Featured 2023 Prius to launch plug-in hydrogen electric vehicle. Corolla to offer hydrogen combustion engine

Australia exports black coal and coking coal .. not brown coal although we do use that later in the state of Victoria for power generation. Australia's electricity grid has an average CO2 intensity of 810 g/kWh although in Victoria it's 1000 g/kWh due to use of brown coal.

Japan is looking to Australia for production of clean solar driven hydrogen/ammonia production ... with a couple of pilot projects under development.

 

OK so is that a cheap hydrogen tank ?

 

OK so is that a cheap hydrogen tank ?

 

Nope. The main barrier is that the cost per mile using H2 is 2x - 4x more than the cost per mile for EVs.
No amount of infrastructure subsidies fixes this unless they give away the H2.

Mike

 

It's early days but hydrogen for large trucks make sense probably initially for larger fleets doing long distances. Infrastructure will take timer to build.

On the diesel hybrid front, there are unsubstantiated reports of Toyota hybridising the 2.4, 2.8 and 3.3 litre. Also if they can make them inherently cleaner and less reliant on DPF's & SCR then they are likely to stay cleaner throughout their life, which is a good thing. In Australia our most popular vehicles are diesel utes/trucks like the Tecoma and they are all Euro 5 because our Government think its OK to be 10 years behind.

 

Don't you need to consider the cost of building and operating all the refineries, pipelines and oil tanker ports?
And also consider the incremental electrical grid costs (minor since we need the grid anyway)

Mike

 

Took a closer look at one of the links, and those hydrogen stations only fill 48 to 63 kg of hydrogen in a 24hr period. I'm guessing these numbers are the limit for fast filling. More could be dispensed at rates approaching charging a plug in.

Assuming cars refuel when at half a tank, that is about 22 cars in a day. A charger could do 24 cars within a day, Well not pratically, but that one charger is less than 5% the cost of the hydrogen station.

Hydrogen refueling at home is in no way practical. CNG at home was once available. The units were $1500 back then, and CNG tanks fill to 3500psi max. Low end pressure for a hydrogen tank is 7000psi, with today's hydrogen cars filling to 10k psi. The CNG units needed annual service to replace seals, and that was a couple hundred dollar expense.

So we'll roughly need every gas station to become hydrogen. Even with PHEV hydrogen cars, those hydrogen stations will need to be larger volume than would is now being made for millions of dollars.

Toyota is reforming brown coal in Australia, and shipping the hydrogen to Japan.
Toyota hydrogen cars could be powered by brown coal | Drive

Now they are prototypes and demos, but hydrogen trucks to date have less than 200 mile ranges. The issue is that hydrogen's energy density per volume isn't that great.

The first Mirai holds almost 5kg of hydrogen. Those tanks are around 39 gallons in volume for just the interior. It isn't counting the extra thick tank walls. A long range semi carries 300 gallons of diesel, which is good for around 2100 miles. Switched to hydrogen, it holds about 40kg. Say we triple the 7mpg I used before, that is a 840 mile range.

Ford claimed their diesel hybrid system cost $9000. The costs for hybrid systems and diesel emissions have dropped since then, but a full hybrid system is still going to add $2000 to $3000 to the diesel truck's price. Reducing DPF and SCR use could save some on that equipment, but it still will be needed.

 

Elon is not making a mistake ... he has a business to build ...

 

Yes not exporting the brown coal but converting to Hydrogen first ... probably more cost effective than from solar. Also its not being done by Toyota but a consortium involving Japanese companies. Its a pilot project and the carbon sequestration is not part of the pilot but part of the full scale project apparently.

 

Toyota's is developing hydrogen rig engines at its Kentucky plant that will deliver 'over 300 miles of range at a full load weight of 80,000 pounds' .. Forbes article "Toyota to make Fuel Cell Modules for Hydrogen Big Rigs"

 

I suspect the DPF & SCR improvements will be on both hybrid and non hybrid diesels and the benefit will be upfront cost savings but also reliability and operational savings. Yes Hybrid costs more upfront, but not that much more as Toyota have built all their product around hybrid. In Australia cars like RAV4 are 70% hybrid as people recognise the value of hybrid. Hybrid represents about 28% of Toyota sales globally now.

 

Sandy Munro points out that the design compromises to support multiple drivetrains leads to inefficiencies across the board. It will be an inefficient gas, hybrid, or BEV because of the overhead from each drivetrain.

Bob Wilson

 

A business with the express purpose of moving us to a more sustainable energy system.

FAIL.

 

Done properly, that overhead is quite substantially negative because each half of the drivetrain can be 1/5th to 1/10th as big as if you only have one.

 

Every technology has advantages and disadvantages and its likely there will be multiple. As a society we need to focus on outcomes, rather than technology and let the global car industry compete to produce the best solutions to meet these outcomes. Europe's greatest failure in recent times was diesel, First to pick a technology as 'the solution' and second to sanction and promote it to the extent that it took a foreign country to reveal what the complicit European regulators could not.

Elon is pushing his technology and he will denounce other technologies as 'foolish' because as CEO of Tesla, that is his job, Toyota, in their own way, will push their technology and denounce other technologies. Competition is good.

 

You have a really odd definition of “fail”.

 

Set us back 10-20 years. I know, I know, he thinks he moved us forward, but that's because he has a narrow focus rather than a broad one.

 

Tesla wasn't even a real car manufacturer until less than 9 years ago and was founded in 2003. It is quite miraculous that such a young company could set whoever "US" is back, whatever that means.

Please define us, and what a set back is, or stop with the trolling.

Toyota appears to be building what you claim will sell. A phev fuel cell car. I would be shocked if they even could lease 10,000/year with heavy government subsidies. The US and Japanese governments have been lobbyied and spent billions on a fuel cell test, and so far the cars have failed to live up to any of the hype. In 2009 CARB promised if the us federal government kept the money flowing there would be over 50,000 fcv in the US before 2020, today there are around 11,000 and a lot more money has been spent.

 

Please define us, and what a set back is, or stop with the trolling.[/quote]

The US, and the transition to a 100% sustainable energy system.

You're not paying attention. I never said "will sell". I said it's too late because all the momentum (in infrastructure) is behind BEVs.

 

Narrow?

Really? Narrow? Elon has a narrow focus... Are you kidding?

- BEV
- AI / AV
- robots
- rooftop solar
- home batteries
- commercial backup and grid storage batteries
- boring tunnels
- rockets
- internet satellites
- neural link

I'm sure I missed a couple. Yeah, maybe he could get into something else like Internet payments. Oh, he already did Paypal. Or maybe he should concentrate on Hyperloop!

One of the biggest business criticisms of Elon, besides setting unrealistic shipping dates and missing his own deadlines is that he is all over the place and can't focus.

Like it (or not in your case) Musk has done what all the car companies could not...build desirable cars that use less energy (per mile and lifetime) and can use renewable energy TODAY.

Mike