Toyota commits back to electification
Toyota has quietly redirected their focus back to EVs as they believe that more cleaner carbon-neutral electricity are being generated. Their early launch with hybrid-electric cars and then their strategic move towards hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may have changed and have gone back to 'electrification' and are improving their next-gen plugin technologies and cars. They will be "using more electricity in the future." Toyota Chief Engineer Hints of Shift Toward More Battery Electrification
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No body that knows anything about hydrogen wants anything to do with hydrogen, so that makes sense.
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So the Mirai was a mirage after all. Who would have thought.
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What's interesting:
You can isolate & store hydrogen using renewable electricity, so technically more "cleaner" electricity coming online is no reason to shift from H fuel cells to battery electric vehicles (BEVs). It ignores the fact that the BEV is a more energy efficient use of that electricity in the first place, but fuel cell proponents like that tech for other advantages (faster filling, range). I saw a reference recently that it would cost a trillion dollars to put hydrogen in all the gas stations in the U.S. Maybe the reality of that chicken & egg scenario is the real reason for the shift in focus. Whereas PHEV's with moderately sized packs can easily be re-charged from ubiquitous 110v outlets (eg. current Chevy Volt = 8 hours from completely empty; other PHEV's take less time than that). |
Hydrogen source, transport, and filling stations will never happen on a scale they are needed. From here: API | Service Station FAQs "as of 2/28/2014 there were 152,995 locations nationwide selling gasoline, including service stations, truck stops, convenience stores and marinas." So, let's say there are ~150,000 gas stations for vehicles. On average, I think each services ~25 vehicles a day?
That's as much as 3.75 million fillups per day. Typical hydrogen filling stations can service just 15 vehicles per day, so that means we would need ~250,000 hydrogen filling stations. They each cost ~$2M. That is $500,000,000,000 for the filling stations alone. If we could build TEN PER DAY, 365 days a year - we would be finished building them by 2085. |
With hydrogen versus electricity its more of a problem of no fueling versus slow recharge.
Far as I am concerned slow recharge wins every day of the week over no available fuel. |
It only took 'em 12+ years to get back on the horse... :D
The Eco-Car Engineers - Innovators - TIME Quote:
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Liquid at room temperature fuel is not going away any time soon.
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