True? Toyota just killed the PiP?

Wow I'd love to own a limited production car like that. Probably be worth twice that much in 10 years. It would also be interesting to have it on hand to compare it to the FCEV when that comes out. Of course I'd be more interested in the car aspects: acceleration, ride, noise, seat comfort, storage space, msrp....


iPad ? HD

 

Some of the Gen I EV Rav4's now have over 100K (mostly trouble free) miles. If Battery MD (authorized to do this) reconditions their packs - you'll see them selling on ebay (not just asking high & not getting the higher prices) for around $18k-$20k .... not bad - but no where near what a '64 Astin Martin' s value is either. But for a daily driver - owners who have owned both gen's say they've had fewer issues with Gen I's than they have w/the Gen II's .... not that I wouldn't want to score one of either type. Several Gen I owners have started converting to J 1772 plugs now that most of the inductive charging network has been dismantled.
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I would say the bmw i8 will be a much better collectors item. Its too late to get a pristine tesla roadster.

I know there is nastalgia about the gen I rav4 ev, but its slow, smaller, has less range, doesn't have a standard plug compared to the gen II. Given that toyota is required to offer spare parts for a gen II for the next decade, but won't for the gen I, makes it kind of a no brainer that the gen I is now a dynasaur. One may want to try to buy a ev-1 brought back to life as a university project, but what is the point of a gen i Rav4 EV. Is it to say it's not as good as current cars, but toyota didn't crush all of them just some? If you are a plug-in collector the gen I looks pretty bad. On the other hand if you live in california, diane might make you a sweet deal on a gen II. Use it only in good weather, to keep it in pristine shape, and it may appreciate in a decade or two. Outside of california, I wouldn't risk it because toyota seems visibly hostile to service them.

 

clicked this link from anouther article.
Affordable Hydrogen Could Send Sales of Fuel-Cell Vehicles Soaring | TheDetroitBureau.com

I thought it was impressive ... on where toyota's thinking its going.

Which is kind of significant from carter's math $30/$7.50/kg = 4 kg of hydrogen to go 300 miles or 75 mile per kg. I believe this may be a japanese test number, but certainly looks high for a US number.

Let's face it the camry hybrid xle is a nicer car and far less expensive than what the fcv is supposed to be (details still pending). camry hybrid gets 40 mpg, so for 300 miles 7.5 gallons. Gas here was $3.22/gallon which cost less than $25 for that trip.

The tesla S 85kwh gets 89 mpge, which for 300 miles would be 114 kwh. Even at a very expensive 15 cents/kwh that is only $17.

Which makes me think toyota USA is thinking energy in the US costs what it does in japan when they push fuel cell vehicles. The numbers work out much nicer if you use japanese gasoline prices and electricity prices and not those we are using.

 

That $7.50 a kg number is also sans tax.

 

That or Toyota USA is thinking Americans are really bad at math

 

Funny thing to me (besides how the author of the article can write so glowing a report over such dread) is how easy the words, "only a billion dollar investment" ..... while neglecting to say WHERE that billion is going to come from. In fact, they're saying we'll rape another billion off the tax payers, because they aint gona invest their own cash ... they don't believe in it THAT much.
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Their glowing report seems pretty bad, even five years out. For now, I think Toyota's barking up the wrong tree, and it's a very expensive tree at that.

 

The 1 billion will be borrowed from the Chinese or Arabia, and then repaid with devalued paper worth half as much.

 

The US government alone has spent about $3B so far, and that doesn't count individual states which have spent a great deal also. Privately well until we bailed them out, gm has spent $2.5 billion. Plug power spends a lot on R&D, but they don't need refueling infrasture, the customer can have hydrogen trucked in. In the scheme of things where gasoline is subsidized to the tune of around $4B/year, and that only amounts to 3 cents a gallon, a billion doesn't sound very big.

The problem in my mind is that the ballance of the car, the stack and tanks, are much to expensive for commercialization right now in the US (Japan may be different). If they can't get those costs down, then that $1B will simply be flushed down the toilet.

Just recently Jim Lentz told us that the fcv would be much less expensive than the tesla S, but it turns out when they came out with pricing its the same price, not less as a much more desirable car (60 kwh tesla S beats the mirai in just about every catagory including refueling convience and the ability to take interstate trips). And while Tesla because of reporting requirements has a large profit margin on the S, we assume that the mirai is a money loser for toyota at that price, making volume impossible. There definitely look like there could be break throughs, but these 10,000 psi hydrogen fueling stations my look as outdated as paddle chargers by the time these technical hurdles are breached.

One area of research that the doe is funding is reduced cost for renewable hydrogen. This is of the order of $100M and seems appropriate.

Methanol seems like a more promising fuel for fuel cells. Some stationary power stations are being run on methanol. Think issolated village, but if methanol works, no need for breakthroughs on storage tech, but they are needed for reformer tech that may have many more applications.

 

I leased a Hydrogen Fool Cell car. I will let you know how well it works (or does not work). By the end of the year California will have a bunch of stations connecting San Diego to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Reno, so it will be as convenient to 'recharge' an FCV as an EV (in california). Wait time is only 15 minutes.

One advantage of hydrogen is the ability for California to suck the CO2 from the natural gas (or methanol) and store it underground, so it cannot make global warming worse. Sequestration. Any other car just spits the CO2 direct from its exhaust, and makes "global cooling"... I mean, global warming... I mean "climate change" more severe.

 

Which one did you lease? Hyundai?
The lease .... I understand they run about $500/month after you put some amount up front?
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Let us know what you leased, for how much, and how you like it.

btw: getting to reno this year? not until october 2015 at the earliest in the hydrogen map, so I assume your joking about most of this. The hydrogen highway was supposed to be done by 2010, so I'll believe it is working when I see it.

 

CO2 sequestering is an advantage of hydrogen from natural gas over just using it for a CNG vehicle. To do so means making the hydrogen at a central location, and then figuring out how to get the hydrogen to the station. I don't think on site station reformers are capable sequestering at this point. If they are, the captured CO2 needs to be shipped to the sequestering site.

Because the sequestering will add to the cost of the fuel hydrogen, it will only happen when the producers are forced to do so.

 

Wonder what would happen if they used that excess CO2 on some algae farms. You know, so they can make some actual sustainable biofuels, especially ones that can be grown indoors, and utilizes salt-water and isn't normally a part of human diet. Much better than using corn at least.

 

Coal power plants feeding CO2 into cesspools of algae -- the perfect factory.

We might as well use the Great Lakes. They are half way there already.

 

So should I buy a Toyota Prius Plugin before it disappears? The FCV is a Mercedes for $420 a month + tax. List price on the lease is $51,000.

I feel baited. I must reply. California is building a plant to convert CNG to H2 and then sequester the CO2 under the Angeles mountains.

 

He didn't say it couldn't be done, he said it would add to the price.
The capture of the CO2 will add cost. The transport to the Sierra mountains will cost money, the sequestration (and monitoring?) will cost money.

May be only a little, or may be more, but it will add costs.

 

congratulations, let us know how you like the car. Is it used? I thought mercedes wasn't shipping new fcv right now.

On the sequestration, I tried googling, and just came up with this plant which is coke and coal to electricity + hydrogen by bakersfield.
Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies @ MIT

It won't be online until 2018, but it would be good progress. DOE is helping fund this, and initially the carbon dioxide would be sold and used in the oil fields, not sequestered, which along with the federal funding helps make the project more viable. The DOE is subsidizing a similar coal + sold pollution in midland texas, but they aren't planning on making hydrogen.

Is there another natural gas to hydrogen sequestration project going on in California.

 

California is requiring a certain percentage of the hydrogen 'sold' through the stations to be green, carbon neutral, or I don't the exact term they are using. Thus the forced part of my comment. Otherwise, a hydrogen company wouldn't choose to do so if it made their product more expensive than a competitor's.