Featured Toyota Chasing Tesla Styling With 2nd Generation 2021 Mirai Fuel Cell Vehicle

Or just fuel up at a reasonable price. Check out this nugget:

No wonder Toyota gives away 3-year/$15,000 hydrogen fueling cards to get people to buy these green guzzlers.

 

Mmm.. B-pillar forward looks alllll Lexus. Behind the B Pillar? Okay, some of those lines are a little Teslish…

Gotta admit, I like the dash/interior much better than any Tesla I’ve seen.

 

You guys really don't know why hydrogen refilling is so expensive? H2 is industrially produced for between 90 cents and 2 dollars a kg. It can be renewably produced for 2-4 dollars per kg. See if you can figure out why it's so much more expensive at the pump.

 

I don't think it looks all that much like a Tesla but it looks much better than the current mirai. Materials in the interior of my previous Lexus GS (before prius) were much nicer than my tesla model 3. I like the zen layout of the tesla better (although it could use a few more buttons or another stalk and a heads up display). That mirai dash looks busy, but its really a matter of taste and I expect more people like a lexus dash than the Tesla.

I know the answer, but am curious to know what you think it is.

 

Hydrogen for cars is expensive for the same reasons Styrofoam isn't recycled.

 

Production is cheap, collection and distribution is a SOB.

Bob Wilson

 

Based on this study by NREL, it looks like:

• Lack of economies of scale (i.e. dispensing capital costs spread over small production values)
• Feedstock costs (bigger for onsite electrolysis than methane reforming)

 

We have a winner!

 

The problem is keeping hydrogen in tank for several months...

 

If it's a PHEV, it's not that big a deal. Keep it at low pressure (say, 1/4 tank) and it will last a lot longer, and you really only need it when you're going on a long trip so fuel up then. That's what I do with my Prime.

 

Distribution tends to be about 5% of the cost.

 

i'd wager right now, it's about 70% of the cost, with another 10% being maintenance. Obviously they need more maintenance than they are presently doing, as a couple of the handful of stations that there are, actually exploded. Never mind the fact that Japan wants to use Brown coal for Reformation, as it's the cheapest Fuel stock.
.

 

Because Japan is choosing to pay more to make the hydrogen out of country, liquidfy it, and then ship it home for ultimately meaningless accounting, they have to find the cheapest feedstock.

 

For car fuel, because it's not in use.

Remember, hydrogen is already used in large quantities in the petroleum industry, other industries and even for rockets. Liquid H2 delivered to the launch site is only around $3 a kg.

If there were millions of cars using H2, it would be about the cost of gasoline but your car would use a third as much. If the car were a PHEV, you can cut it by another 2/3-3/4 because that's how many miles would be on electricity.

H2 cars make a lot of sense as range extenders for PHEVs. Remember, a combined fuel-cell and tank system can have an energy density on the order of 1000Wh/kg, which is 4-6 times better than a combined battery, containment, thermal management system, and it allows the battery to shrink by a factor of 5-10 times, and the battery allows the fuel cell to shrink by a similar magnitude.

 

If it does?
I'm at the dealership at the crack of dawn with my checkbook.

Take that Tesla....I'm farting rainbows!

 

I'll have to wait until it farts gold bricks thank you very much.

.

 

.... if ..... & "if" there were the 10's of thousands of hydrogen stations NOT next to the refinery (where it's more or less a byproduct) or the rocket launch pad (couple /few) - that nationwide infrastructure would be costing over a trillion dollars ... paid by our tax dollars of course .... never mind principals of supply & demand that would skew the reformation cost even higher. But at least the fossil fuel industry will continue thrive & have a stranglehold on transportation - using up their non-renewables.

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Although liquid hydrogen has been and still is used in some upper stage engines, liquid methane is the choice for Blue Origins and the raptor engines for next generation SpaceX.

Bob Wilson

 

It is NOT a byproduct! It's an input, and one that's usually limited in quantity.

It's not next to the pad either - it's shipped in from far away.

How do you think the nationwide natural gas pipelines and oil pipelines were paid for? By tax dollars? No.

As I said, renewable production could be cheap as well. We just don't do it so it's not.

 

now if the Mirai could do both hydrogen and plug in the wall for an extra 10 or 20 miles they would have something.

would have to secure plug in registration exceptions first to make it worthwhile