Featured Drove the Mirai

There is a huge difference between pressurizing the fuel delivery circuit to the engine to under a 100psi, and the entire tank at 10,000psi.

Toyota built the Mirai to Japanese regulations, and didn't want to pay extra for the few getting sold in the US. If Hyundai and Honda didn't have a problem reducing the shock risk to first responders, there is no technical reason Toyota couldn't either.

 

Sounds like the new Toyota hates its prospective alternate fuel vehicle owners as it bad mouths EVs. I'll continue to bad mouth Toyota and hope they bleed billions until they clean up their act.

 

Go right ahead, but I will continue to support Toyota, and so will the majority of Toyota owners.

 

Eventually, most will stop waiting on fantasies to become reality and ignore the corporate fodder that feeds those fantasies about H2. The sooner the better.

 

Sorry to say, but H2 is here to stay, US Government wants it and will support it.......

 

That is some support it in the US government. Others also support pushing the ethanol blend in gasoline beyond what is safe for cars on the road.

 

Do people really like their tax money going to deadends? Hmm, maybe we aren't the smartest beings out there. Sorry to say that H2 is NOT here to stay. Too small of a molecule to keep track of. You know, what with physics and all. Hard to keep that stuff from leaking and cooled and pressurized and whatnot.

 

Actually, I am all for tax money being spent on research or to assist in a new technology get a foothold.
Some of these endeavors will wind up being dead ends (e.g. Solyndra), some will be successful (e.g. Tesla).

What I am opposed to is taxpayer money being used as such a large percentage and overall cost of infrastructure costs for so few vehicles.

Let the army continue testing, get some testing done in very small geographical areas, and don't give such huge bonus credits for a technology that is little more efficient than the new Prius Eco.

 

Talk about tunnel vision. Hydrogen infrastructure will be used by all vehicles, no matter the brand. It'll used for other markets as well, not just for transportation.

If that's your position, why aren't you oppose to plugin incentive?

 

a company can't afford to build $116,000 VEHICLES & sell all their VEHICLES at ½ price (estimated present day cost), without quickly going out of business. Even their government sponsored subsidies would cause their government to go broke quicker. Even if there was an endless supply of free money to make all VEHICLES hydrogen, 85% of people cannot afford a $58,000 vehicle. Couple that nonsense with hydrogen, the most expensive fuel, being created via natural gas & /or Australian coal, the expensive vehicle & it's most expensive fuel, does nothing to try to reduce co2. Therefore, saying all VEHICLES will use hydrogen is a huge falsity - baring some miraculous breakthrough in physics. The mystery is why anyone would desire to promulgate such a falsity.
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That's why there are stages in the roll out strategy.

The initial early adopter model needs to be limited, not only to control cost but also quality.

Gen2 roll out will be different as we saw with Prius. Criticizing why Toyota didn't produce millions of Gen1 Prius will make you look like a fool. Talk about EV blind.

 

The vehicle prices for a H2 FCEV need to come down before we can play with the possibility of all vehicles using hydrogen. But the infrastructure is needed before then, but building it isn't a guarantee that people will buy the cars.

Offering H2 ICE/hybrids or bifuel ones would seem like a reasonable way of supporting the required infrastructure, but I have heard of no plans that such will be done. With the free fuel a H2FCEV gets, there would be more potential customers for the ICE model. Get them hooked, and they'll demand more stations. The stations may need less tax payer funds to build and run, with more cars needing them on the road. Then, when the fuel cell prices drop, these people will switch from the ICE.

Or does an ICE on hydrogen just highlight the deficiencies of hydrogen more?

What other markets will there be for hydrogen?
Home power? Why pump a gas through a pipeline network when there is cable already in place? Cable that is cheaper to install and maintain, and is safer. A central fuel cell power plant near where the hydrogen is made is much easier to do than thousands of miles of pipe and thousands of little fuel cells. Power for business and industry have all the same issues.

The non-power related markets for hydrogen are already being supplied, and the major users locate near the source.

 

There is a reason for that. Combustion engine has tailpipe emission and we don't want to go that route.

The best combustion engine efficiency is around 40%. Fuel cell stack is at 60%. H2 tank space would require FC stack to get 300+ miles range in a car (not SUV).

H2 can be used for electricity as well as heating. This is the only way to go 100% renewable. Natural gas cooking and house heating will remain fossil unless we have hydrogen that plays the role of both electricity grid and natural gas.

Natural gas pipe can be upgraded to handle hydrogen and every home can go off-grid from electricity without those ugly wires. Just a thought, it will be interesting how things turn out.

It may turn out that every home would produce their own hydrogen from solar panels and there won't be any pipe into the house.

Another possibility is to drive a FCV to H2 station, come home and "top off" the house.

 

But a hydrogen ICE will be half the price of the the FCEV at the most for some time. If you want to grow hydrogen infrastructure, you want more than the wealthier to benefit from it.

As I pointed out elsewhere, methane, natural gas, can be made renewably.

Hydrogen contains less energy than natural gas at ambient pressure. It will be extremely poor for cooking and heating. Without renewable methane, there are efficient electric options; geothermal heat pumps and induction range tops. Plus, both are available today.

[/quote]Natural gas pipe can be upgraded to handle hydrogen and every home can go off-grid from electricity without those ugly wires. Just a thought, it will be interesting how things turn out.

 

Invisible flame for either of those purposes would not be good to say the least. LOL!

 

NG ICE makes more sense and we know how it went.

Why not convert electricity to LNG and combust it? It'll solve the refueling speed issue. But then you add tailpipe emission, cost and inefficiency.

Which is why hydrogen fuel cell that solves both problems is a better choice.

That's why electric cook-tops have lights indicating the surface is hot. I don't see that being an obstacle.

 

Except a FCEV is a very expensive purchase now, and so are the stations. H2ICEs could mean more cars on the road that need hydrogen. Higher hydrogen demand equals more business for hydrogen stations, and the quicker they can drop the amount of government subsidy they need.

If you aren't going to worry too much amount the emissions from making the non-renewable hydrogen at this stage, then you shouldn't worry about the tailpipe emissions of a H2ICE at this point. They are only needed until the fuel cells and tanks get down in price.

A flame can extend above the cook top, and it can ignite materials faster than an electric range top.

We can mix something into methanol to make its flame visible, but that can't be done with hydrogen for the same reason we can't add an odorant; the fuel cell won't tolerate it.

 

then you ARE for more wind & solar.
or were we supposed to focus on the exact word of "tailpipe" emission as the only important emission as opposed to the source fuel emissions of hydrogen Reformation.
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I am not opposed to plugin incentives. Neither am I opposed to similar FCV incentives, in the states they are available in. Federal incentives for the purchase of FCVs should be available once FCVs are available in most states.

The incentives for plugin chargers in miniscule compared to the taxpayer money going towards hydrogen. Added up, all the incentives towards plugin infrastructure is still miniscule compared to the way California taxpayers are being #&@#%.

 

It highlights the deficiencies. BMW did this with a 7 series hyrogen vehicle, the govenator had his hydrogen hummer.

Fuel and fuel tank cost a lot more than cng or lng. CNG and Lng aren't exactly doing great outside of iran (number one country for it). Hydrogen needs larger more expensive tanks for the same range, and refueling infrastructure is much more expensive.

Methanol could work for both, but a methanol fcv would not be much more efficient than a flex fuel methanol hybrid vehicle if we take the loss at the reformer has an 80% effiency the mirai would get 67x.8 = 53 mpge. A flex fuel prius gen IV would likely get 52 mpge, which leaves not much reason to go the reformer and fuel cell route unless fuel cell cost drops bellow the cost of an engine. I'm sure this is one reason the fuel cell advocates no longer want to go methanol. Toyota had a prototype fcv using methanol also.