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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

#341

Post by antonvs »

Qwertious wrote: post #299
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is the minimum viable atom: one proton, one electron. H2 is a tiny molecule. "hydrogen embrittlement" is when it's small enough to diffuse into solid metal, because it's that much smaller than iron atoms. It's hard to work with because of this, and what's the point? For most uses, electricity supply is already everywhere.

>Hydrogen is the minimum viable atom: one proton, one electron. Wait until you hear about H+

That’s a type of ion, or of course a proton. An ion with no electrons is not considered an atom normally. GP is correct.

(Atoms must have electrons - the definition in physics and chemistry is a structural one.)

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

#342

Post by jillesvangurp »

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…

Japan has a lot of potential for wind and geothermal power. And much of it isn't too bad for solar either.

The madness with hydrogen in Japan is that they produce most of it from imported LNG. If they'd solve domestic clean energy, they'd have no need for hydrogen in transport. EVs are a lot more efficient than hydrogen vehicles. So they'd need a lot less clean energy to power those.

Japan is slowly and belatedly figuring out that physics and economics just won't favor hydrogen, ever. The Mirai is an exercise in futility. It doesn't make any economic sense whatsoever. It never has. Toyota at this point is grudgingly producing more EVs per quarter than it ever produced hydrogen vehicles (in total). They only sell a few hundred per year at this point. The only reason they still make them at all is because they are being subsidized to do that.

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

#343

Post by defrost »

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.

> I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different from a regular carbon atom.

Easy mistake to make, don't beat yourself up over it.

It's not the individual carbon atoms that carry the signature, it's the atoms in bulk that give the story ... eg: 6 x 10^23 carbon atoms

See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7757245/

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

#344

Post by masklinn »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #326
nandomrumber wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a great way to store, transport, and use hydrogen: Bind it to various length carbon chains. When burned as an energy source the two main byproducts are carbon dioxide which is an essential plant growth nutrient, and water which is also essential to plant growth. Environmentalists will love it! And they can prise my turbo diesel engines from my cold dead hands.

We live (or at least used live) in a very nice climate equilibrium with the CO2 level we had. Pushing us into another climate equilibrium looks very dangerous for human civilization. However I concede that it might be advantageous for certain plants, but I am not a plant so I am mostly concerned about human civilization.

> However I concede that it might be advantageous for certain plants

Plants are highly dependent on their climactic settings, upending a climate equilibrium is awful to the average plant. And looking at past climactic change events, "another climate equilibrium" is something that happens on kiloyear scales (ages, in geochronologic units).

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

#345

Post by ErroneousBosh »

foota wrote: post #147
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently 1kg of hydrogen is about 60 miles range, which seems like a lot, but apparently fuel cells are that good. Currently hydrogen fuel if you can get it is about 15 quid a kilo in the UK, giving a tank range of around 400 miles for £80. This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric. By comparison Autogas LPG is around 92p/litre…

> This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric Is electric charging more expensive in the UK than petrol? That's nuts.

It is if you use a rapid charger. If you're fortunate enough to be able to do what you need with a car within 50 miles or so of your house and leave it overnight to charge, it's cheaper.

At present, EVs do not solve any problem I have.

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

#346

Post by ErroneousBosh »

stoneman24 wrote: post #159
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently 1kg of hydrogen is about 60 miles range, which seems like a lot, but apparently fuel cells are that good. Currently hydrogen fuel if you can get it is about 15 quid a kilo in the UK, giving a tank range of around 400 miles for £80. This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric. By comparison Autogas LPG is around 92p/litre…

If you can get a cheap electric overnight home charging tariff in the UK, then the electric cost is lower. Mid week, I charged 43kWh for the cost of £3.04 (7p per kWh). My home charger does 7kwh in a hour. Usual mileage is about 4 miles per kWh (typical rush hour drive into Edinburgh). That should give me about 170 miles of range. Scaling it to 400 miles (400 miles at 4 miles per kWh is 100 kWh which at 7p each is ab…

The problem is that using an EV makes living in the Highlands far more expensive even allowing for the cost of diesel, because you're forced to use rapid chargers at great expense - if they're available, and actually working - or a quick trip to the shops becomes an overnight stay.

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

#347

Post by MaKey »

Manuel_D wrote: post #327
solatic wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if the economics of hydrogen motors worked out for planes and shipping, the argument is that it would also economically work out for cars.

Is suspect large trucks may eventually move to hydrogen, but smaller passenger vehicles will stay on batteries. The nature of hydrogen containment favors larger capacity, on account of better volume to surface area ratios.

>Is suspect large trucks may eventually move to hydrogen [...]

They won't, why would they? The number of hydrogen gas stations is going down and the price is going up. Batteries are good enough already - the Mercedes eActros 600 with its 600 kWh battery has a range of 500 km.

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

#348

Post by b112 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #308
b112 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't seen any cost models where green hydrogen is feasible without a lot of super cheap excess electricity. And those situations also boost batteries. Do you have one you can show me? It's not just lack of infrastructure, even if you solved the problem of building everything out green hydrogen is still not worth it under conditions close to the present day. And I didn't say it could never under any circumstances…

Research. Battery tech was terrible. Horrible. It was only through endless research, trillions spent, that battery tech can do what it does today.

Now apply the same logic to h2.

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

#349

Post by masklinn »

HPsquared wrote: post #248
aunty_helen wrote: post #60

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 chanc…

> Synthetic fuels (including hydrogen) do still make a lot of sense for heavy stuff like trucks, buses or trains

Synthetic fuels don't "make a lot of sense" for "heavy stuff", rail electrification has been the norm everywhere the capital costs were justified (it's at about 30% worldwide, 57% in europe, some countries like Switzerland are nearly 100% electric).

Synthetic fuels make sense for autonomy reasons when you can't tether the "heavy stuff", but fuel engines absolutely suck for heavy work loads, electric transmissions started being a thing before railway electrification even was.

And of course those are situations where hydrogen sucks, fuel is useful there because it's a stable and dense form of energy storage which is reasonably easy to move about without infrastructure, you can bring a bunch of barrels on a trailer, or tank trailers, to an off-grid site and fuel all your stuff (including electric generators). With hydrogen you're now wasting a significant portion of the energy you brought in trying to keep the hydrogen from going wild.

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

#350

Post by Symbiote »

xxs wrote: post #312
overfeed wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the introduction of 800V charging architectures, long charge-time for EVs was a big con. Hydrogen Cell vehicles were supposed to be EVs with drastically faster fill-up times. The tradeoff was more complex delivery infrastructure.

Yet, most of the world has had 3 phase (400V phase to phase) for ages. At the wall.

North America has 3 phase power for any necessary purpose (factory, DC rapid charging station etc). It's 480V/227V.
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