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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

#281

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.

>When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they should be punished.

You could say the same about EVs. Most people in the US who bought an EV decided to go back to ICE for their next vehicle.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which makes the world warmer on average. It also lowers the PH levels of the oceans. If the oceans die, its very likely that many or even most humans will also. As a human I am pretty strongly opposed to dying, but thats just, like, my opinion man.

The major problem with hydrocarbons today is that we are releasing carbon dioxide stored hundreds of millions of years ago. If, theoretically, you could produce hydrocarbons from the carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere, then it could be a substantial reduction in net carbon dioxide being added; and it would be compatible with the fuel infrastructure of today.

What must have been the composition of the atmosphere all those hundreds of millions of years ago for all that carbon dioxide to have been removed from the atmosphere and sequestered as biological matter, to then be buried and reacted to form vast quantities of hydrocarbons.

The bind moggles.

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I understand that, but it's a fallacious argument. It's still emitting the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.

You can also bury dead trees in a landfill.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand that, but it's a fallacious argument. It's still emitting the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. You can also bury dead trees in a landfill.

The point is that emitting CO2 into the atmosphere was never the problem. Adding geological carbon back into the carbon cycle is the root cause of the entire thing.

You can certainly bury dead trees. I'm not sure how deep you'd need to go to accomplish long term (ie geological timeframe) capture. I somehow doubt the economics work out since what is all the carbon capture research even about given that we could just be dumping bamboo chips into landfills?

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Spain stripped S. America of its gold and silver, and neither Spain nor S. America benefited from it.

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? You can run electrolysis from a cup.

You can’t make and store bulk hydrogen at home

You can’t.

I’m willing to give it a go.

I’ve got the excess solar from the rooftop solar panels, the electrical and electronic knowledge, and the gas fitter and metal fabrication experience.

I have an oil free air compressor, and anyone can by a helium based cryo-cooler. I have an account with an industrial gas supplier.

Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

If Nile Red hasn’t blown his lab up by the time I publish this comment, I reckon I stand a chance.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major problem with hydrocarbons today is that we are releasing carbon dioxide stored hundreds of millions of years ago. If, theoretically, you could produce hydrocarbons from the carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere, then it could be a substantial reduction in net carbon dioxide being added; and it would be compatible with the fuel infrastructure of today.

What must have been the composition of the atmosphere all those hundreds of millions of years ago for all that carbon dioxide to have been removed from the atmosphere and sequestered as biological matter, to then be buried and reacted to form vast quantities of hydrocarbons. The bind moggles.

Your mind should boggle. It's all pretty amazing.

2.5 billion years ago the earth would have been uninhabitable to most modern life. Single celled life evolved in those conditions and began creating glucose and oxygen from CO2 and water. When those primitive lifeforms died some of them became oil and the CO2 was sequestered.

Over time the CO2 levels dropped until about 20 million years ago the CO2 levels fell to about 300ppm. That's when life as we know it really took off. Yes, it took BILLIONS of years to get there.

Humans have only existed for about 200k years. During that time our CO2 levels have mostly been below about 280ppm. The are now at 429ppm and are rising exponentially. [0]

[0] https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have patented the idea of replacing the nitrogen in the cabin air with helium. I'm waiting for the money to roll in!

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

#289
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pointing out that the timeline of continuing funding it, to the point of a major model design and launch, and nationwide network of hydrogen stations, might well be linked to China's emergent REE dominance and that Japan doesn't have those raw materials. (In some future decade/century, people might conclude that car dependency on fossil fuels, after electric from renewable became viable, was a mistake.)

I think Japan made their plans in the 2000s, maybe starting to gain traction in 2010, this is long before China became an EV power house or even had a dominant share of rare earth processing.

Independent of that. I'm saying there was some wisdom to continuing to fund it in Japan post-2010 as a hedge in case REEs were unavailable.

(Separate to whether the idea originally made sense back in the 2000s.)

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

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We store hydrogen all the time for industrial processes. It's not some super science, it's just expensive.

We do? Where? Using what fabrication technologies. I’ve worked mostly in or adjacent to manufacturing and primary industry. As far as I’m aware, the majority of hydrogen production is use on site, and mostly for ammonia production. There isn’t really much in the way of hydrogen storage and transportation, it’s mostly used where it’s generated. And if we use expensive as a proxy for heavy / energy intensive, which it…

There is hydrogen all over the place in exactly where you'd expect to see it: petroleum refineries and petrochemical process plants. The metallurgy of handling and storing hydrogen is well understood and has been for a long time. You just have to use alloys resistant to hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen is squirrelly - it doesn't like to stay put but you can make it stay put long enough to make it useful.

When you are specifying valving or piping in a refinery one of the big things you have to find out is how much hydrogen is in the process because a lot of stuff in a refinery has at least some hydrogen and it will destroy common alloys.

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