Toyota Motor Corporation's Best Vehicle in 2015: The Hydrogen-Powered Mirai

The price of the car may come down, but the obstacle to mass adoption will always be infrastructure...private industry alone can't build out the necessary infrastructure to support a virtually non-existent car, and when we live in an age where spending on even basic infrastructure needs like maintenance on roads and bridges are always a huge fight in Congress, I can't see the Government getting on board to spend billions of the public's money on it either.

In theory, a Hydrogen economy would make a lot sense, we could create fuel from excess Solar, Wind, and other renewables to power our cars, but reality is always a depressing obstacle.

 

I don't pretend to know the answer here.
But I'd say I think it's kind of an exciting time to watch the auto industry as these technologies and products are created and vetted.

I speculate that it's human nature to want to know the "clear cut winner" or what is "next".
But I just don't think an answer that easy exists.

Personally, in the case of both Tesla and Toyota's Mirai, I cannot financially afford to ride the wave of being an early adopter. So I get to read the articles proclaiming the brilliance and wonder, as well as the foolishness, and sit back and watch.

 

The article doesn't mention the price of the fuel. Important and incredible oversight coming from a <cough> financial site.

 

It'd be nice if Toyota put more of their money where their mouth is. Yes, Elon Musk bashes fuel cell cars and promotes EV's, but he's also built out a nationwide chain of chargers to allow Tesla vehicles to drive almost anywhere they want throughout the US and other parts of the world. Best of all, they built the Supercharger network entirely on their own dime, and is paid for by people who buy their cars. And for now, it's also free to use after that 1 time charge.

They're also actively working to bring the costs down even further, mostly via the Gigafactory, so that the average joe and jane can afford to buy a longer ranged electric vehicle.

Other fast chargers are also slowly springing up nationwide. Though their reliability is questionable, at least it's showing up in a lot of different places at once. That'll help fill in gaps nicely when longer ranged EV's become more common.

Wish Toyota would put out a press release talking about how they're investing a lot of their own money to build up a hydrogen network so that Mirai owners and lessees can drive long distances with them and not have to worry about range anxiety either due to lack of places to fill up, or that unreliable stations are down, or only half-filling up their cars.

Instead they want taxpayers to foot the bulk of the bill. I'm surprised more people aren't up in arms over it, considering how much of a political fight it is just to get money to fix potholes.

 

Tesla has already stated that they are willing to let others buy into the Supercharger network. They didn't design the Supercharger standard to keep others out, but because there wasn't any open standard yet available that met their needs. If there had been, they may have simply used it for their network. Doing so would have saved them the Supercharger development costs, and likely reduced their manufacture costs for the stations, and the hardware on the cars.

There is the SAE standard for DC fast charging now, but here is the big difference between it and the one for hydrogen refilling. It wasn't needed for the initial roll out of BEVs. A level 2 EVSE at home is plenty for the vast amount of charging. Tesla didn't have to build the Supercharger network to sell BEVs, but they wanted to sell one that could replace an ICE car right out of the gate.

Hydrogen cars need hydrogen stations available when they hit the road to even have a chance at succeeding. Instead of building and running a station or two to show that they are serious about the technology, the H2FCEV companies are leaving the heavy lifting to local governments.

Gasoline was already widely available before the Model T came to market in 1908. The first purpose built gas stations were built in 1905 and 1907. Before them, motorists bought there fuel from the local general or hardware store. Before a kerosene pump was put to use for gasoline in the 1880's, it was sold by the can.

Gasoline was being used in lamps, heaters, and as a general solvent in households before the car arrived. It was chosen to fuel cars because it was already available. Hydrogen simply isn't on the scale needed for cars fueled by it to replace ICE ones.

And how many more public chargers did those funds install. I bet it is much more than 4 times the hydrogen pumps out there.

 

Yes. I agree. Quite ridiculous.

 

Alternative Fuels Data Center: Electric Vehicle Charging Station Locations
If we only count public fast chargers there are 1409, with 3081 plugs. Many of these were installed mainly with private funds.

Alternative Fuels Data Center: Electric Vehicle Charging Station Locations
Counting the same way there are 14 public hydrogen stations, Of course there are 11 of these in california and toyota is calling 6 demo stations. All of these come from public funding. California has promised to spend $220 million of auto fees on the hydrogen infrastructure. The 2015 report said that these hydrogen pumps are going in slower and are more expensive than they expected, so California may need to spend more than the $220M.

Perhaps they should cheek on the experience of first element.

If it was only $50M and it stopped there, I don't think anyone would complain about the amount.

 

I think this is the history people forget. Petrol was sold before cars, it was purchased from chemists/stores in a can. In the uk this happened right up into the 1920's in more remote areas. There was no infrastructure or plans for it, it just happened. There were no schemes to introduce expensive multipump petrol stations across the land, on the hope of "build it and they will come". Pumps developed where there was a demand, otherwise you bought petrol in a can.

Sadly the Mirai is in the same boat as a 1910 Morris owner, the car is rare, the fuel is rare, you can't pop down the local chemist/store to buy your fuel.

At least with a BEV or PHEV you can plug in at any one of billions of electricity points and get some charge, however slowly.

 

Buy a horse, then you don't have to worry about which is the better between BVA or H2.......

 

But that's going to cost so much money to buy! And not only would you need to devote large tracts of land to refuel it, it's 0-60 time really sucks, and maintenance is going to be both expensive and a nightmare when it needs to get looked at. Not to mention its emissions aren't going to be very friendly either.

Oh wait, I just realized I was talking about hydrogen fuel cell cars.

With a horse at least, you can look kind of cool while riding it.

 

Akin to the idea of trucking in hydrogen in big rigs across the spine of California to bolster this idiotic experiment. Just imagine what might transpire if one of these happens to get involved in a significant traffic incident...

 

Precisely. Fuel cell and plug in cars are going to follow the same expansion as the original automobiles. The first models will only be available to the well to do, and then the affordable ones for the masses followed. The curious rich bought the first cars as a novelty, and still had their horse and buggy for when the car broke down or the local store ran out of gasoline. When the cars numbers grew, that local store would install a pump out back or right on the curb. When cars started being bought by the majority, was when it finally became economically feasible to build actual gas stations.

Unfortunately for hydrogen, it isn't readily available to the public before the cars' arrival like gasoline and electricity were. Not even during the time of ready access to toxic chemicals, poisons, and TNT was hydrogen easy to come by. If it was, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the first ICE car ran on hydrogen. So the first H2FCEV cars only affordable by the well to do require stations built and hydrogen made at the cost to everybody else.

I know someone with horses. They are large, expensive to own, and dangerous. According to Toyota, you could easily make hydrogen from their poop though.

 

Yes Hydrogen stations have new standards. These seem to change all the time, but now there are 4 stations out of 14 that adhere to those standards. They are backwards compatible though so a clarity can still fill at a newer station, it just can't fill as fast, and a mirai can fill at an older station though it just can't fill as fast.

Tesla wanted a fast charger network before the standards committee settled on a standard aka combo plug. The other pre combo plug standard chademo was too slow for Tesla's superchargers, and controlled by a japanese group headed by Nissan. Tesla chose to innovate instead of wait. We now have 3 standards for fast charging Combo plug, Tesla, and Chademo. The first 2 have fast and slow charging on the same plug, chademo requires 2. Tesla has cables to allow owners to use chademo, regular electrical outlets L2 chargers, etc. Tesla, Combo, and Chademo all allow other manufacturers to use their standard. Its the manufacturer not the individual plug-in owner that needs to ink the agreement though. You can't just use tesla's superchargers without paying, as tesla paid to build them.

Ford's model T used the existing ethanol and gasoline infrastructure. Both were commonly available at the time. You needed to go to a store to get it. Gasoline was a low cost byproduct of producing profitable kerosene for the oil industry. Drive up filling stations per much more profitable once enough cars were on the road so oil industry and independents built them. Tesla is able to charge at time of purchase of the car enough to build superchargers, which add value to the cars. The electricity is not free but paid for at the time the car was purchased. Both models work for commercialization.

What doesn't work in the US is a model where hydrogen needs to be dispensed much cheaper than its cost, to build a network. Japan may be fine with this model with the government paying for everything and subsidizing the cars.

That number seems wrong. How are you coming up with it? Are you using the $220M California is spending. I don't see how you can find $880M on charging subsidies, I don't see any that are close. For the country though I'm sure its more than 4x for charging versus hydrogen. Then again there are 100x more fast charging stations than public hydrogen stations, so I'm not seeing the bang per buck.

The NRG deal was a joke. Then again I doubt california could actually get them to pay, so they pretended evgo was worth a lot more than it was. California is wasting money on chargers as well as hydrogen stations, but the waste seems smaller to me.
The Big Problem With the Latest Plan to Build EV Chargers in California | WIRED

Again I'm fine with the $220M and even the extra DOE money for research. What I'm not fine is the deliveries keep getting less, and they are already asking for more money. Prove people actually want the fcv with the $220M, plus the DOE research and commercialization and the similar amounts Germany and Japan are paying. Toyota has no right to be wining about infrastructure. They chose the vendor - First Element, they chose the locations. If they want it faster they need to build some stations themselves.

I'm guessing you are being facetious, but there you go.
No one said they wanted faster horses, they wanted less horseshit | Experience Design at Hello Erik
Henry Ford, Innovation, and That “Faster Horse” Quote

Are Honda, Toyota and CARB pedaling horse S$it? Building the same old car but fueled with hydrogen instead of gasoline. Or is there a market there that market research can't find. I say more power to the first 2 if they can find it, but lets stop increasing the bill CARB with results falling far short of expectations.

 

WHAT? no horse tax credits?

DBCassidy

 

Pennsylvania will give you a break on your real estate taxes if you have horses and 10+ acres of land. There are likely other benefits in the various Ag bills of the country.

 

Congress prepares to extend tax breaks for horse owners, film industry and more | Fox News

 

Yep in its shameful way congress instead of doing comprehensive tax reform, has extended some give sways. Those horse advocates, you know the ones that have million dollar or more horses will be happy to know congress is still looking out for them. Want an electric bike, $2500, you know the special break to get oregon on board with 2 electric bike makers. Hey you are big oil, you got the ability to export american oil, now you can screw the public even more. Own a race track, congress will give you money to pave it. They even extended coal subsidies for mining on indian reservations.

All this is really off topic here, but mainly for USB and Orenji. USB see I bitch about other stupid subsidies also. Orenji thought you would be amused that congress is out to make sure the super rich can provide jobs for jockeys by subsiding race horses. Still horses aren't as environmental as a prius. You don't have to clean up horse manure from a prius, or need lots of land for it to exercise on. expenses for gas and maintenance on a prius is even lower than the fodder and doctor bills on a horse for going the same distance, and horses don't have heat and air conditioning. Prii have higher up front costs and of course require insurance. Fatalities of horse riders pre car were higher than drivers are today, so the prius is safer than a horse too ;-) if you do similar trips.

 

You don't have the monopoly on idiotic or questionable laws lately.

The solar industry over here has had all subsidies cut, as has renewable energy production BUT there are now subsidies to build oil powered power stations.;

Dozens of new 'dirty' diesel generators to be built with £175m subsidies - Telegraph

UK cuts to renewable energy make a mockery of its pledge at Paris climate talks | Environment | The Guardian

Who says money doesn't talk. Big oil must be greasing palms somewhere.