Mirai production begins @ 3/day

Yes its big on the outside, but people think about the size on the inside ;-) I only see tbd on the toyota spec sheet. Do you know?

 

EPA size class is based upon interior volume. The Volt is a compact, while the Cruze is a midsize. It is 2 cu.ft. difference total, and 4 cu.ft. in the cabin. A part of that cabin difference is the battery tunnel that takes the fifth seat space.
Being as big as the Camry, the Mirai should hit the mid-size cut off, but it's cabin space is going to be less due to the tank, FC, battery tunnel taking up space, then possibly thicker doors, and extra Lexus padding all around.

 

Mirai is based on HS250h and that was classified as compact.

Plugin incentive should end now. Hybrid incentive was phased out before the end of that gen.

Plugins have gone "mainstream" so why the incentives?

Technology wasn't ready and the goal post was set too far of reach. The same mistake that of NGPV SuperCar.

Toyota is good at aiming for what they can reach. Looking at the progress made in the last 5 years, I can see why. They are not alone. Hyundai came out of nowhere, surpassing Honda and GM. VW is scrambling to catch up while Tesla is caught with pants down.

 

That seems quite strange and political. So toyota and CARB say plug-ins will never be popular enough, and now you are claiming they are already mainstream. Since the incentive was to drive battery prices down and to get a nice group of vehicles built, and it appears to be working, why would the government shut it down early. The plug-in subsidies even look like they will lower the cost of non-plug-in hybrids. Companies are building production based on the subsidies. Sure maybe you shut it down in 3 years, but even with an act of congress you aren't going to change it today.

Yep it was choosing a technology winner ;-) And it still is.

OK, 6 years ago Toyota and Hyundai were way behind Honda with its clarity. Now Toyota and Hyundai have cut costs a great deal from that first clarity, and GM and Honda have reduced investments and are sharing research and R&D costs. The thing is to a consumer I don't think the mirai at its price is any more desirable than the clarity. Honda will produce the gen II clarity next year, but it needs fewer to make compliance in the US. Even with all this leap frog R&D in the last 6 years the tech is still too expensive, at least according to Toyota and that is why it opened its patents.

Its when Toyota or another company (honda? hyunda? mercedes?) finds these cost reductions, that fcv will be ready for commercialization.

Now poor tesla with its pants down. Instead of producing 3000 mirai in 2017 like Toyota is planning, tesla shipped 31,000 model S's last year. Hopefully when the mirai comes out the gigafactory will be running reducing tesla's battery costs by 30% and the model X will be shipping, and the model 3 available or coming soon. Who knows, Toyota may buy batteries from the gigafactory.

 

Globally, it says agriculture is the largest source of methane. I favor trying to minimize methane emissions. But that does not mean I think all uses of natural gas have to be stopped. We have to come to some sustainable equilibrium, whatever that is. To me it might make more sense to control methane (and other pollutants) rather than CO2 per se, or at least in addition to.

 

The tax credit served the Prius well, and before that there was a tax deduction for MY 2001 and up with no limit on cars. That means 220k Prii were eligible for the deduction. Then the 60k+ for the tax credit means that Prius and Toyota hybrid sales benefited from federal incentives than plugins currently will. The dollar amounts are based upon, iin part, on how much more the new tech car costs than a traditional one; which is how the Japanese incentives worked for the 1st gen Prius. That one was directly related to that cost difference without consideration of how much better the hybrid car performed.

Clean-Fuel Vehicle Deduction Available for Certain Models
Toyota Prius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The initial goals were high because they didn't have any data to gauge them against. Those goals were dialed back once the data started coming in.
The 2015 goal for tank storage(full tank weight/hydrogen amount) is 5.5%. The Mirai is at 5.3%. Which at the expected rate of improvement, means it is off by a year. Which isn't bad considering the forces and chemical involved, and the target 15 year life span(I'm guessing the Mirai reaches that).

The Tuscon FCV doubled the mpg rating of the gas model; a little less than the 2.5 times improvement used by the FCV lobby. But good for Hyundai. With the Soul EV and upcoming Sonata PHV, they are covering all their bases. I don't see how they surpassed Honda considering the Clarity was available in a test program since 2009, and the 2nd gen one is coming soon. GM has simply opted to share R&D costs with Honda.

Not familiar with VW's work, but their plugins may be worth a gander.

Tesla simply had no intention of going with fuel cells. Too pricy a game for a start up. They did file a patent for a BEV with a secondary, range extending Al-air battery before Phinergy started showing off their proof of concept car.

 

Nice pictures. Are the assumptions good? The notes say 2009 assumptions of the cars. We have real cars now.

NREL in its 2014 report gave fcv from the lowest cost source of hydrogen @250 g/mi for a hypothetical 68 mmpge fcv. The current california infrastructure according to DOE produces much higher ghg today, but volume is very low which increases ghg/kg of hydrogen and liquid hydrogen is delivered by truck. California Energy commission puts out a lower figure than NREL because it uses california electricity and assumes new lower electricity use than current tech which is cleaner than NREL national assumption. Let's pretend we will use the 59 current and planned hydrogen stations in California with their high renewable mix, and using california electricity where renewable is not currently specified we get a figure of around 150 g/mi. Now no one has produced a fcv that gets 68 mpge on the epa test, but its feasable so lets use it for some future car.

Now epa has figures for past grids, and provides ghg figures for these. Today's ghg figures are lower as the grid is cleaner both nationaly and in California

National ghg, Ca ghg, Vehicle
250, 150 projected future fcv epa 68 mpge on future high volume hydrogen
250, 200 volt (2014)
200, 140 i3-rex
250, 150 Tesla model S 85kwh (rwd)
190 120 leaf (2015)
225, 170 projected gen II volt (ag projection)
388, 388 Toyota camry 4 cyl reg ga (most popular car to compare as normal ghg)
272, 272 Lexus ES hybrid gasoline.

Note using the california mix or renewables a bev is going to have lower ghg than a similar phev or fcv, but the phev can be refueled more quickly and throughout the country. Using the national mix and assuming a future national system of high volume hydrogen produced from natural gas, the gen II volt which is due out this year will produce lower ghg than a hypothetical future 68 mpge fcv. In california the fuel cell vehicle may be slightly lower. With current technology fcv don't in california or in the country as a whole produce lower ghg than bevs. They may do lower ghg in some states but those states do not seem interested in hydrogen and will not be early adopters (Mary Nichols used indiana as an example, but do we think indiana will go fuel cell to lower ghg?)

Now the argument that if you bring the price of fcv and hydrogen down it may add another lower ghg, lower oil choice, is still valid. If we do natural gas based hydrogen though hybrids may be as low in ghg as fcv, you need renewables for the hydrogen to get significantly lower. You do need to lower the cost of fcv.. Otherwise not enough people will buy the vehicles in the next 30 years to justify building significant infrastructure.. The 200 proposed stations in the next decade are precommercial levels of infrastructure.

 

I changed the simulation vehicle to 2015 and the profile has it preset to 66 MPGe. I saved it as Mirai.

166 g/mi (corrected) is pretty impressive.

If I do 2010 vehicle simulation, it defaults to 59 MPGe and results in 190 g/mi.

 

+1

59 mpge or 66 mpge are good guesses, and covered in the NREL possibilities, the model seems fine there. I wonder why ghg well to pump is so much lower than NRELs distributed high volume on site SMR numbers. Still that 186 g/mile is higher than California Energy Commission's assumptions for California's mix of biogas and nat gas and renewable electricity and if they got high enough volume to the fueling stations. You could roll out that mix throughout the country, but it would cost more to build stations.

 

Could there be a certain level carbon sequestering assumed?

Is this the GREET model with a carbon negative biomass to diesel process?

 

I don't have emission data from Japan's grid but PiP EV miles are designed to cover short trips where gas engine wouldn't be able to operate at optimum efficiency/emission. I would bet PiP EV miles using Japan's grid electricity still beats gas emission with cold starts.

 

Think this book tells it, but if anyone has newer information for greet let me know
Pathways for a transition to a sustainable hydrogen transportation fuel ... - Marlene Hilkert - Google Books


GREET assumptions hydrogen on pages 5 and 6.
GREET for hydrogen is based on assumptions for California and not other states. GREET assumes Hydrogen will be produced centrally and flow in pipelines that have not been built yet to stations (ghg is lower then NREL's assumption, but costs are significantly higher to build this out than NREL scenario. GREET assumes that we build 750 miles of hydrogen pipeline for california which is about how much we have in the country today.

It would probably take decades to for there to be enough fcv on the road, for this to work. I guess we have an easy out. If they want the lower emissions of central and pipeline, you can truck truck liquid hydrogen to the stations. That will cost a lot less than building pipelines, but you can say when (my opinion if) the cars come you can simply spend X hundred million to drop ghg. Its a cheaper test, which is not bad.

 

I reran the BEV with 2015 simulation model year and entered 114 MPGe (Leaf).

It came out to 162 g/mi, about the same as Mirai (66 MPGe).

 

Which would mean that Toyota did not give the PPI enough EV range for North America.

The 2010 grid average for japan was; 42% petroleum, 22% coal, 18% natural gas, and 13% nuclear, with last 4% being hydro and other renewables. That is 82% from sources burning carbon. Though it is a greener mix than North Dakota's 80% coal. The Prius emits 178g/mi CO2 from the tail pipe and 40g/mi upstream. That's a US average. Tar sand oil increase WTW ghg over conventional by 8% to 37%, and there is a good chance that is what is ending up in a ND Prius. Let's say 30%, worse case, over the average, and the total Prius ghg is 230g/mi. Oil shale may be as high as 75% more.

The PPI emits 133g/mi from the tailpipe with 28.8% EV usage. Leaving 87g/mi for upstream electric and gasoline production, which is about 30g/mi, for the US average. A 220 g/mi total. In New Jersey, where the PPI is sold, that average is 10g/mi less. In ND, where it isn't available, it is 10g/mi more, plus 9g/mi running on tar sand gas. Just 9 to 10 g/mi more than the liftback.

The average new car emits 480 g/mi in tailpipe and upstream emissions. Toyota is willing to sell Camries(388g/mi), Siennas(518g/mi), and Tundras(605g/mi)(all lowest emission case) in ND, but won't sell the Prius PHV there because in emits less than 5% more CO2 than the Prius at worse due do the dirtier electric generation. Both are emitting around a third of what a 4 cylinder Camry emits. I'll say again, dirty grid is just a BS excuse from Toyota.

http://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.cfm?sid=ND
Oilsands 101: Climate Impacts | Oilsands | Pembina Institute
http://www.westernresourceadvocates.org/land/pdf/Exh%20A.%20-%20Oil%20Shale%20GHG%20emissions.pdf

 

Uh, it isn't clear that lower carbon emission in the USA has a consensus, yet. Even lower fuel costs does not seem to be a strong motivator.

I can appreciate the technology and modeling effort but the term 'polishing musket balls' comes to mind.

Bob Wilson

 

still - you gotta acknowledge the beauty of the spin;
Hydrogen for fuel from natural gas - increasing C02 lets the industry claimed it's sequestered. Yet Plug-in's using coal fired electricity can never mention the theoretical cleansing of coal fired electricity generation. So . . . Is it cheaper to clean up coal power (filters / scrubbers etc) than it is to sequester C02 (AND building the trillion dollar refueling infrastructure) for Fuel cell cars (forgetting the car's high price) ?
.

 

+1

President Freedom car nicknamed Mr. Rove "Turd blossom". For those that are unfamiliar with the term, its Texas slang for a flower growing out of a cow pie. The question is for 10,000 psi hydrogen is there even a seed of a flower inside all that bs. Outside the state of california and asia there aren't many that are willing to pay to see if it grows. Carb changes pushed freedom car. In hindsight carb changes slowed US battery development, and freedom car slowed US car companies in hybrids. This was what big auto wanted.

Now President Freedom car, eventually realized fcv were a long shot, and increased cafe standards, subsidized battery research and plug-in commercialization, increased biofuel mandates, increased domestic natural gas and oil development. It was an all of the above strategy unlike the earlier programs. CARB in its ZEV though instead of embracing hybrids and phevs and bevs like DOE, last year increased its support for well belief that something beautiful would grow out of all that bs from 2002.

And the answer is no, in 49 states, people are not willing to spend a large amount more to decrease ghg. Sure some of us are wiling to spend a few cents more per kwh to get wind or solar (I buy wind, but it costs me less than someone buying grid power in LA), less than 5% of people in the US are buying hybrids, plug-ins and ghg is not the prime reason for most of them.

There just isn't any way to polish that turd. The only way they will sell fcv in enough quantity to get anyone but the government to pay for fueling infrastructure is to significantly drop the cost on the cars or to get the government to buy them. I don't really see the point of making the test any more expensive by forcing renewables on hydrogen production, except to pretend they will hit california's goal of reducing 80% ghg in 2050. With that goal plug-ins + low ghg fuel are much cheaper than fcv and low ghg fuel. Change the goal to get off oil and fuel cells make some sense.

 

a.k.a. Japan Inc.

Bob Wilson