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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

#261

Post by Manuel_D »

dotancohen wrote: post #249
belorn wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The value proposition of hydrogen is energy density. Batteries have low energy per unit of volume and awful energy density by unit of mass. You will never, ever, fly across the Pacific on a battery powered aircraft. Transoceanic shipping is also not feasible with batteries (current and proposed battery powered shopping lanes are short hops of a couple hundred kilometers or less).

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

#262

Post by fc417fc802 »

WalterBright wrote: post #170
capitainenemo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's also burning regular fuel in a fuel cell, a FCEV. That doubles the efficiencies over ICE, so I guess that bumps it back up to 8x away? Given the great energy densities and stability in transport of hydrocarbons, there's already some plants out there synthesising them directly from green sources, so that could be a solution if we don't manage to increase battery densities by another order of magnitude.

> there's already some plants out there synthesising them directly from green sources I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different from a regular carbon atom. They both result in CO2 when burned.

The problem isn't CO2 it's pulling carbon out of geological deposits. Thus the carbon atoms in synthetic fuel can be considered "green" provided an appropriate energy source was used.

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

#263

Post by b112 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #38
b112 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2, every car would be H2 by now. H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that can be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make H2. Yes, I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really care, it's just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of made up paranoia. We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road.

H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable. Both are alternatives to BEVs, which are the better approach to electrifying transport. If Toyota had gone all in on BEVs when it began its H2 strategy, it would be selling more EVs than Tesla. Instead it entirely ceded the field to others, first Tesla and BYD.

H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural gas is more affordable.

Irrelevant. It seems like everyone who argues against H2 is stuck on "now". Had that been the case with battery powered cars, they'd have never got off of the ground.

Batteries were terrible, wildly expensive, extremely unreliable. It's only been the immense research poured into them, that has brought their costs down.

Meanwhile, the cost of storage on an H2 car is nothing, compared to the immense and exorbitant cost of all those batteries. Batteries which make a car extremely heavy. Batteries which cannot be charged below -20C, and require heaters. Batteries which are incredibly dangerous in car accidents. Batteries which are costly, and damaging to the environment to create, difficult to recycle, and damaging to the environment to recycle.

Compared to battery tech of any type, H2 is a dream from the gods.

Yet because there hasn't been 17 trillion dollars of cash thrown into h2 generation tech, people prattle on about how expensive h2 generation is.

And it doesn't matter where h2 comes from now. It matters where it can and will come from. The goal isn't to make sources of power to generate h2 clean, the goal is to get end-polluters, cars, clean.

If the only goal was "clean", then most electric batteries charging right now, would fail that very goal. After all, there are still coal and gas power plants this very moment, and if we pulled all electric cars off the road, those would close.

No, the goal is to work towards more and more solar power, wind, etc. And in parallel, get cars ready for the day when power they're charged from isn't polluting.

The myopic view of what I deem hyper-environmentalists, is disturbing to me. It is paramount that we don't let short sighted views fog the reality around us.

Anyone arguing 1000lbs of batteries, all environmentally damaging in their construction, recycling cost, and disposal, is superior to h2, is arguing from a pedestal of sandy, earthquake prone, unstable support.

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

#264

Post by b112 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #96
b112 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2, every car would be H2 by now. H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that can be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make H2. Yes, I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really care, it's just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of made up paranoia. We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road.

> We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road. Only if it's also feasible to fuel that car in a clean way. And looking at where the hydrogen would come from is not "made up" or "paranoia".

It is entirely feasible. And it is made up to claim that "Well, this second it looks like there's no infra for green h2, so it can never happen! So there!"

If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with 50km range, and 1000lbs of batteries.

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

#265

Post by WarmWash »

hogehoge51 wrote: post #216
dehrmann wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the ground. It's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its head around not making engines. Ironically, the place hydrogen might work is airplanes where the energy density of batteries doesn't work.

WTF , you are commenting about FCEV - these things dont have engines! The strategy clearly stated by Akio Toyoda is multiple power train technology. You can listen to his interviews on the subject, some are in Japanese, but as you have stated a clear and unambiguous interpretation of Toyota's policy I will assume you have that fluency. (Automotive OEMs are assemblers, the parts come from the supply chain starting wit…

Toyota has had this hydrogen bug since the early 90's.

What's that old meme?

Stop trying to make ____ happen, it's not going to happen.

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

#266

Post by b112 »

Tade0 wrote: post #34
b112 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2, every car would be H2 by now. H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that can be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make H2. Yes, I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really care, it's just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of made up paranoia. We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on the road.

There's no point. EVs go 50% further on the same amount of energy, are easier to charge and are, of course, cheaper.

EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips unrealistic. They are not cheaper long term, for they rely upon thousands of pounds of heavy batteries.

If they go further now, that is not a given down the road.

Were you to employ this logic when electric cars first came out, there wouldn't be a single one on the road. It's only through trillions of research dollars, that current battery tech is where it is.

But sure, let's not work on multiple paths. Let's discount other attempts at clean tech. Even if they're older, cost less to the environment to build (batteries are terrible, environmentally), and so on.

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

#267

Post by bitmasher9 »

Hydrogen fuel solves a long term strategic problem for Japan, which is why the Mirai got as far as it did.

Japan imports energy. They have to be very careful about which type of energy they build infrastructure for, because they must pay to import that type of energy for decades or centuries. (LNG vs Coal use very different equipment) This is specifically a strategic problem for Japan compared to other energy importers because they both use a lot of energy, and don’t have a military option to secure a foreign supply.

Hydrogen fuel could be created by almost any energy source and then used just like any other fuel source. Ideally Japan would like to pay energy exporters to convert their energy to Hydrogen so Japan has maximum flexibility when importing energy.

Projects like the Mirai exist as proof of concepts for Hydrogen, and the United States was never going to be an early widespread adopter of this technology.

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

#268

Post by alephnerd »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #267

Hydrogen fuel solves a long term strategic problem for Japan, which is why the Mirai got as far as it did. Japan imports energy. They have to be very careful about which type of energy they build infrastructure for, because they must pay to import that type of energy for decades or centuries. (LNG vs Coal use very different equipment) This is specifically a strategic problem for Japan compared to other energy importe…

^^^ This.

But Japan has also been heavily investing in solid state batteries, whose supply chain Idemetsu Kosan and Toyota have begun to productionize [0].

The Japanese government made a decision in the early 2000s to make a dual-pronged bet on Hydrogen and solid-state battery chemistry because they lacked the supply chain and a legal method to access IP for lithium ion batteries.

On the other hand, Samsung and LG got the license for Li-On back during the NMC days, and BYD was able to piggyback on Samsung and Berkshire's IP access when both took growth equity stakes in BYD decades ago.

Another reason that a lot of people overlook is the Hydrogen supply chain overlaps heavily with the supply chain needed to domestically produce nitrogen-fixing fertilizers which is heavily concentrated in a handful of countries (especially Russia with whom Japan has had a border dispute with since the end of WW2) [1].

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/idemitsu-build-pi...

[1] - https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/impacts-and-repercussions-pric...

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

#269

Post by killingtime74 »

I went to the Toyota museum where they actually have one of these cars as a cross section. I would never drive one. It's like driving around with a massive bomb under the rear seat. Forget thermal runway from batteries, I wonder how big the crater of the explosion from one these would be.

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

#270

Post by sandworm101 »

killingtime74 wrote: post #269

I went to the Toyota museum where they actually have one of these cars as a cross section. I would never drive one. It's like driving around with a massive bomb under the rear seat. Forget thermal runway from batteries, I wonder how big the crater of the explosion from one these would be.

Safer than liquid fuel. There are videos out there of what a leak+fire looks like on a hydrogen and gasoline car. You would rather be trapped in the hydrogen car.

https://youtu.be/OA8dNFiVaF0

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