Toyota Fuel Cell To Compete With Tesla?

It takes me 5 seconds to plug in my car in my garage, and another 5 seconds to unplug it. I've never had a car that was faster to fill. Its only limitation is that it's not useful beyond its 245-mile range. Or, say, 180 miles, allowing me to drive it as it was intended to be driven (hard) and allow plenty of spare range just in case. Or 200 miles, with a 45-mile reserve, if I drive gently and at 55 mph.

So I have to use the stinker for road trips, but for everything else, the EV is the perfect environmental transportation, zero-carbon on electricity from the Bonneville dam and associated supporting dams.

 

Natural gas is in place at many gas stations and there are huge fleets of vehicles running on natural gas. So natural gas is light years ahead of EV's especially the high voltage EV stations. Even those you are looking at couple hours for charge the battery. It just doesn't work for a mass market. EV's will be limited to "homers". A 300 mile range eases that a lot but it is going to be the cost and convenience that is going to win it for natural gas...that and the billion$ in lobbying money by the energy producers.

 

Unless you have the supercharger, the limit is that you can't do it everyday, consecutively. 12 hours with L1 charger (most common) would recharge about 40 miles. L2 3.3 kW charger would double it to 80 miles.

In comparison, a gas pump can refuel 337 kWh of energy per minute. It will take 10 mins for H2 and to refuel the same amount. Tesla's fastest supercharger is 120 kwh in 60 mins.

 

And for those times in which the Tesla S owner can't wait to charge, they can swap the battery in 90 seconds.

Of course, laser hydride hydrogen storage only takes as long as it takes to switch a CD. But if it reaches market, all the billions spent on hydrogen stations and the infrastructure to support them goes down the drain.

I like the idea of a plug in FCV, but I can't ignore the hurdles and resources required for a hydrogen gas/liquid infrastructure. Being able to refuel faster means nothing if there isn't a place to refuel. Charging stations have a small enough capitol cost that a start up car company is building their own. The car companies pushing hydrogen fuel cells want somebody else to put in the stations.

Frito Lay built their own CNG stations in order to support their truck fleet.

Most of the country will see a CNG station before a hydrogen station, and a CNG car will a lot cheaper than a FCV one. You can even convert existing gasoline and diesel cars to it.

 

Not true! I have an RV-style outlet in my garage. 240 volts, 50 amp breaker. All that took was a breaker that takes up a double slot in my breaker box, wired to the garage. The car will draw 40 amps on a 50-amp circuit, per good practice. That's 9.6 kW and provides 30 miles of range per hour of charging. If the pack is dead empty (245 miles of driving at 55 mph) it will take 8 hours to charge. So if I wanted to, I could drive that far every day.

People who take the Roadster on cross-country trips usually stop at RV parks to re-charge, which gives the same charge as above. You don't even need a "charger" at your stopover. You need an RV park and the UMC sold by Tesla to go along with the car. A friend spent the day in Spokane with his Model S and recharged at my house. The Roadster UMC does not fit the S, but he had the UMC for the S, so he just plugged into my 240-volt outlet.

No stupid wall-mounted chargers needed. (I could never figure out why Nissan insisted on them!)

Tesla also offered a wall-mounted charger for the Roadster, which was 240 volts, 70 amps, so you'd get something like 50 miles of range for each hour of charging. I believe the superchargers that Tesla is installing for the Model S nation-wide are considerably faster even than that.

L1 charging is useless, except for overnight charging of a short-range car like the Leaf.

For me, the Roadster is not a road-trip car. But as I've commented elsewhere, the perfect is the enemy of the good. EV technology and infrastructure are not yet mature enough to replace ALL driving. But it is practical now for replacing one car in 75% or 80% of two-car American households, and installing the infrastructure to make it suitable to replace 90% of all cars will be easier and cheaper than H2 and with the potential to be carbon-free, which by definition fossil fuels are not.

 

Because they are part owner of Chademo?

 

I agree with most of what you are saying

But...

When you say "useless, except" there are really lots and lots of exceptions.

Probably 50%+ of two-car households could do all their daily driving for the second car and use nothing but L1 charging. L1 charging will give you 6-8 miles of range per hour. 10 hours or charging will give you 60+ miles per day. This is 20K miles per year. How many people put on this many miles in their second car? And if the second car is being used for errands, school drop off, soccer practice or whatever, it is even possible (for some households) to get a few hours of additional charge during the day.


IMO, the number of people who can get by with L1 far exceeds the number of people who really need much faster charging...for a second car.

Mike

 

You are right. I should have said L1 charging is useless except for overnight charging of cars like the Leaf that do not actively cool the batteries during charging or that are driven very few miles. The Tesla Roadster (and I would imagine the Model S as well) use enough power to cool the battery pack during charging that L1 provides significantly less range than it does for the Leaf, where no energy is "wasted" cooling the battery. (And I put "wasted" in quotes because I don't consider that energy wasted at all, since it protects the pack.)

 

Daniel, most people commute only 40 miles round trip so if you are on a 8 hour workday with one hour lunch you can pull 9kWh's per daily work shift with L1/120v charging . That's enough charge to cover the lion's share of most EV miles each week ... all on L1.
btw, several early Leaf purchasers here in So Cal never purchased L2 wall mount EVSE's. That's just to say there was never a Nissan requirement to purchase a wall mounted L2 EVSE - either now, or back 2yrs ago. They encouraged a wall mount, but many never bothered. This is especially true now that (PC's own member) pEEf is mod'ing the portable EVSE's that come with several plug-in's. Once mod'ed the portable EVSE's can deliver 120v, as well as 208v and 240v as well.
EVSE Upgrade - Your EV Charging Solution
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I have been using the L1 charger for the past 6 months and averaged 50% EV ratio.

For the July 4th long weekend, I drove 1,110 miles in 4 days. Thanks to the 337 kWh per minute refueling option for PiP, I spent just a few minutes at the gas station.

FCVs would have similar refueling ability as gas car but with higher well-to-wheel efficiency producing less greenhouse gas emission. Oh, and you also get the EV driving experience.

 

There are these things called planes you should look into, unless you really enjoy spending 4 days on asphalt.

 

You need one of those 4 miracles for fuel cell vehicles to be as fast to fill up as a phev.

In Austin we will 1 refueling station. Its for reserch, but I'm sure I could talk my way in. Its about 20 minutes away unless that is rush hour. That is 40 minutes round trip if I decide I need fuel and want to head south. When will There be a station with in 5 minutes? 10 years, 20 years, I don't know, but certainly unless you live or work within shouting distance of one of the stations in california, Hydrogen is inconvienient. To go to elpaso, I would need to be followed by a hydrogen truck.

How many fueling stations do you have by you? If you don't live in california the odds are it is 0.

Back to fueling the prius phv versus fuel cell. You can also plug it in when you are home. That makes it even more convient than an ICE car. It can charge while you sleep, so you need to hit the gas station less often.

Refueling is a problem that will cost trillions of dollars to solve for hydrogen. Will the car companies pay for it? The government? We know the oil companies don't want to do it.

 

Don't wana sound like I'm beating up on you USB, but am I the only one that understands that fracked NG isn't a free hydrogen ride? ... either because it's no cleaner than fracking (environmental) or because of NG supply longevity (over estimated)?

Fracking: The next bubble? - Salon.com

I'm just saying ... it'd be a shame to waste perfectly good and limited NG for a trillion dollar investment that may very well have a short life span. Considering my self more ignorant than pre GM bankruptcy bean counters, I'd have thought GM would have known better than to pour so much into the Hummer line. But they did. Now, Toyota seems to be following in the same irresponsible foot path that GM did. Whithout a multi decade supply of cheep NG, fracking may very will be the Toyota version of the Hummer fiasco.
.

 

Hill, gulp, I have to defend the fuel cell from this attack. Now granted this defeats toyota's rosy little graph that it all comes from natural gas, but hydrogen if we build the infrastructure can be driven by electricity. Yes wind, solar, nuclear, and even coal. At least a couple of those will be around after we run out of natural gas, and methane can be created more expensively by renewable means, its just so damn cheap to frack it out of the ground we don't do that.

I found part of that salon thing a little puzzling. They were decrying the lower production of shale gas, that is occurring because prices are low. As soon as prices start going up, other gas comes on line. Its just the market. I read something about 5 years ago that texas had enough extra natural gas to fuel 1 M cars. That would take a bite out of oil consumption, but its not really very many compared to all the cars running on gasoline. Its the base idea behind the pickens plan. Use more wind to displace natural gas in electrical generation, then liquify the natural gas to fuel long haul trucks. Not much infrastructure needs to be built. Picken's part of the plan with wind has just been dropped for today since gas is so cheap. If the prices go up, at least in texas we will have the grid enhanced to add more wind. I don't think the government will fund both the lng trucking infrastructure and a nation wide hydrogen highway. That's where those fuel cell lobbest have to make their case.

Yes, natural gas prices will inevitably go up. After that if we have fuel cells we will need to use hydrolysis or coal or something else. It doesn't break the cars, but that scenario should be included when comparing fcv to plug-ins on environmental impact.

 

Day 1 - Niagara Falls
Day 2 - Toronto Zoo
Day 3 - Thousand Islands (Boldt Castle)
Day 4 - Home

Why would we take an airplane? PiP used 18.5 gallons and cost us (3 including me) $67.

I think you are referencing our Energy Secretary Steven Chu's popular quote "If you need four miracles, that’s unlikely: saints only need three miracles."

Well, he changed his stance after finding out many progress made. You are still stuck on his 2009 views.

I am talking about it's potential and how it could be a great alternative energy solution and take us into energy independence and end oil import.

You are focusing on the chicken and egg problem. Steven Chu didn't help with the hydrogen budget cut neither. If he had put half the EV budget into building hydrogen stations, we would have many by now.

Instead, what do we have now? The best selling plugin, Volt (where the most money went) emit more greenhouse gas than a standard Prius.

Not really. You pretty much have to plug and unplug it every day, maybe twice a day somedays. You only need to gas up maybe once month with a Prius, likely in a gas station on the usual commute route.

It doesn't mean I don't like plugins, I own one. I can put half of my miles on electricity and the other half on gas. I take advantage of both fuels and am unbiased like you.

 

Perhaps his views in 2009 were the correct ones, although I would not call them miracles. There was a lot of political pressure from CARB and the hydrogen lobby to reverse them. Congress reversed much of his budget cuts.

I agree the picture painted by gm and others is beautiful. Renewable resources fueling our cars. No more oil needed. What was it millions of cars in California by 2010. The lack of fueling infrastucture is what honda complained prevented them from rolling out more cars in california. It is not a chicken egg problem though. There are those 3 other miracles, the main one price. If all you have is a $50,000 car that uses a fuel that costs more than gasoline, you are not going to sell even if you have stations everywhere and producing hydrogen only by product is rainbows and smiles. Price of the cars, and price of the fuel are two other problems. These may come down in 5 years, 10 years, etc. I just don't want to pay for all those stations until the chickens cost less than a cow Now Europe and Japan have a solution to the fuel price problem. They tax gasoline and diesel enough that hydrogen might be competitive. The cost of the fuel cell stack and tanks still need to come down.

The question is what is the problem. Fuel cell cars were supposed to solve the problem of imported oil. The volt does a relatively good job of that. The other plug-ins including the prius phv also do. Where will these cars be in 2018? I only imagine they will get better. I don't expect there will be much infrastructure in the US for fcv before 5 years. Then we should have a better idea.

If you want to solve the problem of ghg, there are much less expensive ways. Fuel cell cars aren't going to cut ghg nearly as much as switching power plants from coal to natural gas, and that is a much less expensive switch. Think of it this way from numbers from epa and union of concerned scientists, converting 3 average coal plants to natural gas ccgt reduces ghg as much as taking 1 million cars off the road.

Yes, I fill up less than once a month in the winter, about every 2-3 weeks in the summer, plus the extra on trips.

I definitely would rather plug in to wind, than fill up with gas. I guess I am a little too cheap to trade in my car yet I think you made a great choice for you in a prius phv. I think toyota could sell a lot more of the next generation if it didn't put anti-battery collaterial material in its fuel cell press. IMHO when a fcv is comercially sucessful, you will be able to plug it in at home, as well as fuel it up on hydrogen.

 

I agree with most of your comments.

However, just because Europe and Japan have high taxes on gas doesn't mean it will be easy for them to switch to hydrogen. Yes, it means that they can choose to not tax hydrogen initially, but eventually they will want to replace the tax revenue. Politicians always want to do this...just like the brain dead ones if a few states have already sent mixed messages...rebates for EVs/PHEVs, then let's tax them since they don't pay enough gas taxes.

Mike

 

Yes, it has potential. One of the potentials is laser metal hydrides for fuel storage. With them you don't need the bulky, expensive, heavy, and potentially shorter life span than the car tanks that gaseous hydrogen requires. The tanks for liquid hydrogen aren't much better. If hydrogen pumps are still needed with the laser hydrides, instead of simply swapping out the disks, they can be filled with low pressure pumps. This means less cash for infrastructure.

There are already fuel cells for home power that reform the natural gas on site. They are currently too big for automotive use, but advances can change that. Then we only need NG stations that can serve both NG ICEs and fuel cells.

Methanol fuel cells are also under development. Shipping liquids around is much simpler than a gas. It can also be used in methanol flex fuel vehicles or instead of ethanol at 10% for the rest of the fleet.

The first cars are going to be $60,000+. Spending millions or billions on high pressure infrastructure and stations to fuel gaseous or liquid hydrogen cars that only a few can afford is not an effective use of resources. We can let other countries conduct the beta test. Then if the above technologies come to market, they'll be the ones out the investment.

Or how about this. Tesla is building there own national refueling network on their dime. Let's have the car companies that want to sell expensive FCVs at least pay part of the tab for building the hydrogen refueling network.

 

I wasn't really saying it will work there either, but FCV have a better chance in Europe and Japan than the US. They already are building infrastructure to test. We don't really gain anything in most of the country by building a test track and subsidies for fcv in California. American companies can test the FC and tanks in other countries. GM has partnered with honda, ford with mercedes and nissan, if costs come way down in those tests, then all those companies and toyota and hyundai are free to build the here. The fuel cell lobby makes it sound like if we don't spend a lot of money, on top of the money we have already spent, then america will lose competitiveness. That just is crazy if you believe it. America already wasted enough money on freedom car.

The numbers do look tantalizing. Here are figures from the doe
http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/12020_fuel_cell_system_cost_2012.pdf
They say that right now a company can build fuel cells in quantities of 10,000 for $84/kw. That means a 80 kw fuel cell for $6720. If we look at a $29,000 leaf, take out half its battery and drop in that fuel cell it still should only cost $30,000 since the battery you remove should cost about the same. Now all you have to do is drop in a fuel tank, what maybe another $5000, and you have a $35,000 plug in fuel cell vehicle before perhaps a $10,000 federal and california tax credit. The problem is most don't believe the fuel cell costs. They seem to be hitting the freedom car goals for costs like some beurocrat was just pretending goals were being met, but no one is building the cars in quantities. If the said vehicle costs $60K before tax credits drop it to $50,000 the toyota promise, I don't think they will sell more than a few thousand a year. California is claiming 50,000 by 2017. I am all for letting them build them and see if they can bring costs down. I just don't believe the promises. Let them get the costs down before we believe the high sales numbers.

 

Considering all the miles driven by Volt owners, a third was driven with gasoline. At 37 MPG, it still use about half the gas a regular Prius would use at 50 MPG.

There are less expensive way to save gas. Make the regular Prius qualify for $3,000 tax credit.

You are ok with the government incentives/investment for Volt to cut down ~1,500 gallons (vs Prius) but against FCV that could completely eliminate gasoline.

Could it be the fact that only foreign car manufacturers (Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan) are ready to roll FCVs by 2015 but not GM or Ford? That's the only reason I can think of.