Toyota Fuel Cell To Compete With Tesla?

Really? Is it going to perform like a Tesla and have as much front and rear trunk space as a Tesla?

But I never say never. Pricing will be helped by saving purchases of the ZEV and carbon credits, but it's competing against falling prices and improved capability of PEVs and due to the underlying NG infrastructure required could end up competing directly against CNG vehicles as well. Not to mention the fact that success will be almost wholly dependent on NG prices remaining low. Tick tock.

 

The real competitor to EV's, hybrids and fuel cell cars is the direct burn of natural gas. US will be energy independent by 2035 with rapidly growing natural gas production via shale leading the way.

Natural gas has several marketing advantages.

1. It is currently in use in millions of fleet vehicles.
2. It is available in 70% of homes. Home fueling station for NG vehicles is available now
3. It reduces emissions about 10%, gets US to about 15% of our goal of 80% reduction by 2050.
4. It is produced by same gasoline suppliers, massive lobbyists.
5. US will be 100% independent in supply which addresses US economic and national security issues of oil trade deficit, military spending for oil wars, oil financed terrorism a roughly $1T per year cost to US.
6. Cars running on natural gas cost 20% less than expensive battery or fuel cell cars.

 

At the end of the day what matters is grams of fossil-derived CO2 released per km traveled. Everything is a parochial re-arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. By that metric, if made from natural gas H2 is no better than gasoline. If made from non-fossil energy it's still an awkward vehicle fuel and an inefficient use of the energy; better to use batteries.

 

Problem with battery and fuel cell cars is that there is not enough natural resource available to build enough batteries and fuel cells which require costly and limited materials.

Natural gas (10% reduction in emissions) and hydrogen (100% reduction of emissions) require no exotic, short supply materials or many changes by car manufacturers.

 

Zero emissions from the vehicle, maybe, but the same cannot be said of manufacturing, transporting, and storing the product. I say 'product' because hydrogen isn't really a fuel; it's more like an energy storage medium.

 

10-4. There's 2 of us in Davis that I know of, mine's blue the other one is white. Funny thing is we live on the same street! Haven't met the other owner yet.

 

Which applies to all vehicles so that zeroes out and we are left with:

1. Lack of resources to build batteries and fuel cells for 240 million vehicles in US and another 240 million in China.

2. 20% cost disadvantage of battery and fuel cell over direct burn engines.

With natural gas on a US boom of epic proportions, I think EV and fuel cell are going to be run over by the natural gas delivery truck.

 

It most certainly does not 'zero out'. How can you apply full-cost thinking to one form of energy, and then ignore it when it comes to others? Consider ALL the costs for ALL the choices, and then decide.

 

The prototype, best guess is this is a volt like car, a 2+2 to give room for the hydrogen tnnk. Perhaps is will be more luxurious like the cadilac ELR. Either way it won't sell well compared to the tesla or volt, if its priced like the tesla, and can only fill at a very limited number of stations in California. Toyota clearly designed this car at a time where its marketing said tesla can not successfully build the S.

Now in Japan this vehicle has a much higher probability for sucess, as there are trade barriers to keep out the Tesla S and volt, and gasoline is more expensive, and the population can be satisfied with fewer fueling stations. It still needs to compete with the leaf though, and probably an improved prius phv.

 

If anything manufacturing of battery and fuel cells will cost MORE in emissions than regular production etc. so it is cutting the battery and fuel cell some slack to say the production, transport, etc. have the same emissions costs.

 

Yep . . . . the trillion dollar project was dumped. Even the oil industry didn't want to touch it with a 10,000lb psi embrittled fuel tube Hydrogen embrittlement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . And the oily industry is as close as you can get to building a hydrogen highway for profit ... yet they won't. After all - where do you think the hydrogen comes from. Most is distilled from . . . . you guessed it! Fossil fuel !! What a great waste of perfectly good natural gas. The lame factor never ceases to amaze me.

 

Fuel cells are insanely expensive, so I agree with you there. But suggesting that making batteries results in more emissions than regular petroleum production, if that's what you're saying, simply doesn't make sense. You're going to have to come up with some very robust numbers to sound the least bit convincing.

In the meantime, here's a good place to start with understanding full costing of alternatives.

 

I believe that natural gas produces less CO2 per unit of energy than petroleum, since there's less carbon in it, and coal produces more than either, since it's pure carbon. So any system using nat gas is preferable to gasoline, and burning nat gas directly is certainly more efficient than making H2 out of it, and an ICE to burn nat gas directly is cheaper than a fuel cell. The fuel cell has only one advantage: moving the pollution out of the city.

But when it comes to convenience, I plug my car in at home, and that's as convenient as it gets! Five seconds to plug it in, and five seconds to unplug it. (The car end of the charging cord hangs on a hook right next to where the charge port of the car is when parked in the garage.)

And here in the Pacific Northwest, my electricity is zero carbon, since it comes from hydro. Elsewhere, you can pay a little extra for wind power, or you can install your own PVs or wind charger, eliminating all carbon, other than original manufacturing.

Batteries are expensive and heavy, but H2 is dangerous and very difficult to store and transport. So, do I want a car that can only be fueled up at a vanishingly small number of stations, or a car I can plug in anywhere? The answer to that is easy, and would still be easy even if a hydrogen car were available. I'm very disappointed in Toyota for not building as many of the new Rav4EV as they could sell nation-wide. I'm even more disappointed in Honda for not building an EV Civic. For reliability and customer service Honda is a great company and I loved my Civic. An electric Civic with a 150-mile range would have been my ideal car. I really only bought the Tesla Roadster in desperation when all other options had fallen through. (Though I love it now and am very glad I got it. And Tesla service has been outstanding.)

 

Welcome back, Daniel!

 

You can do the same thing with natural gas if your home has a natural gas line for heat, cooking, etc.

But much less dangerous than gasoline and slightly less dangerous than natural gas.

Like a Tesla or LEAF? Public charging makes little sense because it takes so long. Hydrogen and natural gas fueling is much quicker and follows the same model as gasoline.

Natural gas supply is growing exponentially. It exists at many service stations now for tank fillups. It exists in most homes for home fueling. It has the backing of the energy industry. It has grudging acceptance by environmentalists as stop gap especially if used to replace coal plants (50-70% reduction in emissions) and Diesel trucks and trains (20%) reduction.

If natural gas gets the push by energy industry and government as the automobile fuel of the future for the US, EV's and fuel cell vehicles will get sidelined.

 

Tesla is expanding the charging network at a much faster rate than the infrastructure for hydrogen and natural gas is being developed. Have you seen their battery swap demonstration? Those gas cars will never catch on - they take too long to fuel.

 

In defense of Honda on the Civic EV, at this point in time, it would likely have emerged as something like the Focus EV. An expensive compact with a range shorter than what the general public would accept. The Focus and Fit at least have the space of a hatchback in order to place the batteries. A Civic EV with 150 mile range probably wouldn't have a trunk.

People are disappointed that Honda is only offering the Fit EV as a lease. Leasing seems to be favored for plug ins at this time because of the deals and hedging against possible loss of battery capacity. Plus, they expect better range and prices by the time their lease is up. The Fit EV is also offered in more states than the Rav4 EV. Which Toyota is only offering because California forced them too. In terms of technology, it's a Tesla.

At this time Toyota doesn't have an EV of their own. They made a few eQs but it has the shortest range of BEVs on fueleconomy.gov. So their cancelling it makes sense. But no word of any other model in development. Then Toyota's announcement that they won't offer an EV in Europe until the countries there adopt plans to clean up their grids seems hypocritical in light of Japan's grid. They also don't seem very interested in trying to sell the Prius plug in.

Instead they are promoting fuel cells. Not even talk of a plug in FCV, in which the use of problematic hydrogen gas and it's cost can be stretched out with grid electricity. To be fair, no other major manufacturer has done so, but I expect it out of Honda/GM first.

 

I don't think that helps bevs versus gasoline cars, but it really rips the heart out of the hydrogen lobby in california. The one thing going for the hydrogen lobby was "it takes too long to charge". It now appears at least a $69K (before tax credits) Tesla S can refuel faster than a fuel cell vehicle as well as at home.

From the latest california plug-in survey
http://energycenter.org/images/stories/cvrp/survey/infographic_motivations_2013_vertical_med.jpg
79% would be satisfied with Tesla S range. 39% of bev owners (mainly leaf) have solar at home. This further is discouraging to Fuel cells taking off unless they are significantly less expensive than a tesla S, with a significant amount of refueling stations, as they have to compete with charging from home. On Toyota and Honda's home turf of Japan these fcv may have a better chance.

 

DUP

 

I'm not sure the hydrogen lobby ever had a heart, but this is encouraging.