Toyota: $50k Hydrogen Sedan By 2015

I imagine they feal.... Good!
They've been paid to do research, and got their kids into good schools, paid their mortgage etc. BUT - it's similar to Fusion research. After decades and decades of "progress" and for ever more "progress" ... honesty requires to admit it'll only go so far. Many researchers now admit they're feeding a false dream ... whether it's hydrogen 'power' or fusion:

No future for fusion power, says top scientist - physics-math - 09 March 2006 - New Scientist

How does the old saying go? Fish or cut bait? On the other hand battery EV's are here ... so improved batteries simply take existing/workable technology and continue to make it better.

 

KABOOM !!!!

(that is not the sound of a hydrogen car blowing up - it is the sound of a nuclear power plant heading into warp speed, trying to generate enough power to create enough hydrogen to power all of the cars in the world)

I wonder if fuel cells could work to power air planes instead of petroleum. I would support that idea.

 

The Bloombox runs straight of natural gas and is rated at 50%+ efficiency. Fat chance putting one of these in your car any time soon. They don't even have them down to where you'd have one for your house. Not to mention that these are designed for steady state load. They need a LOT of power to get fired up because of the temperatures they run at.

It's also vapor ware with no estimate at all of when it'd be commercially viable. We are talking about technology which will be sold to the public in the next 5 years here.

Of course it would - but it would also not be very honest. They used actual grid data - not some pie-in-the-sky estimate of what might happen 50 years from now.

The only thing FCHV has going for it over EVs is weight. Price, complexity, infrastructure all are huge drawbacks to FCHVs.

Don't get me wrong - I would love the nation's fleet to run off fuel-cells instead of gasoline/diesel. Driving in any semi busy road sucks because of the fumes you suck from the car in front of you.

But in reality, FCHVs have been 3-5 years away for a long time now. Let me know when they are ready to sell them to the public for $30k and then we'll talk. Even if Toyota can get one to market for $50k in 2015, realistically that means another 5 years at the soonest before they can get one to the market for $30k.

With $30k EVs coming to market late this year, FCHVs will have a 10-year gap to make up.