Thought you all might like to see this

I don't understand.
Toyota Tells Dealers To Stop Selling Mirai FCV Due To Lack of Refueling Stations
Since the hydrogen cars are a fail, when compared to the ever-increasing popularity of plugins, why in the world isn't Toyota advertising their upcoming long-range electric car?
Toyota is planning long-range battery-powered electric cars for 2020 as its hydrogen fuel cells cars are failing | Electrek
After all, most state tax coffers are tapped out already. & the fossil fuel industry says it would not be profitable to build infrastructure. Corporate Toyota bailed on California once they got huge sums of Lobby money for hydrogen infrastructure here. And it still didn't put a dent in what would be needed Nationwide. With cheap natural gas fracking in Texas, it makes sense that texas would be Toyota's next Target for costly taxpayer infrastructure , especially since one can't legally sell new Tesla's in their state.

If you can, please tell us the new ads during the Super Bowl won't be anti plug in - the way lexes has done in the past.
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personally, i'm glad they're not running an ev ad, no need to kill it with more flowers before it even arrives.

 

What will the rest of the country see to counter Kia's Niro ad?

 

vdub.

 

Toyota Mirai Driver Comes Clean About His Hydrogen-Powered Car

I know it's moldy from earlier this year, but it is kind of interesting. I was pointed here from a mirai proponent ;-) on a tesla thread. I was kind of surprised, because ... with the model 3 now in production, the 2 complaints (tesla is too expensive and too big) seem solved.
Hydrogen highway is being built out in California and Japan. In both places it is behind schedule and over budget. Even though they are way behind US sales (mirai is now leased in california and hawaii) I have no doubt toyota will blitz and hit their goal of 3000, or at least come close, by the end of the year. Model 3's have a wait list, and probably won't be delivered to new people until 2019 after the federal incentives are lower or gone for the car.
The mirai has a big problem in the US come 2019. I expect by then the dealers will be well trained in the prius prime. There will be tens of thousands of tesla's in california alone, and the prius prime will be selling in very high numbers. With these cars likely lower in ghg in california, and sold nation wide, how does toyota (and honda, hyundai, etc) justify the federal and state incentives?
Japan is a different matter. I expect a full blown test for the 2020 Olympics with massive advertising and government incentives. The country is physically much smaller, so nation wide infrastructure is less expensive. They also have barriers to foreign made cars, so competition from tesla, gm, and bmw won't kill the prospects. I hope by then we learn if the prices really go down as volume goes up, or if there are claims hydrogen will be ready in another 10 years.

 

when you say 'justify the incentives', do you mean to the cali legislature? are they anti hydrogen?

 

They're actually neither
for or against. They simply go to the highest bidder in way too many instances . Politics - it's big business & control.

 

The best that I can tell, CARB is going to have to increase funding for hydrogen in 2019 from their reports as stations are behind schedule and overr budget. There are currently 30 stations open (3 non retail) and 6 in development past planning in the state. CARB counts the non-retail stations. It has funding for 50 stations, enough they say for 13,000 fuel cell vehicles. These 50 were all supposed to open by the end of this year, but current progress will force a reassessment of stations open by end of the year, and downward reviions of etimates of those that will be sold in 2017 (they were expecting a lot more hyundai and honda fcev ;-)), 2018, and 2019. Who knows maybe they will make up an increase in 2020 as it is so far away.

What if the car companies don't actually sell enough vehicles to use the 50 funded stations. It looked like they would simply take the cap and trade taxes and pay for them, but there are lawsuits, and I don't expect that they can. CARB needs to go back to the legislature to continue the expirement past 2020. At a cost of $2.3 per station right now, maybe they can get another $37 million for 16 more stations to 66, enough carb says to support 20,000 vehicles. That brings us to the end of 2019, with $140M spent to upgrade and build those 66. Remember those foreign built fuel cell vehicles are getting higher subsidies than plug-ins built in california and the rest of the us.

Current proposal to make the cap and tax plan more palletable to get the votes need to be legal is to give most of the tax money back to the people of california. Hey, that sounds like a great idea versus unending spending on fuel cells that every year come short of CARBs estimates. If the prius prime, teslas, bolt, volt, and i3 are selling many times more than the fuel cell vehicles, I can't see the legislature spending all that extra money on fuel cell infrastructure. Remember CARBs sales pitch was people are going to like fuel cell cars more than plug-ins that is why they need to be subsidized more. I think in 2020, that remaining $80M that the legislature talked about may still go for hydrogen stations, but it may not. I certainly don't think CARBs requests for increased funding for fueling are going to happen.

 

and all that on top of the new bill to pick up the federal slackers.

 

Yea - we need to make hydrogen more palatable. Maybe they could kick all the natural gas & battery cars out of the carpool lanes & just allow fuel cell cars hov stickers for being in there. <duck>

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and blimps.

 

i wonder how much business that soupbowl ad brought in.

 

Toyota is selling them at a huge (they won't say how much) loss - even with the incentives - so if they only lease out one more it's better for the bottom line either way

 

how can leasing them at a loss be better for the bottom line?

 

Example, would you rather lose $20,000 on one vehicle or $20,000 on 200 vehicles

Tongue in cheek. I realize that if they unload another thousand or more they can feel like their R&D was spread over a larger quantity.
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it's gonna be an interesting watch going forward. so much to admire in cali, not perfect i realize, but a perfect boondoggle on this one.

 

CARBs rules for ZEV credits - and Toyota needs about 3000 vehicles worth of fcv to meet the criteria and not buy from a competitor (tesla or Nissan) allow them to lease instead of sell. Since you don't get credit for a repaired car, having few in the field to fail, and these fuel cells will fail, actually saves them money (lower short term losses per zev credit). If you pull cars out of the market ever 3rd year, and your goal is X cars sold or leased, you get to avoid competition from the used fcv market.

Japan's METI seems to be banking on Japan being to export fcv as part of its funding. Therefore toyota needs to get foreign sales if they are going to get the maximum government money, even if they lose money on those sales, net to the company is positive.

Variable costs are very small compared to fixed costs. Heavy spending is on the stack design and equipment to manufacture it. The tank design and equipment to manufacture it. The car design. Given the massive Japanese, US government, and California state government incentives its likely toyota does not lose much more doing 3000 cars per year than 300 cars per year. The fcv proponents in the company also like this makes loss per vehicle look like only 10% of the loss per car if they did many fewer cars.

We know that fcv advocates inside Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and GM want to continue the program. They really believe they may only be 10 years out ;-) Getting all this extra government money lowers their costs and puts it out on government. Toyota is doing the heavy lifting. GM/Honda are spending less than the other two, and have a lead from past R&D. They are sharing costs and R&D efforts. It looks like Honda is contributing more the the fcv effort, and in return GM appears to be sharing the voltec components. These two companies seem to see phevs as a better bet than fcv. At least for the near term. Clarity seems like a stab at toyota's tech choices. It has fcv, phev, and bev configurations shipping before the end of the year. A government can easily test them for efficiency and weight and over come some bad assumptions about fuel cells.

 

so, to boil it all down, they are not losing money on every car sold.

 

Isn't gaming the system wonderful?

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