Featured Toyota chief speaks out on EVs

"Public chargers also provide an appeal boost for PHEV, making the argument for BEV more difficult. Opportunity charging at the grocery store, coffeeshop, or restaurant supply more EV range. That doesn't require an expensive or spacious install either. A simple commercial level-2 charger will do the trick. They don't like that at all."

Your statement there makes it sound as if BEVs themselves couldn't take advantage of those AC Level 2 EVSEs themselves. Considering the likely hood of the BEV having a faster charger, it will even get more miles for the time spent charging at them. In fact, many of the solutions for those that can't charge at home involve installing more AC Level 2 EVSEs, and making the design of them less obtrusive.

The appeal of the PHEV has been that it has most of the benefits of a BEV without the limitations. That is their entire point; no charger, no problem.

With many BEV owners starting with a PHEV, anything that increases PHEV adoption will lead to BEV adoption in many cases. So how are they actually a threat to BEVs?

Years? BEV purists have only become vocal recently. They are equating anything with an ICE as a polluter. Unfortunately, poor policies in Europe have lead PHEVs being bought and not plugged in. That just gave them more reason to get more vocal.

No one is hyping expectations here, except you with these fallacies. Many wish it would go faster, but know that change has a cost in time, materials, and money.

Mr. Toyoda's comment may have merit in Japan, but they are coming from a place of hypocrisy. He wouldn't be making such comments about FCEVs and hydrogen if the Japanese government announced they would be pushing for a switch to hydrogen. This is all about Japan possibly adopting an ICE ban, and Toyota not being ready for plug ins. You think the Rav4 Prime will be a game changer, but how long has the Outlander PHEV been supply constrained for?

Hydrogen needs to around double the price of gasoline to be competitive with it in cost per mile, or another 25% drop. Keep in mind that these prices are for hydrogen that is 66% fossil fuel.

 

HOAs already need to allow the install of chargers on Common Areas. But the individual must pay for the install and maintain additional insurance to protect the common area of possible fire. Once that owner leaves they will need to remove the chargers from the common area and pay for all repairs. So yes State and Federal law trump HOAs governing documents but there are still rules that in-play that make it more expensive to have that charger at home.

 

One example of poor execution doesn't prove your case. Less than 1/2 mile from my house they put in free L2 chargers at a store. Two pedestals with 2 chargers each. They put the pedestals (with ads) in the planter area at the ends of the lanes and took up no parking spots.
At my work location (remember those?) they put in ~48 chargers on the parking garage pillars and the parking spaces are spaced the same as all the others.

Mike

 

This can be easily proved incorrect, depending on what you mean by efficiency.
Compare the calories burned while running vs biking. Biking takes fewer calories and you go 2-3x as fast. You can compare top athletes or average people. The reason is the simple physics of rolling wheels being more efficient and, of course, assumes you have a flat surface.
You can also look at how efficient it is to ski and skate when those conditions allow.
It is much more efficient to walk up a gentle hill carrying a skateboard and coming back down on the skateboard than to walk/run both ways. Flat road required.

Mike

 

In all of my EV and PHEV travels and charging station usage, it has been uncommon for EV charging hardware to take up extra parking spaces. That goes for L2 and superchargers. Usually transformers are not parked on prior parking spaces.

 

This NIST video shows what happens if there is a hydrogen leak in an enclosed garage, which is then subject to a spark, such as from an ICE car starting:
Test 3: Dispersion and Burning Behavior of Hydrogen Released in a Full-Scale Residential Garage in the Presence and Absence of Conventional Automobiles (View of garage interior from floor camera) | NIST
(spoiler: the garage door is blown off)

So better put a vent at the top of your garage. I don't know what we do about underground parking garages.

I'm not saying hydrogen leaks are worse than gasoline leaks, but it is a mistake to think that hydrogen leaks aren't dangerous.

 

So are natural gas leaks, and many of us have it piped into our houses. I have four natural gas appliances on the inside of my house (and the feed pipe runs through my garage). I'd rather have hydrogen since it's safer. A house a few blocks from me was turned into toothpicks by a natural gas explosion.




My garage has a gable vent and two leaky garage doors, so there's little hope of building a small hydrogen leak into a big problem.

 

U.S. is headed away from natural gas long term. Our natural gas line is turned off and haven't used any in a couple years. California is heading that way and others are following. Why double down and go the opposite (wrong) direction?

 

Because hydrogen can be made renewably and because we can't do seasonal storage of electricity. And because batteries suck, obviously.

 

Not economically for passenger vehicles, the whole point. Nothing sucks worse than that. It's the absolute worst.

 

Simply wrong. It's just that NOBODY has built a decent hydrogen powered car, which has to be PHEV.

 

Not using natural gas in Colorado is just stupid. Electricity for the same heat is 5 times the cost and 70% of it is generated using natural gas or coal anyway.

 

CO is not the U.S. and not correct for internalized costs either, but a different heat pump topic you should start a thread on.

 

Tell that to the person a few blocks from you.

 

Yeah - it's dangerous. Hydrogen is much safer. Safer than gasoline too.

Look, I'm all for BEVs and have been since 1986 when I got my first one. But having been through Lead-Acid, Ni-Cd, NiMH, and now Li-Ion and LiPo, well, guess what? Batteries STILL SUCK!

It's a simple matter of numbers. H2 fuel cell systems can store around 1,000Wh/kg. Batteries are around 1/4 that. Natural gas season storage just in the US represents over a century of gigafactory battery production.

Current BEVs work for very limited use cases, mostly light vehicles in-town. I'm looking longer-term to a 100% renewable society, including industry, process heating, residential and commercial heating, heavy vehicles, shipping and aircraft, and batteries don't cut it. Now, if we get 1,000Wh/kg batteries some day, that would help with a lot more use cases, but even that's not nearly enough for ocean-crossing aircraft.

 

Yeah, how crazy you are the only one who figured that out.

 

can but currently it has to be forced by CA legislation ... because for ~ an equal amount of electrolosis energy needed for hydrogen, that energy would get the battery car down the road - multiple times further. Why do you think natural gas & coal are less expensive.

could it be because you'd have to spend millions on a long shot gamble that costs would come down on hydrogen cars with even bigger batteries? And for all those thousands of hydrogen cars needed to bring massive infrastructure costs down via massive volumes of stations ... let's see, why don't we do massive hydrogen stations.
Gee i wonder why . . . . could it be that it's 'assuming' the trillion dollar infrastructure 'ought' to get cheaper & cheaper never happens? with no proof? - Could it be considered a fools game to lay up trillions, hoping prices will come down as you spend years building & building ... only to have (as history shows) cost over-runs that make such pie in the sky notions even more hideously expensive that the wildest imagination ever thought?
Maybe some other state can afford that gamble ... Cali is out of money ... better get Toyota to move to Texas for more money. Oh wait ! That scheme is already underway.
.

 

Has anyone mentioned the hazard of having high pressure gas of any kind that leaks into an enclosed compartment like the cabin of a car? It's one of the issues in transporting welding gasses like Argon. At 3000 PSI an 80 cf tank of argon can fill a small car pretty fast, suffocating the driver. Since it's an inert gas only a few breaths of argon will produce asphyxiation without warning. Argon is heavier than air, so it pools. Hydrogen being lighter than air, would pool from the roof down.

This should not be a major concern, since anyone designing a fuel cell operated car would know that the cabin would need to be well isolated from the stored gas.

Just thought I'd throw it in there since the explosive dangers were being discussed.

Dan

 

This is for folks other than Lee Jay. I know he has strong opinions and I don't want to confuse him with facts. Really I don't even want him to comment as it will likely just confuse others.

Luckily we no longer heat many homes with fuel oil, which was much more dangerous than natural gas, higher polluting, and more expensive.

Pumping hydrogen through the houses lines at concentrations higher than 10% will cause embrittlement, and if not diagnosed leaking and fires. Electric heaters and natural gas heaters and appliances are extremely safe when inspections are done and proper equipment is used. Accidents do happen, but people cut corners because maintenance and replacement cost money. How much more would it cost to replace all the natural gas equipment with that that can work with hydrogen. I guess some suggest that you could sequester the carbon dioxide for smr hydrogen but then you make the hydrogen much more expensive than natural gas. Or you can use electricity to make the hydrogen, and use at least twice as much as electric heating. I'm not seeing the upside of the replacement.
Hydrogen homes is a terrible idea

One of the best way to come to the wrong conclusions is to use bad metrics. We can look at the new 2021 mirai and we get 2wd sedan with small interior and trunk space as the tesla model 3 long range awd and rav 4 prime but weighs 4250 lbs. For reference the tesla weighs 4036 lbs and has a range of 350 miles, the rav4 prime weighs 4300 lbs and a range of 600 miles. Unlike the mirai there is a nationwide fueling structure in most major markets for these two vehicles and both would lose weight if they dropped performance and awd to match the mirai. The problem is the bulky tanks need to be accounted for with fuel cells and the lower efficiency. Bothe the bev and phev cost less today, and battery prices are still falling. The mirai includes free fuel and a subsidized lease, so it does have that going for it, but energy density for a full vehicle is not there.

Preview: 2021 Toyota Mirai brings sexier look, lower price for fuel cell sedan
Compare Side-by-Side



That leaves us with the sole advantage the mirai can get fueled faster on long trips if you pay to build the stations and pay for the fuel.

Current BEVs work for very limited use cases, mostly light vehicles in-town. I'm looking longer-term to a 100% renewable society, including industry, process heating, residential and commercial heating, heavy vehicles, shipping and aircraft, and batteries don't cut it. Now, if we get 1,000Wh/kg batteries some day, that would help with a lot more use cases, but even that's not nearly enough for ocean-crossing aircraft.[/QUOTE]


could it be because you'd have to spend millions on a long shot gamble that costs would come down on hydrogen cars with even bigger batteries? And for all those thousands of hydrogen cars needed to bring massive infrastructure costs down via massive volumes of stations ... let's see, why don't we do massive hydrogen stations.
Gee i wonder why . . . . could it be that it's 'assuming' the trillion dollar infrastructure 'ought' to get cheaper & cheaper never happens? with no proof? - Could it be considered a fools game to lay up trillions, hoping prices will come down as you spend years building & building ... only to have (as history shows) cost over-runs that make such pie in the sky notions even more hideously expensive that the wildest imagination ever thought?
Maybe some other state can afford that gamble ... Cali is out of money ... better get Toyota to move to Texas for more money. Oh wait ! That scheme is already underway.
.[/QUOTE]

 

You make it sound like I don't have facts. This is what I do for a living, and have for 27 years.

Too bad.

That's alloy and coating dependent, and can be fully mitigated.

I am NOT proposing that. I'm am proposing using hydrogen as a vehicle fuel.

Tanks consume volume, but not mass. Fuel cells and hydrogen tanks weigh around 1/4th as much as batteries for the same energy.

But it could be if designed properly. The Mirai is a full FC vehicle which, as I keep saying, is just as stupid as a full battery vehicle (with today's batteries) or a full gas vehicle. Cars are inherently HYBRIDS because they have need of large peak power and lots of energy. Therefore, it's better to have one source for the power (batteries) and one source for the energy (a tiny fuel cell). That results in a car that weighs around 800 pounds less than a BEV but with the range and fueling speed of a gas car, all for the same total energy consumption as a BEV.

Which is a MASSIVE advantage. Some of us are unwilling to wait for charging. I drive a Prime and occasionally stop at charging stations. Unless I'm eating there, I find waiting more than 5 minutes for a charge to be excruciating. I can tolerate 10 minutes if I use the bathroom and clean the windows.