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one technology to prove dominant? to loosely state what someone else in the interwebs stated before: "Remember the last time the Germans and Japanese got together?" I suppose that would be the latest Supra...but before that !
We don’t have a lot of details yet. Hyperion says the hydrogen hypercar can travel 1,000 miles between refueling — a process that takes mere minutes — and that it’ll do 0-60 miles per hour in a blistering 2.2 seconds. Its side aero elements not only help provide high-speed cornering stability, but they house solar panels, “which can articulate to follow the trajectory of the sun.” Hyperion, which also has aerospace and energy arms in addition to its automotive business, plans to produce the XP-1 in the U.S. starting in 2022.
New policies in China will support hydrogen vehicle sales
Toyota and Hyundai have already announced launch plans for hydrogen vehicles in China
BEIJING — China, the world's biggest automobile market, rolled out fresh policies to support hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to improve the industry's supply chain and technologies, the finance ministry said on Monday.
China is also the world's largest market for new energy vehicles (NEVs), which include battery electric vehicles as well as plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
While previous policies to support NEV makers had offered subsidies on sales, the fresh rollout will require local governments and companies to build a more mature supply chain and business model for the industry.Local governments and companies need to prove their joint projects are able to lower the price of hydrogen fuel, increase the number of hydrogen-charging stations, enlarge hydrogen fuel cell vehicle fleets and improve related technologies, according to the document.
Authorities will offer rewards to the projects after an assessment of these key performance areas, the ministry said.
The rollout comes a few days after Reuters reported that China's policymakers and the government may publish a fresh policy, citing people familiar with the matter.
China has over 7,000 hydrogen vehicles, compared with over 4 million pure battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Global automakers including Toyota and Hyundai have already announced launch plans for hydrogen vehicles in China.
Toyota went all in on HFCEVs so it’s unsurprising to see them stay the course. What a bad bet.
No they did not. They well all in on hybrid, BEV, and FCEV. For the record, there is a Lexus battery electric vehicle currently for sale. But there is no hydrogen Lexus as of yet. The end game IS fuel cells.
^^^^ Generally agree with the OP on this topic. Not only that, but I think it also needs to be noted that both hydrogen and oxygen can easily be produced from water (remember those simple lab-experiments you did as a kid in science-class, with electrolysis?)....although it is debatable, in the real world, if the amount of electrical energy required for the electrolysis itself justifies the amount of hydrogen and oxygen you get from the process. Still, water is the one thing we are not short of.....it covers roughly 70% of the earth, perhaps a little more than that, now that polar ice-caps are melting and sea-levels rising.
I had the chance to drive a friend's first generation Toyota Mirai a couple of years back. It was an intriguing car. It looked like a Prius sedan... only much bigger. And it only seated four which must have had to do with the arrangement of the three hydrogen tanks between the trunk and rear seats. I recall that his was a version with lower pressure tanks than are used now which means lower range than the last revision Mirai and the new second generation.
It was not fast and I don't remember how much horsepower the electric motor made (150hp...?) but it was more than enough for normal driving duties. The thing I liked the most was the noise from the fuel cell stack cooling fans (unless I was listening to electronically generated noise but he said this was not the case) which were progressive and got louder depending on the level of accelerator (potentiometer) input you applied. Pretty cool, that.
It was like driving a big Prius but with a much more luxurious interior that made you feel as if the car represented what high end Toyotas tended to be like before the Lexus brand's existence disallowed there to ever again be such a thing as a "luxuirous" Toyota. It wasn't up to the level of what modern Lexus does mind you but the materials and design seemed to be much more upscale that what you'd expect in a regular Toyota.
Anyway this new Mirai using the LS's TNGA rear wheel drive architecture is a step up. Though I am perplexed as to why the electric motor is rated at a mere 182 horsepower when the car is now some 4200lbs or more. Reportedly it takes over 9 seconds to get to 60mph as well. That's a very 90's Mercedes turbodiesel style horsepower proposition for interested parties.
Toyota is more than capable of delivering an electric motor with much more horsepower than that. A luxury style vehicle this heavy with an electric motor should have at minimum 250-280hp.
This makes me wonder if the reason the electric motor is not of a higher horsepower specification has to do with current limitations of the hydrogen fuel cell stack system in regards to how much juice it can output through the small lithium ion battery acting as a buffer between the fuel cell and electric motor inverter. Maybe it's just not capable of very high voltage the way it is currently designed. If so then we'll have to watch and see how Toyota further evolves their technology to achieve higher outputs.
The range on a full tank is pretty good in this generation though and that's another very good trait that further echoes the main advantages of classic turbodiesel sedans: lots of torue and lots of maximum range. The original range used to be 404 miles and now it's 528 miles. Very impressive.
On long road trips I have only ever been able to stand traveling between 550-600 miles on average per day with around 700 being my absolute maximum so long as I do far less mileage the following day. To see an electric vehicle just barely reach and begin to fill out those thresholds is very promising.
And I'd also like to see them take advantage of the RWD platform and offer an Torsen LSD option, haha. That is assuming that the motor is in the front using a driveshaft to connect with a conventional differential at the rear. Because of the arrangement and size of the fuel cell tanks in that location I am assuming the electric motor, inverter and fuel cell stack are up front.
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With my friend's 1st generation Mirai with the early style tanks the main concern was how to plan out trips between he and his wife to make sure they always had a hydrogen station within range to fill up again. But he said they even worked out how to do a few road trips and camping trips with it. The range of the new hydrogen cars combined with more refueling stations in the future will help the argument. Big long haul semi trucks will be a big part of that refueling infrastructure buildout over time.
The current methods by which the majority of hydrogen is produced is the Achilles heel. But give it time. Better and more ubiquitous carbon neutral hydrogen production processes will eventually take over from current methods.
Costs... I have no idea at current time... but it is very cool and interesting technology to follow!
This is one of those times the production car looks disappointing compared to the concept car. Thankfully, that rope has been tightening over the years on this issue. But I feel Toyota went soft on this one. The separate turn signal (or whatever it is) up front is poorly integrated. But at least overall, we are well above the styling of the outgoing fright-fest.
Without a very robust refueling infrastructure, the HV project seems to be lost in the design phase. EV has charging infrastructure in place that’s growing and clean energy behind it. Battery technology is advancing rapidly. HV is many years behind EV and I would bet my money on EV to be the platform of the future. I think if Elon Musk thought HV was viable, he would have invested in it. He didn’t.
Akio Toyoda needs to be fired. Some of his greatest hits include canning the Tesla partnership and he was at the helm when Toyota sold their old NUMMI factory to Tesla for peanuts. He talks about EVs putting too much of a strain on the power grid, then touts hydrogen production using solar farms.
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