Mirai production begins @ 3/day

I don't know the exact cost but I doubt the first Prius was just a few grand over the Echo.

I would say gas-electric hybrid was a "lower hanging fruit". Refueling infrastructure was already in place.

Not so with FCV. Mirai was launched in order to get the ball to start rolling and it is. 2020 mass production model is supposed to be for the consumers. Toyota doesn't do that unless they expect to turn profit by end of that gen (Prius did).

 

A vehicle's range is expressed as far it will go on a full tank; not how far it goes until the low fuel light turns on. If the Mirai really gets 75mpge, Toyota could have stated it has a range of 375 miles in order to follow with them stating it has a 5kg of hydrogen capacity.

The SAE's standard for filling a light hydrogen vehicle is for safely filling up the tanks without overpressurizing them or overheating the hydrogen they contain. The Toyota footnote stated what their car's tank pressure was for the same reason they stated the ambient temperature, because those values go into determining the safe fill rate. The 10MPa they listed wasn't minimum, it was just where the tank 'level' was at. They weren't going to run the car until empty, and then tow it to the refilling station to determine the range.

What determines when the tank is empty on a FCV is the hydrogen pressure required by the fuel cell stack. For PEM fuel cells that pressure is under 1MPa. 2MPa is conservative value used for empty from a source I used in the other thread. Likely chosen for going through the pressure regulator and fuel lines while maintaining proper pressure and flow for a fuel cell.

 

When first released, the Prius was getting a Japanese government subsidy that covered have the price difference between it and an equivalent traditional car. IIRC, the yen converted to around $6700. It was around $5000 more than the Echo when it arrived in the US. The Camry hybrid is almost $4000 more than the Camry now.

The Mirai is supposedly greatly reduced in cost than the previous gen of FCV. Toyota could be losing money on it, but I suspect that is before you factor in subsidies, including the indirect ones.

 

We were ran the experiment:

	2001 Echo	2001 Prius	2003 Prius	metric
1	$14250	$21000	$17500	purchase price
2	$3000	n/a	in service	sold price
3	35 MPG	48 MPG	48 MPG	original EPA MPG
4	38 MPG	n/a	52 MPG	service MPG
5	30000	0	120000	service miles
6	790 gal	n/a	2300 gal	regular
7	2001-09	n/a	2005-current	service period

Bob Wilson

 

1.6kwh nimh, they said similar to the camry hybrid, but who knows it could have some improvements for the car. In the camry hybrid the battery through the motor provides 44 hp. The power not the the energy is probably the more important number in the mirai configuration.

Yes absolutely, and it is one of the limiting factors on production.

I'm not, sure, you might have. The fact is in 2011 they couldn't sell the hydrogen to a consumer filling up the car in the US or canada, so it was some estimated price. Back then oil companies were supposed to see the huge market and want to jump in taking just a little government money.

The $10/kg comes from Toyota. It isn't far off what the DOE found it cost (their figures were a little higher, but toyota is assuming higher volume for the future). Toyota thinks the CFCP can bring the costs down to $6/kg, this matches a study by their friend's at UC-Irvine. One of those friends that did the research is building 19 of the stations. Again for the 3 year lease Toyota and Hyundai in the US will pick up the cost of any hydrogen the government doesn't. Honda does this currently for the clarity, and likely will follow in the 2017 next gen clarity, but they haven't committed to pricing yet.

 

Let's agree to wait until Toyota releases epa figures. So far those efficiency estimates made in 2009, see to not be realistic with epa testing, so you have to compare some Japanese test on a fuel cell to a us test on a different car.
2016 Toyota Mirai Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Car: A Few Things We Noticed
Ive seen estimates as high as 65 miles/kg, but most are lower based on what toyota has said about the ballpark range and tank capacity. Of course toyota could be way off on these estimates for the US car, but they are much more recent than your source.

Excellent source and its important to note the assumptions - High volume stations in 2020, able to fill 1500 kg (300 5kg fills) per day with steam reformed natural gas hydrogen produced on site with high utilization.

Which makes it easy to see why toyota's estimates of $10 today and maybe could reduce to $6/kg in the future makes more sense. California is requiring 33% of energy is renewable, which bumps up costs. The stations are smaller, and few have onsite reformers. California at least through 2017 is not building infrastructure close to the most cost effective way for high volumes of cars. Part of this extra cost is to reduce ghg from the hydrogen by using a lot of renwables. Part is because the stations are much lower capacity without production, and that may be because we don't they don't expect high utilization of a 300 car per day station.

Well it all depends on how the hydrogen is made and how efficient the beast is. I expect then gen IV prius will be more efficient than the mirai well to wheel. I would expect a plug-in to be able to travel as many miles on the renewable electricity used to make the hydrogen in california. Let's wait to see the figures of the california hydrogen production and the epa rating on the car.

Actually burning cng would produce higher global warming potential because of leakage of the methane. There are 40 renewable compressed methane stations in califoria. If they are convient to you, you get the same hov sticker and have produced very lower ghg according to the state of california. The subsidised price of the compressed biogas is about $2.50 gallon equivellent right now, so much cheaper than fuel cells but when you add the cost of cng tanks more than a gasoline hybrid.

 

That's amazing to me how small the battery is in the Mirai, and also it is NiMH.
I would think there would be more EV/plugin dual capability to glide into the next H2 fill-up station.
Perhaps if they had a bigger Li batt there would be less poliical fight from the EV advocates. So the H2 FCV is sort of circumventimg the battery requirement. I am not saying I am a big Li battery advocate, because I am not...just saying.

I also did a mini-study on numbers of U.S. gaso stations vs. EV charging stations. My interest was due to an EV advocate saying that Japan already has more EV charging stations than gaso stations.

I see we have in the USA about 120,000 gaso stations, and the number has been going down. Maybe holding steady now not sure. We currently have 20,000-25,000 EV charging stations in USA and growing. In another thread here, PG&E California says that 100,000 EV charging station are required in their CA coverage area by 2020 (PG&E is ~66% of CA land area, not sure % of CA power or population). If that comes true, then CA alone would have more EV charging stations than gaso stations in the entire USA, before 2020.

 

My guess is, if MN grid doesn't get cleaner, you may not see PiP Gen2 there.

NiMH is superior in cold weather. Since it needs to support the FC stack for those cold starts, Li-ion isn't suitable.

From my experience with PiP Li-ion battery in this winter, the power limit (ICE kicked in) at about 1/3 of the normal 38kW power.

Toyota is not doing the national roll out with Mirai. They can't do it without the fueling stations. Mirai (as well as Hyundai FCV) are just the beginning and things are moving now.

What you saw in Mirai is what I saw in the Volt 5 years ago when it launched and eventually to all states. It was as clean as 42 MPG gas car. The expense of the big battery pack was a slap in tax payer's face. I estimate Gen2 Volt to be as clean as 47 MPG.

Mirai is at another league, cleaner than 60 MPG. The cost of the limited model is still high but the end result can justify it.

 

I suspect Toyota went with NiMH because of lower costs to them.

Ford has a plugin FCV concept, Ford Airstream - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and there may be others. I'll skip over politics of why Toyota doesn't have a plug, but give a technical reason. That Ford is a bulky SUV with 25 miles of grid range. The batteries available during Mirai development weren't energy dense enough to be packaged with the hydrogen tanks. To get a worthwhile grid range, one of the tanks would likely have to go, cutting FC range down to 150 miles. This will likely be the case with any FCV using a gas for fuel for some time.

 

Relatively few "gas stations" have only a single nozzle. I tend to see 8-12 nozzles in urban areas. On the other hand "charging stations" are like "gas pumps" and typically have 1 or sometimes 2 plugs.

PG&E is proposing to build about 2,500 charging locations typically consisting of about 10 plugs each.

Some EV activists think they are overestimating the future need for Level 2 (specifically, 3.6 kW) charging plugs since more people will be able to charge overnight if EV battery range increases in the next few years. Many of these will likely be used by PHEVs rather than EVs so they won't strictly be necessary but will contribute to reducing petroleum imports to CA and reducing CO2 emissions.

In any case, there is not a direct analogy to conventional gas station locations since most charging will be done at home or at workplace parking areas. The real analogy to gas station locations will be public DC fast charging stations and PG&E is only thinking they will initially build 100 of those.

 

Automotive Lithium Volt-style battery prices have dropped by 50% since the Volt began production and energy density is rapidly improving. This has already led to 50 mile Volt EV range in 2016 which is a 43% improvement over the 35 miles of EPA range in the 2011 model year in a cheaper and physically slightly smaller pack. In 2017 we will see 200 mile EV range in the $35-40k MSRP range. I'd say the government's battery subsidy supports have been very successful in bringing forward the timeframe for practical vehicle plugification.

In the late summer or fall of 2010 when I negotiated the price of my 2011 Volt the best price I could get was at MSRP which was $41,000 including destination costs (not counting my specific options or sales tax and registration). That is nearly $44,000 in today's inflation adjusted dollars. I took off the $7,500 federal credit but could not get the $1,500 state rebate because GM narrowly missed the emissions require to until the fixed that in mid-2012. So, $44,000 - $"7,500" adjusted for inflation is about $36,000 today.

Today, I could walk into a Chevy dealer in Los Angeles (Rydell in Northridge) and buy a 2015 Volt off the lot for $29,500 - $7,500 - $1,500 which is $20,500 or about $16,000 less than I would have paid in constant dollars in CA just 5 years ago. That's getting near 50% off to the actual cost to a consumer purchasing the car. I doubt the Mirai will be doing anything close to that 5 years from now.

Please show your rough math and the assumptions you are making that allow you to arrive at the assertion that the Mirai is "cleaner" than a 60 mpg gasoline car (and by what metric?). I have no idea what you are actually claiming.

 

..... I gotta go back and read the the PG&E CA proposal, i thought they said they wanted to build 25,000 EV chargers

 

Yes the $10/kg going possibly down to $5/kg came from recent toyota press releases and interviews, and one of the toyota spokes people to have said it was Mr. Carter.

Again you provided an excellent link to a DOE study, but you should really read it. This is based on 20 year levelized cost of production of high volume stations that can dispense 1500 kg of Hydrogen a day producing it on site from pipe line natural gas in on-site SMR facilities. The DOE has also studied what existing stations costs are, and I believe that Mr. Carter is projecting out lower costs based on research done at UC-Irvine research. Here California is not funding the projects, and does not expect the demand that would get to DOE's low cost projection.

Toyota and Honda have loaned money to first element, which is the recipient of the californian subsidies for 19 stations. Both Toyata and Honda should have a good handle on what First element is building, and the price they need to charge for hydrogen to pay back the loans.

TRANSPORTATION: One source of Calif.'s fuel of the future will be sewage -- Wednesday, November 19, 2014 -- www.eenews.net

First element, toyota, and Fuel Cell Energy are all reporting $10/kg for today in california.

The DOE found it to be $12 in 2013. Maybe if they can get volumes up to average 600kg a day they can get it down to $7. Toyota is committed to paying for the fuel for the first 3 years on 3000 fcv to try to get the volume up and the price down.

 

+1

Nice pictures. Oh I believe there was a price of $7 or something like it on the pump. Toyota/shell couldn't sell the hydrogen dispensed there by the kg so its just a fictional price.

The good thing, this is one of the lowest cost way to distribute 10,000 psi hydrogen as it comes directly from a pipeline and air products is probably selling the hydrogen with little or no marke up. Toyota/Shell can probably eat the amount spent so far as R&D and marketing, most of the money came from DOE to build it. They should be able to sell hydrogen for less than $5/kg then or continue giving it away. Unfortunately most places that are planned for hydrogen are not right on a pipeline, and expending the pipeline is extremely expensive.

 

Going by Toyota calculation of well-to-wheel efficiency, Mirai would be 40% vs 50 MPG Prius 34%.

If we boost 18% difference to 50 MPG, we get 59 MPG equivalent. That's assuming 100% of H2 is produced by natural gas. In California, 30% needs to come from renewable source so, overall it should be above 60 MPG+ equivalent clean.

 

IIRC, wasn't it you who pointed out one of UCI's hydrogen honchos is an EX-GM exec that got canned from GM for certain acts of questionable honesty/integrity?
GM Fires Marketing Chief For Soccer Deal, Then Signs It - The Truth About Cars

If that's the case then I'd be hard pressed to rely on statements made by anyone out of UCI relating to their hydrogen projects as being remotely reliable. But then again I began to have my doubts when the industry continued claiming "in just 10 more years" for the third time.
But yea . . . $6/kg - from a fired marketing spin guru .... the same marketing guys who continue to blather on how, "hydrogen can be made from water" .... not that it ever will - due to its much higher distilling / energy costs. Yet they keep on saying it, knowing ignorant people will eat that kind of half truth up.
But hey .... just 10 more years....
.

 

heck, i'll only be seventy if i live that long, but then, it's all about the kids...

 

Yes that was me,, and it may be worse than that with at least the look and smell of ethical problems for Toyota, Honda, Air Products, CARB, and First Element's Dr. Tim Brown.
Conflict of interest, cronyism along the hydrogen highway: Thomas Elias
First Elements does have the look of a lot of the enron type dealings with government, but then again it may suceed who knows? It may just be a shell that toyota, honda, and airproducts are using and they may get it too suceed? The fact is this is the company that will be making the hydrogen and California is not gong to be building the least expensive hydrogen stations.

I want to be fair here. SOme were acting as if I was slandering toyota by saying that it costs $10/kg today in California, and may drop to $6/kg. That is what toyota and the company they are pushing to build the infrastructure are saying. There is no anti-toyota here. Toyota is certainly not saying they are building 1500 kg a day stations with on site SMR as the DOE proposed as the lowest cost solution.

Now if you asking me whether customers will pay $10 or $6 at the pump, I don't think many in the US will pay more than $6. Carb is already taxing registration fees, and spending $20M/year to subsidize the stations to be built approximately $220 million to get to 100 stations. If there are 10,000 cars that fuel up 5kg a week, and the additional price of fuel above that current subsidy is $10/kg then it is only $26M a year. Toyota can certainly afford $13M/year to make it $5/kg for its customers, gm already wasted $2.5B I certainly would expect toyota and/or honda and/or the tax payers to pick up some of that $10 charge or they won't sell many fuel cell vehicles at all. So no I don't expect the fuel cell vehicle leaser in the US will ever pay $10/kg. Someone will pick up part of the tab. The cost is a limiting feature of how many fcv are sold though in the US.

In Japan gasoline taxes may just go up high enough so that hydrogen prices look ok. The Japanese government appears to have deeper pockets than the US one for subsidizing the vehicles so I would not count out them selling in the tens of thousands there in a decade, and in the hundreds of thousands in 2 decades. Plug ins sold over 300,000 last year, so the idea that people are more willing to buy a fuel cell than a plug-in certainly won't be true world wide for at least 4 decades if ever, hell toyota is talking about 100 years. .Still I would not rule out advances in 20 years.