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The Toyota Mirai (FCV) Thread

Discussion in 'Fuel Cell Vehicles' started by usbseawolf2000, Dec 9, 2014.

  1. GasperG

    GasperG Senior Member

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    Hybrids Better for Climate than Leaf, Tesla in Most States | Climate Central

    There are many ways to produce hydrogen and many ways to produce electricity, one ways are cleaner than the others. You just take "cleaner" hydrogen example and not so clean electricity example and there you have it.

    I'm not against hydrogen or EV, nor am I saying one is cleaner than other, I'm just pointing out that those statements can be correct on some boundary cases, but are not necessarily correct for majority.
     
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  2. Sergiospl

    Sergiospl Senior Member

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    Tesla Battery Range in Sub-Zero and Snowy Conditions - TESLARATI.com
    FCV also will need to do better or not that useful in cold weather.
     
  3. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    i see how your reality got mixed up. I think I can help clear up the misunderstanding. It's been rewritten probably a dozen times.
    Survey: Electric Cars Are Primary Cars, Often Powered by Solar | PluginCars.com
    You see, one doesn't make plugins dirty by moving them to a coal powered state. Most plugins are located in cleaner electricity States. Moreover most plugin's are either running on their own pv solar, or are contemplating installing solar.
    So even in the fantasy world of moving all the plugin's to a coal state - they're still cleaner, because of substantial home pv charging. But - moving back to reality, where the majority of plug-in cars actually exist - they get even cleaner.
    So don't be fooled by the hydrogen lobby shell game, that magically moves an entire class of vehicles across the country. If we are going to play musical cars, just think how filthy nasty hydrogen vehicles would be if you drove them around coal-powered West Virginia. Not only do they become WAY less efficient - distilling hydrogen via electricity (instead of natural gas) you have to attribute downstream coal filth to the hydrogen car. But Toyota doesn't want to advertise that. They want me to believe that hydrogen cars can run on coolaid, Pepsi, lemonade, feces, ... ANYTHING but non-renewable natural gas. See, that's what troubles so many ... faking a fossil fuel burner (for all intents purposes) as being emission free, just because in some non
    reality-based universe - it could happen. But if any one wants to live there - more power to them.
    .
     
  4. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    +1
    But but
    Lexus Bypassing Plug-In Hybrids, Looking At Fuel Cells, Maybe EVs
    Don't you think all of the eastern grid coal fired plants are really chugging along to power those plug-ins in california?;) Its important to say that grid tied solar when used for a house, uses coal to charge a car, but if used to make hydrogen its zero emissions. Very important to count differently.

    I think the powered by everthing, you know milk milk, lemonade, around the back the fudge is made - then turning it into hydrogen is a funny way to tell us really if industry builds it it will be fossil. Can you imagine what it would cost to have trucks driving around on oil, buying $60 worth of children's lemonade then turning it into a kg of hydrogen? Well not much if there aren't cars, but a great deal of money (hundreds of billions) if you are supplying 1% of the transport fleet that way. No one is going to pay for that when you can produce hydrogen from natural gas for less than $2/kg, then liquify and truck it to stations less expensively than picking up that lemonade and negotiating the price with children.. .

    But I do think there are things in the lab that can drive down the price of renewable hydrogen. The cheapest right now is off peak wind, and that may get cheaper as we may over build wind as over building is cheaper than grid storage. I don't expect that to happen for 40 years though. enzymatic or baterial (using their enzymes) conversion of biomass to methane or directly to hydrogen, is the most promising. Then their is catylitic or enzymatic (including bacterial) cracking of water using suger, solar, or electrical energy to power the reaction.

    renewable hydrogen is doable just expensive today. We may get one of those miricles - a technological breakthrough, to lower the cost. Panasonic says its 5 years away. Maybe its just a decade away, or maybe 100 years, isn't that toyota's new hydrogen line. I think it will happen in my lifetime. But when you are saying don't buy a plug-in today, because in a decade hydrogen might be better, it sounds like a delaying tactic to sell gasoline only cars.
     
    #224 austingreen, Aug 27, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
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  5. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    Agreed, there are many things in the lab that may come to fruition within a few decades. The rub is best realized by looking at the plug in Prius. These owners will invariably not charge if the cost is even a few pennies above the cost of gasoline. How will fuel cell cars work en mass, if they can't be less expensive than gasoline.
     
  6. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I expect expensive gasoline in my lifetime;) The problem for hydrogen is audi and some of the oil industry are looking at those cheapest methods to make hydrogen, and use them to make liquid fuels - methanol, ethanol, and sytnthetic diesel. If you start with hydrogen, methane, or methanol, and add renewable electricity and carbon dioxide you can make all that stuff, and continue to fuel a liquid fuel fleet. This is why audi's parrent vw says fcv are probably an island technology. Something that might work in Japan, or anouther place with low infrastructure to population costs, but not in china, north america, or Europe - the three biggest car markets. Now if the audi plan works, and america institutes an open fuel standard, then toyota will continue to do well in north america even without plug-ins, but won't make any money from fcv.

    For now I'm fine with a southern california and Japan test, I just think california is making it overly expensive and complicated. California rules are why the first hydrogen highway failed, now on the second one, I expect failure again that will be called a victory. If the breakthroughs come for fcv and not for plug-ins as toyota thinks they will, I will have no problem with building the infrastructure with some public funds. If the oposite happens as all the US and European car companies expect, then it shouldn't go farther than a test.

    Japan is spending a billion dollars on their olympic stadium, keep that in perspective for fcv commercialized costs for the 2020 olympics
    Toyota's future fuel cell vehicle lineup revealed?
    which links to this
    Tokyo wants 6k fuel-cell cars from Toyota and Honda for 2020 Olympics
    Compared to Japan California is getting a bargain. If you divide it out that's just a little more than $60,000/fcv for direct subsidies, hydrogen stations, and hydrogen. I'm sure with that money they will have no problem getting 6000 on the road by the olympics, I think they will exceed it. The goal for 2025 though may be tough without breakthroughs. I doubt they want to spend another $5.6B to get to 100,000, so subsidies will go down. Hopefully honda and toytoa can get the costs down for those goals.

    Vancouver similarly bought fuel cell buses for the 2010 winter olympics
    Vancouver Ends Hydrogen Bus Program Amid High Costs - Gas 2
    They are selling them or converting them to diesel, as they cost to much to operate.
    They could simply build a smr facility to locally supply the hydrogen from natural gas, but that loses the ghg benefits completely and probably would also be more than diesel or cng busses.


    I expect Japan will keep up the infrastructure as its more of a matter of their national pride.
     
    #226 austingreen, Aug 27, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2015
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  7. lensovet

    lensovet former BP Brigade 207

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    but hydrogen takes poop and outputs water! are you saying you would rather see piles of poop everywhere??
     
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  8. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    +1
    I'd like to continue to capture the methane from poop, and burn it in a turbine or engine for electricity. If there is enough the gas can be pumped back into the natural gas lines. Trucking the poop to the hydrogen station, then hoping you have enough poop for the cars, but not too much, is a lot more expensive than poop biodigester->electricity + waste, natural gas SMR -> hydrogen. That saves on a lot of trucking of the bs, and lost of extra equipment. How many cattle ranches and dairy farms do they think are in southern California? Well I guess there are probably enough for a few thousand cars:)
     
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  9. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    That just means we need more gigantic mega feedlots ... which means we need more feed/grain .... which means we need more agriculture & water. Whoops - plum out of water here in California. Back to square one

    .
     
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  10. Jeff N

    Jeff N The answer is 0042

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    No, you just need to install a big desalination plant next to the ocean and a large bank of solar panels and some windmills to power it. Obvious.

    And while we are doing that, we might as well add some hyperloops to automate the delivery of the poop from the feedlots to a central hydrogen plant. Obvious.
     
    #230 Jeff N, Aug 27, 2015
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  11. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    The same can be said for renewable diesel and gasoline.
     
  12. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    Why? They'll need combustion (emission) and efficiency is best at 40% where fuel cell is 59% plus room for refinement.

    Not sure if you are monitoring but there are so many breakthroughs in artificial photosysthesis to generate solar powered hydrogen production.
     
  13. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    What do you think . . . . maybe in just 10 years?
    ;)
    .
     
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  14. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    Mirai would be cleaner than a lot of electric cars outside the states with cleanest electricity (CA, NY, etc).
    I would say FCVs are a generation ahead of BEVs (due to range and refuel speed) but fuel infrastructure is a generation behind. Fuel production is one generation further behind the infrastructure.

    If a generation is 5 years, you are right about the fuel production but not for infrastructure or vehicles.
     
  15. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    I would say that's a huge step closer to reality than anything Toyota's FC PR machine has put forth - so I 'll have to give a big pat on the back for the post ... not that it's spot on

    .
     
  16. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Combustion efficiency of 40%? Toyota says gen IV prius will have that this year. I don't know why the 38% of the current prius and camry hybrid system aren't good enough though. VW and BMW diesels exceed that, but won't do as well in stop and go as a hybrid.

    Still that artificial photosynthesis was supposed to be here by now and cheaper than pv->electrolyzer, but pv->electrolyzer costs have been dropping, though wind->electrolyzer is much less expensive. I'll believe the breakthrough happens when you can get under $3/kg hydrogen out of that solar catylitic or enzymatic hydrogen. SMR (natural gas) is under $2. Hey $7/kg as we get this process today might still fly in japan. Again audi wants to take the biogas or hydrogen and feed cng vehicles, or make liquid fuels for hybrids (including phev), diesels, or gasp ordinary engine cars.

    Or, Hill do you mean hydrogen cars will be more economic in only another 10 years?;)

    I'm not sure how you measure ahead or behind. This generation is $499/mo lease, the last generation of fcv only had one the clarity which was $600/mo lease. Toyota says they lose a lot less per vehicle at that price than honda did, and I believe them, but someone (toyota, Japan, California, Honda) still needs to pick up the tab for the free fuel, as even fewer (Japan projects 6000 by summer 2020, California projects 19,000 by end of 2020) would take a car if they had to pay even half the price of fuel. I haven't driven a mirai, but have a tesla, i3, and volt. I find it hard to beleive that refueling in 5 minutes at say 86 stations in California, is ahead of refueling at home and at gas stations or superchargers. Even if there were as many hydrogen stations as L3 stations in the US, I really doubt you could sell many mirai, tucson fcv, or gen II clarity (do out next year probably). of those 3 cars I've driven the 25K fcv california and Japan are hoping for before the end of 2020, are tiny numbers. Tesla already sold that many so far this year, bmw is on pace to sell that many in a year and a half, the gen I volt sold about 3 times more in the time its been around, and I expect gen II to sell atleast 20,000/year Tesla model III and gen 2 leaf should be out by the end of 2018. How many people would purchase the mirai over those entrants even if we had $6/kg hydrogen in 1000 stations? $4/kg at 10,000 stations? Say it cost $10B to subsidize those 10,000 statons to provide $4/kg hydrogen for 10 years, would they close or would drivers be willing to pay the price for the hydrogen?
     
    #236 austingreen, Aug 28, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2015
  17. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Volvo has a fuel cell that has been running in the lab for 10k hours. It is meant to replace the generators on long distance trucks and boats.
    It runs on diesel. With the auto reforming it only emits CO2, and the fuel cell efficiency means it emits less of it. Then what does the CO2 matter if it is fueled with renewable diesel.

    I have said my beef wasn't with FCEV, but with using hydrogen for the fuel. Its low volumetric energy density makes it expensive to ship, and its chemical nature makes pipelines expensive to make, which there are viritually none of in the US.

    One of those breakthroughs was to use the hydrogen right away to make isopropanol, which can be used in an ICE or fuel cell with onboard reforming.
    There is also many breakthroughs announced for batteries. According to BASF's lab results, NiMH will surpass Li-ion. That is the lab. It will be years before they start testing these batteries and hydrogen production announcements out in the real world, if they even make it that far.

    Phinergy already has their Al-air battery in at least one BEV test/demo mule. They are also partnered with Alcoa, one of the largest aluminum companies in the world, and may have a partnership with one of the major automakers; likely Nissan.

    Which do you think will be available nationwide first? Photolysis hydrogen systems, or a thousand mile primary battery range extender for a BEV that only needs distilled water top offs during a long trip.
     
  18. Jeff N

    Jeff N The answer is 0042

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    And a lot of electric cars would be cleaner (lower CO2 equivalent emissions) than the Mirai in many states outside CA, NY, etc.

    The Mirai is a proxy for FCEVs. Different cars will always have different efficiencies. Mirai is 67 MPGe but Clarity was 60 and the Tucson is 50. Let's use the slightly above average Clarity in this list.

    You approvingly posted an LA Times graphic sourced from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) who are on the record as supporting FCEVs and the present CA retail customer rollout.

    UCS assumes a Tucson FCEV using NG H2 emits 286 g per mile of CO2. Scale that to the Clarity's MPGe and it's about 240 g per mile. Now let's pick a BEV to use as a comparison. I'm going to pick a Model S 90D since it has the closest range as a Mirai-class FCEV even though at 100 MPGe it is among the less efficient BEVs

    Below is a partial list of states where the 90D emits the same or less CO2 as the NG H2 Clarity, according to EPA's fueleconomy.com and using UCS NG H2 estimates. As you requested, I'm omitting CA, NY, and the various west and northeastern coastal states that people assume are low carbon.

    Here's the partial list:

    North Carolina
    South Carolina
    Georgia
    Florida
    Alabama
    Tennessee
    Kentucky
    Pennsylvania
    Arkansas
    Louisiana
    Mississippi
    Texas
    New Mexico
    Arizona
    Nevada
    Montana
    Wyoming

    All these states show the Tesla Model S 90D at 240 g per mile or less. Several of them show less than the 210-215 g per mile that UCS would assume for the Mirai itself on NG H2.

    I assume you will object that the NG should include renewables but by the time these states actually have H2 stations with significant renewable H2 content most of them will already have seen substantial drops in their grid CO2 emissions due to the statistics catching up (EPA stats are based on data from 2009) and actual CO2 reductions from switching from coal to NG or introducing renewable grid in line with EPA regulations or their own state renewable standards.
     
    #238 Jeff N, Aug 28, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2015
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  19. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    If we use UCS's number for natural gas hydrogen the mirai gets 216 g/mile. If we claim 1/3 of the energy is renewable that is 144 g/mile. No one knows what a national mix will be.

    In 2014 the US grid produced 0.537 kg/kwh (taken from 2 eia sources and divided) If burned in a tesla model S 70D (gen II volt, leaf, i3, etc are more efficient) that would produce 179 g of co2/mile. fueleconomy.gov has it at 210 on the national grid, but its numbers are from 2010. It has that tesla at 130 g of co2/mile at my old address in California.

    Let's say we use 2014 figures for the tesla, how many drivers would need to opt for solar panels or wind to have lower emissions than the mirai? In california none of them. They start out lower. But on the national grid the mirai is 24% lower. Say only 25% of these plug-in drivers opted for green energy, it hits the same level.

    But
    1) Even without renewables the mirai has very low co2 emissions.
    2) By 2030 the cleaner US grid should make a car like the tesla 90D or model III lower in ghg emissions than a fcv like the mirai running on 1/3 reneables.

    Its pretty simple. Lets roll these suckers out on lower priced natural gas hydrogen, and see if anyone wants them. I think the key is if people like them more than plug-ins (that is with similar subsidies they out sell them) then maybe we subsidize the renewable fuel, but it is much cheaper using today's tech to put renewables in a phev than a fcv.

    Let's not pretend the mirai is a dirty car, but we shouldn't pretend either that people will pay a lot more to fill it with renewables than a similar phev.
     
  20. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    renewables, as in electricity? fundamentally, the mirai or any hydrogen car isn't dirty or clean. What raises eyebrows is the practicality & cleanliness of its source fuel, needed to distill hydrogen, and the efficiency of the distillation process. Discounting natural gas, and reading one x-hydrogen guy's comnents pertaining to electric distilled efficiency he states;

    ..... converting electric energy into hydrogen is only about 75% efficient at best and converting the hydrogen back into electricity is also only about 75% efficient at best. 75% X 75% is only 56%, meaning you lose 44% of the energy if you try to use hydrogen for storage.
    (i'm guessing he's talking compressors?)
    Batteries tend to be greater than 90% efficient in charging and discharging for a round-trip efficiency of 90% X 90% = 81% - quite a lot better than 44% .....

    If those are reasonable givens - or close, & we have surplus wind/solar - why not use batteries, versus hydrogen for surplus power storage. I understand there's a huge U.S. battery manufacturing plant that'll come in line soon.
    .
     
    #240 hill, Aug 28, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2015