Mirai production begins @ 3/day

except that there are what 121,000 gas stations in the US, and in 2017 with lots of effort their will be less than 100 public hydrogen stations. What will there be 10 in new england by 2020? That is a big difference from gasoline.

I thought the anticipated date was 2015. Its hard to be here sooner than that

That is what I love. $10/kg hydrogen won't wander between $2/gallon and $5/gallon.

What is it you can get a camry xle hybrid for $30K, or a mirai after california tax breaks for $50k. That mirai may only use 2/3 the hydrogen as the camry uses gas, and you get 3 years of free hydrogen. Still you can buy a lot of gas and groceries and probably some gold and renewable energy certs for the price of the mirai.

12 stations. Oh that's different. Now how much would you pay on the east coast?

absolutely, but that has nothing to do with hydrogen production. Meat and milk should clean up after themselves, but politically well, washington kind of runs on bs.

 

Another commentary on Toyota's manure ad:

'Fueled By Bullsh*t': Toyota's Video Defending Hydrogen Cars Is Funny But Misleading | ThinkProgress

 

An energy expert's love-hate affair with Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell Mirai - Fortune

"Indeed, the biggest problem (logistical, environmental, infrastructural, economic, etc.) with hydrogen fuel cells is probably the hydrogen itself. This starts with the greenhouse gas footprint. At SunHydro in Connecticut, the gas is derived through solar energy. But generally hydrogen is produced through steam methane reforming (from natural gas), which means a lot of CO2 emitted. The hydrogen needs to be stored either at very high pressures or cryogenically as a liquid – and all of that takes a lot of energy. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the Mirai is not much more efficient than your standard Prius – it’s much worse than an electric car. On top of that, hydrogen is explosive, it pools upward in enclosed spaces and can burn with an invisible flame."

Acknowledges all the problems, but suggests reasons Toyota is so gung ho on fuel cells (including politics) and also suggestsToyota may be right to keep working on them.

 

I thought this is pretty clear. If using domestic natural gas, FCV is cleaner than EV. Solar to H2 generation with artificial photosynthesis is still in the lab. Once it is mainstream, EV will have nothing over FCV.

 

Well yeah Geee, if Toyota draws a little chart that says so, then it must be true. And yes, it is clear .... Toyota's head honchos have as much as admitted their hydrogen dream is not ready for anything, except shouldering us, the U.S. - with their expensive experiments. As for the "once it's mainstream" thought .... that's like saying once flying cars are mainstream, we'll all fly to work. Thing is - the notion skips over a little thing called reality ... and that's why toyota is finally caughing up this bit of back-peddling truth. And oh yea ... distilling hydrogen via natural gas (a non-renewable, remember?) & releasing CO2 .... yea sure ... that's loads cleaner than fueling ev's via zero-pollution solar. And of course, to beat this dead horse even further, this is where we can blow smoke / rehash how hydrogen can come from trash dumps and cow poo ... and all the other stuff ..... blah blah blah. I wish it were true as much as Toyota wants it to be true, but reality keeps getting in the way.
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USB, mainstream will not change TTW efficiency. EV leads by a good margin. Can't agree.

 

And isn't it more efficient to generate electricity from dumps and erm, shite? That electricity could then just be used to charge your EV?

 

Generating electricity from natural gas releases more CO2. What's the point?

Solar panels are about 15-20% efficient. Plants can do the equivalent step at 90%.

There is also energy storage and refueling speed to consider.

 

and generating electricity from coal releases more co2 also. That's a poor deflection. The point is to help you not miss the best and most economical alternative fuel, not to compare to something worse.

that's a very poor deflection. What are suggesting, that we start driving begonias? We are talking practicality. Photosynthesis in plants does not mean we will be driving on photosynthesis anytime within the next few decades. So let's concern ourselves with flying cars & hydrogen when we get a little closer.

 

I was comparing natural gas to generate hydrogen vs. electricity. How is that deflecting?

You may be pretending all electricity generated in the US are from renewable sources. Last year, 7% is from renewable. 0.4% from solar.

27% from natural gas which emit CO2. 39% from coal which also emit even more CO2.

Why is it an issue with H2 generating from natural gas when electricity is doing the same but with worse CO2 emission?

I am suggesting you start looking at FCV as a big potential technology that will be realized in a few model year updates (and stop bashing). Start thinking what's possible rather than dismissing it.

I am not suggesting we should stop EVs but it'll have it's market for short range and slow refueling market.

 

I think you missed the point. Well to tank analysis has nothing to do with my TTW assessment.
Besides, how can you turn primary energy directly from sun in Hydrogen?...

 

When utilities start replacing heat engines with fuel cells, I'll reconsider but for now, hydrogen primary cells do not make sense.

Bob Wilson

 

wrong - you have to do it over & over again ... or maybe you haven't heard of what hydrogen does to plumbing;


Hydrogen embrittlement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So yes, in time, fail to replace pipeline .... tick tick tick - boom ... disaster. Why claim hydrogen plumbing is a one time thing. But at least 10,000psi hydrogen car plumbing won't require as much time to check for all the embrittlement leaks. Is it any wonder the manufacturers only lease these vehicles?
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I like it other than false analysis on the politics of it all, which wa shallow and wrong.

Here we have some of the stupidity of the tests. Fuel cell vehicles aren't even close to being commercially viable. The fuel cell lobby and Toyota keep pretending they are ready, but if you produce hydrogen with natural gas fcv do no better than hybrids a far a ghg. So the lobby to drop ghg is having the government build 1/3 of it as very expensive renewable hydrogen. Great now less ghg than a hybrid and more efficient on the fossil fuel, but we have just made the fueling infrastructure a lot more expensive, and plug-ins could run on thoe renewables much more efficiently. I can see renwables part of it if they pass the test and become commercial, but why make it so much more expensive for this false "ghg" point. Plug-ins are going to reduce ghg with a lot fewer renewables built because they are many times more efficient on the renewable energy.

The key here on larger vehicles is the 50 mile phev. Batteries are heavy for 300 miles, hydrogen tanks are also heavy, both with get lighter, but in the interim on a truck or SUV I can't see either taking over. A PHEV would have gas for longer trips, but daily drives on much lighter batteries. The batteries could allow the truck or suv to run on an efficient 4 cylinder instead of the bigger 6 or 8 cylinders. Hydrogen tanks right now would be very big and expensive.

I agree here, but then lets stop with the bs about how much better than plug-ins hydrogen will be. Let's also do the test as cheap as possible with natural gas in california or small hydrolyzers, and get rid of the correption of the "renewable biogas" is the future so sations need to be built by landfills, or that the best place is at car companies that are part of the lobby. Make it a 10,000 car test until they actually hit some numbers, don't keep pretending their will be millions of fcv soon. not even toyota believes that.

 

An interesting requirement, "300 miles" suggests we may be looking at too small of a requirement. If the range requirement is expanded to say 900-1200 miles, a new dynamic comes into play:

• volume efficiency: payload / fully-loaded-mass - the payload increases by the cube of the volume but the mass increases by the square:
  • V = (4/3) * pi() * (r**3)
  • A = 4 * pi() * (r**2)

So instead of tiny tanks, make them larger although perhaps a little smaller than this one:


Ok, something approaching this:


Just make the tanks large enough to hold say 1,000 miles and problem solved (not really!) For semitrailer trucks, large enough for a coast-to-coast run.

Bob Wilson

 

Energy density is very low for long haul trucking, and you might as well make it liquid, the tanks and infrastructure will be cheaper doing today's technology. Those 10,000 psi tanks are expensive. Then you have the extra newable electriicity to liquify. Natural gas when liquified has about 70% more energy density than liquid hydrogen, and about 60% of diesel, so smaller cheaper system for long haul. See picken's plan.

It seems backwards but if hydrogen is "cheap" and natural gas expensive, methane can be made from the hydrogen and run in these much less expensive lng vehicles. According to the PIcken's people infrastructure is the problem, but much less than for hydrogen. Audi even has a plan to make diesel out of hydrogen if natural gas and oil get expensive. Big Trucks seem a really bad fit for 10,000 psi or liquid hydrogen.

On busses sure, but ghg may be higher than diesel depending on route and source of the hydrogen. FCV busses are much more expensive than cng and plug-in busses today, and the maintenance and fuel are more expensive every year.

 

EV has advantage over FCV for tank to wheel (as the chart above shows). That's just part of the picture and you need to add well to tank makes the whole picture (well to wheel).

Here is a recent news on the breakthrough of a technology that produces hydrogen from solar.

Artificial photosynthesis: New, stable photocathode with great potential

Some more:

Hydrogen production breakthrough could herald cheap green energy

Artificial photosynthesis can produce hydrogen and also create negative CO2. It'll take in CO2 and water to emit oxygen and hydrogen. It may still have a long way to go but it is the way to go. It is how the plants have been doing forever.

Yup, but it has started. I think it'll progress nicely and I am excited for what's ahead.

 

We certainly agree!

Funny, we haven't had any of the 'brown gas' advocates jump in. Perhaps they are on the moderator 'kill on sight' list along with SPAMMERs. <GRINS>

Bob Wilson

 

It'll require −423.17 °F to keep it in liquid state. How would it be cheaper?

 

dead horse - Toyota's little chart conveniently fails to show PV as a source fuel for plugins ... and/or how inefficient FC's are when synthesizing H2 via electricity. Thus, following this convenient failure to acknowledge PV as a most common source fuel for plugins, you can pretend FC's are great .... going on & on with the natural gas comparison. It's not bashing when someone corrects misinformation. Don't forget ... the lion's share of plugin's either have - or plan on having PV .... although I'm sure that won't stop Toyota from failing to continue to fling charts out that conveniently skew these kinds of realities.
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