Slew of new mirai articles

it's all so tiresome. it's like reading popular science, and knowing it's never gonna happen.

 

Japan must have an easy way to remanufacture prime material and come up with Hydrogen upon their sleeve or they have a large surplus of H2 and do not know what to do with it.

 

Gee, I wonder if they're trying to create demand.

 

Now that I think of it, I did first read about fuel cell cars in Popular Science -- back in the late 70's.

 

How many is there in a slew.
And what is the penalty for NOT selling tens of thousands in just 5 or more years? Nothing? So - there's not even a loss of character for truth or believably penalty? I guess not. So heck ... why not jack up the fictional sales number even higher.
.

 

Sorry, I am not joing the pity party here.

The FC stack, H2 tank and 5kg hydrogen in Mirai weights 327 lbs.

The equivalent 60kWh battery pack in Model S weights 850 lbs.

FCV can scale range better than BEV. It fuels as fast as gasoline. One refuel station could refuel many more vehicles than a charging station.

It is a very worthy technology to commercialize.

 

Of course, the 2016 Volt will have about the same average CO2 emissions as the Mirai when operating on a typical mix of gasoline and US average electricity but will weigh about 400 pounds less, can recharge conveniently overnight at home, will cost about $20,000 less after tax credits, can refuel quickly during road trips almost anywhere, accelerates much quicker, and requires comparitively little new infrastructure.

 

What's the source of your information?

I am surprised nobody is questioning the first article OP posted with the unfair comparison. It wasn't even about Mirai but fuel cell vehicle from Hyundai. The closest comparison to Hyundai Tucson FC is the discontinued Escape hybrid which was rated 32 MPG. Or RAV 4 EV with emission as clean as a 37 MPG gas hybrid. From that, FCVs can be as clean as EVs but also has advantage of gas vehicles.

I think I figured out why Mirai is so heavy. It was based on a very heavy platform, that same that Lexus HS 250h was based on. HS 250h had the curb weight of 3,700+ lbs.

The current Volt is as clean as a 42 MPG gas hybrid. I have yet to see how clean Mirai is and the Volt Gen2 numbers.

Where are the numbers for Mirai? I only saw of those for Tucson FCV.

Mirai is not on Camry platform. It shares the same platform as HS 250h which weights 3,740 lbs. So it looks like there is about 300 lbs extra.

This is just Gen1, guys. We saw what happened when Prius Gen1 went from Echo conversion to dedicated Gen2 platform.

Gen1 refueling stations don't need to handle that kind of volume yet. Judging by the speed of cost reduction, it does have great potential.

There is no production EV that refuels as fast as FCV. No amount of money thrown can make it happen until a major breakthrough in battery. Then, you still need to build the super quick charging infrastructure. Fast refueling is also a weakness of BEV.

Battery packs are also tax payer subsidized from R&D, manufacturing to sales tax credit. Charging stations are subsidized as well. Even the fuel (solar/wind/etc) are subsidized.

Why do you have problem with one but not the other?

It is amazing how writers are calling out Toyota for saying Mirai has zero tailpipe emission.

Where were they when Nissan and other EV makers made the same claim?

I called them out for years and tried to bring the discussion to include fuel production. EPA even added the Beyond Tailpipe Emission site to address it. Nobody cared, just brushing away with "but I'll buy renewable electricity".

It looks like the tables has turned about people are waking up. I think it is a better time for well-to-wheel discussion.

 

I wish we could call out specific emissions instead of just always focusing on CO2. There are other emissions to be worried about. Comparing CO2 emissions a RAV4 EV to a 30 something mpg car doesn't tell the whole story.

 

Do you mean other global warming gas emissions or do you mean "old fashioned" traditional emissions that make for smoggy air?

I'm personally not worried about non-warming emissions at this point. Many years of important regulatory changes have dramatically improved traditional tailpipe emissions from gasoline cars and finally for diesels as well. At this point we just need to wait for all the older vehicles to wear out and be purged from the road. Other sources of traditional pollutants such as coal plants are already either on the way out for other reasons or must already be upgraded with more pollution controls under existing regulations.

Meanwhile, global warming emissions are completely out of control and threaten to cause disasterous environmental damage unless we dramatically bring them down over the next several decades. Of those emissions, the one that really matters is CO2.

The others warming gasses besides CO2, even methane, are of relatively less importance and are also far easier to control at their source. Methane emissions can be fixed by creating and enforcing leak detection regulations in natural gas drilling fields. Most field leaks are from a small number of offenders and are often due to human error (valves left open by mistake etc.). The other major source of methane leaks can be fixed by replacing ancient leaky iron gas pipelines in older cities.

So, CO2 is pretty much the only fossil fuel-related emission we need to worry about today in the United States and other 1st world countries. Unfortunately, FCVs run on NG-derived hydrogen in the real world and when they do they emit about the same CO2 as an efficiency-oriented hybrid gasoline vehicle. Hydrogen from renewable sources is a very small part of the hydrogen market and those sources are probably better off being redirected to providing renewable electricity instead.

Hydrogen FCVs are a dangerous distraction at this point and are clearly not ready for widespread consumer deployment. They do not usefully address the only truly important pollutant emission today -- CO2.

The best way forward appears to be renewable portfolio standards to mandate ever increasing low-carbon electricity sources on the grid combined with EVs, PHEVs, and full hybrid vehicles than can utilize the existing liquid fueling infrastructure.

Perhaps after 30 years of driving inefficient conventional drivetrains off of our roads we can then worry about eliminating the remaining alreadyvdramatically reduced use of gasoline or other fossil-derived liquid fuels. By then, however, battery technology may well have advanced enough under enormous economic pressure so that few vehicles benefit from non-battery designs. Or, maybe large scale solar catylized direct hydrogen production will have been perfected with costs per kg competitive with NG-derived H2. Let's worry about it then, not now!

 

When we are comparing technology, it is important to keep the vehicles in comparison as close as possible. As I have mentioned, there is more than one data point and you have shown to be on the EV blind side.

I am tech neutral and obviously not a fuel cell fan. I own a PHEV but I think FCVs do make sense and they have better battery than BEVs.

I want to remind you again that GHG is a global issue. You always use California but your own state (Texas) grid emission is higher than national average. Have you considered moving into your own world (CA)?

Both PiP and Volt emits 200 g/mi under current CA grid. The difference is with the national average. Volt emits 250 g/mi while PiP emits 220 g/mi. A regular Prius emits 222 g/mi. You tell me which plugin was designed to lower emission nation wide.

As hydrogen production increases and fueling stations are deployed, they will be produced cleaner than the grid mix. It can start from a clean sheet of paper whereas electricity grid has the legacy coal in the mix.

 

Coal is an excellent feedstock for producing H{2}, CO, and a wealth of derived chemicals. Only the cheapness of natural gas has it down for now.

At one time, there were investigations of 'burning in place' where air was pumped to the coal seam and processing happened in situ. But there are risks: Centralia, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bob Wilson

 

round & round we go . . . . . refueling hydrogen takes the additional 5minutes - 20minutes (one way trip) just to get to one of the hand full of stations. Plugging in for most, takes 10 seconds at the end of the day. You'll say, "oh, but soon there'll be hundreds & hundreds of hydrogen stations.".
Right .... all that takes is hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars, because the oil companies refuse to build the infrastructure. Why? They consider such a project a looser.

Charging stations subsidized vs hydrogen stations subsidized is different on a scale of 1/100 the cost.

So ... next time we need to deflect the question with ... "plugin's get subsidized" etc. hopefully we can put that permanently to bed. probably not

 

As far as those two PHEVs are concerned I would say the Volt was. The PIP still isn't available nationwide.

 

Shouldn't the FCV battery pack be included since the FC can't deliver enough power to the AC motor without it? Not that it will make a huge difference in the comparison but it would make it more accurate.