Featured Toyota chief speaks out on EVs

It's not misinformation, it's an analysis of the NHTS data.

National Household Travel Survey

How much statistical evidence can you draw from a single data point?

 

Since I paid for it ... I got my money’s worth.

I am not in the business of separating someone from their folly. We place our bets and takes our rewards.

Bob Wilson

 

Another fuel-cell outage hampers Bay Area fuel-cell drivers (greencarreports.com)

 

The spokes person's good news;
Hydrogen price drop. 25%
So - in stead of $15/litre it's 'only' $11 & change.
You can't make stuff like that up.
.

 

To be fair, 25% is a step in the right direction.
Although touting Hydrogen stations with more capacity doesn’t help with supply issues.

 

This isn't meant to be snide and if it seems that way I apologize

e=mc2 where e =energy

You do not get something for nothing with energy.

Every energy source will have its issues whether it is habitant destruction/change- generation of heat or undesirable byproducts.

Heck I do a lot of walking and biking. That takes energy and I must replenish it with plant, animal products and water. I then have to eliminate the unused material I put into my body as my body excretes that waste into the environment.

I wonder if the net sum of mobility products is about equal no matter what way you go mobile. The difference may be in efficiency

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest!

 

Well that isn't really what is going on. They said the station cost has been reduced 25%, but we aren't really sure what they really cost. Certainly a 200 kg/day station is never going to make sense. It can only at peak do 50 - 4 kg fill ups a day, and filling the hydrogen tanks means that if its doing that it probably needs delivery every day it is moving that fast. Drivers will get frustrated, the thing will shut down. If the goal is 50,000 fcv and you fill once a week, then you probably need 300 hydrogen stations and california has struggled to get 58 working and 101 funded. California's goal was 100 by the end of this year, now they are talking 2024 to get the funded stations built, so the goal of 50,000 fcv by 2015, would not happen until 2028 if you kept building the small stations and buckets of more money.

The new stations have capacity of 1200 kg/day. That makes a lot more sense, it will peak at 300 - 4kg fill ups a day. Now to get these built california is going to pay a maintenance payment for unused capacity. In other words the state is on the hook to pay for the hydrogen not dispensed, which lowers the amount they need to subsidize upfront, because investors will pony up for that guaranteed payment. This probably is cheaper than building and abandoning all the low capacity stations. It also means that if somehow they convince or pay people to drive fcv the stations have the scale to drop price of fuel. There is some pie in the sky dreaming in this years report that if you build 200 stations by end of 2025 that they can serve 175,000 fcv. They are currently projecting 27,000 fcv on california's roads 3 years from now. Definitely possible but highly optimistic. You get to that 175,000 fcv vehicles my guess is maybe you can get unsubsized hydrogen (after paying capital costs) down to around $8/kg. Current cost reductions of stations not likely to actually cut down the price of unsubsidized hydrogen. Maybe they will get there in only another decade.

 

Your second sentence answers your question.
In other words, no, the net sum of mobility products is not equal.
And yes, efficiency is a large part of that.

One of the more straightforward examples of this happens to be Hydrogen vs Battery electric.
The images have been shared in various threads. Here is a link to one such article: Battery-electric or hydrogen fuel cell? VW lays out why one is the winner

There is an energy loss at each step. Typically, the more steps the more loss.
This is one of the advantages of renewables. Finding them is easier than digging up fossil fuels. Refining them is easier, transporting the energy is easier on average. And in most cases, using them to produce motive power is easier.

Hydrogen requires compression at one or multiple stages, transportation is far more energy intense, storage is less efficient and then the conversion back into a useful energy form.

Renewable energy? You get the losses from transmission and then the losses from storage.
Someday, Hydrogen may be more efficient, but I don’t see that happening.

 

The pattern has become easy to recognize and quite predictable. When some constructive criticism is presented about setting realistic expectations for the pace of plug-in acceptance, those who agree get personally pounced on and attention is diverted to hydrogen. Every single time the discussions end that way. It's quite telling. In this case, lack of charging infrastructure was brought up and details were presented. That was quickly dismissed with a vague no-need-for-concern. The same old players think their tactics and talking-points will continue to work. They are wrong, as history has confirmed about the observed pattern. They repeat mistakes.

With regard to specifics of this topic, it's quite obvious the absence of a charging standard will continue to impair any type of serious progress. Then when we finally get it (most likely CCS), there's the very real problem of capacity & ownership. Business & Landlord interest toward investing in chargers is almost a dead topic. It's sad. Then when you do get a charging location, there's no guarantee that the fastest speed offered will actually be available routinely. Grid demand and the higher tier prices make offering that a costly challenge, every step of the way. There's on-going support to address as well.

Take any metropolitan area, look at quantity & distribution of SuperChargers. So far after so many years should be an indication of the pace to set for realistic expectations. It will happen, just not anywhere near as fast as enthusiasts & early-adopters hope. That's what the CEO of Toyota was pointing out. He's well aware of how difficult it is to even get level-2 equipment installed. It takes time & money, along with education & confidence. PHEV rollout will help with the latter. Both dealer & consumer need exposure to the technology before they will invest in it. Patience is required... a necessity some here refuse to acknowledge.

 

Why is there such an intense focus on public chargers? As mentioned in one of the posts, the average city dweller will not need 600 mile range as much as they need a way to recharge daily. For example, most people shop within 2.5 miles of their home. If they have a relatively efficient car like the Tesla Model 3 or Prius Prime, then they will get about 6 miles of range for every hour of charge from a level 1 charger. 15 percent of the car owners commute. They are likely to need a level 2 to store enough energy for the "average 55 minute commute".

That leaves the long distance drivers as the ones who need a supercharger, and those would probably be be well served by strategically placed charging stations along the main thoroughfares. That's quite doable.

Or, of course, just use a car similar to the Prius Prime that, for most people, only uses gas on those occasional interstate trips.

For those advocating adding "a few charging stalls" in grocery store parking lots: Over the last 2 months I have watched 3 stalls being installed at the local grocery store. They took out 12 parking spots to put in the 3 parking spaces with the associated dispensers and large transformers to bring the power to the edge of a parking lot. This is in an area where real estate goes for over a million dollars an acre. I have no idea which federal or state program is underwriting the costs for this.

Dan

 

Hydrogen was brought up because part of Mr. Toyoda's complaint against plug ins will be the cost of expanding the charging infrastructure. That, and issues of real estate, is hypocritical coming from him and Toyota. These issues weren't issues for them when it comes to hydrogen infrastructure and refueling.

 

That's what the pattern reveals. Availability gets sighted as a selling-point for BEV. Yet when called out with detail, the enthusiast divert attention elsewhere, rather than address shortcomings. That evade is becoming quite obvious.

You can tell they aren't being sincere either, when 50kW speeds (level-3, tier-1) are mocked and belittled despite fully supporting a form of level-3 (DC Fast-Charging, aka: DCFC). They insist speeds well into tier-2 (in excess of 150kW) are absolutely required. The reasoning for that is to accommodate those who would own a BEV but don't fit the "leaves the long distance drivers as the ones who need a supercharger" criteria. In other words, that massive chunk of the population who is unable to have a level-2 charger (basic is 3.3kW from 16-amp, fast is 10kW from 50-amp, with a max of 19.2kW) for overnight recharges.

This is why it will take much longer than they hope. So, the narrative of hydrogen not ever co-existing is inevitably pushed each time the topic comes up. They know the reality of automakers selling more than just passenger vehicles. They know Toyota will thrive with their fuel-cells being a critical aspect of the industrial & commercial shift away from fossil-fuels. Diesel use must come to an end. They worry that effort will interfere with plug-in options and refuse to acknowledge the benefit of shared components. It will take a combination/overlap of solutions to fulfill needs. A single solution for all is unrealistic, especially when we look at the speed & scale at which change is needed.

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.

Pay attention to detail. Watch for the pattern.

 

I’ve never seen the “straw-man” fallacy so well illustrated.

 

Level 3 charging is officially no more. The SAE now categorizes charging speeds by current type; AC Lever 1&2 and DC Level 1&2. DC Level 1 maxes out at 12kW, IRRC. 50kW was a fine starting point, but it isn't fast enough to support long range BEVs on trips. It or slower may work out as a charging point for those that can't charge at home. CHAdeMO was the first fast DC standard, but it was developed in Japan, where cars are driven less, and there is a great rail system for even long trips.

A large part of the US car buying public can charge at home. This means less pressure to solve charging for those that can't, and less waste that comes with rushing. Europe has less home charging, and the US can look at what public charging options they are deploying. They have street lamp and kerb installed chargers that don't need private real estate. We might have to adopt their practice of the car owner supplying the cord for using public AC chargers, but this might cut down on issues seen here. Cords will be put away, people can't rudely unplug someone when the chord locks into the car and charger while the charging is on going.

Regulators pushing hydrogen at the expense of BEVs has already been done. CARB infamously excluded battery swapping from the ZEV credits for fast refueling once Tesla deployed a swap station showing that it was feasible, leaving hydrogen as the only beneficiary of that incentive.

But the opposition against hydrogen isn't for some narrative about it and plug ins not co-existing, but because of the great costs its infrastructure would require. There are other zero emission fuel possibilities that can be used in an ICE or fuel cell that would be cheaper to deploy. Pushing hydrogen commercialization now also means higher cost if a breakthrough on storing it happens.

We are well aware of the shared components between FCEVs and BEVs. It is part of the reason why we are puzzled by Toyota's delay in bringing BEVs to market. Making and selling a Mirai BEV would take little effort, and the cost would be covered by its sales.

I like the part of PHEVs now being a threat to BEVs.

 

Fuel Cell powered vehicles have been investigated for 70 years or so, back to the '50s when the DOD was testing a hydrogen powered plane. The problem then was the same as it is now. Production and storage. Only for cars add distribution and quantity and costs. Trucks or even planes use established routes so delivering diesel or kerosene or hydrogen is less of a problem. But when I think of where I go in a normal year ... Heck I can't even find a charger within 30 miles of the cabin. That gas distribution infrastructure is hard to duplicate and costly.

Clean electric power generation costs get spread over businesses, homes and vehicles. And with 600 mile EV ranges on the horizon

 

That is another confirmation, pretending a long-standing issue is new. Next is to ask a question about it, as if it hadn't already been asked & answered many times already on many different threads. It is the "U"ncertainty part of spreading FUD.

For years, their have been fights about BEV being the only viable solution, that PHEV were a waste of time and resources. What has changed recently is the rollout of RAV4 Prime proving otherwise. It's the first to break the stereotype, finding a means of reaching beyond early-adopters... which brings us back to the original topic of how long change will actually take.

Again, Toyota's CEO is being realistic, enthusiasts are hyping expectations. Again again, this is nothing new. We see the pattern of thinking change will happen a lot faster, but refusing to acknowledge the factors causing slowdown... like infrastructure shortcomings.

 

Another clear illustration of the straw-man fallacy.

 

the first? ...... iirc, our plugin minivan came out years ahead of the PHEV RAV.

realistic? mentioning FUD as part of some anti-phev / anti-toyota agenda .... when actually it's the other way around;


So how is it that Toyota is to be painted as the poor inocent victim of mean ol' EV 'early adapters' .... isn't it about time to stop throwing that term out now that even one manufacturer of EV's alone, has made millions of them? If not, how many more Millions will there have to be.
.

 

Are you kidding? That's excellent news for people who purchased hydrogen vehicles or are planning to. Another 25% drop would make it price competitive with combustion fuel. 1 gallon of gasoline is not equivalent to 1 kg of hydrogen in terms of expected range.