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Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

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Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy density doesn't work for now . Everybody hoping for that breakthrough, and battery aircraft are moving into certain sectors (drone delivery, air taxis etc).

Jet engine and wing efficiency have increased enormously over the last 50 years.

With diminishing results.

Turbofans and supercritical airfoils are done to the point of engine manufacturers looking to propfans and alternative materials (carbon fibre) to eke out further efficiencies.

Although carbon fibre has significant down sides.

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#242

Kinda glad this is the case. When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished. Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground. There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the next oil and therefore greedy people want to get in early on. But this blinds them to the basic chemistry and physics.

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Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#243
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bZ4X? 10+ years after the Nissan Leaf?

And the bZ3, bZ5, bZ7, bZ3X, bZ Woodland, C-HR+, the Lexus RZ, and soon the Hilux EV: https://electrek.co/2026/01/09/toyota-electric-pickup-images...

A list of cars that aren't available for purchase yet doesn't disprove the argument that Toyota is late to the game.

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#244

This technology is completely amazing - for large fleet vehicles like buses, trucks, ferries, etc. Also airplanes! Getting this so compact and refined is a technological miracle. Now put it where it fits!

Buses are already largely electric (with the US as a notable exception), and trucks are quickly getting there:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Meanwhile, hydrogen trucks are nowhere to be found...

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurately, the calculation needs to factor in the fact that battery weight doesn’t decrease as charge is used. Commercial aviation’s profitability hinges on being able to carry only as much fuel as strictly[1] required. How can batteries compete with that constraint? Also, commercial aviation aircraft aren’t time-restricted by refuelling requirements. How are batteries going to compete with that? Realistically,…

An A320 can store 24k liters of fuel. Jet fuel stores 35 MJ/L. So, the plane carries 8.4E11 J of energy. If that was stored in a battery that had to be charged in an hour 0.23GW of electric power would be required. So indeed, an airport serving dozens or hundreds of electric aircrafts a day will need obscene amounts of electric energy.

Jet engines are not 100% efficient.

Electric motors can be pretty close, 98% is realistic. Of course other parts of the system will lose energy, like conversion losses.

Of course that doesn't mean batteries are currently a viable replacement. One should still take efficiency into account in quick back of the envelope calculations.

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#246
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the bZ3, bZ5, bZ7, bZ3X, bZ Woodland, C-HR+, the Lexus RZ, and soon the Hilux EV: https://electrek.co/2026/01/09/toyota-electric-pickup-images...

A list of cars that aren't available for purchase yet doesn't disprove the argument that Toyota is late to the game.

They are available for purchase.

Toyota is in the game of selling cars. Toyota has been the best selling automaker for the last six years straight.

Toyota had record sales last year:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota...

It's possible that Toyota understands the car business better than you do.

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#247
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this bad? This means H2O molecules are being destroyed and the water is not returning to the water cycle to be reused. We will literally run out of water if everyone did this.

Water gets split into oxygen and hydrogen using energy. The hydrogen then gets burned to release usable energy, which creates water. At least as far as I remember from chemistry class ages ago.

There's some truth to what the gp said. Some hydrogen will escape, enter the upper atmosphere, and be blown away by the solar wind and thus be permanently lost.

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#248

Kinda glad this is the case. When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished. Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground. There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the next oil and therefore greedy people want to get in early on. But this blinds them to the basic chemistry and physics.

Synthetic fuels (including hydrogen) do still make a lot of sense for heavy stuff like trucks, buses or trains, and aircraft where the energy density is a big plus. Those are where you'd expect to see hydrogen take off first, not passenger cars. Same as how diesel started in trucks - expensive engines but economical when amortized and worth it for heavy usage applications.

If they couldn't crack those areas, no chance in the highly competitive passenger car space.

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#249
post #203

Kinda glad this is the case. When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished. Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground. There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the next oil and therefore greedy people want to get in early on. But this blinds them to the basic chemistry and physics.

People looked at how the cost of wind and solar went down and made a assumption that green hydrogen would follow. The reasoning was that the cost of green hydrogen was energy, and thus at some point green hydrogen would be too cheap to meter. The whole energy plan of central/northen Europe, especially Germany, was built for the last several decades on the idea that they would combine wind, solar and cheap natural gas…

I had to Google what is green hydrogen. It is hydrogen produced by electrolysis.

If you've already got the electricity for electrolysis, would it not be more efficient and mechanically simpler to store it in a battery and power an electric motor?

Re: Toyota’s hydrogen-powered Mirai has experienced rapid depreciation

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and it doesn’t fit the narrative. We should be moving towards being able to terraform Earth not because of anthropogenic climate forcing, but because one volcano or one space rock could render our atmosphere overnight rather uncomfortable. You won’t find the Swedish Doom Goblin saying anything about that . > burn petrol. Well yeah, so making electricity unreliable and expensive, and the end-user’s problem (resid…

Natural resources are not required to make a country an economic powerhouse. See Japan, for example. Hong Kong, Taiwan, S Korea. What's needed are free markets. Any country that wants to become a powerhouse has it within their grasp. Free markets.

And political will.

The Antipodes have such a problem with successful people we even invented a term for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

On the subject of free markets, Australia excels. We even let foreign entities extract and sell our LNG and pay no royalties and no tax.

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/zero-royalties-charge...

Doesn’t get any freer than that!

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