Toyota Seeks Prius-Like Success With 2015 Fuel-Cell Model

Ok people don't MOAN......But whatever happened to GM's fuel cell program. Last I knew they gave out 200 Chevy Tahoe's to people in the NYC and Washington DC area to test them for a year or so.

 

It was on CBS national news at 6:30 pm, I believe it was 4/3, or 4/4. This is just crazy in my mind, the only place I could get hydrogen for a fill up would be in Columbus, OH at Ohio state university, 50 miles from where I live. Apparently the Honda offering is supposed to have a 300 mile range.

 

GM realized that they would fail to produce anything commercial in the near term, and are focusing on plug-ins for alternative vehicles. Management has changed quite a bit from the bad old days.

They announced a joint venture with Honda to share patents and some parts for fcv. The group holds the most patents and the most miles on the road. The first fruits of this should be a new honda clarity next year. IDK how much of the GM information honda is using, as this is quite soon after the partnership was formed. Its likely for this car GM is just helping financially, and hoping to learn along with honda.

Honda, GM fuel-cell partnership wants to reduce hydrogen refueling costs

 

I don't understand their reasoning, but if Toyota really, really wants me to buy a Tesla, I guess I will. There's no point building a bridge from fossil fuels to EVs if you're not going to cross it.

 

Hmm... I'm actually less critical of hydrogen than I used to be 10-15 years ago. And back in '98/'99, I thought Toyota was crazy even with just the (gas-elec) hybrid route.

I keep an occasional eye on hydrogen-based energy research still because I feel the fact that hybrid and electric have become viable means at all, and that it is largely thanks to Toyota, that it's imprudent to be too cynical of their approach.

I remember 1-2 years after the Prius hit and was picking up steam hearing that the reason Toyota even dove headfirst into hybrid tech was because the US government had incentivized researching it. The big 3 US auto manufacturers (was it still 5 at the time?) pretended to jump on it, saying, "Oh yeah, we're totally researching hybrids! (hehehe..)" and produced little more than non-serious token concept cars. Toyota apparently thought they were going to be genuinely cut out by US auto if they didn't jump in too, and immediately sank $1B into hybrid R&D over the next year (along with Honda) before the first Prius and Insight hit.

What this reminds me is that much of our modern industrialized economies are based on "inertia" in a sense. Pursuing gas-based tech has immediately realizable value because our economy is already devoted almost entirely to gas and has been for over a century. To a lesser degree, EV tech is the same way. EV is "proven" (or at least, more proven now). But that's only now. And we shouldn't forget it's due to Toyota, who everyone thought was crazy. Until it wasn't so crazy anymore. A majority of the value of such an alternative fuel-based transport economy comes from the amount of work our economy has already sunk into that system in all its aspects.

Now I completely grant that none of this directly addresses the obstacles rightly pointed out by everyone in the thread. But let's remember we shouldn't dismiss Toyota as complete nutjobs who don't know a single thing about what they're doing. (I find the Prius planetary gear transmission that reduces the need for moving parts to be quite ingenious.)

For instance, hydrogen production from bioreactors is quite impressive for the clean|renewable production side. That's mostly waiting on a breakthrough in scaling. But yes, based on currently available public information, a major change in the trend in favor of hydrogen seems like it'd require several breakthroughs on multiple fronts for fuel production and distribution to become "not so crazy" within the next 5-10 years at the soonest. But who knows? Maybe Toyota's learned to perform a lot of R&D on the side on the down low during the past several years using all that Prius money rather than just relishing in it all.

 

Equinox, I used to see them running around here.