La Poste to test electric truck with fuel cell range extender

Going fleet is better because you don't need to invest in a distributed hydrogen stations. A business can also take more of an advantage of any tax incentives.

Passenger cars have the potential of dropping manufacturing costs quicker, but only if a decent portion of the population has a chance of buying it.

 

This is a better way to test fuel cells and hydrogen tanks. First the fuel cell is tiny 20 kw versus the 114 kw in the mirai. It should cost less than 20% to make, and if it fails or improvements made it should be much cheaper to replace and test the new one. The tanks should be as expensive though.

It also doesn't need massive refueling infrastructure as it can be refilled from delivered hydrogen at the central depot. I only expect 20k fuel cell vehicles in the near future (next 5 years) in california, and for that california is paying over $16,000/car in fueling infrastructure and tax credits, that may be used in the test then die. To get manufacturers to make them, california is giveing about anouther $18,000/car. The federal government will throw in anouther $500,000,000 or so over the time period for you guessed it fueling stations and R&D. The Japanese government is providing $18,000-$27,000 tax credits for each of the 6000 fuel cell vehicles they expect in the near future (next 5 years) and expect to spend even more per car than California for fueling infrastructure. The Japanese government looks like they will spend about $500,000,000 on R&D also. Of course toyota wants even more government money for each fcv and is actively lobbying congress for anouther $8K per car.
Toyota Will Work With Congress To Renew Expired FCV Credits - HybridCars.com
Their lobbyists even got a Delaware senator to try to sneak the credit into other senate business like keystone. If Toyota lobbyists can "work with" congress to get it restored, I would say the total is $42,000/fcv leased in California. Use your own estimates as numbers. If there are substantially more than 20,000 the subsidy per vehicle goes down ;-)

The range extender test should be much much cheaper for the french government, but still test this pre-commercial technology. If you think it is ready for prime time, there would be no reason for the US and Japanese governments to spend over $1B combined for R&D over the next 5 years.