Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

Building stations where the hydrogen is already available because of other industries does nothing to counter the hurdles to using it as a replacement energy carrier for the entire country.

Hydrogen gas is a horrid energy source to put into an ICE.
Mazda RX-8 Hydrogen RE - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
With gasoline, the engine produces 206hp and gets 21.4mpg.
On hydrogen, it's 107hp and 25.9mi/kg.

Power is greatly reduced for some increase in economy. Will that increase make up for the energy losses of making hydrogen? Oh, I'll give a hydrogen only ICE could perform better than a bi-fuel, but then it's limited like the hydrogen fuel cell to where there is stations. The fuel cell would be better because it gets better economy for the little hydrogen the vehicle can carry.

 

Hydrogen was not already available at any of the regular gas stations. Shell installed the hydrogen tanks and pumps, as easy as adding another gasoline pump and much easier than adding another gasoline tank. The hydrogen tanker comes the same as the gasoline tanker.

A demonstrably easy transition.

Or an excellent one depending on whether one goes with uninformed opinion above or actual performance stats below.

BMW Hydrogen 7, 260 HP, 290 ft. lb. torque, zero-60 9.2 seconds, zero emissions and that for a BMW 7, a heavy 4,048 lb car.

 

BMW has canceled future plans with the hydrogen 7. Perhaps this is why

BMW's Hydrogen 7: Not as Green as it Seems - SPIEGEL ONLINE

 

Yes and BMW has been slow on the hybrids also. But it was more the fact that the BMW H7 blew all Trollbait's misconceptions out of the water that was interesting.

Direct burn hydrogen as a lot of advantages over the fuel cell/EV hydrogen but world went VHS not BetaMax, Windows not Mac. But as we see now IOS rules.

 

The der spiegel piece though old, really confirmed what he was saying. The hydrogen7 got 4.7 miles/kg. This required liquid hydrogen tanks to fit enough energy for range. It therefore needed a great deal of energy, so much that it would greatly outstrip all the renewables if that was the point. What the hydrogen 7 did was cost much less than fuel cell cars at the time. A PHEV using methanol would be less expensive and use both less electricity and less natural gas. As the article said

The world has not chosen hydrogen fuel cells, they are at a pre-competitive demo level. The Japanese and koreans seem to favor them. We used to use methanol in race cars. It can be made easily renewable or from natural gas or coal. It is a better ice fuel, because you can build a more efficient engine for it that can also burn gasoline. The tanks are also much cheaper.

 

Yes excellent range and mileage and this we designed as a dual fuel car so it had to carry a gasoline tank and also equipment to convert the engine from gasoline to hydrogen. Which impacted efficiency of both but great engineering work using existing vehicle vs. purpose designed.

It was a very early, 2005, prototype that certainly favorably answered many of the questions about hydrogen fueled vehicles.

Honda, Toyota and Hyundai 2013 engineering with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is the next step. It is why Toyota announced the move to hydrogen while cutting back on EV.

 

well technically, they did not cut back on EV... they just think PHEVs, that use same technology btw, are the way to go until new battery tech is being developed.

From all the info they are putting up, it is pretty clear to me that long term they are thinking EVs for small/mid distances and FCV's for long distances and trucks/busses.

Obviously FCVs are FCHV's, so they are certainly developing same tech that could eventually go into EVs (hybrid components, batteries).

 

Actually Toyota did cut back on EV. And for the reasons noted, range and refueling. Even Tesla with its recently announced "super chargers" is looking at 60-90 minutes to recharge. That's just not going to cut it.

It's why Toyota simultaneously announced moving forward on hydrogen fueled vehicles since this addresses the range and refill issues.

 

And when did that happen?

Once again, building a refueling station or just installing a pump does not demonstrate that distribution is economically feasible for the country. If people pay for the hydrogen, some stations give it away, the price is heavily subsidized.

The BMW isn't any better than the Mazda on hydrogen. The RX used a 5000psi tank. That and space limits meant it carries very little hydrogen. Only enough for 100km. To get that range, the engineers throttled back the the power in favor of fuel economy. It is actually more efficient with hydrogen.

The Hydrogen 7 uses a liquid hydrogen tank, and it is a huge tank. With nearly of 45 gallons of liquid hydrogen, it can be wasteful with it. It doesn't throttle back the engine. It just dumps in more hydrogen. The hydrogen fuel economy is just a little better than a quarter of its gasoline economy. Its worse than a fully load tractor trailer's diesel economy.

It is also wasteful with the hydrogen while parked.

BMW Hydrogen 7 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

PS: I filled up tonight. It was in NJ, so the professional fuel transfer technician might be faster than me. It was 3 minutes. I didn't start the timer right away, so rounded up, and added a minute.

 

The BMW Hydrogen 7 was in 2006 and was built as a duel fuel car. As the BMW specs, building the vehicle for hydrogen and gasoline necessarily meant it was not optimized for either.

But it did prove out the concept of hydrogen as direct burn.

 

Mazda built their dual fuel is 2003. Leased it in Japan in 2005, and even sent some to Norway. They beat BMW proving the concept, and actually offered it to non-public people.

If you could read, you would know I wasn't denying that hydrogen could be used in an ICE. Just that it is a poor energy source for one. You would also know that I admitted that an ICE only fueled by hydrogen would have better performance and fuel economy. It would just be tethered to a limited refueling network.

There people out there running their cars and trucks on wood gas. That doesn't mean wood gas is a viable replacement for powering society's transportation network.

 

That's nice. Not particularly relevant.

Actually hydrogen is an excellent fuel, the universal fuel one might say. Everything from rockets to BMW's.

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this is not true at all.

You guys are the same, one is trying to push hydrogen as only future and other is pushing EV as only future... neither is correct and certainly toyota is not saying that.

 

That depends on whether these two news articles are true at all.


Toyota plans to sell fuel cell car by 2015

and

Toyota Drops Electric Car (eQ) Sales Plans

 

I'm not pushing EV as the only option. I think a BEV can be an excellent option for the family's second car to cover a daily commute. No need to have both cars be able to take the family on vacation.

Multiple times, I have stated it makes more sense to use natural gas or an alcohol for a fuel cell vehicle. The costs of distribution on a national level are cheaper or even have already been done. Both also have the potential for renewable production.

Wrong.

Hydrogen is an energy carrier here on Earth.

Petroleum is a fuel. Without consideration for efficiency and emissions, we can burn it directly to boil water to turn a steam turbine. The only required into on our part is getting it to the plant. We choose to make better use of it by distilling and refining it into different fractions.

Same for coal, natural gas, uranium, thorium, the wind, gravity(tides), and sun rays. These all are present on the planet to some degree. They can be used to power are machines without changes to their fundamental nature.

Until we get a pipeline to Jupiter, there is no elemental hydrogen present here. We have to make it. The most abundant source for it is water.

Water doesn't burn. We can get work from it through river currents and tides. That's really Earth's gravity running it downhill, or the Sun's and Moon's sloshing it around the planet.

To get the hydrogen from water, we have to put a lot of energy into it to break the bonds. More energy than we could ever recover when we let the hydrogen and oxygen recombine.

Stripping it from natural gas is more energy efficient, but we are still losing energy that the gas itself could have given us.

To be fair, gasoline is partially an energy carrier. Enough doesn't exist in the octanes we need. So we put energy in to get those octanes.

 

No need to have any cars be able to take the family on vacation. Once a year requirements can be met much more cheaply by using other transportation (rented car, train, plane, bikes, boats, etc.)

 

Good point on the rental route, very cost effective way to go for the once a year vacation. Unless one goes on vacation much more frequently, which is very unlikely.

DBCassidy

 

Kind of like carbon.

Kind of like hydrogen.

Here's US Army viewpoint which might help explain why car mfg.s are pushing hydrogen as fuel. From US military to world's leading car mfg.s, everyone sees hydrogen as the ultimate fuel.

Army Logistics University

 

True, but I think it will be awhile before before there is an BEV for the common man with the capablilities to meet the needs of a family with children.

Improving BEV cost and range is important to getting them accepted by the public. More important, and harder, is getting the public to realize doesn't have to meet their occasional needs to be suitable for them. Single car BEV households are going to be rare for a while because of this.

 

Which is why I am starting now...