Featured Toyota to study Mirai-derived fuel-cell tech for heavy-duty trucks

This is where they should have started with hydrogen fuel cells. Central refueling stations reduce the required infrastructure investment, and swapping out a commercial diesel truck is more bang for the buck than multiple, cleaner cars. But it doesn't give any clear advantage over a BEV truck.

As for the truck itself, it has a 12kWh battery with two fuel cell stacks that are used in the Mirai. Each stack generates 114kW(153hp), leaving 364hp to be provided by the battery during periods of peak demand. "Let's put a plug on it" appears a no brainer has it could quick charge while refueling, but will that grid charge last long enough to offset the cost?

Couldn't find info on the truck's tank size. So in addition to not knowing potential refuel times, we can't even guess at efficiency.

 

The ports use short haul semi trucks. They drastically cleaned up emissions in the last decade from these trucks by switching many to natural gas. The ports by LA before the initiatives were responsible for 10% of the air pollution in the most polluted city in america. They claim they have dropped pollution by 80% already. The question is really is the technology ready or is this just another expensive program that will force people to get expensive equipment that is hard to maintain, and needs to be replaced quickly.



California Passes Clean Air Bill with $895M in Vehicle Incentives - TopNews - Fuel Smarts - TopNews - TruckingInfo.com

A problem with the natural gas trucks that initially went into the older initiative (2008), is they did not have enough power to move the loads, and maintenance was much too high. I believe that the natural gas engines now produced are fine.

12 KWH of battery sounds like too little of a buffer for these high loads. Its probably a good place to test a technology that doesn't seem ready for prime time. California is throwing lots of cash at this.

Toyota started running fuel cell busses in Japan. Its probably the same fuel cell size (2 from the mirai) but with a smaller battery. These just started this year. I am curious to see if they have increased reliability and reduced maintenance costs.

Toyota Unveiled Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Truck at Port of Los Angeles | WIRED

It sounds like these short haul trucks do 120 mile round trips. A big batteried natural gas phev, may be able to do this duty well as well as fuel cell if maintenance issues can be worked out.