Fuel Station Woes

teething pains...

 

twas ever thus...

 

"Just as the rollout of plug-in electric vehicle technology took time, so will this." - CARB response

But a public charger going down doesn't leave a car stuck at home; they can still charge up there.

 

It's sort of fun to watch real economics in action. The stations don't make any money refueling cars. They make money by being built, upgraded, or repaired. So remember these two economic basics:

1) You get what you pay for.
2) Follow the money.

 

They do make money refilling cars. The car company is paying for the hydrogen instead of the car driver.
I wonder if there is s guarrenteed minimum a station will get paid whether cars use it or not?

 

I am a fan of Fuel Cells, but I don't consider FCV cars as something that makes financial sense right now, maybe for decades.

But we should not condemn FCV for mismanagement by Ca./CARB. One of the exciting things about FCV technically is the availability of new generation fueling stations that have no problems. Japan is getting some of these. Probably CARB is thinking about using older technology or USA homegrown technology or something political that prevents purchasing equipment that works well.

 

I'm not sure you make a valid point for mismanagement of taxpayer money. Technical progress can be targeted for satisfying an end consumer or for satisfying a government/corporate fantasy. The technology actually gets perverted in implementation to satisfy political goals. The end users are saddled with something much more expensive and possibly unusable. That does not advance the technology even though technical "breakthroughs" right and left have been pronounced.

For example, the constraints and freedoms of spending the R&D money making fuel cells for tractor trailers might actually steer the FCV technology to larger power plants needing much less infrastructure. Instead, the FCV technology money is solving car installation size, price, and infrastructure problems where solving different FCV implementation trucking problems could have a vastly bigger payoff for vastly less taxpayer squeezing.

 

There is a difference between how Hyundai and Toyota rolls them out.

Green Car Reports last week spoke with some Tucson FCV drivers who said existing fueling stations in Orange County have been down for days or weeks at a time, causing them to park their vehicle. When the pumps are working, they are often slow to dispense fuel.

“The quick answer is this is sort of expected,” Craig Scott, national manager-Advanced Technologies Group for Toyota tells WardsAuto. “The stations that exist today were built many, many, many years ago, using funds that were set up to create demonstration stations. That’s exactly what these are. They were never intended for retail use.”

Newly built hydrogen refueling stations coming online now in California are being built with the public in mind, meaning refueling times should be akin to those at gasoline stations.

Hydrogen proponents have cited a typical refueling time being three minutes, although owner reports suggest current pumps can take as long as 20 minutes as they may need to come up to pressure after previously dispensing fuel to other vehicles.

“It’s why we got involved in infrastructure, to sort of speed things along,” Scott says, referring to Toyota’s partnership with First Element Fuels and Air Liquide to build dozens of hydrogen-refueling stations in California and the Northeastern U.S. in the next few years.

Even with a more robust infrastructure expected soon, Scott says some growing pains will arise, such as too many cars and not enough stations.

“There will be a period of discomfort if you will where the growth of cars exceeds the growth of stations, and then it catches up,” Scott says. “It’s just kind of normal business. I don’t think there’s anything shocking here.”​

Toyota: 600 Requests for Mirai, Refueling Woes to Be Expected | Vehicles & Technology content from WardsAuto

 

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

By the way: Tesla has missed every single deadline they've ever set for themselves. The difference is that they could build zero super chargers and you'd still be able to drive the car. With FCVs, not so much.