Honda UK has dropped ALL hybrids from its range!

Only according to you and Toyota.
No one else calls their FCEV a hybrid. Hyundai and Honda are going with electric vehicle, because that is all the drive train. Hybrid, as it relates to cars, is in reference to the drive train, not fuel sources.

Otherwise, GM is missing out. They have an Impala hybrid and don't know it. If fact, it is more of a hybrid than any of the FCEV that is available. It actually fills up with two different fuels; gasoline and natural gas.

 

Nope, it per definition of SAE. To be specific, fuel cell - battery hybrid. Prius is gas - battery hybrid.

“A vehicle with two or more energy storage systems both of which must provide propulsion power – either together or independently.”

 

Yes, when the car isn't moving.

The operation should be the same as a Prius. When the demand is less than 15hp, ICE or FC stack would shut off. The threshold may be different.

 

Replace the gas engine with FC stack and you have a fuel cell vehicle.

 

Right.
Also, the FCV stack can't generate enough power to reach the MG peak performance, so when going "full throttle" some energy is subtracted from the battery. And like the Prius if the battery is low you have less maximum hp avaiable.

 

Neither one of us has seen the SAE's full definition. That quote comes out of the GM SAE paper arguing on the existence of the EREV term, and may only be a part of it.
Here is the entirety of the paragraph that the quote is in. "Hybrid- A hybrid is defined by SAE [4] as: “A vehicle with two or more energy storage systems both of which must provide propulsion power – either together or independently.” In practice, hybrid vehicles typically require both sources to provide full vehicle capability. The engine is also typically the larger of the two propulsion sources, being sized to provide most of the power during high power vehicle events. The motor is typically the smaller of the two propulsion sources, being sized to maximize the amount of energy that can be captured during braking and for limited low speed EV operation."
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There seems to be more to the SAE definition, but it isn't being directly quoted. I simply don't care enough to pay the SAE $70 to get access to the full definition.

No one else uses hybrid and fuel cell together. Not Honda, not Hyundai, not GM, not the DoE, nor the National Labs. If they put a fuel cell car in any category, it is just an electric vehicle.

There are two main reasons for a FCEV to have a traction battery. The first is to provide propulsion until the FC warms up enough to provide power. The second is to buffer the power output of the stack.

A fuel cell can not modulate their power output as quickly as an ICE. Early FCEVs without a battery accelerated slower than a 1980 non-turbo diesel Rabbit. Apply the accelerator, and you have to wait for the stack's output to catch up. Let off the pedal, and the output cuts out just as slow. The traction battery stores up the excess energy from the stack's slow down to provide a faster motor response when the driver calls for it, and the FC itself wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand. It may also be used to get a higher max power to the wheels; like the overboost feature of some turbos.

So the Mirai could turn off the FC and go just battery, but the SOC limit on when the FC comes back on is likely higher than in a Prius to allow for that slower output response.

 

I think it has same basic NiMH battery size as a Prius or Camry hybrid, so EV range is not the goal, but regen braking etc.

 

They're abandoning gas-electric and plug-in hybrids and hoping the $60,000USD Clarity hydrogen will sell? It's gonna tank at anything over 35k.

 

The Clarity will be getting a PHEV and BEV version.

 

will they sell them in the u/k?

 

I'm confused as to why Europe is so far behind us on the use of this technology. I thought the USA was supposedly the world's gas hogging, smog-making no-goods. In seriousness, though, what a lot of European and liberal thinkers fail to understand are the vast distances that we travel in the U.S. Europeans, and especially those in the U.K., travel in compact areas and even your "rural" areas are not far away at all. I live in Houston, Texas and it's 250 miles to Dallas, Texas. A distance impossible to travel in any EV, but a trip made regularly by many people. Happy to have a gas-electric hybrid. (note: I'm equally confused by Toyota's lack of market share in Europe... People buy French cars instead of Toyotas? It makes me question the intelligence of Europeans!)

 

one reason is the pols we're paid off to promote diesel, and another is high cost of hybrids from toyota for unexplained reasons.

 

The Toyota hybrids here are more expensive than their gasoline counterparts, but not excessively so. Currently you can get a 1-2 year old Prius for a song. I'm confused as to why Toyotas "in general" are not common in Europe (I read 5% market share). No offense to Europeans, but your cars are the most unreliable in the world. I'd buy a Korean car before a European (and I have, in fact). I've purchased brand-new a Volkswagen Passat and won't make that mistake again.

 

There actually is an EV that can do a trip to Dallas, without recharging, if you keep your speeds down... but it ain't cheap. (And, you could probably recharge a smaller battery version on the way, but you'd be waiting somewhere in between for about half an hour.)

In any case, there'll be a few factors going on here from my (outside) understanding:

• Cost
• The European automotive industry (outside of the UK) didn't have the kind of decline that the American one did, and therefore there might be some nationalism going on, that didn't get quashed by foreign competition utterly destroying the domestic industries? (And, the UK domestic auto industry got destroyed by the continental European one more than the Japanese one, I thought, although there is some UK manufacturing of Japanese marques.)
• Diesel bias in fuel taxation (and Honda had to buy diesels from other suppliers for a while, before eventually doing their own, and the resulting bias caused automakers that didn't have competitive diesels to lose sales)
• Reliability issues that Honda's early hybrids had
• Cargo space constraints that many hybrids have had due to battery packaging issues (in the US, our solution is to buy a bigger hybrid, but in Europe, the solution is to buy a car with better packaging, which means a non-hybrid)
• Fuel economy concerns (the European cycle can inflate fuel economy figures disproportionately for both hybrids and turbocharged gas engines, whereas diesels and naturally aspirated non-hybrid gas engines tend to be closer to their claimed figures in the real world)
• Driving experience concerns (hybrids are often seen as more boring than diesels, although some of that is because of the 2nd and 3rd-gen Prius)
• Transmission preference (although that wouldn't have affected some of the Honda hybrids, as they had manuals)
• Lack of diesel competition in the US (if you lived in California in 2004 and wanted a fuel efficient car, there were two choices - the Prius, and the Insight. If you lived outside of California or one of the four (at the time) other CARB states, there were basically five choices - the Prius, the Insight, the Golf/Jetta/Jetta Wagon, the New Beetle, and the Passat/Passat Wagon.)
• Ease of "meeting" emissions standards with a diesel
• Brand reputation (as I understand, Honda and Toyota are both seen as brands for old people in Europe? Conversely, largely because of the terrible dealer network, but also because of Volkswagen's designs' lack of tolerance of any neglect, as well as Volkswagen of America's part pricing stratgies, Volkswagen is seen as an unreliable brand here.)

That said, the European automakers are doing some hybridization of their own - VAG, PSA, BMW, Mercedes, and Volvo offer hybrids there, AFAIK. (And, if you can count Ford of Europe as European, they have the Mondeo Hybrid, although that's really just an American Fusion Hybrid - trunk and all (the regular Mondeo has a liftback instead) - with Mondeo badges.)

 

Seen as unreliable, because comparably, they are. I have several personal experiences with this myself and within my family. I bought a new VW Passat that had over night or multi-day dealer visits at least 10 times in 2 years, 40k miles. Bizarre, garbage issues, like failing subframe mount bolts, failed gas gauge sending unit, failed instrument cluster, failed stereo head unit, etc. It was in at least 3 times for the subframe bolt issue (made a loud pop when backing up as the engine/subframe and frame moved back and forth). I traded it in on a Chevrolet Camaro that never, not even once, visited the dealer in the 2 years I drove it.

My family has had VW's. My mom bought brand-new a 2000 VW Beetle. At 60k miles, the turbo failed, VW only paid 50% of cost (despite 100k warranty), 90k miles, timing belt broke and destroyed the cylinder head. Despite the 100k maintenance interval for the belt and despite the 100k drivetrain warranty, VW didn't even honor it at all. She paid thousands to fix the car, only to have the (automatic) transmission completely fail at about 105k. She sold the car as-is at a loss in non-working condition. She bought a new 2008 to replace it, and it has been markedly more reliable than the 2000, but just two weeks ago she had to take it in for what the dealer quoted as a $2000+ dollar repair to the A/C system with only 100k on the car. That would be unthinkable for a Toyota, Honda, Chevrolet, Ford, Kia, Hyundai.... but it's German, so people just say it's quirky and "high maintenance." That's not high maintenance, that's poor design and/or build. I won't even begin on the Audi horror stories I can tell you, including a $10,000 new transmission on a new S4 with under 15k miles. You couldn't give me an Audi. Actually you could, but I'd trade it in on something else as fast as I could get to the dealership.

As a result of Japanese competition, American domestic cars have improved exponentially over the past 30 years, which is why they are now better cars, reliability-wise, than German and definitely French and Italian cars. Evidently the Japanese didn't infiltrate much into Europe, so people don't know what they're missing. The number of 300k+ Toyota, Honda, Subarus I've seen is more than I can begin to count. You see that enough, you start to think maybe those are actually better cars....