Featured Toyota Chasing Tesla Styling With 2nd Generation 2021 Mirai Fuel Cell Vehicle

maybe throw in ing too, plenty of room under that hood

 

.... problem is, that load of crock was shoveled onto the public over ½ decade ago & costs still hasn't even begun to start dropping. But the lobby will still be pushing their narrative for at least another decade. Always a bridesmaid never a bride. It's the same story since the 1970s. Just 10 more years.
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It's not a load of crock, it's the truth and costs haven't come down because we haven't built anything. And they won't come down unless we do.

 

Where do you put the battery for that in a car or even an SUV with the hydrogen tanks. The Clarity FCEV, without plug, has less trunk space and than the PHEV version and lost the folding rear seats.

I agree FCEVs need a plug in order to have a chance, but hydrogen tanks are large, bulky things, and it sounds like the new Mirai put in larger ones to increase the range. It could work with Nissan's FCEVs, as they are using the battery pack from the Leaf, but the fuel cell also runs off ethanol, not hydrogen.

We haven't built anyone, because no one wants hydrogen. Gas and oil companies mostly paid for pipelines themselves because they had customers demanding their products at the end of the line.

Who is paying for hydrogen infrastructure in Japan? In California? Europe?

No company is going to risk investing in hydrogen infrastructure on their own until there are customers, and no one is going to buy a hydrogen car until there is fuel available. Which means heavy subsidies from tax payers will be needed.

 

Oh, I certainly agree. I was just noting the reasons behind the eye-popping H2 prices (less transporting H2, more economy of scale issues).

To be fair, if BEVs didn't exist, I would definitely be supporting FCVs as they are still better for the environment than standard gassers.

However, BEV's do exist and are superior to FCVs in almost every way. The areas where they are inferior, its still likely cheaper to solve the problem on the BEV side than switch to FCVs.

 

We seem to find room for a bulky gas tank, a bulky IC engine and a bulky exhaust in PHEVs now. An H2 tank isn't that large and is lighter than those, and the fuel cell is the size of a shoe box.

BEVs are heavy and expensive, primarily because the batteries use are lousy devices for storing energy.

Battery = 200Wh/kg + $200/kWh
FC = 1000Wh/kg + $50/kWh
ICE + gas tank = 1000Wh/kg + $50/kWh

Which of these is different than the other?

If we ever get decent batteries, this could change. But that's like fusion power - just a few years away, and always has been.

 

The future is with FCEV. It's just going to take a while to build the infrastructure. BEVs are just a stop gap, one step removed from the ICE hybrid. Personally, I would like to see a compressed natural gas or propane PHEV.

 

It's unlikely that we will see batteries make any quantum leap in power storage density, in my opinion. There may be incremental improvements, but in the end I think we will look back at the BEV age in the same way we look at the age of the Model T today.

 

We can press metal into all kinds of odd shape so that they can conform to every cubic centimeter to get the most space required. 10,000 PSI tanks? Not so much. High pressure tank manufacturers pretty much can shape them either like a donut or a kielbasa.

how is that, other than experiments, fusion has been a non-starter since the notion was dreamed up. Batteries? Continual chemistry changes & advancements Lead .... glass mat .... Nicad .... nickel metal hydride ... & continual refinements with lithium chemistries, & several others about to go into production. Each rev gets lighter per kwh, more durable, faster charging, & iirc, Toyota is keeping close to the vest - a production that's supposed to be even better. All that's a far cry from fusion - which has pretty much remained as practical as fuel cells in a car.

that's what the lobby told us in the 1970's, that it would happen "in just 10 years" ... we'll have hydrogen cars all over the landscape. Then the 80s rolled around & again they said "in just 10 more years". 1990's? Same repeat promise. Then the 2000's? yep - you guessed it. The decade of the 20 teens? They are almost up. Just 2 months to go, & we can start the gullibility clock all over.
"get your wallet out - more tax dollars please" ... after all - because we are really really close, this time. My dad is almost 100. If I have the same longevity - I only have to hear this "10yrs" claptrap, at most, another 4x.
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it already has a power dense, storage density poor battery,

given battery storage densities these days I have no doubt 4x the storage could fit into the same space as the existing battery with some minor concessions.

given I can buy a 2016 Mirai off the auction block for $5000
if it plugged in and was tax exempt I might buy one as a project.
Only a pipe dream

 

The Clarity FCEV loses 3.7 cubic feet of trunk space in comparison to the PHEV model. The hydrogen tank also extends into the space for the PHEV battery.



A shorter plug in range means a smaller battery, but it will still need to sacrifice space or tank size for it.

The Clarity FCEV has a curb weight of 4134lbs, seats 5 with 101.5cu.ft. of cabin space, and 11.8cu.ft. of trunk. Range on 5.46kg of hydrogen is 360 miles. It is lease only for $379/month.

The Mirai is 4075lbs. Seats 4 with just 85.7cu.ft. cabin and 12.8 trunk space. It goes 312 miles on a tank, which IIRC is just under 5kg. The lease $389/month, and Toyota doesn't publish the MSRP on their site. The internet says $58,500.

The Model 3LR is 4072lbs. Seats 5. The cabin space is 97cu.ft., and cargo space is 15cu.ft. Range is 310 miles. The price is $47,990.

The hydrogen FCEVs available now use a battery about the size of one used in a hybrid. So good for a mile or two on their own, maybe three. Floride ion batteries have about 3x the capacity of Li-ion, but need 100C operating temperatures. So I think we won't be seeing that type of improvement soon.

Saying we did, such a battery wouldn't be limited to FCEVs. It would also be going into PHEVs and BEVs, and getting ranges far beyond the FCEV's 12ish miles.

Now, if the FCEV followed Nissan's approach, it could have a plug in range of 50 to 80 miles with current technology. Nissan uses a lower output fuel cell stack, perhaps around a tenth of what Toyota and Honda use. It 'trickle' charges a larger battery that runs the car. Concepts and test vehicles literally used the same pack from a gen1 Leaf. They use ethanol instead of hydrogen, so the pack might need to be pared down for hydrogen tanks, but plug in range would still exceed the Prime.

 

I think it'll be the opposite. There is widespread research, investment and development of battery technology that's increasing energy density and dropping price:

From: The growth of lithium-ion battery power - Daily chart

That's because good/cheap battery technology is useful in a whole range of products beyond BEVs, such as phones, computers, smart devices, etc. Things like Tesla and their gigafactory are helping to push costs down, but if not one BEV existed, there would still be significant investment in battery technology.

And this is with current battery technologies. Future ones, such as solid state, could increase energy density and/or reduce cost even more.

Hydrogen has two big advantages:
(1) It can refuel faster and,
(2) Its much higher energy density

However, in practice its much harder to transport, store and fill a gas energy storage medium than a liquid or solid one in a vehicle. This is why FCVs both currently cost more upfront and to refill.

In contrast, there are already 4 million BEVs on the road globally:


Batteries are getting cheaper and more and more companies are releasing BEVs. Its pretty clear where the future of alternative vehicles is heading and its not towards FCVs.

 

...or adopt the nicer looking design into the Prius line.

 

I don't believe it is a chicken and egg situation where there are few fuel cell car sales because there are few stations. There are lots of fuel cell refilling stations in Germany, spread out across the country, but car sales are still low.

Fuel cell refilling stations are very expensive to build and maintain--even the cheapest are in the millions. They are much more complicated than a gasoline station with compressors and coolers (the hydrogen heats up when you fill a car, so must first be cooled). Special materials must be used to avoid hydrogen embrittlement and much of it must be replaced after a number of years. The same is true with the car--every fuel cell car has a 'do not fill this car after this date' label on the inside of its gas cap cover (you can see this on youtube videos showing cars getting filled).

And most of the present stations can only hold 100kg or less of fuel, which means about 20 Mirai fill ups. That's it for the day. So they have to charge quite a lot for the fuel to even hope to make up for the cost and maintenance expenses of the station. I really don't see how they can ever make money without lots of tax benefits, which is really the only reason they are getting built now.

 

That's the Sakichi battery fallacy, named after Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, who was convinced there would be this quantum leap in battery technology, and in 1925 offered a prize of 1 million dollars for a breakthrough battery. It seems like Toyota has searched for this Sakichi battery ever since.

Tesla, on the other hand, put out a statement when they were first formed that they are counting on slow, but steady improvements in battery technology--6 to 8% a year. It seems low but it is compounding, so over the years you end up with large improvements. And as noonm shows above, the battery technology improvements have been following this plan.

 

Battery-electric cars have been around since the earliest automobiles, but it took them ~100 years to start becoming fashionable again.

Maybe fuel cell cars just need another 40-50 years on the back burner. If you look at it as ‘plan c’ what’s so bad about it?

Subsidies have enabled public participation in what would otherwise be a lab & track development project. That’s still valuable, if indirect.

 

Where to house a PHEV-size battery and the hydrogen FCEV paraphernalia in a sedan: thinking out of the (3)-box - put all these things into a truck or an SUV/CUV, which should help with the topology and the customer demand as well. Oh, and while we are at it, make those vehicles not weirder in appearance than absolutely necessary.

FCEV with a plug (especially if they succeed in developing a practical fuel-agnostic SOFC): that would be a sure way to do away with ICE once and forever. As for hydrogen fuel cells, they may find a better application in urban public transportation and especially aviation, so wouldn't be a waste of effort either.

 

I don't disagree. I am not sure if the progress is 6- to 8-percent per year, but I don't think the progress will continue forever. ICE cars followed the same pattern, I think. The laws of thermodynamics and physics are the governing factor, not some prophetic soothsaying, or adaptation of technology at an assumed rate (which at 7 percent increase each year, would result in doubling today's efficiency in just over 11 years -- not likely).

Just out of curiosity, what has been the increase in efficiency in batteries over the life of Tesla, year by year? If a 7-percent constant were applied, Tesla cars of exactly the same model should be nearly 3 times as efficient today.

 

Public buses are absolutely ripe for reinvention. I rode one yesterday in Boston MA and couldn’t believe how bad it was.

It was some hybrid-electric whizbang thing that converted to grid-electric for part of the route via catenary wire.

The ride was crap. Intense whirrrrring and grinding noises flooding the cabin at all times despite ordinary progress on the roadways. Ridiculous floorplan, tough to get around in it, few seats, lots of steps up and down. All the right intentions boiled down into all the right technologies all applied so poorly you wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

 

That's because of regulations for compressed gas fuel tanks on road vehicles. It is also an issue with CNG tanks, though they tend to have longer lifetimes than hydrogen.

Fuel cells may replace ICE's as range extenders. I just think the physics of hydrogen tanks means they'll be using another fuel.

There is more wasted space on a SUV. Consumers are going to be comparing these to ICE PHEVs that do a better job of not losing space though.

SOFC is the way to go, and is what Nissan is using.

Hydrogen might work with grid energy storage.

The federal tax credit law was written with the expectation of 8% improvement per year, and it has averaged out a little. The improvement isn't all into the operation specs of batteries, but also includes cost reductions.