Toyota Sends Hydrogen Stations to Dealers for Sold-Out Mirai

I think the limit is the fuel cell cost. To get Model S performance, you need one with higher output which will cost more. A higher capacity traction battery may provide bursts of performance for a lower price tag.

 

Yes, the Platinum fuel stack would have to be more than four times as large to come even remotely close to Tesla's 700 horsepower. That fuel stack would cost more than the entire hydrogen car costs - even with it being sold at roughly ~ half its build cost.

actually? On both points maybe a smaller fuel cell vehicle as shown below - which has already been in the works for over a decade would be economically possible for people that are NOT so wealthy. Contrast either the cheaper hydrofen car below or the unaffordable /more expensive hydrogen car to the Tesla - which has infrastructure already across the US through multiple paths.

TOYOTA FCHV

And several manufacturers will have multiple hundred mile range EV's in just a few months- long before the handful of hydrogen stations open.
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That vehicles says 120 km range on the japanese test, which is worse than a leaf. It would of course not sell in the volume of the leaf and has more expensive components. Why not make a 200 mile bev or a 50 mile phev instead of this beast. It seems less convenient than either.

No you can't fit big hydrogen tanks in a small vehicles without it having terrible compromises.

Absolutely you can build hydrogen pipelines. Its just a matter of money.

For home, factory, and office most of the value of methane is in buring it for heat cooking or chemical processes. Here we have a problem as hydrogen is much more expensive per unit energy. In most places there is already infrastructure in place, but even in places with new infrastructure why would you build hydrogen pipelines when natural gas pipelines work?

We already have hydrogen pipelines by refineries where hydrogen is needed, but here there is little trasport cost, natural gas is coverted to hydrogen near where it is used.

Then we have a misleading statement hydrogen is renewable natural gas is not. 95% of hydrogen is not renewable. The value of natural gas is methane, which can be made renewably either as biogas
Google

Or from the reverse SMR reaction
4H2 + CO2 + energy (usually from burning some of the methane + electricity) -> 2H2O + CH4

There is talk of putting up to 10% renewable hydrogen into natural gas lines, which is low enough that it won't hurt natural gas appliances or newer pipelines. That would not be infrastructure costly, but hardly move toward hydrogen pipelines (it would be pumped in near excess electricity generation (which is the cause of its manufacture) not where people want hydrogen.

 

If we take toyota estimates of its fuel cell cost about $40,000 (I'm guessing this is 2017, after new equipment is installed not today). Tesla's battery cost is about $20,000 for a 70kwh pack or about half of the mirai stack. Chief cost of mirai's fuel cell is not materials, but materials cost need to decrease for toyota to drop it from the $40,000 to their $5000 goal.

Both companies expect costs to fall rapidly. Tesla says its costs should drop to $12,250 once gigafactory is in high volume production, and to $7000 before 2025. Toyota's goal is to drop cost to $5000, but we don't have a date. I would say toyota has a much harder job in pulling costs out. They need to pull costs out of the hydrogen tanks also. Just going from 3000 unit production a year in 2017 to 30,000 per year in 2020 should allow them to spend on machines that greatly decreases manufacturing costs, but not anywhere near their goal of $5000.

 

The source was toyota shareholder meeting of $50,000 for the fc and tanks and plumbing. I was guestimating 80% is the fuel cell cost since toyota said it got the tank cost down. They disn't specify if this was today at the 700 unit production, or if it was after they bought the new equipment that I'm guessing is less labor intensive for the 3000 unit production. Either way costs will fall greatly if they produce 30,000 per year versus 3000 per year.

DOE expects stacks at $5500 if you produce 500,000/year after companies learn to take costs out. Then again no one knows if costs really go down on these hypothetical curves. If they did in the past fuel cells would be at the 50,000 mark cumulative today. DOE and toyota's figures are similar, but will toyota be able to get their on lower volume? Or when will they sell 500,000 fcv a year. The total market for plug-ins is arround 500,000 world wide. If toyota can sell more mirai and other fuel cells than plug-ins ....

 

Great. Then they must be making a profit, and don't need any bonus subsidies.

Or perhaps the mirai is a hnad built car, and the sheet metal is very expensive. Any volume production would make it a lot cheaper so we don't talk about that alone probably costing a great deal. No they were talking about the hydrogen system, not the car. Many are estimating the car to be around $80,000 before dealer costs. If you add the zev credits ($18,000) to the list price $58,000 toyota doesn't lose that much per unit ($76,000) if they could get list. They are discounting from there though mainly in a $499 lease price that includes toyota paying partially for the fuel, which means a big loss per vehicle. California kicks in $5000 add to the zev value so think $23,000 from your number. How much do you think they are losing on each lease? Yes that is why they are asking for more money. If the car cost $50,000 and they had a typical mark up to $56,000 then you deducted the zev credits you could price it at $38,000, $33,000 after tax credit. Yep you could do the lease then, but toyota says they are losing money. If toyota's cost was only $50,000 they would be pumping out a lot higher production for japan where they have a 2 year waiting list, and they would have a high variable profit.

Do you have anything that says it only costs them $50,000 to produce the cars from 2014 or after. We have lots of information that the fch-adv was around $1M. If the shell was $30,000 they still would round to $1M.

Toyota Admits Cutting Costs of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology Further Will Be Tough | Transport Evolved

If they were talking the price of the car 95% THEN 3/4 then toyota must be thinking $12,500 for the cost of the fuel cell system not the entire car. That's the goal for 2020, but its a tough goal. What does engineering say?


Toyota Wants To Slash Sticker Price Of 2016 Mirai Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle

I'd be with engineering thinking 2025 or 2030 for that $12,500 drive train (stack, motors, tank, inverter, battery), not 2020, but lets see what toyota can do. When they do that then perhaps it will be ready for commercialization. With all that other stuff the stack probably needs to get down to around $5000.

 

Was his statement before or after Toyota admitted this whole hydrogen thing might not happen for 50 years.
Lotta spin coming from Toyota when it comes to this experiment. Take the title of this OP as a perfect example ... Toyoya sends hydrogen stations to anyplace?!? Really?
Will i see a Texico station
& convenience store being rolled down the street like some midnight house move ?
Or - is the hydrogen experiment fail so great, Toyota has to truck it in. It's just a bunch of cylinders on a truck for cryin' out loud . Call it what it is. Stations fail ... gotta truck cylinders to the dealership, as a stop gap.
And the "sold out Mirai" yep ... Toyota unloads the handfull of cars - primarily on some municipalities - and it's "sold out". Even if they'd delivered two cars you can spin it as sold out - but it just takes away any sense of honesty ... not that it seems to matter to Toyota - anymore than using old data/charts to justify moving forward at huge expense to honesty & reality.
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That was the goal in 2013. Since then they admitted they failed. They also said 5000-10,000 fcv in 2015 instead of 700. Read my later links above.

But yes if they did it, then they are raking in big profits with the bigger subsidies.

From your link

We have a goal to reduce the cost of the fuel cell system not the car here in your 2014 link, they failed to reduce the price of the total car that much but that was a much harder goal.. This is your own link read it. That is $50,000 for the fuel cell system, not including the rest of the hand built mirai.

As posted above in a previous reply, their goal is $12,500 for the fuel cell system in 2020. In 2014 when this was written toyota knew the mirai would not get an expired $8000 tax credit but had just received an increase to 9 zev credits and $5000 california credit which are worth around $23,000. If toyota can drop the price in 2020, more power to them, the cost of the car will drop $37,500 and higher production should drop the ballance of the car cost. Toyota engineers are already saying this is much too aggressive. Hey I'd love it if toyota engineering is wrong and hydrogen hype is right and they do it in time for the olympics, but past promises have been met with disapointment.

 

They officially have delivered 34 in the US. Toyota's goal for the year was 200, which seems ludicrously easy, and they could ship and deliver 166 more cars this month. Articles have said some want to "wait", I'm guessing these aren't real orders but deposits, that are cancelable. Toyota says with the infrastructure they are fine with the delayed deliveries. My guess is 2015 is below the 200 goal. 2016 goal is 1000 (not sure if that is cumulative) and out of 3000 hand raisers they can probably do that too.

The cars not delivered to California have orders in Japan, but my guess is they are not interchangable, so the 700 goal might be missed, but they can make it up in 2016 pretty easily.

Agree selling out 2700 cars for a 2 year period is a pretty low bar, but I think they will make it even though we should not call deposits and hand raisers sold.

 

200 is Toyota's goal for california this year, 50 to 100 in Europe, the rest in Japan. You seem to be confused. How many do you think they will ship in December? Toyota sold or leased 23 in November. Toyota in a previous press release said that some wanted to delay their December orders, and toyota would honor requests.

They said so. Their goal was to sell a fcv for around $50,000 without losing money. They said they are losing money. You are the person still sticking to that goal, but they have admitted that they couldn't do it. The price is 7 million yen in Japan. It was an ambitious goal. I don't fault them on failing, but lets not pretend that because that is what their goal was, that they reached it. In your own linked article it said the fuel cell system alone was around 5% of the cost of the one in the FCV-adv which they said was around $1M. What is your point in arguing.

Hey if they are making the mirai for only $50K, how are they going to reduce costs to 1/4 as they have repeatedly stated their new goal is. It is just silly. They are leasing the vehicles in the US for much less than the goal of $50,000 - but that is fairly easy if you are ok losing money on every one.

Yes the fuel is an additional loss, but its small compared to the vehicle.

Well I put bold italics down showing that they are talking about reduction in the cost of the fuel cell (really fuel cell sytem) not in the car. Your source says the same as mine.

The additional detail is to reach the goal of 3 million yen they want to shave 3/4 of the fuel cell system cost. Are they on track for 2020. Management says they are, engineering says they aren't. As I mentioned in my previous post I'd like it if engineering is wrong and management is right, but others in management say those hydrogen advocates in the organization are overly optimistic.

So lets not pretend that a hand built mirai with exoctic fuel cells only costs $50,000 to build. Here is one estimatee.
How Much Money Does The 2016 Toyota Mirai Lose? A Lot, Perhaps

A lot of it is accounting. I think losses are much lower because I'm putting some things they are talking about as part of R&D and not the vehicle cost, as well as assuming the zev credits reduce the loss.


We can read the goal of about $12,500 (yen has devalued so its lower, but lets make it dollar terms for inflation) for the fuel cell system. They hope they can put that in a 3 to 5 million yen car. ($25,000-$41,000 at today's rates) in 2020. If today's mirai only cost them 5 million yen to make it would not be a tough goal to bring costs down to 5 mllion yen.



Anyway I hope you can at least read and affirm future goals, even though you don't seem to be able to understand today's costs.

The japanese government goal is a 2 million to 3 million yen fcv after subsidies. We should know in 2020 whether toyota made it. My guess is they willl make that goal by having high sbusidies, but toyota won't sell or lease the 30,000 vehicles they are projecting for 2020.

 

On my last reply I didn' notice this post, and perhaps I can clear up some more of your confustion.

Yes you should not buy or lease a plug-in today if you can't find one you like or can't plug-it in at home or work. Absolutely.

A fcv does require fueling infrastructure and you likeing the car. This is a much smaller subset of people in the next 5 years that can satisfy both. If you look at tco compared to similar cars it gets even worse.

Its the grid, not the "fosil fuel" grid. In many places most of the grid is non-fosil. It also was not built for plug-in cars, but other uses, and 100% of the coal power plants now operating were not built with fueling plug-in cars in mind.

Certainly you should take grid losses which includes conversion of voltage and even DC/AC and AC/DC conversions in efficiency for electricity provided to both plug-ins and hydrogen stations.

I'm really confused by these figures. The mirai stack efficiency is included in the 66 m/kg. That s about 65% as efficient as a model S 70D which is heavier faster and awd including the charging losses. I have no idea of the fuel cell efficiency but it does not generate electricity from the hydrogen compression. Compression takes energy outside the epa's test. Here it is 3kwh-7kwh in practice at stations. That in most cases with SMR is much more than 10%, but yes with the inefficiency of electroysis its only around 10%.

Its accurate if you are using grid tied solar or wind. Its inaccurate when using SMR natural gas versus turbine natural gas. Its a pretty clear rason why running plug-ins on renewables require a lot less renewables than fcv.on renewables. Great reason to use more efficient domestic natural gas for fcv. Let's not pretend though most of their power won't be fossil fuel as they are most efficient on fossil fuel.

Well as you have already pointed out this one is misleading because it only uses natural gas. As pointed out before the numbers are also wrong, with toyota now saying with natural gas plug-ins and fcv are both very efficient (fcv afe not greatly more efficient if you corret the bad assumptions put in this 2009 chart.

 

You are being intellectually dishonest be ignoring that the accepted meaning for the past several years of carbon neutral is in reference to atmospheric carbon.

Austingreen covered the answer for the general population, but I'll provide one for my situation.

I can put in the hardware for a plugin for when the time comes for a new car. Either pay someone else to do it, or dig a trench myself, it can be reasonably done.

There is no hydrogen station, and there won't be any within a reasonable distance of my commute. We had a flex-fuel Ranger, and it was 5 years into ownership when an e85 station was close enough to think about using, and then it was a 30 to 45 minute round trip from my job, going farther from home, into Philly.

If one did magically appear on my commute, I would have to visit it more often than I do than with our non-hybrid cars to a gas station. Why would anybody willing increase the times they have to get out into the cold, rain, sleet, and snow for refueling to more than they have too?

 

Because they've been (mis)led to believe they're saving the erf, and they have more money than sense?

 

More details of this plan has come out
Portable Hydrogen Fuelers Go To Six Toyota Mirai Dealers As Stations Lag

6 of the 8 mirai dealers get a station, 2 said no thanks they would rather use the space on their lots for something that helps sales more. Toyota expects these customers to refill every 1.7kg or about 115 miles until more stations open. These stations are driven to air products hydrogen production site and filled with SMR produced hydrogen. drivers need to get a toyota employee to fill their mirai.

There were 9 stations around before the big spend. Now it appears that 3 of those have been upgraded and there are now 6 (3 new 3 upgraded) retail statons open or any day now and 6 demo stations and 6 six of these temporary mobile stations - 18 total of which 1/3 are "retail".

I would not hold my breath for those 6 more going live this year as December is notorious for slow work, but maybe we will have 24 at the beginning of next year 12 retail, 6 demo, and 6 temporary Mobil.

Toyota clarified their goal as 1000 my 2016 mirais in the US. I have no idea what month is change over to my 2017, my guess is once they lease 1000, which is only 84 for each of the 12 retail stations, plenty of infrastructure. If a vehicle fills once a week then only 12 mirais through stations, pretty easy even when some stations can only handle 25 - 4kg fills in a day.

Let's say changeover is in October with 2017 my starting in novemember. That leaves only 14 months to sell the balance of 2000 mirai, which would take the bulk of world wide production.