Featured Toyota North American CEO to dealerships: "Stop delivering Mirai"

Growing pains between refueling infrastructure and product.
Shouldn't of been unexpected.

 

Well no, but toyota is intimitaely involved with picking the station builders and funding, and projected 200 fcv by the end of last year. For them to only ship 72 and claim the thing was sold out for all of this year is not a good indication that their vission of the "future" is working. Remember in 2013 they were claiming 5000-10,000 in 2015. Toyota told us they were taking charge less than 2 years ago to make sure the stations would be there.

I thought they could do that measily 200 in the US in 2015. I admit it I was wrong. They couldn't even do that. 72. Its a joke. And this move is because those 72 are having trouble.

Now how are we supposed to beiieve 30,000 in 2020. Aren't the same people failing at building the infrastructure that are failing today. That's right yeah, more money. Cogress just approved even more money to build hydrogen stations because .... these things are so much better than plug-in cars.

 

probably low on cow poop.

 

...need a heavier FCV car....add a bunch of batts to qualify the Hummer tax loophole. Then they can take it home, after they incorporate as a sole proprietorship to qualify.

 

Academic. And an unnecessary call. You would think that dealerships are smart enough to know there is almost no infrastructure to support the product. Sounds more like a message designed for the media to pick up and aimed directly towards consumers instead of dealers.

 

who buys an fcev, not knowing there aren't any fueling stations?

 

No sh!t, Sherlock. I don't know who's dumber. Is it the dealers, the buyers, or Toyota?

Toyota, you know there isn't enough hydrogen in California so don't take up valuable space in a ship's cargo hold shipping a vehicle that can't be fuelled.

I can only guess that the dealers have a rather large margin on the car otherwise they would want an SUV or a pickup truck delivered instead.
Who in their right mind leases a car not knowing they can't find fuel?

Looks like Lentz & co. need to start wearing their Ribbons of Shame.

 

Supposedly 3000 people wanted to order according to toyota, but toyota told them the stations would be there by now. Remember toyota told us they were sold out.

Then again only 72 took delivery last year. I think that is the number of virgins you get in heaven, or that may be soemthing else.

So the question is "who takes delivery and signs a lease for a car that can't be refueled?" Its a short list.

 

maybe they are jay leno types who just want to add them to their collection.

 

I presume Toyota is saying: we kept our part of CARB ZEV mandate agreement, we supplied ZEV cars as promised to California on time.

 

Probably not on anyone's watch list, but one of the characters in Girlfriends Guide to Divorce (on Bravo) has one. It has appeared in 2 episodes so far.

 

where do they fuel it up?

 

Good question. In its most recent appearance it was parked. I'm curious to see if they show it moving again.

 

Maybe the portable hydrogen station truck makes house calls just like the oil truck and the propane truck.

 

..sure there are H2 trucks and H2 cylinder options...can't get to top pressure but...

 

Not necessarily disagreeing with any of this.
But, I think this could be a case of losing round one, but NOT out of the fight.

Simplistically, I think the first challenge for Toyota was to bring the Mirai into existence, period.
They've done that.
Now the challenge is to find a way to make it's existence at any level, a worthwhile commercial en devour

As anxious as it seems some opponents of Hydrogen Fuel Cell want to be to attend the "Fuel Cell Vehicle" funeral, I think it's premature.
Could there be that funeral? Certainly. The challenge of manufacturing a product, that's viable usage is tied to a refueling infrastructure of nebulous existence? Incredibly challenging.

But regardless of early numbers, and early challenges, both met and unmet, I give Toyota some credit for attempting to do that which is not easy.
Today's joke....often becomes tomorrows heralded success.

.

 

Well no, no they didn't. They asked for $220M in fueling infrastructure after failing to deliver any of the cars they promised between 2012-2014. Carb then gave them 2 extra bonus credits to total 5 zev credits because fueling would be so convient. They even loaned First Element $7M so it would qualify for the biggest chunk of california cash to build the stations. Toyota has been long on promises, but short on delivery. Its choice of vendor First Element is late and over budget.

To make sure to reward toyota for under delivering, The hydrogen lobby added more Federal tax payer sweeteners seemed targeted specifically to aid toyota in the spending bill.

If its not convenient, what are those 5 zev credits for? If you can't build stations for the subsidies, what is the point of adding anouther $8000 in tax payer money to lease more fcv that people can't fill up. Its just circular.

Toyota as expressed above, has won every round with the government, except the one where it tried to lower incentives for BEVs.

The first in the mirai was the first to be sold in quantity. The clarity was the first consumer level fcv, and that was way back in 2008. The tucson fcv was the first fcv built on a production line. What toyota has done is been first in lobbying to get sweateners from governments for fcv.

Who said we all were oponents of fcv. A lot of us are oponents of the lies. That this is the future, and we as taxpayers need to pay for it. I'd like fcv to be sucessful. I'd like people to be able to make green hydrogen in a sustainable and affordable manner. Instead we get pollitics powered by according to the toyota internet ad, bull Sh&t.

We could have had a test environment built in southern california by now that was viable. We know how to build these these things. Its not that hard its just expensive.

In stead of building 20, 700 kg/day retail stations, the plan was to instead build 100 hodge podge stations because you know after 100 according to doc brown formerly of UCI, and author of the details of this plan, then industry would pay. Most of the stations planned are 200Kg or less, or enough for only 50 cars a day to get 4kg of hydrogen. Doc Brown decided to team up with a flim flam man that did some internal fraud at GM to build these stations. Neither had any experience. Toyota hired him at UCI to conduct the research, then loaned him money and pushed for the new company First Element with no experience to build most of the first tranche of stations. Suprisingly they are late and over budget. Who would have thunk it. To be low ghg Toyota and CARB said 46% of the new stations would be renewable. This according to them would be easy peasy lemon squeezy (OK they didn't say that exactly, but something more like, tesla's wrong, infrastructure will easily be better). I'm against the goal, but anyway, I didn't think it would be this bad.

But I thought for so much cash they would at least get a single renewable station on line. If you had 10 stations that could pump 350 kg/day (yes they know how to build these, they just cost about $4M each) that would mean you could fill 900 cars a day, probably 4000 cars a week, or plenty to fuel the small numbers of mirai, clarity II, and tucsons fcv. That would have been easy. You could have just written a check to linde and air products and said hey make it happen in a year. No that wouldn't give the excuses to not even deliver 200 vehicles in all of 2015.

Yes they have succefully lobbied the Japanese, Amercican, and California government.

Now when can we expect them to deliver?

 

I would replace 'opponents of lies' with 'educated in high school physics and chemistry', which told us this was BS from the start. Now @austingreen and I disagree with the PNGV that was replaced by the Freedomcar, fool-cell nonsense but that really doesn't matter. The technologies demonstrated in PNGV have been finding their way into cars we can buy today.

When I see in-car, hydrogen reformation of a low-pressure liquid, say anhydrous ammonia that can be bought at farm supply stores, we'll be on the same sheet. In the meanwhile, high-pressure hydrogen remains a non-starter for me.

Bob Wilson