Toyota Used Mirai's, for Free?

Toyota uses a PEM type cell, so not directly. "due to their low operating temperature, they cannot directly use hydrocarbon fuels, such as natural gas, liquefied natural gas, or ethanol. These fuels must be converted to hydrogen in a fuel reformer to be able to be used by a PEM fuel cell." - Fuel Cell Basics | Department of Energy

It will need a reformer, which will reduce the car's overall efficiency. As is, CNG will still poison a PEM fuel cell. Sulfur is bad for them, and the odorant in natural gas is a sulfur compound.

 

Use them to house the homeless, maybe.

 

They have the *potential* to be the perfect green car. We are not currently organized for it, but I can respect their effort. If Toyota sent out a diktat to every dealer ordering them to install a public 24 / 7 / 365 Hydrogen filling station, these cars would become practical overnight.

 

Never heard that one before!

 

Maybe the Mirai has a little cold fusion reactor for range extender.

 

Nah, there's already the Ford Fusion...

 

I think they are under the mistaken impression Toyota can command the dealers. At least some of the US regional distributors are not owned by Toyota.

 

I wanted to emphasize that it would be a harsh and unpopular command.

 

Regarding bankrupting initial costs, I had in mind that a semi trailer would come in from corporate and have a readi-made pump on a stand. They would stand it up, fill it up, and leave it for the dealer to keep up and running. If no one ever used it, operating costs would be quite modest.

You have been here long enough that I expect you can recall the clouds of poisonous disinformation that were blown around the early model Priuses. The cars were radically different from anything on the road at that time and there was question (some of it honest even) about whether Americans would stand for something so new, so foreign, and so different.

It's going on twenty years now and it seems that we *can* shift over to something technically superior when conditions are right, like for example if we can buy fuel for it. I might mention that old man Henry Ford was also an aviation enthusiast. He tried going up in a plane and discovered that while in the air you can travel at tremendous speeds, but you have no idea where you are, and that this was a problem for the industry.

The next day he had sent telegrams to every Ford dealership in the US, instructing them to write the name of their town on the roof in big white letters. It was not a total or a perfect solution, but he did his bit to use his resources to promote something new and potentially valuable. And you know what? Thanks to him, and a thousand others like him, today we have something better.

This would be a bold way to force the issue. If it failed, and it might, it would fail hard enough that all us grumpy old greenies would at least shut up about it for a decade or two, and then you at least wouldn't have to hear us whine about it.

 

You seem unfamiliar with what it takes to fill a hydrogen car up as quickly as one with liquid fuel. The basic concept is close to how pneumatic tools are operated. The tools are directly driven by a compressor, as it wouldn't provide enough air directly. Instead, the compressor fills up a tank with enough air to provide a pressure that can drive the tools. When the pressure drops too low to drive them, you have to sit and wait for it to build back up.

A hydrogen station works the same way. A compressor fills up a tank to over the 10k psi of the cars' tanks, and the dispenser fills the car from that tank. Unlike air, hydrogen is flammable, explosive, and sensitive to heat. For fast fill times, that tank needs to be chilled down to -40 degrees. Warmer is fine if longer fill times are acceptable; the -40 means 3 minutes, but up to 15 minutes is possible for 5 kg.

So you need space for the dispenser, compressor, pressure tank, and refrigeration equipment, plus the supply tank of hydrogen. The dealer from which I got my Prius had very little parking. Many around here have limited space. Before considering hydrogen's flammable nature, or the cost of running the refrigeration, dealerships will balk at the loss of space for all that equipment.

Now, when there was problems with the local hydrogen stations, Toyota did have filler trucks at dealers for the Mirai. So these do exist. Those systems only filled up to 5000psi though. So FCEVs with 10k psi tanks would only fill up two thirds of the way at best.

 

The world is vast, and my knowledge small...

So, nothing any sane person would use for fuel?

There was an unspoken assumption in my first post, This seems like a good place to spell it out properly. I am assuming that Toyota corporate would be hard*CENSORED* enough to insist it be done, but that they would not be *CENSORED* headed enough to drive dealers out of business just because *CENSORED* you, that's why.

I had assumed that a company with the chops to market a world class product line would be willing to work cooperatively with their dealers, and if that means mounting the stations across the street, or at an existing gas station, or at a highway rest stop, they would.

The goal here is not to destroy your business, but to take a gamble on expanding it. Hydrogen, done well, might well be the ultimate carbon neutral green fuel. It can be made out of water and electricity, and the main combustion byproduct is water.

What I see here is that there is room for improvement, but no one uses the technology so there is no incentive to do the work to improve the technology. There are around 1,500 Toyota dealers in the US, if you put out ~ 30 H stations per state, people like me might start using it, which would create incentive to improve it, which would leave the chicken & the egg problem lying in the past...

 

They cannot do that because of their binding contracts privately owned distributors.

 

OK, OK, I'll just go back to making my one-man sized model of the Hindenburg...

 

The stance for the longest time of Toyota and other car companies working on hydrogen cars has been that they are car companies, not energy companies, and they wanted nothing to do with the fuel side of hydrogen. Only recently, as in after the release of the Mirai, did the Japanese car companies start helping out with funding the infrastructure in their home country. The portable refueling stations only happened in California when the state funded stations were out of service for an extended period.

They aren't willing to risk their own capital like Tesla did with the Supercharger network. They want someone else, most likely the taxpayer, to pay for it.

If Toyota did want to get dealers in the US to host refueling sites, there are issues with the contracts, and even then, they likely couldn't do anything for the Southeast and Gulf states. That area is run by independent distributers. Primes need to be special ordered there, and the Prius was hard to get back in the day. But really, dealers should welcome fuel cars. they have more maintenance requirements than BEVs.

The technology is pretty well established for compressed gas. The fact is that moving high pressure gases around will always require more resources in equipment, energy, and cash than for liquids.

Then there is the issue that the standards might change. The original Honda Clarity had 5000psi tanks. FCEVs in the US now have 10k psi ones. Upgrading the old stations still around costed millions. Japan is starting to move to tanks over 12k psi. One group developed a fast filling method that prefilled the tank with water first. If something like that of hydride storage is adopted, it will be another huge cost to switch.

 

Don’t forget the Y’s optional (or is it mandated) blow off roof. That’s a strong selling point!

 

2016/2017 Mirais at the end of lease can be purchased for $3000

If shipping were $0 I would buy one and do a drivetrain swap

Ah well

 

But at least it would be easier to fix than putting diesel in a gas car!!

 

And people are critical of the depreciation on a BEV.