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Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

businessweek.com

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Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#11

Post by sliverstorm »

henrikschroder wrote: post #6

Good that there's serious money being sunk into alternatives to electric cars, more is always good. But I'm seriously tired of the fact that all articles about fuel-cells enthusiastically exclaims that "it's only byproduct is water!!!!", as if hydrogen was some sort of magic alternative to hydrocarbons. It's not, it's an energy transmission medium, not an energy source. For fuel-cell cars to work, you would need to h…

We appear to already have the infrastructure for electric cars, and at low adoption rates that's true. But according to the utilities, that infrastructure is in no way ready for sweeping adoption of electric vehicles, so then too we would need to overhaul our existing infrastructure.

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#12

Post by dragonwriter »

henrikschroder wrote: post #7
henrikschroder wrote: post #6

Good that there's serious money being sunk into alternatives to electric cars, more is always good. But I'm seriously tired of the fact that all articles about fuel-cells enthusiastically exclaims that "it's only byproduct is water!!!!", as if hydrogen was some sort of magic alternative to hydrocarbons. It's not, it's an energy transmission medium, not an energy source. For fuel-cell cars to work, you would need to h…

The only game-changer I could see there would be if we could make some sort of in-your-home hydrolyzer, so that you just connect water and electricity to it, and it connects to your car to fill it up. That's on-par with the convenience of an electric car, if we ignore the safety issues of hydrogen gas leaks in urban neighbourhoods...

Regenerative fuel cells are cells with an in-cell hydrolysis system; if you could incorporate them, a fuel cell vehicle would have pretty much the same recharging UX as any other EV.

Even with stationary at-home electrolysis systems, if you don't store more than one fill-up in the system, there's marginal additional risk compared to having a hydrogen-fueled vehicle in the first place.

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#13

Post by secabeen »

jobu wrote: post #9

There have been two major hurdles for the development of hydrogen fuel-cell cars: 1) storing the hydrogen - hydrogen is extremely corrosive, and not very energy dense compared to gasoline 2) variable energy output - fuel cells are good at producing a steady, constant amount of power, but the power requirements of a car can be quite variable (especially for city driving) Anyone have details on how Toyota overcame thes…

On 2), the Mirai has a 1.6kWh battery. I believe the model is an electric motor driven by the battery, which is recharged by the fuel cell.

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#14

Post by henrikschroder »

sliverstorm wrote: post #11
henrikschroder wrote: post #6

Good that there's serious money being sunk into alternatives to electric cars, more is always good. But I'm seriously tired of the fact that all articles about fuel-cells enthusiastically exclaims that "it's only byproduct is water!!!!", as if hydrogen was some sort of magic alternative to hydrocarbons. It's not, it's an energy transmission medium, not an energy source. For fuel-cell cars to work, you would need to h…

We appear to already have the infrastructure for electric cars, and at low adoption rates that's true. But according to the utilities, that infrastructure is in no way ready for sweeping adoption of electric vehicles, so then too we would need to overhaul our existing infrastructure.

The difference there lies in that the electrical infrastructure can be overhauled gradually, as electric car adoption increases. We already have something that is useful to the current EV owners, and it can be made better. I'm also not convinced that the utilities are correct, current peak use is probably a lot higher than what a fleet of slow-charging vehicles would consume at night.

In the case of hydrogen infrastructure, we have nothing. If you're the first guy to buy a hydrogen car, you can't fill it up anywhere, there's an enormous amount of investment and work needed to get to that first hydrogen gas station, and I don't see that happening. Who would put up the money to make that bet?

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#15

Post by secabeen »

MrGuyUser wrote: post #3

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it's very rare on earth so it has to be manufactured. So the oil companies totally would love you to switch from the oil they will sooner or later not be able to fracking get anymore to hydrogen which they can raise prices on until the day when nuclear fusion becomes something they could sell again as long as it remains expensive enough to be sellable. Hydrog…

They don't mention the price because current systems cannot accurately measure the amount of H2 being dispensed into the car. Every Fuel Cell car comes with free fuel coordinated by the manufacturer.

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#16

Post by MrGuyUser »

teraflop wrote: post #8
MrGuyUser wrote: post #3

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it's very rare on earth so it has to be manufactured. So the oil companies totally would love you to switch from the oil they will sooner or later not be able to fracking get anymore to hydrogen which they can raise prices on until the day when nuclear fusion becomes something they could sell again as long as it remains expensive enough to be sellable. Hydrog…

The article does mention price: "While EVs take hours to recharge, the fueling cost is a fraction of the roughly $45 a hydrogen fill-up will cost." That's more expensive than gasoline, but as of a few months ago the price difference would have only been about 30% compared to my relatively fuel-efficient Honda Fit. The gap is larger now thanks to the recently plummeting gas prices in the US, of course. > And also Hydr…

Ok I was wrong about the regenerative breaking. It makes sense since it would be easy to implement. Most of the drive system of a Hydrogen Car will be electric already. It will use batteries as well. The world will once again be at the whim of the hydrogen producers which would likely be Shell, BP or Exxon. Electric cars are only going to get better and generating your own power is only going to get easier. Oil companies don't like the loss of control. Hybrid's pull some tricks to save fuel, but I might argue they have much more points of failure and are harder to fix when they do fail. I predict that on Dec 15th they will sell one or two of these cars to Toyota Executives whom receive a bonus just a little more than what the car would cost if they did.

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#18

Post by dragonwriter »

jobu wrote: post #9

There have been two major hurdles for the development of hydrogen fuel-cell cars: 1) storing the hydrogen - hydrogen is extremely corrosive, and not very energy dense compared to gasoline 2) variable energy output - fuel cells are good at producing a steady, constant amount of power, but the power requirements of a car can be quite variable (especially for city driving) Anyone have details on how Toyota overcame thes…

On #1, energy density isn't a huge problem; sure, hydrogen is worse than gasoline in energy:volume (though much better in energy:mass), but its energy:volume is better than that of existing battery technologies -- this is one of the advantages FCVs have over battery-powered EVs.

#2 is similar to problems solved by Toyota's gas-electric hybrid design, and Toyota's Fuel Cell Vehicle's back to their earlier demonstration Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle version of the Highlander use a similar approach, with a battery to buffer the fuel cells output the same way that the battery is used in their Hybrid Synergy Drive to buffer ICE output.

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#19

Post by revelation »

sliverstorm wrote: post #11
henrikschroder wrote: post #6

Good that there's serious money being sunk into alternatives to electric cars, more is always good. But I'm seriously tired of the fact that all articles about fuel-cells enthusiastically exclaims that "it's only byproduct is water!!!!", as if hydrogen was some sort of magic alternative to hydrocarbons. It's not, it's an energy transmission medium, not an energy source. For fuel-cell cars to work, you would need to h…

We appear to already have the infrastructure for electric cars, and at low adoption rates that's true. But according to the utilities, that infrastructure is in no way ready for sweeping adoption of electric vehicles, so then too we would need to overhaul our existing infrastructure.

We could take the gasoline, burn it to generate electricity and use that to charge electric vehicles. If you consider the massive efficiency advantage, we'd probably still come ahead over using internal combustion engines.

This is in other words a complete non-issue. But I'd love to hear plans on safeguarding inevitable hydrogen leaks in residential areas. Should we tell people to get rid of their garages?

Re: Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

#20

Post by dragonwriter »

henrikschroder wrote: post #14
sliverstorm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We appear to already have the infrastructure for electric cars, and at low adoption rates that's true. But according to the utilities, that infrastructure is in no way ready for sweeping adoption of electric vehicles, so then too we would need to overhaul our existing infrastructure.

The difference there lies in that the electrical infrastructure can be overhauled gradually, as electric car adoption increases. We already have something that is useful to the current EV owners, and it can be made better. I'm also not convinced that the utilities are correct, current peak use is probably a lot higher than what a fleet of slow-charging vehicles would consume at night. In the case of hydrogen infrastr…

> In the case of hydrogen infrastructure, we have nothing.

Well, more than nothing, but not a lot just now. Though more is in development.

> If you're the first guy to buy a hydrogen car, you can't fill it up anywhere

I'm going to guess that the first several tens of thousands of people to buy consumer electric vehicles in the US will be clustered around the places where the existing infrastructure is [1], so that this won't be even approximately true (there'll be an interesting trade off until infrastructure builds out in that FCVs will have a longer single charge/tank range than EVs, but a much more limited area of operations since there'll be limited refueling locations especially outside of the "home" areas.)

[1] e.g., in California, http://www.cafcp.org/stationmap

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