Motor

LeX2K

Car is hilariously over prices, 60 grand for a car you can't refuel except at a few stations. All that complexity to turn hydrogen into electricity, look under hood it's a complex array of hardware. The car is pretty damn slow too. Useless waste of time automobile I don't know what Toyota is thinking.

Hydrogen filling stations are also extremely expensive compared to electric I would imagine there will be huge incentives/government money to build them. Hydrogen=total joke. It would be vastly different if it was readily available but it's not we have to create it from other fuels using fuel to do it.

RXSF

I don't think 60K is that bad. Government subsidy is more than 10K so that brings down costs to 50K to drive an automobile that many people think will be the future. It wasn't too long ago when people thought costs would be more than 100K.

spwolf

45k fully equipped after CA rabates... or 499 lease with 3 years of free hydrogen.

Its cheap... they plan to start with 1000 in 2015 and get that up to 10,000+ in few years when infrastructure gets better.

LeX2K

Buy a Tesla there are many charging stations. Charge it at work (some places offer it for free), solar panels at home etc. etc.

Yes but if you own a hydrogen car you have almost no where to fuel it. You MUST stay in a very specific area, if you are outside that area and run out you're toast there is nothing you can do but get your car towed. And with the extremely low volume of FCVs to be sold in the next 10 years the amount of fueling stations will be very small. If you run out of power in your electric you can plug it in almost anywhere.

Any way you look at the hydrogen car is idiotic, it simply makes no sense. You are taking natural gas, turning it into hydrogen, putting it in a tank, then through a complicated and expensive process generating electricity. The storage of hydrogen is tricky and very expensive, it's dangerous in encloses spaces, and it doesn't do a damn thing to make the air cleaner it's "emissions elsewhere". The same can be said for the electric but it has options, solar, hydro, whatever new tech might be developed. The hydrogen car is just another fuel burner, fuel you will buy from an oil company.

RXSF

It's the whole chicken and egg scenario. Yes, there will be limited hydrogen stations. If you look at the map now, there are like 4 in california, and all of them in Southern Cali. But according to the map, by the end of 2015 and into 2016, there should be many more. Im sure when the combustion engine was created, many people felt the same way. Timed mini explosions to create propulsion was probably a crazy idea

MPLexus301

iTrader: (3)

Obviously the Prius takes gasoline, but I remember reading comments like this years ago when the Prius was launched - "it's unnecessary, we don't need it, it's slow, it's too complicated, it's expensive for what it is."

Well, yes, but this is a big step towards the future, and just as we saw with hybrids, this technology is likely to be come less expensive, more prevalent and increasingly accessible. Got to start somewhere.

LeX2K

This car is a Prius (even uses the same-ish battery pack) that runs on Hydrogen instead of gasoline. It doesn't matter how innovative the actual tech is because hydrogen is not a good energy carrier. How many power plants do you see using hydrogen to power them? None because it's better to use the fuel directly instead of converting it into hydrogen and losing energy in the process.

spwolf

Batteries that satisfy most of our needs are simply yet not invented. So there is no EV solution right now, not even on horizon. Even Tesla is building their giga factory on premise of using lithium-ion batteries in the considerable future (10+ years).

Actually Hydrogen even now is better energy storage solution than using batteries. Point of all of this is that they expect to be able to lower the price of hydrogen solution to much lower than today, way faster than they are lowering the cost of batteries.

And IMHO, the stupidest part of EV-enthusiast world (which I am part of) knee jerk anti-hydrogen movement, is that hydrogen solutions are very compatible with electricity and renewable energy. In the future, hydrogen could be used to store excess energy that solar/wind produces that today simply goes to waste, so quite possibly we wont have to have coal or nuclear plants as "base" energy source anymore.

For instance, in Japan there is a big problem right now with utilities not taking in anymore of customer installed solar energy into their system as they have excess of it and cant store it. There are startups right now that are creating solutions for storing hydrogen from your own solar cells. Or from sewage waste that is simply wasted right now. Or from solar on the spot in gas stations.

Sulu

The study presented suggests that hydrogen is very compatible with green energy generation, such as solar and wind power. Electricity generated by solar and wind sources are not demand driven -- you cannot turn them on or off only when you need them -- so that energy must be stored or wasted. Battery storage is expensive. The study suggests using that electricity to generate hydrogen from water by electrolysis and then storing the hydrogen in the natural gas storage system, which already exists and is compatible.


Read about it here: Bibendum 2014: ITM Power wants to make nearly free hydrogen. No, really.


Hydrogen availability is a supply and demand problem (a chicken-and-egg and if-you-build-it-they-will-come situation): There is little supply because there is no demand, but once the demand starts ramping up, the supply situation will improve; it may be a slow ramp-up at first but eventually, if there is enough demand, the supply will be there. We are seeing that now with the availability of EV chargers; the supply is starting to ramp up, with coffee shops, employers and public parking garages starting to offer charging stations.

Motor

LeX2K

Greater than 90% of hydrogen is currently derived from fossil fuels. Can anyone prove info of when/how this is going to change? Also I'd like to see info on the claim that hydrogen is a better electrical storage system than batteries. A lead acid battery is greater than 85% efficient, lithium-ion over 90%.

Motor

spwolf

yep... and there are many other from DOE as well that show similar things.

In Japan, two sewage plants will start producing hydrogen in trial mode next year.

RXSF

I like these little videos of Akio, seems like a really cool guy. Anywhoo, I am really warming up to the front end and side profile. Its the rear that is most difficult to swallow