Featured Toyota to suppyl fuel cells for Chinese buses, commercial vehicles

cali's investment is finally paying off.

 

I'm pretty sure it is Japan's investment . . . although there are fundamental physics and economics that accumulate over time.

Bob Wilson

 

US tax payer and california taxpayers now have heavily subsidized 7100 fuel cell vehicles and about 70 hydrogen fueling stations (40 public + 24 funded and being built in california plus private and public ones in other states). This includes 51 fc busses (31 running, 20 ordered).
By The Numbers | California Fuel Cell Partnership

Japan has funded over 100 hydrogen stations but only around half as many fuel cell vehicles. US subsidies so far have been higher but that has changed to japan's heavier funding the last couple of years to gear up for a big show, or a big yawn at the tokyo olympics. Vancouver proved that fuel cell busses were not ready for commercialization in the 2010 olympics. The problem has been down time (reliability), maintenance costs, and fuel costs. These are engineering not physics problems, but there is not a lot that has been shown the proves toyota and the japanese have solved these problems in the just over a decade they will have between olympics.

Part of the engineering problem is that bev and phev costs have fallen faster than fuel cell costs, and these technologies today are more reliable and lower maintenance. Its a moving target and they don't just need to be better than phev or bev technology in 2010, they have to be better than the technology today.

My guess is toyota is heavily subsidizing the fuel cells going to china in an effort to garner more public money in japan. For reference there are about 300 bev busses in the US, and in 2018 the US government instituted a program of $84M to get more bev busses in 42 states. This release talks about 20 fc busses in china, which has over 400,000 bev busses (which is most of the worlds population of them). EU seems to be investing the most in fuel cell busses. I would not be surprised if there were 1000 fuel cell busses in the world by the end of 2021. This is indeed progress, but its tiny compared to the plug-in bus market.

 

Eventually the terrible costs of the hydrogen fuel cell experiment will become public knowledge. On that day of reckoning, fuel cells will become a laughing stock.

Bob Wilson

 

yep . . . .

just like in Canada ~

Vancouver Ends Hydrogen Bus Program Amid High Costs | Gas 2

pitty . . . sometimes, countries won't listen from the mistakes of others - rather, they just have to learn for their self.
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I call it "reality training."

Bob Wilson

 

I don't mind it. Regular reminders that FEVs are just more expensive BEVs filled with flammable gas is nice to keep BEVs on top. Might as well let Japan spend the money to prove FEVs are a crappy deal.

 

― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

yep ~ iirc - he lived over ½ a millennium ago. That means we may be still be working on hydrogen cars, 'in the year 2525 - if man is still alive'.

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Except it means the Japanese companies are trying to force the crappy deal on others.