The Toyota Mirai (FCV) Thread

Say 90% of plug-in (erev and bev) cars charge at home and a hydrogen car runs 30% on renewable electricity and the rest on methane (biogas(in the few instances you want a station by bs or sewage)or mainly natural gas) or coal.

Plug-in efficiency today is about 3.5x hydrogen if on renewable electricity, but lets pretend hydrogen cars can close the gap to to 2x.

Grid is already built to homes and offfices. Lets say Plug-ins need X power, we need public charging to provide 0.1X. How about hydrogen? Well on renewable electricity they need 2X, but only 30% is supposed to be that, so 0.6X needs to built on a renewable grid for hydrogen. Its ok most of the grid is there, but that is a lot of rnewables, electrolyzers, high power grid connections, compressors, chillers and pumps. For the same number of cars, of course plug-ins are cheaper, and we expect higher penetration when you realize most of the infrastructure will be there for phevs and bevs in 5 years. In 6 years California expects 86 stations, and what east coast might have 20?

Say all the hydrogen in indiana is made from coal, but if you live there you can put solar on your house, plug-ins make it much easier to choose renewables. Don't think Indiana is going to say screw you to CARB and build coal hydrogen? Then they probably won't build any at all. Then where are you going to fill up your fuel cell on a cross country trip. Yep, you'll take a phev or other better car. With the clean power plan, indiana's electricity will be almost 40% cleaner in 2030. I expect 0% of cars fill up on renewable hydrogen stations there by then.
Public Hydrogen stations and prices in Indiana (IN)

So much for hydrogen cars will be cleaner in Indiana argument from mary nichols.

Which means its expensive and probably will use a lot of fossile fuel to make the hydrogen. That's just a fact for the next couple of decades. Time to stop the snow job that infrastructure is cheaper. Now if advances come along to make the infrastructure cheaper great. Good reason to do R&D. Until then lets stop the fueled by bs as if its not a giant joke. The fueled by lemonade was done by an onion guy. Its the biofuels thing. If we get to switchgrass we may have cheaper ethanol and hydrogen, but the ethanol in a hybrid will likely be cheaper.

 

Hydrgen is free - for now.

Whenever any company gives something away for free, there's usually a catch;



I wonder why they're so keen to give me £50 or more for free? Oh yes, because once I'm hooked they've got me. Hydrogen, online casino's, all the same.

 

Oh you're so negative

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Yeah I know. Too cynical. I'm sure they're offering hydrogen for free as it's so cheap to produce, transport and store. Must be coming out of their ears.

So kind of them. I wonder if they'll do the same with petrol now the oil prices have dropped?

 

I think toyota and hyundai have been up front here. The free fuel is because if they charged you wouldn't buy the car. We know tesla is really charging an extra $2000/car that it is using to build out the supercharger network, but people seem wiling to pay. Hydrogen they need to bring the cost of the car and the fuel down.

How do you do it. Volume, Volume, Volume.

 

i don't doubt your motives - & respect your right to to advocate any thing that seems worthy - no matter how inexplicable it seems. Yes - YOUR motives are ok ... sergiospl - i'm not so sure .....

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Sure the DOE's investmetn so far is $3.2B. What is the rush for commercialization? Shouldn't we get say 50 working charging stations, and 2000 working cars before deciding the tech they are using in california is ok for lots of refuelng stations. You will note the stuff they were building, yuu know at $1M/station 100 stations by 2010, Toyota now says is crap, and those 9 remaining stations of those that didn't close down, have to get retrofited. In 5 years with it be metal hydride, or methanol, or something other than 10,000 psi hydrogen? CARBS math is about $140M of California fees to retrofit the old stations and build new ones to get to 86 stations, probably with about $50M of DOE money thrown in. It was $1M per station, but really is $2M/station in the US, more like 4 in Japan. Many of the 86 can only provide 100 kg of hydrogen a day, or about 100 fcv a week,, so they will be obsolete in less than 10 years.

They aren't hydrogen has always gotten more R&D money, and more commercialzation money per car. The claim for the reason was it was so much closer to commercialization. The push back you hear is about some of those previous false claims. We know people are not going to want to fill up most of the time at sewage sites, or slaughter houses, or dairy farms. We know we aren't going to take $60 worth of lemonade, truck it to a factory, then convert the sugar to a kg hydrogen, but they may use the corn they make tehanol with to make hydrogen instead. I don't know why that is better. Who know switch grass?.

Do you believe that $120M/year is too low a subsidy from the US. Yes its a cut from $300M/year but progress has been slower than expected. Japan is giving more, but they are doing it because they hope to export the cars to the US, you know Japanese jobs while hybrids and plug-ins will likely move to american factories over that time period. I mean if we get 30,000 cars by 2021, I'll be surprised at $120M/year that is $20,000 per likely car in 2016 though 2021 that is budgeted. Why isn't that enough, for R&D and fueling stations, and commercialization. They need more per car than plug-ins, but that is more than double per car in those years.

 

It's no wonder we don't find any of that in the Toyota literature - but instead have to dig for the data our selves. Yeah that's the stuff that Toyota doesn't want folks to know. What Toyota wishes we knew is that plug in's are for people who have 4 hours to waste .
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If they are to the same extent, the electrical grid.

The long distance electrical lines are just aluminum cables.
Hydrogen will require large diameter, high pressure pipe made of a steel alloy that can withstand hydrogen embrittlement to cover the long distances with valves and sensors in case of leaks.

Going to every home and business, the costs may even out, but the fuel cell to power the building will be a major cost, and other item to maintain.

If you putting some false equivalency of paying for the grid or hydrogen infrastructure just for cars, i don't know which will cost more. I do know the people will be upset to not have power for their toys, conveniences, and cold beer.

The issue here is that when plugins first came to market, they were already priced to generate some revenue, and weren't priced below cost. Just like when the first Prius came to market. FCEVs are still costly enough that they can't be priced to net a profit, and require shell games with incentives to make the cost bearable to the car company. The Tesla S is expensive, but Tesla knew it would be and designed it to compete in the expensive luxury car market.

Plugins also don't need public charging infrastructure to make a go at it. It helps with adoption, but a person doesn't have to sell their car if they move away from those public chargers. You yourself have said the stations are a generation behind the cars. If the stations being built now are going to need updating in the near future, why the the rush to get the cars out? Why pretend that these FCEVs are actual production ready cars, and admit that this is another test program like the one with the Clarity and F-cell?

There are renewables beyond solar. While that photolyzer and fuel cell system might exceed PV in efficiency, it won't on cost when it arrives.

Grid. There are efficiency gains with large power plants, and the grid allows cost effective shifting between renewables and other sources.

As for hydrogen infrastructure, why not just use the natural gas one, and install generators or NG fuel cells at every home. Methane can be made renewably, and it is easier to pipe than hydrogen.

The cost quotes for a gas station include real estate, permits, licenses, and the building for a store. I have seen nothing that suggests those are included in hydrogen station cost figures.

Why do we need such a BEV when we'll have 300 to 500 mile range PHVs, and 600 mile range hybrids? Those are coming next year. In five years, we'll likely have Al-air battery range extenders on BEVs.

You can buy a Yaris with the amount of cash Toyota is including for the hydrogen with the Mirai.

 

Lexus LS Fuel-Cell Variant Rumored to Bow in 2020

 

wired on hydrogen then
Wired 11.04: How Hydrogen Can Save America
and now
Is There Another Reason For Toyota to Make a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car? | WIRED

Sure that is pretending. They have a figure in the lab, but we have no idea if it will make it out. CSP was supposed to be cheaper than PV, but once Spainish and the US government built the plants we found out there were a lot of costs that were not considered, while PV prices kept falling. They have higher "net efficiency" that is capacity factor x rating, but in take up more land (most pv is didstributed on buildings so no new land is used, and and much more $/kwh. Here is an article about that before the cost over runs.
Is Ivanpah the World’s Most Efficient Solar Plant? : Greentech Media. The least expensive way to make renewable electricity for plug-ins is off peak wind charging. NREL says central wind electrolysis is the cheapest way to make renewable hydrogen. It may be cheap enough if subsidized, but here we have that efficiency loop that I was talking about. 2060, maybe states like texas and Iowa and california have enough night wind that price of the renewable electricity doesn't even matter, but we will see how fast we do grid improvements and building of wind turbines. Currently you can get on a plan in most of texas for free coal electricity at night, because of all of the wind, but you have higher rates during peaks than other customers. The coal plants have to pay to put electricity on the grid if there is not enough demand.

But yes new tech, like catylitic cracking using sunlight energy may work one day. The MIT start up that showed a lot of promise, was bought by lockheed martin, after it ran out of cash, it had promised $1/kg of hydrogen but in reality cost around $7/kg. Still maybe there are places where $7/kg of hydrogen are ok, like military micro-grids in places with enough water. No that isn't $7 at a fueling station, the station still needs to compress and chill it and store it, bringing up the cost to customers. Central off peak wind might produce it at $4/kg but then you need to liquify and truck it to the stations.

The texas grid, ERCOT, is the smallest of the 3 major us grids, so we can easily see how and why it was created. When WWII started Factories needed more power than their local utilities could provide, and it took a long time to build new power plants, so utilities worked with each other to build the beginning grid, which allowed a factory in houston to run during peak deman, with power from central or south texas. This made all the power plants more reliable as they could work together to satisfy peaks, and new investments less risky. Yes, I think the grid is more important for say pumping clean water, and powering factories, but would I build it just to supply plug-ins, probably not. I don't think plug-ins add much cost to the grid, and the grid gets updated to provide power for all of thsoe other things. Can you see why for most of us we don't think something really built over 50 years ago should be charged to plug-in cars?

Because you pretend that what is not there is cheap. I never said it will stay prohibitively expensive if these advances happen, but there are gating items, and the promises have been great, and results awful. We shouldn't pretend that these advances will all happen for hydrogen and fuel cells, but won't happen for plug-ins.

The cost problem is not that the cost of a hydrogen station to fill 200 cars a week cost more than a gas station.
Gas / Petrol Service Stations For Sale in US on BusinessesForSale.com
The problem comes when the unsubsidized price of that hydrogen even assuming 15% of cars is much higher than people are willing to pay. That makes it tough for self sustaining network. The gap in that number to the price it needs to be may require hundreds of billions of taxypayer dollars.

No problem with a test, but it is a huge problem with a big roll out on today's technology. That is why the DOE is spending more money on R&D than commercialization. They are spending for cheaper fuel cells, cheaper electrolyzers, renewable hydrogen, lowering the price of stations, natural gas hydrogen, lower priced compessors and pumps. They also are working on metal hydryde and on board reformers, which would eliminate the need for 10,000 psi hydrogen and a lot of the station costs. Until 2011 they were spending to try and make cheaper hydrogen from coal and in nuclear power plants.

Now who is looking at what is, versus what could be?

Next year plug-ins world wide will reach 1 million cars, and people call it slow. In 2017 there may be 10,000 fcv on the road and somehow this is fast. Why the two differeent yard sticks? One gating item on plug-ins is the cost of batteries, but this should be low enough in 2020. IMHO 300 mile is an artificial goal, 300 km with home or work refueling is what bmw and nissan think the goal for adoption should be. Tesla thinks its 200 miles, but this "real world miles" which I think they mean 200 miles, 32 degrees F, 65 mph.

Since 90% or more of charging is at home or work, someone the driver or employer is paying for most of that. Yes some places have free public chargers, which don't make much sense to me, but hopefully those will change to cheap public chargers. Tesla's free chargers are really paid for when you buy the car, and included in the purchase price. That network along with the Combo plug fast chargers, should be built out in the US before 2020. I really don't think we need taxpayer subsidies for L3 chargers, but locally we have utilities including L2 and some L3 in their rates, hoping the night charging lowers the cost of electricity, and increases profits or leads to lower rates. NRG, Tesla, and Nissan are big boys and probably can afford to build out charging infrastructure. Some taxpayer money is probably needed to put chargers in parks and by libraries to make those places more accessable, but its not much.

 

Another thing to keep in mind when comparing hydrogen to gas station costs.
That hydrogen station can fill a couple dozen cars a day.
The gas station can fill hundreds of cars in the same time period, and likely has more individual pumps than the hydrogen one.

 

PRIUSChat's own member ev nut made a quotable illustratiob recently that makes a lot of sense. He said natural gas burning hydrogen cars solved the fossil fuel / renewable energy issue, the same way that adding more freeway lanes ends congestion. That's hard to argue with.
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Toyota's future fuel cell vehicle lineup revealed?

 

"It's actually greener than a lot of electric cars" (1m17s). That was said by a customer so Toyota can get away with it, but the message was said nonetheless.

Who are they kidding? I suppose IF the hydrogen was produced by 100% renewable electricity and teh EV was charged from purely coal powered electricity, then you could argue that that is greener. I really did expect better from Toyota. They've really gone down in my estimations.

 

Prius is also cleaner than a lot of electric cars.

It just depends where on earth you charge your EV

 

Link?
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What people that say this about hydrogen being cleaner are ignoring is, that it depends where your hydrogen station gets its H2 from.

If the H2 and electricity are generated from the same source, be it coal, NG, or solar, EVs are cleaner.