Featured Toyota Won’t Make A Proper EV Because Dealers Say It Won’t Sell

But they weren't forced to stop making the Rav4 EV. Lead acid batteries weren't ideal, but they worked. It is a crime with what happened to the NiMH patents, but lack of NiMH access didn't affect motors and all the supporting equipment, nor did battery chemistry limit them to only selling within the CARB states. The Rav4 EV was nothing more than a compliance car.

The gen2 was also, and all the major car companies had a compliance car in California around that time. The Leaf, Volt, Model S, and Focus Electric were all available before it, and also weren't limited to California. So claiming Toyota was some type of leader with the new Rev4 EV is a stretch. If the first one hadn't achieved cult status in popularity, Toyota wouldn't have bothered with out sourcing the gen2 to Tesla. They were working on the iQ EV in house already. If they were serious about the new Rav4 EV, they could have done the same with it, or extended the contract past 3000 units at the least.

Toyota is more focused on a hydrogen FCEV, which they let the Rav4 EV die for. Ironically, that might save them when the BEV market really takes off. Remove the fuel cell and hydrogen tanks for more battery, and their FCEV becomes a BEV. They can't claim it's a hybrid though.

 

ooh, ooh, pick me...please pick me
[apologies to Horshack]

People who want a quieter car?
People who don't like smelling like gas.
People who are OK with just plugging in at home rather than "going" to the gas station.
People who realize that solar at home is still cheaper than cheap gas
People who don't want to live in smog.
People who want new technology.
People who want to drive with domestic fuel.

Mike

 

how do we clone you?

 

Or be way ahead of the time and use a Nuclear Fusion Reactor - AKA - the SUN.

 

How do we make all of those great clean offsets .......... get offset against even cheaper gas, if electricity is way way more costly to most folks compared to gas - those who find cheaper Transportation fuel to be the lesser of 2 evils - going broke or going clean. Call me mr. skeptical, but imo most can't stomach doing the right thing when the finances won't permit.

or able to pay their rent

or able to pay their rent

or able to pay their rent

or just able to pay the rent

or just able to pay the rent

or just able to pay the rent

or just be able to pay the rent

 

I zeroed in on this. I think that's an astute analysis. They sort of have an escape hatch where they would simply can the fuel cells and triple their battery orders. Then within 5 years they'll have gone to a new generation further optimized for battery only. The packaging, sizes and weights of "all the things" wouldn't be much different between all-battery and fc versions.

As for the overall plan to do hydrogen- why not? It may never go big... but if it happens to then they're well set. I don't give it a high percentage of likelihood... But hey, they might as well explore and perfect manufacturing for this niche and dare to dream. I get it.

Honestly the only thing I see missing from hydrogen now is the lack of home fueling. It would be a tough engineering puzzle. A home-scale box that took water and electrical inputs and resulted in compressed hydrogen in quantities relevant to a typical commuter.

 

And Commercial hydrogen costs are $15 per liter. Homebrew setup would be astronomical, as if fifteen bucks a leader isn't.
.

 

I am sitting at Ford Dry Lake Road near the Cali/AZ border right now. From here I can see what I believe are three solar farms. Given the configuration, I would say they are piped hot water from solar mirrors, spinning turbines. I would bet dollars to donuts that these plants also burn natural gas on cool or cloudy days, and at night in order to meet contract requirements and to "spin up" the solar portion of the plant at sunrise. Regardless of the source of the muscle that drives these plants, because they are remote from metro areas, they lose a lot of efficiency because they are a grid source.

There is lots of waste in grid power of any ilk. There are transmission losses and transformer losses at all steps in the system. But there is not the kind of waste the commenter claims.

The only real way to reduce the incredible operating waste from grid power is to generate power at the point of use. That is why gasoline has lived a long life as a fuel. And why power cells are attractive. Batteries, as I have said before, are lame when power density is compared with diesel, gasoline, compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, propane, kerosene or even body fat. Lame. We would be better served to increase the efficiency of internal combustion engines from it's typical 15% to 50%, if possible.

 

As at 18 mths ago, almost all the largest manufacturers in the world (TOYOTA, HYUNDAI/KIA, GM, VW (at least AUDI), Merc, Honda - and Lexus and Genesis were working on Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles.

The last I heard the biggest roadblock is the development of ways to produce massive amounts of Hydrogen in an environmentally friendly way. One disadvantage of Hydrogen over electricity is that it still needs transporting - not able to be sent over wires.

 

In the form it's used in PRIUS (ie with EV as a buffer, and allowing it to spin at close to optimal RPM), I think the ICE is about 40%.

 

you mean the waste of pumping oil from one continent and then transporting it to another? Or pumping it from the Northern end of a continent to the other? As opposed to wind & photovoltaic generation on site with battery backup? Yes you're right, transporting thousands of miles to take a liquid goo & wasting energy & causing pollution - refining it into another toxic chemical and then Trucking it around the nation? Yes - it's wasteful. Transmission loss of high voltage - on the other hand? Just a few % of loss. And when it's solar or wind or Hydro? It's non-carcinogenic to boot.
.

 

Can I assume that you mean in cases where somebody is buying the electricity (or stripping it from CNG) instead of solar? What would be wrong with a bunch of solar panels out there dumping power into a high pressure electrolysis rig?

 

it takes roughly 4 x the amount of electricity to reform hydrogen via electrolysis then if you had just put the electricity in a battery. Other than that, and the astronomical cost of the Platinum stacks wearing out, and the necessity of replacing tanks at 10 years? Fuel lines at 10 years? And other consumables? Okay yeah I guess that would work.

 

Not convinced choice between ICE and plug-ins is nearly as financially serious as making rent payment. Sure, it could be for some.

In my little world, though - for everyone I know who drives a plug-in, there are dozens more financially more secure who chose ICE instead. It comes down to choice as a major factor. Just not the choice many here would want.

 

It appears to give the gift of energy density, and the portability isn't bad even if the shelf life sucks.
Tradeoffs? We just established that grids have waste and pumping slime around has waste. Why would waste surprise me in a hydrogen system?

It looks like it's got some good uses.

 

Does anyone know how much compression (or whatever it would be called) Compressed Hydrogen would be in a car application? Also - I guess, being hydrogen, it should be lighter than Petrol or Diesel (or Crude) to cart around. Is that a correct assumption?

 

Sure, there are plenty of people that worry about paying the rent.

BUT

Given that the median price for a new car is way above $30K there are plenty of people that can pay the rent since they could be buying cars far cheaper than that if they just needed to be able to get from point A to point B.

Mike

 

10,000 psi or greater.

 

It all depends on priorities, and what market people are in.

For someone looking for a used car, say 2 or 3 yrs old, the difference between a PRIUS or a RAV4 or Tacoma will be that they're going to cost about the same to buy, but the PRIUS will be far cheaper over 5 yrs of ownership (Australian fuel price particularly).

When I bought PRIUS, I did the sums against similar sized, and equipped hatchbacks - and, while similar in outright purchase price, the running costs (with Australian petrol up toward $1.60/litre) put the PRIUS substantially in front.

A friend was saying the same thing with regard to a TESLA, which here, is $120-150,000. He said that, while that's crazy money to someone like him and I, for someone looking at a well equipped E Class Merc or BMW 5 series, a TESLA S is a viable option, probably cheaper in the long run - better resale for a start.

 

Your gasoline price translates to over $6.00 per gallon. I am currently paying under $3.00 and sometimes closer to $2.50 per gallon. That changes the economic equation substantially.