Luxury brands place fuel cell bets

Huh?
I belive if the US gave $100,000/fcv more between now and 2021, World wide production of fcv would go up only about 20,000 units. Nothing. They would shift between europe and Japan to the US. How would that help the worlds ghg? You do know Toyota's plan in Japan is to make hydrogen in australia from coal and ship it. As stated many times fcv incentives are much higher than plug-in incentives.

In Japan 3 million yen/fcv in the area most likely to lease them, plus 4 billion yen for fueling infrastructure. That works out to $60,000 per likely car. If that only gets you to production of 3000/year, how would more money from the US for commercialization help? US does spend over $100M/year on hydrogen and fcv R&D. California gives 9zev credits plus $5000 worth about $23,000/fcv plus $20M/year on fueling on top of what the DOE spends on fueling. A PHEV in california gets $9000 in federal and california incentives with no zev credits. This is a lot, but why make it smaller to make the fuel cell incentives even larger. How can $9000 be too much, but $23,000 need $8000 more in federal and more than $20M/year in state fueling give aways. I don't know how you can make the numbers add up to think per unit ghg or oil or pollution or tech breakthroughs to make it seem like hydrogen should get more more more.

I think its just chearleading. Please look at the numbers.

 

More Electric Car Drivers Are Using Solar Power Instead of Gasoline
The pathetically sad thing is, no matter how many times obvious facts are brought up, no matter how many times links are provided, the same repetitive question continually get asked, "how do you know where most plugins are?"
What is it - a hope that the dozens of links will have diaappeared? FC'rs just happen to Keep forgetting? It's not like everyone hasn't seen this a dozen times before. But there you go - If the 'Elon Musk' haha supposedly clever comment works for you - with it lack of reality /honesty, glad that's working for you. I expect nothing less from those who needs to skew FuelCell reality.
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Then why are you saying fcv need more subsidies than it cost to buy a camry hybrid outright, the fcv incentives for each vehicle in Japan are about what it would cost to buy a chevy volt and a nissan leaf (bottom of the line unsubsidized)?

Let's at least get to a demo phase of 5000 vehicles before pretending they need a ton more money.

 

Kaizen is a strong driving force for a Japanes company like Toyota.
They do it, invest so many hours of thinking, designing, playing around with various ideas to develop a deeper understanding about what Hydrogen and the Fuelcell can be in the future, how to get experience with the technology the full circle from ideas, research and development to every single step in the productions process in building a car like the Mirai.

They are building it not because they are sure it will succeed, they are building it because it is a stepstone to the future, what ever it might be.

Electricity has a major disadvantage: It must be generated in the same area as it is consumed. When all verhicles in Japan would be pure electric cars, where should the electricity come from, would that mean more nuclear powerplants in Japan?
Hydrogen (or components to generate it from like Methane or Natural Gas) on the other side can be stored, compressed and also be transported in the near future around the globe with ships. In Germany Hydrogen is a by-product in many chemical processes, it might be the case that German companies like Linde produce more Hydrogen than it can currently sell.

See the whole picture, have a vision for the future, gather insight about what you know and what you can achieve. Enhance your knowledge and your wisdom every day (kaizen) and then deside: Could Hydrogen be a viable and reasonable source for privat and public transport.

Best regards,
Pale Fox

 

This chart does nothing for me, it mostly points out that most Americans have yet to buy into EVs and that FCV do have a strong possibility of overtaking sales of EVs.

 

so - as I posted above - it doesn't matter how many times this dishonesty is regurgitated, & refuted, living a lie still works for you? That's really hard to reconcile.
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Until 2020 Toyota and Honda say they will produce at most 4500 fcv for the world wide market, they are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to get to that production rate. The rest of the vendors will not produce many more, with only Mercedes and Hyundai commited to cars before then, lets say 2000/year. That is 6500 fcv/year world wide once they ramp up. Tesla and Nissan produce more than this each month and have new cars in thier stable to greatly accelerate sales (model X, III, gen II leaf). How do FCV overtake Plug-ins in the next decade. There are over 1 Million plug-ins as of today, and there is no way all the fuel cell makers will get to today's level in the next decade. No one expects that there will be infrastructure let alone cars in 2025.

I think your question to hill was different though. No the majority of plug-ins don't run on solar. Over 30% of plug-in owners though have solar or wind. If you look at where the vehicles sell, the sales weighted average runs much much cleaner than the national grid. If you look at 2015 numbers even not counting all the renewables plug-in owners build or buy, sales wweighted average produces much lower ghg than hybrids. YMMV. Georgia was the second biggest seller, and if owners didn't build solar or buy wind they were higher in ghg. Still as a whole it is much lower. How about fcv? In Japan, you guessed it the plan is to use australian coal to produce the hydrogen. Now if tax payers pay more then perhaps the hydrogen will get made from solar or wind, but this is much more expensive. Governments are already funding hydrogen fueling to the tune of $100M/year.

 

here in California we're roughly 300 miles from Hoover dam's power generation, where we get a good amount of power. If you draw a straight line anywhere across the width of Japan and try to drive it - you'll find yourself at the bottom of the ocean ... LONG before you travel 300 miles.
So are you saying 300 miles is "generated in the same area" ?? or did you simply not know electricity can easily transmit that far? - But it's difficult to see how electricity transmission over 100's of miles has any bearing on ev's ability to charge or not. Maybe you havn't heard of Tesla's highly efficient power wall? That's a great way to capture ones own excess solar for recharging ev's. Last time I was in Tokio I marveled at all the pv on the roof tops.
As for the notion of Kaizen - don't forget other ideas such as the Shogun, or before that, Sengoku. Just because something is the way it is - doesn't mean that it's best - in fact it might just be the opposite.

Best
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It's very different,mass plugins could be used in any state in the nation. FCVs can be bought in a minority of California, and perhaps soon in a minority of one of the east coast states.

Hybrid incentives were not cut as a result of the plugin incentives.
When the hybrid incentives were written, they were set for a set number of vehicles. Those vehicles were sold and the incentives ended.

The same will happen with plugin vehicles. Once they sell their allotment the incentives end.

Fuel cell vehicles should get federal rebates once they are available nationwide. They will have rebates long after plugin vehicles no longer have a rebate.

 

Let's assume the US plug in credit was written for the Volt. It gets a potential $7500 in tax credit that can not be transferred to the next year. The Cruze, the Volt's platform mate, was $15,000 less than the initial Volt when similarly equipped. So the Volt's incentive covers half the price difference between it and an ICE car.

When the Prius went on sale in Japan the government incentive was a direct subsidy to Toyota equal to half the price difference between the gen1 Prius and the Echo. I have posted these links numerous times already.

Emissions were not the sole reason for the plug in incentive, and the bill it was a part of included the incentives for solar, wind, and other renewables along with increased taxes on coal. You also need to take a step back. Both hybrids and plug ins are a small minority of cars sold, and plugins in dirty states are cleaner than most ICE cars sold.

There is a link in my signature to the political thread discussing these and other credits. Which is where any further discussion should take place, because they are heavily linked to politics.

Should I be worried. Despite what you think, my postings here are solely my own without any compensation. Or do you believe I joined Priuschat before you on the off chance hydrogen FCEVs would start getting favored status over plugins by CARB.

I thought FCEVs were hybrids? Seriously, perhaps they should now that nearly every car maker will have one. I don't see this happening; again the link in my sig.

{politics}

Production numbers aside, how can FCEVs have such a potential when the only refueling infrastructure is in part of a large state?

 

- at LEAST make 'em wait for any credits until they have' em in all of the carb states. But at an amount substantially larger than hybrids or plug-ins ever had? Even as they damned their competition via media? That's just a waste. The cars ought to at least be able to be near competing in price without a $50,000 kickback/loss from the manufacturer on their cost. No one thinks Toyota built the first gen Prius for 2x the price that they initially sold it for in the U.S. (SOME loss, to be sure) and at least hybrids and plug-ins show an environmental & efficiency improvement. To put it as kind as possible - those issues are a subject of much debate with hydrogen cars set up to primarily run on US natural gas & Australian coal. Geez with VW's dishonesty already plaguing the world - do we really need another car that we can label as rolling coal?
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HOV purposes are multi-faceted ( at least in California where the historic legislation states that it's) to encourage fuel savings, reduce polluted air & encourage adoption of efficient vehicles. Hybrids ARE now more mainstream so they lost the privilege balanced against HOV overcrowding. Upon intro of plugin's - the same purposes arise .... encourage adoption of clean tech and saving gas. As you know, that's a valid purpose to favor plugin's over std hybrid, at least until plugin's become more mainstream. Unless Toyota starts selling plugins in more States that's still going to be an issue.

As for hydrogen cars being Mobil power stations - how is that any more or less true of a car full of cng or gasoline or propane that you could use in a generator or electricity in an ev in a plugin?

The above are WAY less expensive mobile power stations ... but ok ... hydrogen cars are too .... just WAY harder to come by.
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What does Toyota tell us about their Hydrogen strategy and motivs?
Toyota Global Site | Fuel Cell Vehicle
"Recognizing hydrogen’s vast potential as a clean energy source, Toyota is actively developing and producing fuel cell vehicles (FCV). We believe hydrogen can help us contribute to the next 100 years of the automobile."

Technically the FCV powered by Hydrogen is an electrical car that produces its electricity using the Hydrogen stored in the tank.
It is never wise to exclusivly concentrate on one technology or one fuel source for cars.
Impacts of a new fuel are not only economically or financially, there is impact on the environment and on the infrastructure.

Electric cars with batteries will be more common in the future. But just imagine a densly populated city like the metropolean area of Tokyo. In my opionion most people in Tokyo driving a car just do not have the possibility to plug-in their cars for an hour or two. Filling up a car with Hydrogen only needs about 3 minutes, so it is about 50 times faster. And the point of the fuel fill-up does not need to be at the exact location where you can leave your car parked for 3 hours. You drive to the Hydrogen fuel station and fill it up, then you park the car and go to work or whatever.

As far as I could gather data, Japan does not import electricity! With "in the same area" I mean domestically produced in the special case of Japan where about 100% of the used electricity is produced domestically.
I might simply not know some things, but to asume that I do not know how to transmit electricty more than 100 years after to big fight between DC and AC (Edison and Tesla) is worth a laugh!

Please provide the Kanji or context for "Shogun" and "Sengoku" that you are referring to so the meaning is clear for me.


Best regards,
Pale Fox

 

Are you suggesting that that if Toyota says it's so - than it is beyond all doubt - the truth? That's not necessarily so. The Prius deserves the highest praise for all that it represents, and has accomplished, yet we only need to go back as far as the known problems with hybrid accelerators, and the injury/deaths caused - and Toyota denying there was any problem when in fact Toyota did know there were problems.
Toyota to Pay $1.2B for Hiding Deadly ‘Unintended Acceleration’ - ABC News
It pains me to have to remind anyone of that, but for a specific purpose. VERIFY.
As for the term "energy source" - no, hydrogen is not an energy source, but rather an energy carrier. We have to use energy, just so it can be 'captured' - just like electricity. I believe toyota has as much said that as well - so it's bizar to now see them claim hydrogen as a 'source'. Being captured energy, one has to look where it's being captured from. Toyota plans to (hopefully among other things) use COAL. That is NOT clean. So now Toyota will have to use even more energy, simply to sequester the CO2. And what about the mountains of COAL ASH that gets left behind . . . . have you ever seen what happens when hundreds of millions of tons of coal ash escape for containment areas?



Is that ok with Japan? Is Toyota also going to take all this arsenic / cadmium laden toxic waste back to Japan? Does Toyota factor coal ash/waste abatement into the cost of hydrogen? Or is that Australia's problem. Even as this risk is posed though - Toyota boasts about clean hydrogen. Yes, it can be, but at a huge cost. It'd be great if there were assurances that remediation will extend beyond CO2.

I apologize if my response sounded insulting and it was not meant that way. In fact I'm still not certain what the meaning was really meant to say, even after the reply. If your clarification & original meaning was to say SOURCE fuel of electricity comes from far away, then yes, I understand that.
But since Japan has no natural resources (to make electricity) then regardless of how Japan gets 'fuel' to make electricity ... whether it's natural gas, coal, oil or (already reformed from coal or natural gas) hydrogen, then how ever - yes japan doesn't get 'fuel' for electricity from close by. I am sympathetic to that challenge.

let me address that via PM so as not to get too far off topic addressing philosophical/political definitions

so what ... neither can a hydrogen car that's stuck at a truck load of empty cylinders, waiting for them to recharge. And if the grid's down - good luck on that wait time. As for the whole 3 or 5 minute wait - yea - hydrogen car drivers are already reporting in on what a crock that is ... as they hopefully wait for better times ... more expensive compressors. tic tok tic tok.
FCV's (fuel cel vehicles?) are independent? Last time I checked ... if more coal or natural gas isn't heated up to reform - then sorry - no hydrogen for you.
"CAN be renewable" ... that's Toyota's clever trick word. The fact that it can, has no bearing on what Toyota plans to do. Grab your shovel ... there's gonna be a lot of coal ash flying. False alarm ... not really ... because thank goodness this fiasco won't really go anywhere - presuming the next 10 years will be like the last ... and the 10yrs before that ... and before that, and yes, the 10 before that.
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