Toyota aims to cut hydrogen car prices by 95% in ten years

Re: Toyota aims to cut hydrogen car prices by 95% in ten yea

Agreed, charging up EVs with coal-based electricity is not the best idea.

That's why I prefer the idea of charging up with wind and solar attached to your vehicle (like this guy does). You would always be plugged in where you park, but when the weather is good you'd earn money by pumping charge into the grid, and when it isn't so good, you'd pay out to charge with nasty coal electricity.

$3k worth of Sunpower A300 cells on the roof and bonnet of a Prius-EV could provide 5.5kWh per day, or about 20 miles of EV-range per day - more when sunny, less when dim.

Add a 600 watt wind-turbine (the little turbine shown in the link above is 400W) and the general rule of thumb is that you get about one third of its rated capacity on average, so you could expect another 5 kWh from that on average for an additional 20 miles range per day over and above what the solar gives you. Turbines are also waaaay cheaper than solar for electricity production. Perhaps a $1k option?

40 miles range per day is almost 15,000 miles per year - plenty for most people, and people traveling less than that or living in sunny, windy areas would earn a nice little rebate on their electric bill every year.

 

Re: Toyota aims to cut hydrogen car prices by 95% in ten yea

How about a comprimise? All a hydrogen fuel cell does is produce electricity, so a fuel cell car is really an electric car. In fact Toyota's fuel cell car prototype is a hybrid, using a battery, regen braking, etc, to supplement the power from the fuel cell.

So what if they put a bigger battery in it? Then you could have a plug-in battery for short trips, and a fuel cell for range.

 

Re: Toyota aims to cut hydrogen car prices by 95% in ten yea

The same thing can be said for a solar system on a house. Excess power could be stored during the daytime in the battery packs. Then, during the overnight hours, the batteries in the car would then be recharged while you sleep. IMO, the losses of such transfers become moot as sunshine is a free, nonpolluting, and continuous source of energy. It's very easy to put enough solar panels on even a small house, to far exceed the home's energy requirements - even where I live, where A/C is a constant and heavily used necessity.

 

Re: Toyota aims to cut hydrogen car prices by 95% in ten yea

What you are describing here, is very likely what Toyota has envisioned for their vehicles - minus the plug in part. Of course, enterprising minds would fix that slight omission.

 

Re: Toyota aims to cut hydrogen car prices by 95% in ten yea

There is an interesting read here http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/multimedia.html with some multimedia downloads. With the progress in solar roofing, this will soon become almost mainstream. Now if could get a national energy policy with concerns other than drilling in ANWAR, I think this country and many others would be well on the way to energy independance (homeland security?).

 

this is what we need to be doing a LOT more of. its the little things that will add up. right now our problem is we are looking for the "one" fixall solution. we aint gonna find it.

it will the little local projects that will save us. may it be solar, geothermal, wind, wave generation, biofuels, etc. they can all help and none should be discounted. no one will do it all but all them can contribute.

Godiva, you live in CA and see to be very ecologically minded. check out this site

www.californiacoastline.org

the owner of the site has a great link (hint: click on the link in the left pane that has solar power in its caption) to his self sufficient home that is making him money. he was a former owner of one of the GM EV cars so he charged that car plus another electric he had, provided all his electricity and sold some back to the grid.

sure, he had money and the know how to do it, but his project is over 5 years old. think of what new technology would do today.

ps... you might be happy to know that his site is 100% microsoft free

 

ooops you r right... bad memory i guess. its the 2nd icon from the bottom. its called "powered by the Sun" under it a caption that says

This web site is powered by solar energy.

guess i should have swung by there first before posting. if you have a fast net connect, you should check out some of the pics he has.

he photographed the entire ca coastline (all that isnt restricted for military purposes) in order to be able to have records of coastal erosion and other damages. he eventually would like to use them to be able to predict what effect developement might have in the future on some of the more sensitive areas.

he used a digital camera in a helicopter. the camera took 6 MP pics one every 1.5 sec and used firewire connect to send the data to a harddrive connected to a Mac Powerbook. he did it about 3-4 years ago and without any special equipment. just regular off the shelf components. try doing that with windows