Featured What Happens To Your Honda Clarity When The Lease Is Up?

This page from the fueleconomy gov web site may provide a clue. Fuel Cell Vehicles - Benefits and Challenges

They point out that the fuel cell stack has a limited life span, currently as high as 75,000 miles. To sell them in California they will need at at least a 100K mile warranty If they are like the Hybrid warranties. At current costs the fuel cell (without labor) would be around $6,000 to replace. That's on top of a $55,000 purchase price.

It might be better to cut their losses instead of having all of them fail at such an early age. Another complication may come from the requirement to provide spare parts. Auto manufacturers are required by US Federal Law to have parts available for any models they sold for the period of 10 years. Can you imagine having to stock two or three $6000 fuel cells per car? That's a lot of assets to stockpile.

Dan

 

Are you basing the replacement price from this graph?


The cost might be lower than $55/kW, if production was up to the 500k systems a per year in fine print. A 6kW fuel cell generator runs over $27k now, G-HFCS-6kW (6kW Hydrogen Fuel Cell Power Generator). The cost to Honda is probably at the $30k point. The Mirai's would be $36k.

The fuel cells at failing at that point. Their wattage output drops over time of use, and watt equals horsepower for the motor. The 150k mile(really 5000hrs of operation, which is about 150k miles in a car) target is the average loss to be less than 10% at that time. When a lot of fuel cells hits that failure mileage, some will be less than 10%, and some over. I think I came across the report for the 29k mile fail set, and IIRC, the worse were pushing 30%. Still, the 10% average is more than what an ICE will lose over its life.

Some people may not notice the loss. For those that do, it's like battery capacity for BEVs, the amount of the loss could acceptable for their needs, or it may not. The problem for FCEV proponents is that this power loss isn't as well known as battery degradation by the public, and with the hurdles before FCEV adoption, reports of such losses in lower mile used cars wouldn't be well received.

Now, in theory, these FCEVs could have been converted into PHEV or BEV models, but it probably would have been a bigger loss to Honda to do so and sell them.

 

iirc - under carb legislation, hybrids & plug-ins are required to have 10-year 150k warranties on all hybrid/synergy drive related components at least;
CARB state warranty requirement | PriusChat
If the hydrogen car lobby have carved out another special exemption, well, that shouldn't be surprising.
.

 

Plenty of high mileage Mirai already running the street in California with no issues. One in particular has 180k miles.

 

I see that your Mirai is a 2017. Is that the one with 180K miles? What kind or work are you doing that puts 5000 miles a month on the car? I would think that daily long haul trips would not be too convenient.

Dan

 

No not mine another owner. Have no idea what he does. Only thing replaced has been one wheel bearing. I do know another owner that average 3,000 miles per month in sales. People drive from OC to San Francisco all the time. They stop at Harris Ranch to fill up.

 

Edmunds review of the (as @bisco says) hydrobomb;

Used 2018 Toyota Mirai Consumer Reviews - 3 Car Reviews | Edmunds

2 out of 3. oh well . . . we all can't be advocates for the hydrogen highway dead end.

Motortrend seems to have an ax to grind against hydrogen too;

https://www.motortrend.com/cars/toyota/mirai/2016/2016-toyota-mirai-review-long-term-verdict/

bahh . . .what do they know.
.

 

You've given us a couple anecdotal examples without any type of evidence. Have these cars been tested for the power loss that all fuel cells experience? What about with less miles, as type of drives can have a bearing on that loss?

There are Tesla sites that are tracking capacity loss in Teslas, and those tracking high mileage ones, that report maintenance. Any thing for the Mirai?

 

I don’t know, but I will research and let you know what I find.

 

Looks like Motortrend thinks differently of the 2021 model.

2021 Toyota Mirai First Drive Review: Hydrogen's Never Looked This Good

 

That says nothing about loss of capacity due to the Platinum fuel stack wearing out
.

 

fuel cell cars are not hybrids. They do not need to follow hybrid regulations. They are almost entirely leased so that they can be taken off the road after lease expiration without really hurting. Those that bought well its such a small number the car manufacturer can give them all their money back and it wouldn't make a dent.

My guess is most will simply lose capacity (power). Hopefully newer designs will be plug compatible with the old ones so Toyota, Honda, or Hyundai can simply replace a bad fuel cell with a better designed newer one. If we really are increasing sales and fuel cell prices go down, then they can afford it to keep selling.

The solution to lower power over the lifetime is to have excess battery power so the driver doesn't notice the change other than possibly a little higher hydrogen consumption. Batteries are pretty cheap compared to fcv.

They are talking volume needed to get low unit production at 500,000/year. Toyota hopes next one makes 30,000 units per year. If they replace a 2022 fuel cell in 2027 and prices fall as Toyota hopes, then its not going to cost much to replace.

Maybe if Hyundai, Toyota, and Honda all cooperate on a design for 2027 they can share a plant and make the volume necessary to drop fuel cell prices. There is volume in the much lower power fork lift fuel cells. The other miracles have to be fueling and tanks. All the technical challenges to build and fuel one have been over come. The problem is making them desirable at a price that doesn't require huge subsidies.

 

This was in response to your post #8