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Featured Toyota Technical Chief says People are Finally Seeing the Reality about Hydrogen EVs

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by drash, Oct 28, 2023.

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  1. drash

    drash Senior Member

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    Toyota Admits Mirai Has “Not Been Successful,” Will Focus On Hydrogen Commercial Vehicles | Carscoops

    CarScoops has published an article about Toyota's lack of success selling hydrogen powered EVs. Toyota will refocus its hydrogen efforts to commercial vehicles. They note the lack of hydrogen filling stations as the main reason. Toyota Technical Chief Hiroki Nakajima says building the hydrogen highway for commercial vehicles is much easier because commercial vehicles go long distances from point a to b (i.e. the stations don't rely on occasional local travel based fill ups).

    Well that and commercial vehicles would create a much bigger demand for hydrogen than the paltry 2 or 3 kg fill ups they ask investors to pony up $1M for a hydrogen gas station. The industry doesn't even know if they'll end up using liquid or compressed gas hydrogen filling stations. Darn shame because the Mirai is a pretty good car and actually sold more vehicles in the first 9 months of 2023 than each of the 2 years previously.
     
  2. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Makes sense.

    For cars, the Mirai has a really nice interior (and really convincing SofTex). But aside from that, the performance is ho-hum and refuelling cost is the same as a regular car, despite being more efficient. So in that case, why would someone buy a Mirai over an ES300h other than "oh cool, I'm driving a H2 car".
     
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  3. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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  4. john1701a

    john1701a Prius Guru

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    Nothing new. We always knew the bulk of the investment would be focused on industrial & commercial use anyway. Mirai was a handy development/refinement platform that doubled as a component share with plug-in vehicles.
     
  5. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    Toyota's leadership;
    Well yeah - Toyo expected everybody else & their grandmother to build expensive refueling stations for their cars at a cost (not just for the stations but) for fuel that's WAY more expensive than anyone wants to pay - fuel that is primarily reformed from fossil fuels to add insult to injury. At least electric car owners can produce their own fuel at home via solar panels.
    If fool cels were such a grand / affordable idea - Toyo would have built the stations themselves Ah- lah Tesla & supercharger stalls.
    The real question is why Toyota didn't see the writing on the wall years sooner. Fossil fuels to reform hydrogen continues to go up & up which means that the even more expensive hydrogen would be even WAY more expensive.
    .
     
  6. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    It would of been a huge hit if they had designed a home appliance that could make hydrogen out of your waste water... But that would probably use just as much electricity as an EV charger and lead to some pretty impressive house fires while they got the bugs worked out.
     
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  7. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    "people are finally seeing the reality..." toyota speak for, "carb has finally cut off our funding"
     
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  8. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    PEM fuel cells need really pure hydrogen to avoid being poisoned. Meanwhile, Honda told Civic CNG owners to stop using home filling units cause the natural gas to homes wasn't clean enough for the car's fuel system and corroding it.
     
  9. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Only to be replaced by a multi-billion dollar, hydrogen fuel station 'initiative' by the Federal government.

    Source: Alternative Fuels Data Center: Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure Development

    The availability of stations providing reasonably priced hydrogen in places where vehicles will be deployed remains a key challenge to the adoption of this technology. To address this challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched H2USA—a public-private collaboration with federal agencies, automakers, hydrogen providers, fuel cell developers, national laboratories, and additional stakeholders. H2USA is focused on advancing hydrogen infrastructure to support more transportation energy options for U.S. consumers.

    Source_2: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/13/biden-harris-administration-announces-regional-clean-hydrogen-hubs-to-drive-clean-manufacturing-and-jobs/

    . . . President Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm are announcing seven regional clean hydrogen hubs that were selected to receive $7 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding to accelerate the domestic market for low-cost, clean hydrogen.

    So a 'hydrogen hub' only costs $1 billion. Google searching for more details made me hate my eyes.

    Bob Wilson
     
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  10. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    "Clean hydrogen can reduce emissions in many sectors of the economy and is especially important for hard-to-decarbonize sectors and industrial processes, such as heavy-duty transportation and chemical, steel, and cement manufacturing." - the White House link above

    Not sure about the transportation, but we do need clean hydrogen for industrial and agricultural purposes.

    As for the OP, Toyota has just come to the same conclusion as VW, Mercedes, and others have years ago.
     
  11. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    (sigh) i guess that's one more group that'll be beholdin' to fund the reelection war chest. the oldest profession.
    .
     
  12. PriusCamper

    PriusCamper Senior Member

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    Yeah... The first ICE was invented in 1807... But it took a hundred years to mass produce them for cars. I suspect making hydrogen in your own home as part of a living machine that purifies your wastewater in a way that doesn't waste energy, but actually conserves energy is still a couple decades away.
     
  13. John321

    John321 Senior Member

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  14. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    I encourage any and all hydrogen advocates to buy hydrogen vehicles and technology:

    “There's no education in the second kick of the mule,” McConnell said, in one of several interviews that week invoking the phrase. He had just negotiated a political surrender after a 16-day federal shutdown left Republicans battered.

    Bob Wilson
     
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  15. John321

    John321 Senior Member

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    That is a wonderful quote and it makes you point well.

    You guys may be right about Hydrogen.

    I believe life and our universe has may wonderful surprises left for us to find - I'm anxious to see what the future holds and what wonderful discoveries yet await us.
     
  16. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Interesting that there is a potential natural source. It doesn't address the issue of how to ship it around to were it is needed. Much of the high price for hydrogen at the pump in California is in the shipping, compressing, chilling, and storing of it.
     
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  17. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    Devil is in the details
     
  18. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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  19. drash

    drash Senior Member

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    The cheap money was always in generation of hydrogen and it got all the initial investment. Most of that hydrogen was locally generated and used, but as @Trollbait said no one spent much time (or money) in getting hydrogen to where the general public can get to it, cheaply and safely. CSD costs for hydrogen compressed gas is on the order of $2 per kg in 2018, although I’m pretty sure inflation has kicked that up. So you make a heart stopping investment to make a compressed hydrogen refueling station only to have Toyota turn around and say their cars need liquid hydrogen and not compressed hydrogen. :confused: The industry needs to reset to see what commercial vehicles would need in type, volume and location, then have passenger vehicles take advantage of economy of scale. This was a classic case of cart before the horse.
     
  20. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Moving hydrogen around is tricky enough that current research is into doing so with carrier compounds. You make, or mine in this case, the hydrogen, then convert it into ammonia or methanol, ship it, and then strip the hydrogen off the compound for use.