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

I can't deny any of that, but I also can't make electrical batteries out of mud baked under the sun. A giant thermal battery? Maybe..

 

Since it was designed for fuel cell we can't do that, but we can look at the model 3 which is similar in internal size. The model 3 mid range weighs 3,686 lb and has a range of 260 miles (EPA) and has a world wide fueling infrastructure. The clarity fuel cell is 4,134 lb which is about how high you would get if you put enough batteries in a model 3 to get its 366 miles, but refueling is extremely limited. Before subsidies the clarity which loses honda money is priced at $59K, the mid range model 3 premium which is profitable costs $46K.

On a smart grid (I live on one in austin) there are one time costs to make transmission work. When it happens solar or wind displace natural gas on the grid. Here if the solar needs to go far away there is around a 20% loss in transmission. The lines add little to the cost of the grid but old coal needs to leave the grid if its too heavy and be replaced by something like a combination of solar, wind, and ccgt natural gas. Solar is currently more expensive than wind or natural gas in most of the country. In a car like the model 3 (even the least efficient one) the electricity then gets 116 mpge. Multiply that by the 80% bad case and you are at 93 mpge after heavy transmission losses. Now look at hydrogen. The electricity needs to convert it to hydrogen then pump it up over 10,000 psi makes the process currently only about 60% efficient, multiply this to the most efficient fuel cell car (clarity) of 68 mpge gives us 41 mpge after losses from the solar. It means you need to build over 2x more renewable to fuel the vehicles and a much more expensive infrastructure. Nationwide this electricity and infrastructure would cost about $4.40/gge for the plug-in versus around $25/gge for the fuel cell vehicle (its a lot more than 2x because equipment is much more expensive). The national average gas price is $2.66 today. For $ / mile that fuel cell vehicle would need to have a gasoline car get more than 8 miles/gallon pretty much every light vehicle. For that tesla it would need to get more than 70 mpg. You can see how the economics work against fuel cells without some serious breakthroughs or massive government subsidies. The other part is scale. For the tesla charging structure, it is fairly easy and cheap to add more fast chargers to home and L2. Adding incremental windfarm and solar is also easy. Adding hydrogen so that people feel comfortable requires a huge investment ant likely will be stranded. Japan is trying this. We only need one experiment and japan is better than america because it is smaller with lower fueling requirements and more expensive gasoline and electricity.

Fueling speed is still a problem for some. PHEVs are less expensive than fcv to both buy, maintain, and fuel without subsidies. You could make it flex fuel to run on methanol which can be made from co2 and solar for lower cost than 10,000 psi hydrogen.

The needed breakthroughs are something like safe nuclear that is much lower cost than current nucleaer or wind, which seems doubtfull. The excess heat can be used to make hydrogen cheaply ;-)

 

Yes, they ICE. They were poor performers on hydrogen because they were using engines designed for gasoline.

Hydrogen has good energy density by mass, but poor by volume. In order to get the gas to a density that is workable for a car, it needs to be compressed to a high pressure or pressed and chilled into a liquid. With a high pressure gas, the tanks need to be strong, which makes them heavy. Cylinders, spheres, and variations of them are the most weight efficient shapes for containing high pressures. They aren't conducive to efficient packaging in a car like tanks liquids. With liquid hydrogen, the tanks gets bulky and gains weight from insulation. Then some of the hydrogen needs to periodically be vented as it all warms up.

The water issue is something that is going to increase the involved costs.

There are already several options for grid energy storage besides Li-ion batteries, and some are in use. Simply pumping water up hill to later run a turbine is being used in a couple spots. Fly wheel 'batteries' already exist, and were even used in F1 cars. Flow batteries are also being used, and some are becoming available for the residential market, though the vanadium that most use might become hard to come by; there are several battery chemistries out there. MIT recently took the thermal brick idea to the next level by using a mass of liquid sodium; heat it up, and then make use of the heat and light with PV.

The thermal brick method probably is more worthwhile on a much smaller scale by having a wall or floor of a building heat up during the day to help heat at night.

Li-ion has proven itself in cars, and is proving itself for grid storage. Tesla currently is using the same cell in cars and grid batteries. Eventually, demand for both uses will increase the price, or strain the supply. Better to use energy storage systems for the grid that would work poorly in a car in the long term. Electrolyzer/fuel cell systems could be one such option. Another is vanadium flow batteries; one is supposedly coming to the US next year that is cheaper than the Powerwall with a 25 to 30 year electrolyte life.

Just like the old VWs with magnesium engine blocks. Back then, the solution when one of those lit up was to call in a back hoe and bury it. All those fire fighters with that experience have retired, and I guess the collective knowledge is now gone.

But neither Toyota nor Honda make a Honda make a Model 3. The FCEV discussion started to show that Toyota was not completely out of the 100% EV drive train field, and if they hypothetically needed a BEV tomorrow, they could do a conversion of the Mirai, or whatever other FCEV they are working on, to sell until they did have a dedicated BEV platform.

 

I now have the image of a firefighter in a hastily-borrowed excavator frantically trying to reach 1-800-DIG-SAFE stuck in my head.

Batman said it best. Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

 

True, and this really is a pretend problem. Unfortunately according to the source it can burn for up to 24 hours, the key is to put it out, then tow it away from things it might light on fire. IIRC there have been 2 of these incidents in the last 4 years, and the problem may be gone in the model 3's newer battery design. Say it happens 100 times a year and the cars need to be towed to a safe place as this one was and allowed to burn out. No injuries. That is much better than the historic gasoline car fires, which cause around 375 deaths a year.

 

i doubt car fires are one of toyota's bev concerns. but it is likely part of any car design process.

 

well this is what the thread is all about. We can't compare it to what toyota or honda do, because they have not put forth a serious effort for a long range bev. Honda has been better on phev. Honda's conversion of the fuel cell mirai platform for bev shows how bad it is. The key things a bev design should have is skateboard type battery that is part of the structure of the body and aerodynamics for highway range. To me tesla is the only company that has pushed this far enough although gm, nissan, porsche, audi, and jaguar have made attempts. Price performance needs to look at the model 3, which is a better comparison (same interior + cargo room as the clarity, higher power, same basic 4 door sedan unlike the bolt's hatchback).

Hydrogen is basically dead outside of japan for consumer vehicles. The price of the fueling infrastructure just makes them not viable without some big technological breakthroughs. Methanol phevs would have lower fueling cost and production costs right now. Here are the economics. If high volume fuel cells get produced (hundreds of thousands a year) it will cost approximately $9K for tanks and fuel cell stack. Analysts think tesla will get its 80.5 kwh battery pack (310 mile range) down to $8000 in less than 10 years. That fuel cell and tanks take up more room and also require a buffering battery and a fueling nozzle which are more expensive than the charger needed in a bev. Which would you buy if they cost the same? I have no doubt toyota or honda could build a accord or camry or rav4 or crv for less than tesla outside the battery and motors (which tesla seems the low cost producer). Honda has been working on the clarity fuel cell, and toyota on the mirai components for longer than tesla has existed as a company.

The problem toyota and honda have is the dealership netork relies on maintenance costs and they would need a higher profit margin on car sales to make up for the lack of profit on maintenance on a bev.

 

dealers lose in the long run either way, they just don't know it yet

 

Cracks me up how quickly a battery fire makes the news, rather than turn the cameras around at the majority of Auto fires - even considering the ratio of battery to ice vehicles. Consider this relatively new RAV4 that almost takes out a fireman;

For crying out loud, you have something flammable yet people get all drama-filled when it actually Flames out on you.
.

 

Rare things are sometimes newsworthy. Common occurrences usually aren't.

Seems normal to me.

 

maybe we need more ev fires

 

We've had threads on different EV vehicle fires before.

Hoping someone here can point me to data on how new EV vehicles fire rates compare to new ICE vehicle fire rates. Would also be useful to have old EV vehicle fire rates to compare to old ICE vehicle fire rates. Not sure we have enough EV years of data to do the later yet.

Lastly, might be interesting to compare EV fires by manufacturer per vehicle capita.

 

Not supporting hydrogen FCEVs, nor arguing a ground up BEV design wouldn't be cheaper.

Just pointing out that Toyota isn't getting left behind in terms technical knowledge by not having a BEV available. The motor and supporting hardware in a FCEV and BEV is the same. The difference is on the energy supply side, and a single battery is easier to do than balancing the output a fuel cell and buffer battery. Toyota is lacking in regards to plug in battery packaging, and maybe liquid thermal management.

Toyota's hurdle to doing a good BEV isn't technical, but philosophical.

 

I guess you've never seen the Hoover dam. Or Niagara Falls.

Basic laws of thermodynamics. You are only going to get out a fraction of the heat you put in. You are taking already perfectly usable electricity from PV and dumping it into a big heat sink only to get a small fraction of BTUs back out, then incur losses in the conversion from heat to something rotating (probably) and more losses to get electricity. Sure, technically this works...just not efficiently and thus not profitable.

If you could (cheaply) just cover your pit with glass and collect solar thermal you might have a chance at being economical. But you'd want a phase change material and not bricks. Why? Because on really hot days you want to collect as much heat as possible without losing it. The rate of heat loss is directly proportional to the temperature delta. Phase change caps this, within a range. This is one reason why steam plants can be made (relatively) efficiently. Water is converted to steam as it changes phases and stores lots more energy at its phase change temperature.

Mike

 

Normal but not a rational engineering analysis of facts

Mike

 

Re 1) - I vaguely remember flywheel buses - I was only young, but I'm sure I read about them in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science. I think they had very short range and were re-spun when they stopped for passengers? ;
Re 2) - Somewhere recently I read/heard about the old NiFe batteries as were used in BEVs a century+ ago - being investigated for static home power storage. Anyone heard any more on this?

 

Yes, this is all well understood and accepted...

Now this is the assertion I challenge. Profitability is a continuum. Things that were not profitable a few years ago are breaking even now, and getting better tomorrow. Things that don't work today may work in the future, which might even be tomorrow.

The key point here isn't to deliver the cheapest electricity during production hours. Plenty of other plants can do that. I want one that can completely displace a coal plant by providing the same 24x7x365 performance with an ultra-low-tech storage mechanism. A specific engineering goal.

Journalistic reporting rarely is, and that's a good thing. They might report on the release of a report bearing a rational engineering analysis of facts, they might quote it or run a few highlights or a quick take from an expert in the field. That's the way they present information. If you want more you go get it yourself.

 

"Just laying out solar panels and hooking to the grid," isn't as easy as you think. Regulations, contracts to buy and supply, etc. However, McCoalRoller is right. The roof covered with solar converting hydrogen for a single family might be doable. Fuel cell in the car, fuel cell in the kitchen, bing bang boom shakala! Instant grid free, non-polluting existence. After reading this post, I am quite sure that McCoalRoller is really Elon Musk! He's already figured out that we can't get to Mars (space-x experiment reveals secret weaknesses), and that BEVs are not the answer. So, in the cape of the CoalRoller, he begins his next crusade -- a fuel cell and two canoes in every garage! And, with any luck, the new venture will IPO at $420 a share!!!!!!!! Brilliant!

The most incredible thing about this video is the little guy. How did he get to be a fireman? He's not bigger than the oxygen bottle the stupid dude is wearing.

 

Pretty amazing we haven't seen more Tesla battery fires in the news considering the amount that are now out there. That is pretty amazing in and of itself IMO.

 

Good, competent design & manufacture is sometimes close to magic.