed to happen by 2010, then in 2012-2014, I think realistically the first test will be tokyo olympics. If that is the test and the automakers want to produce entirely in asia, why not just help fund the japanese test?

Well as oposed to hybrids where technology is mainly set, the plug-in incentive has actually gotten the car companies - gm, nissan, bmw, ford, vw group, hyundai, mercedes - to invest. Tesla would have invested anyway, but that extra cash is being used to develop better bevs and infrastructure. Honda and Toyota seem to be the loan hold outs of companies that sell well in north america. I hope that changes. Still January was the best ever for plug-ins, and battery prices are dropping faster than they expected when the program was started. GM and tesla are working hard with their partners lg and panasonic to get battery packs and conditioning improved . That means oil savings in 2020-2030 if it works. That should be much higher than a hybrid incenive but absolutely I you only count this year hybrid incenives would work beter, but that is extremely short term thinking, the kind that went into past failed programs.

That's not alternative energy, and hybrids with regen brakes but normal engines don't save much fuel. Most of the savings comes from a more efficient engine transmission pair, where torque can be stored and then used in a battery. We should call a hsd an electrified car, as it uses electrification to use gasoline more efficiently. Its not an alternatively fueled car.

Most plug-ins use fossil and non-fossil fuel, but this is alternative fuel mainly natural gas and wind instead of oil. Which fuel changes regionally and by what time an owner charges the vehicle.

I doubt that very much, but lets say the prius and volt both are much lower in ghg than the average car on the road. As the us grid gets cleaner those volts will reduce their ghg footprints if they already are not very very low. To determine how much ghg is produced we need to know the drivig cycles and where those volts are. GM actually has some good numbers, and of course there were some suprises. What is not suprising is a large percentage of volts are sold where electricity produces much less ghg than the national average. I'm sure you can get a couple of grad students to work out the figures, but I don't have time to cruch all the numbers.

Now we could do the same for the mirai, and that is much easier because their are only about 100 of them in north america, but california has not disclosed how much ghg each of the stations uses. I'm sure its much higher than a volt in the same region today. Who knows if they will build the promised renewables and if the cars will fill up there.

 

They supposed goal of the ZEV program is to clean up the vehicle emissions in California, whose geography and climate make particularly problematic in their major cities. Most PHEVs with longer EV ranges do that. They don't eliminate all the tailpipe emission like a BEV or H2FCEV, but they are cheaper that the long range ones, and are easier to fit in most peoples lifestyles. If Carb can give fewer ZEV credits to shorter range BEVs than long range ones, they can give even fewer credits to those PHEVs.

That isn't the problem. It is CARB's blatant rule changes to favor them even more. Refueling in 15 minutes or less was originally 1 or 3 credits depending on the car's range. That is what Tesla was earning with their battery swapping.CARB changes the rules to disallow battery swaps, and also increases the fast refuel credit to 2 and 5.

To add insult to injury, CARB isn't deducting those extra credits from H2FCEVs since the infrastructure can't reliably meet the fast refuel requirements. A reason used for taking away battery swapping was that few people used it. Well, some Mirai owners can only get a half fill. Half of the Mirai's range isn't enough to qualify for the 2 credits, let alone the 5. Those cars should only get 4, like the Model S.

are these lifetime numbers for the cars? A Camry hybrid saves 170 to 225 gallons a year at 15k miles over the ICE models. The new Prius saves 312 gallons compared to a 25mpg car.

Which was energy that originally came from the ICE and fuel for it.

In the words of Bob Wilson, "Electricity is ultimate flex fuel." It can come from fossil fuel, but it can also come from nuclear, geothermal, wind, solar, tidal, hydro, etc. You even hook a tread mill up to a generator, and have your dogs charge your car, if you so inclined.

Under current policies, the amount the Volt emits will drop, and already has compared to the EPA site, as time passes. The Prius will emit more over the same time frame, as we need to use dirtier sources of crude.

Even in dirty coal states, plug ins emit less carbon than the average vehicle, or any ICE Camry that sells in far greater numbers than the hybrid. If you truly want to see emission improvements, you have to stop using the Prius Strawman.

Just because the H2FCEV can't go where there isn't infrastructure, isn't a reason to artificially impose such limits on over solutions.

Those in a lower income bracket than you felt the same way about the incentives for plain hybrids. They were likely more concerned about American jobs than emissions.

If your Prius PHEV was wrecked tomorrow, would you be able to replace it next week?
How does the Prius PHEV emission compare to the Prius on the Japanese grid? That was where Toyota had hoped to sell the majority of them.

If the Prius PHEV was sold in Texas, Austingreen might have already owned one.

 

If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Hurling insults?, maybe is issue is more of being thin skinned?

DBCassidy

 

we normally find such decisions made sub optimally by a central government. In this case the central government is CARB, who has continuously tweaked there system to micromanage. I can not say they have good results. Partial zev credits was mainly there to push automakers to get to 4000 fcv by end of 2014. We know that didn't work out, so the number was dropped. The best selling plug-ins sell nation wide - leaf, volt, tesla model S, bmw i3. The partial credits did get the prius phv, but I can't think of any other phev or hybrid that they inspired.

What is more wastefull? The extra expense of a prius over a versa? Or a volt's engine over a leaf? In the case of the 30kwh leaf you have an extra 12 kwh of battery probably costing around $3600 versus the 18kwh battery in the gen II volt and an engine/gas tank/ emissions control that cost roughly the same. For the smaller batteried leaf versus gen i volt, people went about the same number of miles. The leaf owner just used anouther car. Seems like that is a good trade off for those wanting the quick refuel convience and not access to anouther car. Many would say the 30 kwh is not enough it needs to be more like 60 kwh (bolt) so there is your trade off. Shouldn't the market decide not carb what is wastefull?

And how many extra hybrids did it sell. I think it was 0. Yep the partial credits sold 0 hybrids. It doesn't make much sense. I think carb's goal is fcv, and that is why they keep making up these rules. You can't travel accross the country in a short milage bev or a fcv. Why the credit? We know why - its to favor fuel cells. Let's not pretend its for convenient refueling. Hydrogen is not convenient for very many people. So step 2 is to lobby the federal government to spend hundreds of billions to make it more convenient because really that gas tank is wasteful, but those hydrogen stations well they need to be built to prove fcv are more convenient.

 

Except they might need to drive beyond a BEV's range at times, and don't wish to pay for keeping a second car around.

If a fast battery swap won't make a person give up an ICE car, why would going from filling up with a liquid fuel to a less convenient, highly compressed gas make them do so? Even if a hydrogen FCEV owner got lucky, and always got a fill up on the faster side, they would still be inconvenience by having to go to the station more often. The best FCEV has a range of just over 300 miles. Most ICE cars have at least 400 miles.

The problem with this analogy is that phones didn't have to contend with large format battery patents. Hybrids started with NiMH packs, but the patent holder on capacities large enough for a plug in was unwilling to license it at a reasonable rate.

Along with that not being a concern, Li-ion was already superior to NiMH for plug in application. It just cost much more at first. It only saw use in hybrids when other manufacturers when they became of concerned they would be left cut off from NiMH by Toyota's demands.

This is a mealy mouthed excuse from Toyota for not expanding Prius PHEV sales to other states or countries. They were expecting a much larger market in Japan, a resource poor island nation that imports the vast majority of its energy in the form of oil, natural gas, and coal. Toyota wasn't concerned about grid emissions in their home country, and they aren't concerned about them elsewhere, or selling their ICE models along side the hybrid one.

We have hybrids that are dirtier than ICE cars.
And again, the law that created the plug in tax credit also contained mechanics to reduce grid emissions.

And it is a shame Toyota didn't know how to sell it, or had the faith to offer it elsewhere.

I have already pointed out that the nationally available plug ins run from sub-compacts to large SUVs, with the two best selling ones being a mid-size and a large car.

If the goal is to get away from the straight ICE car, why do you insist on using a hybrid as your benchmark of whether plug ins are good enough and not one of those ICE cars?

An incentive for hybrids now would only prop up their sales for as long as the incentive remained in place. That was seen in the Japanese market. The continuation of hybrid incentives there also hurt the sales of new to the market plug ins, including the Prius plug in.

The Volt came out as a 2011MY with Texas being on of the later states for it to arrive too. Since his Prius is a 2010MY, he may not have been able to wait for it, and a quick turn over on a new car is wasteful.

Whatever the reason, it doesn't change the fact that you are using his , and my, lack of plug in ownership as an attempt to discredit our arguments with false logic, because you can't do so any other way. You support H2FCEV's, why haven't you moved out to Southern California so you can buy one? They are available now, you really have no excuse not too.

 

Go easy on Elon, he is not having a very good start this year. With gas prices low - not good for Teslsas' sales and the issue with Solar City in Nevada.

Hopefully things will turn around soon for Musk.

DBCassidy

 

volt was released in austin as one of the first markets in 2011. My gen III prius was only a little over a year old than (bought november in 2009). I would have taken a huge loss on selling such a new car in the heat of the toyota devaluation. USB is right I would have chosen the volt over the prius phv, but the texas government would ahve bought a lot of them. There are many shiny objects for me personally. I waited texas incentive, plus to test the i3, but it would take time to discount, now we have the gen II volt and increased range i3. I will probably put a deposit on a tesla model 3 in march, and may lease a i3 or volt if the model 3 isn't until the end of 2018. We should know the shiny objects for me soon. tesla doesn't get the texas $2500 but volt and i3 do.

I might have bought a rav4 ev, but although diane could get me a good price, the toyota dealers told me they would not service it The car seems to have needed a lot of tender loving care.

None of my personnel waiting for a shiny toy should matter to this discussion. Anyone not in California is getting paid lip service from carb and toyota. Neither want to provide good low oil solutions that substitue electricity to the nation. 9 zev credits. Yeah, maybe toyota will change its tune when its headquarters is out of lala land and in texas. Really I doubt even in a decade would there be any more than the 1 private university station for fcv in texas (yes I could probably use it, I know some of the researchers, but why?). I wish toyota the best of luck in making a fcv desirable and at a price that it can sell in tens of thousands. That simply won't happen fast, and its foolish to think it will.