It's official Toyota is full speed fuel cells for compliance after 2014

Those are the numbers I was looking for to get a comparison. 60mp(kg) at $5/kg is more expensive than 50mpg at $4/gallon. That's already enough to make it difficult to convince people that it's superior technology to a hybrid. Considering all the facts available to us right now, I don't see it selling in the triple digits monthly, if annually. It's like they're trying to tell us 2+2=9000. Again, I really do hope in time I'll be proven wrong, but it's hard to see how this will happen, unless maybe it will save the planet a few hundred years down the road.

 

lol don't give 'em any ideas!

The Freudian slip on the title still cracks me up. I do like the slip someone made earlier in this thread calling it a fool cell. Love it

 

You can't compare the costs of gasoline, where every facet of it's production and use has been fine-tuned by 100 years of world-wide need to the costs of a system still in its infancy. (Not to mention how much of that production of gasoline is subsidized and not accounted for in that $4). Hydrogen test vehicles like these are not intended to compete directly on cost with where we are today; they are a hedge against a potential future where gasoline is no longer plentiful and cheap. We would feel pretty stupid if gas suddenly ballooned to $12/gallon and nobody had been doing the research as to potential alternatives.

 

Elon Musk has been using (coined?) the term for years now. "At Tesla, we call them “Fool Cells”. Gas 2 | Bridging the gap between green heads and gear heads.

 

I saw visible steam coming from a Fuel cell SUV going down the road. None of the gasoline or diesel ones were emitting any steam. So Yes I'd say fuel cells emit more water vapor in real world use.

 

That's more than I said.

I merely stated that the two cannot be directly compared because the issue is far more complex than some simple numbers. Personally, I hate that Tesla is losing so many credits when they are the only manufacturer fully committed to BEV's; they should be credited for the huge amount of range they are offering, and the charging infrastructure they are building.

You have to commercialize ventures like hydrogen vehicles to some extent, however, because no amount of R&D done by the manufacturers can replicate what they will get by having even a relatively small number of these vehicles in the hands of consumers.

You can't remove oil subsidies to an extent that matters because the real subsidies come in the form of foreign policy that is completely driven by protection of our oil supply. And that oil supply is volatile enough both geo-politically and as a finite resource where the tipping point between adequate and inadequate supply vs. demand can appear very suddenly, so holding back on developing alternatives is the worst thing we can do.

 

It's not quite as straight-forward as the numbers you quoted seem to suggest.
When they say a fuel cell car "gets 60 miles per kg" this is roughly equivalent to a gasoline-hybrid sedan getting about 30 mpg, since fuel cells are supposedly "twice" as efficient as an ICE.
I say "twice" because, as I and others here have noted, there are many inefficiencies during warmup, along with the need to 'self-charge' the batteries since the FCV doesn't have a plug. So, overall mpkg won't be quite twice the mpg (but possibly on a long-distance trip it would be).
Anyhow, Toyota says the FCV will resemble the now-defunct Lexus HS 250h. See:
Compare Side-by-Side
Keep in mind the Lexus had less interior and cargo room than a standard Prius. It got 35 mpg; the fact that this FCV gets 60 mpkg sounds about right; it may be slightly larger/roomier/heavier/faster than the HS.
Bottom line is you always have to compare a FCV to an equivalent gasoline-hybrid, since the FCV already has Toyota's HSD, but basically swapped the ICE for a FC. That is why I think it is retarded that they don't include a J1772 plug. I mean seriously, the batteries and inverter are already there, so the cost of a charging port would probably only be a couple hundred bucks, but it would pay for itself by letting you recharge the batteries using grid energy as opposed to $5/kg H2!
The Rule-of-Thumb is that the price of H2 cannot exceed twice the price a gallon of gasoline if one wants to see a reasonable 'payback' on whatever 'premium' they paid for the FCV. The closer the price of a kg of H2 gets to a gallon of gasoline, the faster your 'payback time'.
It's similar to diesel cars now; they cost more than gasoline cars but get 30% more mpg. So, if diesel is priced 30% or higher compared to gasoline, there is no payback; otherwise you again get a faster payback the more diesel drops from a 30% premium down to parity with gasoline.

I would say the knowledge of how to squeeze the most amount of gasoline from a given amount/grade of crude oil is definitely a factor, but beyond that it is just pure physics and no amount of knowledge can change that. Gasoline will thus always track global crude prices. With H2, I think it's been pretty well established that no one in their right mind would use electricity to crack H2 from H2O, so it's a given that H2 will be made from, and track the prices of, natural gas. On face value this would seem to indicate that H2 will be cheaper for the rest of the century since NG is so much more cheaper and abundant that oil. Unfortunately that calculation leaves out the cost of financing and building all those NG->H2 facilities; the oil refineries were of course fully amortized years ago.

I'm not so sure. I think we already have a viable alternative staring us right in the face, and we should be able to grab it if it were not for the obstinacy of certain car companies pushing FCVs. I'm not worried about $12/gasoline, not at all.
Our most promising alternative is direct burn of natural gas instead of gasoline, or as austingreen mentioned, M85 methanol. The next best alternative is PHEVs.

Methanol is a great solution, and something we should have done like 20 years ago. The downside is that it is a refined fuel, so it must be made in dedicated facilities. Well, in the mid-2000s, we certainly showed we can build ethanol facilities in a hurry, and methanol is vastly more scalable than ethanol since we have way more NG than corn. It can be blended into the existing fuel supply, and current cars on the road can be cheaply retrofitted to run it for a couple hundred bucks.
The solution I think is the MOST promising at-home refilling of CNG. Take a look again at these 3 cars from Honda:
Compare Side-by-Side
Hey Honda, it's time to start combining the technology of these 3 cars! Stop following Toyota down the H2 rabbit hole!!
Can you imagine a (non-plug) Honda Accord CNG Hybrid with @ home re-fuel
capability? If Honda put in carbon fiber tanks to give it comparable range to the regular gasoline hybrid, I doubt it would bring the cost to more than the plug-in version.
Can you imagine the cost-per-mile and emissions of such a car? Off the top of my head, I'd say a CNG hybrid would have lower emissions than an EV (charged with grid energy that is 100% natural gas power), and it would be cleaner than EVs in 70-80% of the country for years to come!
Honda, are you listening!!??

 

With the natural average price now at $2.09(what fueleconomy.gov is using for calcs), a CNG Civic will go 60 miles for $4.18.
The outgoing Honda and Mercedes FCEV got 60mi/kg and 52mi/kg. Thew newer models should do better, but not enough the justify the increased costs for cars and fuel.
Compare Fuel Cell Vehicles Side-by-Side

Hydrogen has always been a by-product of oil refining, and is an important reagent for some refinery products. It is also important in other industries. There is a lot of experience in making it. That likely could be improved upon. But the cost isn't in making it for cars. It is in getting it to the stations.

 

Hydrogen has always been a by-product of oil refining, and is an important reagent for some refinery products. It is also important in other industries. There is a lot of experience in making it. That likely could be improved upon. But the cost isn't in making it for cars. It is in getting it to the stations.[/quote]

I believe that Nuclear power stations also make Hydrogen. I've never really considered the dollar savings the primary reason to own a hybrid or energy efficient vehicle, but it is a nice to have feature. I like the technology first. If one is considering a hybrid or electric for the money savings, I think that is a bad idea. The Tesla for example is as cool as it gets, but with the price tag, it is still more expensive to drive than my oil burning, gas guzzling 4 cylinder honda civic with 200,000 miles.

 

Steam is invisible. If you can see it, then it has cooled to become 'condensation', like clouds or fog. The phase difference, and invisibility of one phase, makes it impossible to visually compare the quantity.

When functioning normally, gasoline and diesel engines must emit water. This is required by basic physics and chemistry, Conservation of Matter.

 

So, Toyota's FCV is now getting the same treatment or criticisms as the original Prius, but this time from Prius owners? Nice!
This time, Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai are also on board with FC.

 

Were there cries of "who will build the gasoline stations" for the original Prius?

 

No, but Henry Ford heard that same question when his original engines were gonna run on straight ethanol...not gasoline.

 

Did he get the government to spend taxpayer money to build ethanol stations back then? Did he go ahead and build ethanol engines despite their being few if any, stations for them?

FCEV's aren't getting the same criticisms as the original Prius did. Some may seem similar, but differ on scale. The Prius was pricy. Four grand more than the equivalent gas car meant giving the purchase of one some hard thought. The $40k difference of the FCEV flat out makes it a non-option. The big one against hydrogen is the refueling infrastructure, though.

 

They do, during the meltdown phase when the fuel rod claddings start to overheat. This is the source of the hydrogen that later blew the lids off the Fukushima plants three years ago.

This is not a good way to make hydrogen.