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Featured 2023 Prius to launch plug-in hydrogen electric vehicle. Corolla to offer hydrogen combustion engine

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by JosephG, Sep 2, 2021.

  1. Lee Jay

    Lee Jay Senior Member

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    But it won't need the massive local power supply - the "demand" will be a lot lower.

    I was just at an Electrify America station with four DC fast chargers. The four of them were sharing a 750kVA transformer. An H2 station might have a 75kVA transformer running an electrolysis and compression system, and a tube trailer.
     
  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    i have plenty of electricity in my garage, how many drivers can say that?
     
  3. Lee Jay

    Lee Jay Senior Member

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    I've got two 15A 120V circuits and a 100A 240V subpanel feeding a NEMA 14-50 and 3 20A 120V circuits.
     
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  4. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    How many plug ins can that charger station fast charge at once? Many of the 4 dispenser hydrogen stations announced here can only fill 3 cars at a time. How many cars can be fast filled from the tube trailer in a row?
     
  5. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    April 1st release date??
     
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  6. Lee Jay

    Lee Jay Senior Member

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    It's just a series of compressed gas tubes. As many as you have fill stations and ways to avoid freezing. And remember, a 5-minute fill means 1 wand can serve as many cars as 6 half-hour charging stations.

    [​IMG]
     
  7. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    At three times the cost per mile as a BEV car.

    Works for me.

    Bob Wilson
     
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  8. JosephG

    JosephG Active Member

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    I don't think Toyota thinks hydrogen is simply better than batteries, they are after all a major investor in the lithium battery consortium and solid state battery research. They think it's more practical for vehicles over a few thousand pounds or with a range over a hundred miles or two and also in other less interesting ways a more practical fuel (in natural disasters - like say in Louisiana, national security, for apartment dwellers, developing markets etc.)

    They probably also like that it gets certain advantages in CARB credits, but their belief in hydrogen at least for heavy vehicles seems to be genuine.
    The difference is the efficiency of converting hydrogen to energy. Fuel cells themselves are very efficient. The new Mirai has I believe 3 hydrogen tanks, to get the same range with a hydrogen combustion engine you'd need like 9, there's nowhere to put that many.

    If the Prius is getting a combustion engine, I could see it being slightly less bad since you can probably make the engine more efficient without running into problems like knock, but it will never be as good as just plugging in a fuel cell vehicle. I really hope that's not what Toyota is planning, it makes no sense and makes even less as fuel cell costs continue to come down.

    Heck, consider you need to keep paying Pace Automotive licensing fees and put a clutch in the transmission and all sorts of things that you don't need to do if you just put a plug on a fuel cell and it would make the competence of management look very questionable if they went with an ICE.
     
    #28 JosephG, Sep 2, 2021
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2021
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  9. Lee Jay

    Lee Jay Senior Member

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    You make the same mistake as Elon, which is surprising since I've explained it to you in detail in the past.
     
  10. 3PriusMike

    3PriusMike Prius owner since 2000, Tesla M3 2018

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    And they (Toyota and the rest of the legacy car makers) have no one to blame for this than themselves. They all sat on their hands while a tiny Silicon Valley startup built more fast DC chargers than all of them combined. And if you subtract out the ones mandated by the VW cheating scandal it is probably an order of magnitude more.
    There are no excuses. "They" could have done it working together if Tesla did what it did.
    But "they" wanted someone else to pay for it the same as "they" are going to want someone else to pay for the H2 stations. You should be able to see where this is going. No where.

    Mike
     
  11. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Actually the legacy manufacturers paid Tesla for the new factories. Works for me.

    Bob Wilson
     
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  12. JosephG

    JosephG Active Member

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    You say that as though Tesla has solved the charging infrastructure problem. I live in California and can't access a charge at most hotels. Heck, we often can't even charge at home in the summer. The federal government will need to pay for infrastructure to solve this problem.
     
  13. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    Naw ... just trade-in your car for one that has charging lanes available.

    Bob Wilson
     
  14. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Five minute fills require the tanks chilled to -40 degrees. With higher temperatures and lower tank pressures, the fill time starts getting longer. As long as a DC fast charge isn't unheard of.
    Locally, Japan's electric grid isn't up for home charging cars for about half the population. On top of that, research and projects involving BEVs using NiMH at best convinced Japan's auto industry that only short range city BEVs would work. That thinking still seems in place. So they pushed hydrogen made from nuclear power to be carbon free. Then nuclear became a no go in Japan, and now they are importing hydrogen made from fossil fuels.

    Toyota started with cars though. Available space on a truck, should make packaging easier to start. The problem is that fuel cells are expensive. To see price reductions, I think they need annual production in the hundreds of thousands. they are around 30k before the pandemic.


    Point taken on more hydrogen tanks needed for a straight ICE car. Mazda and Toyota with the Prius are planning hydrogen ICE with a PHEV. It is possible the hydrogen Corolla will be a hybrid or PHEV too. We have little details at this time.

    The current Mirai has an official tank range is nearly 80 miles less than an ICE Camry. It does have three hydrogen tanks; one behind the rear bumper, one behind the back seat, and one running down the middle of the cabin. Because of the tanks, the middle rear seat has a hump like the gen2 Volt, there is no pass through for long items, and the trunk is small. It is 9.6 cubic feet to the Camry's 15.1. The Corolla sedan has 13.1. The Mirai's trunk isn't in the unusable category, but hydrogen FCEVs were seen as a long range solution for cars, but the majority of long trips made by people are for things like vacations where trunk size can be a limiting factor on whether a car will work for the trip.

    I thought those fees ended.

    The Mirai is $50k, and it is basically a nicer trimmed Camry(at least one reviewer said Buick level). Seeing how the higher trim model is $15k more, Toyota is probably is selling them at a loss, or is getting a subsidy from the Japanese government. Prius sales couldn't survive the price hike for a fuel cell.

    Public charging is a cheaper problem to fix than hydrogen infrastructure. That's why car companies pushing hydrogen cried they weren't an energy company when infrastructure was brought up.
     
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  15. JosephG

    JosephG Active Member

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    With the generous subsidies for hydrogen, I think the Prius could probably survive as a fuel cell. The main barrier really is infrastructure.

    I disagree public charging is necessarily a cheaper problem to fix. It simply falls on the electricity companies gradually so automakers don't have to deal with the problem except for more rural areas smile hydrogen is kind of all or nothing in terms of if there's a fueling station near you or not.

    It's hard to judge exactly how expensive it would be for Toyota at scale because they were building the Mirai stack by hand at tremendous expense; however, factor in the increasing efficiency of the cells (therefore making the stack cheaper) and scaling up production and I still doubt investing in development of combustion engines makes sense.
     
  16. privilege

    privilege Active Member

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    hydrogen fuel cells, for TRUCKING ?

    the massive diesel truck stop infrastructure of the USA.... and millions of trucks, is just going to change over to hydrogen ?

    I don't think I've ever seen a hydrogen station. what do they look like ?

    I would love to see diesel in use with hybrids .. man I hope you're right about that !
     
  17. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    A fast DC charger is in the $75k to $150k installed for the high powered ones.
    How Much Do Commercial DC Fast Chargers Cost?
    A hydrogen station is one to three million dollars just for the equipment. That's for stations that can fill up to 250 FCEVs a day. The average customers per day for a gas station is 1100.
    https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/21002-hydrogen-fueling-station-cost.pdf
    https://www.nacsshow.com/About/ForTheMedia/Documents/FactSheet_ConvenienceStoreIndustry

    Toyota's production should be on a line now.
    Toyota moves to expand mass-production of fuel cell stacks and hydrogen tanks towards ten-fold increase post-2020 | Corporate | Global Newsroom | Toyota Motor Corporation Official Global Website

    The fuel cell in the Mirai could cost under $6000, if Toyota was making 100k of a year, but they are only making maybe 30k. Then the hydrogen tanks are a couple thousand. A FCEV made in the same numbers as a Model 3 might compete with the Tesla on price.
    Fact of the Month April 2018: Fuel Cell Cost Decreased by 60% since 2006 | Department of Energy
    https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/17007_fuel_cell_system_cost_2017.pdf

    A couple of car companies have announced discontinuing of engine development.
     
  18. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    If the first Gen Mirai would have been a “PHEV”. I might have bought one of the $3500 off lease units to use as a short range EV without access to hydrogen

    only benefit of an ICE hydrogen PHEV is that once they get fire saled I can convert one to CNG


    Now the real questions
    what MPG will the regular hybrid get?
    What battery size/range will the PHEV have?
     
    #38 Rmay635703, Sep 2, 2021
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2021
  19. Raytheeagle

    Raytheeagle Senior Member

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    You just do t know your audience :ROFLMAO::LOL::ROFLMAO::LOL::ROFLMAO::LOL:.
     
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  20. JosephG

    JosephG Active Member

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    That's a meaningless comparison. Actually, you touched on why by comparing how many vehicles a gas station can service vs. a hydrogen station.

    You need to compare the total infrastructure cost per mile driven. For example, a gas station is more expensive than a level 2 home charger, but a single gas station will get a thousand cars hundreds of miles worth of fuel every day while most home charging will give a single vehicle a daily commute worth of charge (so on average something like 30 miles).

    When you factor in the range of the vehicles, percent of the capacity for fueling stations used, and the cost of delivering the fuel, replacing gasoline entirely with hydrogen is pretty comparable to electricity. The issue again is putting one hydrogen station somewhere is way more expensive even in a per mile basis than a couple hundred chargers when >90% of people are still using gasoline. I am not sure how that comes out in terms of maintaininance, but I would guess electricity would start winning out more decisively then.

    Now that I think of it, charging hydrogen range extended vehicles at home might be the worst of both worlds...
     
    #40 JosephG, Sep 3, 2021
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2021