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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

#461

Post by [deleted] »

vel0city wrote: post #122
glitchc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An EV is a clear simplification of an ICE. Add a Battery and replace the mechanical complexity of a combustion engine with a relatively simple electric motor. So many components are now unnecessary and so many problems just go away. EVs also make charging simpler. Is it? Then why isn't it cheaper to produce and cheaper to own? > Hydrogen cars on the other hand are very complex and also quite inefficient, requiring…

My EV has cost me ~$1,100/yr less to operate over the last few years for the same mileage compared to my ICE, and I didn't even have any major issues with my ICE. Meanwhile its been charged with almost exclusively 100% renewable, zero-emission energy.

[deleted]

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

#462

Post by crote »

Ray20 wrote: post #317
KennyBlanken wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Round trip efficiency of hydrogen is at best 50% and at worse half that. You have the horrendous efficiency of electrolysis and then the equally bad efficiency in the fuel cell. Efficiency pumping your excess solar into the EV itself is more like 80-85%, most of which is loss in the electronics, not the battery - those typically have a coulombic efficiency of over 95%. Hydrogen a boondoggle. It's not nearly as stupid…

> Round trip efficiency of hydrogen is at best 50% In fact, even this level of efficiency may be sufficient. Solar panels are so cheap that if we had affordable, long-term energy storage options, even with such efficiency, we would have completely abandoned fossil fuels. But, unfortunately, storing hydrogen is difficult and dangerous. It is not like natural gas. > It's not nearly as stupid as making ethanol from corn…

> Ethanol is produced from corn not for energy purposes, but for food security.

No, it's done to subsidize (bribe) farmers. Food security is merely the excuse used to sell it to the non-farmer voters.

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

#463

Post by pfdietz »

crote wrote: post #460
pfdietz wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen burning could have a place in an all-renewable grid: it could be much more economical for very long duration storage than using batteries. The last 5-10% of the grid becomes much cheaper to do with renewables if something like hydrogen (or other e-fuels) is available. A competitor that might be even better is very long duration high temperature thermal storage, if capex minimization is the priority.

> it could be much more economical for very long duration storage than using batteries Yes, but that's not the only option you have. With the absolutely awful efficiency of burning hydrogen you'd need to be building a massive amount of additional wind and solar - which in turn means you'll also have additional capacity available during cloudy wind-calm days, which means you'll need to burn substantially less hydrogen…

Efficiency is not very important for very long duration storage. What's important is minimizing cost, which is dominated by capex, not by the cost of the energy used to charge the storage system. Paying more to charge it can make sense if that greatly reduces capex.

So, yes, more input energy is needed. So what?

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

#464

Post by vel0city »

sandworm101 wrote: post #379
vel0city wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't necessarily true. Most cylinders storing compressed gasses need to be hydrostatically tested in regular intervals to ensure continued safety and will need replacement when they fail. Other kinds of composite cylinders have fixed ages where they should be replaced.

Inspection is expected. In the transport industry, all sorts of parts need regular inspection. Batteries are different. Performance loss over time leading to replacement decisions is unussual. Virtually no other part degrades in performance the moment you use it. Lots of parts have time limits, especially in aerospace, but few degrade. Those running fleets see this as unussual and unpredictable which, at scale, means…

> In the transport industry

I'm not in the transport industry, I just want to go to the grocery store.

> Performance loss over time leading to replacement decisions is unussual. Virtually no other part degrades in performance the moment you use it.

Tires? Brake pads? Lubricants? Belts? Springs? Bearings? Bushings? Seals? There's tons of parts on my cars that have expected wear intervals that will need replacing after x number of miles with performance that changes with the wear of the part, there's a whole service manual of when to replace certain parts.

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

#465

Post by breve »

bdcravens wrote: post #421
breve wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is the biggest EV market, Europe is the second biggest, and North America is third. For EVs the US will remain lower priority than China and Europe for a while yet. Toyota understands how to sell cars. It's funny how this thread has gone from "Toyota can't wrap its head around not making engines" to "Toyota is not prioritizing small EV markets first".

You are correct that China is the number one market in terms of BEV sales, but the US is number two, selling more than 3-5 combined. That's an odd way to define a small EV market. Funny thing is, in terms of rankings, the US is actually a "small market" when it comes to gas-only cars. Prior to moving to only BEVs, our family bought several Toyotas (and before that, only Hondas), and I was disappointed to find that I…

> but the US is number two

Nope:

https://electrek.co/2025/12/11/global-ev-sales-jump-21-in-20...

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

#466

Post by AngryData »

Joker_vD wrote: post #408
AngryData wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hydrogen is also so easy to produce on demand that you can design your balloon to be at small positive pressure all the time and always leaks outwards into the open air. If oxygen is allowed to leaked in undetected, yeah that's a death trap. The same if hydrogen leaked into semi contained oxygen enclosures. But leaking through the skin of the balloon to open sky even with decent size holes and a bit of positive p…

> And considering the massive efficiency of lighter-than-air transport What efficiency? You still need to orient it and propel it in the desired direction, unless you don't mind to simply float around on the wind (in which case, yes, we have weather balloons precisely for that and nothing much else).

Slow moving free floating objects are super easy to move around. You can push a 100 ton piece of equipment with your hands if it is floating. That is why cargo boats still beat out shipping efficiency of rail. There is almost no practical size or weight limits, your only real potential loss, and potential gain, is the movement of your floating fluid be it wind or water, which in the case of air is fairly predictable these days, on top of moving in different directions at different altitudes.

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

#467

Post by bdcravens »

rsynnott wrote: post #450
bdcravens wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that China is the number one market in terms of BEV sales, but the US is number two, selling more than 3-5 combined. That's an odd way to define a small EV market. Funny thing is, in terms of rankings, the US is actually a "small market" when it comes to gas-only cars. Prior to moving to only BEVs, our family bought several Toyotas (and before that, only Hondas), and I was disappointed to find that I…

> You are correct that China is the number one market in terms of BEV sales, but the US is number two, selling more than 3-5 combined. This is incorrect, unless you're viewing the US as a single market but the EU as multiple (which, I mean, ah, you do you, but that doesn't make any sense from an industry perspective). Last year about 1.3 million BEVs were sold in the US (a minor decline from 2024), 1.9 million BEVs w…

Nation-based segmentation makes the most sense to me because as I understand it (coming from a US-centric perspective, so I may have misunderstandings) there may be additional friction (fees, regulations, etc) buying from another EU country as opposed to someone in the US buying a vehicle from a different state. In many cases, you don't even have to go to another state; dealerships regularly transfer inventory (with a shipping fee, but not anything at the government level)

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

#468

Post by mapontosevenths »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #422
Joker_vD wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fairly certain they teach the gist of all of that in even in school-level textbooks on biology/geography.

Hopefully they never stop. adrian puts it quite well though. Keeping that in mind; >What role, if any, did carbonate mineral formation have in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? Looks like as much as it possibly could.

It was the primary driver until life happened. Then life was, and now they exist in a delicate balance.

I get the idea that the throwaway account was suggesting we can just "do whatever forever" without consequences though, and that's just not true. Most CO2 sequestration on earth is now biological in origin and has been for a very long time.

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

#469

Post by closewith »

pfdietz wrote: post #453
closewith wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are simply wrong on this. HVDC losses total ~5% for 1,000km, including step up and step down losses. H2 will experience 20-30% over the same distance of natural gas line including compression and friction losses. DOA.

I said expensive. Total cost is the relevant metric, not efficiency. https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81662.pdf It's a common mistake to think efficiency dominates all other metrics. It's never just efficiency.

Capex for H2 pipelines is higher than new HVDC, and opex is 5-10x HVDC per MWh-km so you're just wrong on this.

H2 makes sense for feedstocks but not energy distribution.

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

#470

Post by crote »

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…

Reality already caught up with synthetic fuel for buses.

Shenzhen electrified its entire 16,000-vehicle bus fleet in 2017 - that's almost a decade ago. Since then virtually all of China has transitioned to electric, and other countries aren't far behind. Electric buses have completely taken over the market.

And it isn't just rich Western countries playing around either. We're seeing countries like Slovenia and Romania at >90% electric, and even countries like Ecuador and Colombia and targeting 100% electric in 2030 and 2035!

All the hard technical and financial problems have been solved. If your city isn't adopting electric buses yet, it will be solely due to political reasons.

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