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Toyota Scion IQ Electric Car To Launch In 2012
Mightee writes "Toyota officially announced at an annual dealer meeting in Las Vegas that the all-electric Scion iQ will be launched next year in the United States. According to Toyota, Scion iQ can only go 50 miles on a single charge. Because of this, it will be facing tough competition from 73-mile Nissan Leaf and 85-mile Mitsubishi i."
If they price it right (ie: much cheaper than a leaf) then I'd consider it. My commute in the morning is 10 miles each way, plus add 10 miles for a trip to the grocery store and this car can take care of 90% of my driving needs. I already own a mini-van with a trailer hitch so I am covered for long trips or for towing or carrying stuff.
When I lived near the city center this would have been great as the second car for a couple. Really. I would have loved it, at the right price.
Not so much any more though. Our current vehicles get about 25, 20, & 8 mpg. (Don't freak out you greenies, I don't drive the 5-ton very often or very far. It's a pretty harsh ride...) So yeah, since we, current owners of 3 largish vehicles, would have considered it seriously, I'd bet there's a good market for it.
What will the range be like after 5-10 years? And what if it's a really cold winter day? I have to heat the cabin somehow.
This is my main problem with all-electric vehicles. You never really know how much range you have. And if you live in a cold climate like I do, gasoline engines are really quite efficient in the winter since the "waste" heat is not wasted at all; it heats the cabin.
How do you think Hydrogen is manufactured, if not from electricity?
Um, steam reforming of natural gas, dude.
I'd guess you'd do a lot better just running the cars on the natural gas and forgetting the hydrogen crap.
I looked up the range of the Nissan Leaf, they say it can go 62 miles in terrible conditions: 14 degrees F outside, traffic jam, average speed of 15mph (it's most efficient speed is 38mph). That's slightly worse than half their best condition 138 miles: flat roads, 68d F, 38mph constant speed. (http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/tags/show/range#/leaf-electric-car/theBasicsRange/index)
If Toyota is playing it safe and reporting their worst condition distance for now, then all is well. If they reported the distance it could go according to the EPA standard "LA4" test, then it might still get 30 miles in worst conditions.
And where do you think hydrogen comes from? Electrolysis. Using hydrogen just adds another step to the fuel pipeline, and with each step comes less efficiency. Once of the biggest advantages of electric cars is that they're fuel-agnostic - they don't care where the electricity comes from. As we move towards cleaner fuel sources, that's when we'll see our emissions really change. Not to mention that a coal-burning power plant is a heck of a lot more efficient, as far as ton of CO2 per watt, than an internal combustion engine.
You don't need electricity or hydrocarbons, just a source of high heat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur-iodine_cycle.
The process heat could come from a solar concentrator or a next-generation high temperature reactor.
Of course then you're faced with the problems of transporting and storing hydrogen, which have solutions but not easy ones.
Liquid hydrogen is the way to go
LOL Right. Because pumping liquid hydrogen at a station would just be soo safe and liquifying it and keeping it cold doesn't take much energy at all...
All these electric cars are just slowing down the development of hydrogen.
No, they're filling the niche that hydrogen is incapable of filling. There's very little new going on with hydrogen because it is just not a convenient fuel.
I'd be all for electric if nuclear power was common, but in my state almost all the energy is produced in coal power plants. I just don't see how that is so much different from burning gasoline.
You're aware that hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels releasing greenhouse gases, right?
If the automotive industry is going to undergo a paradigm shift, it should be the best one available, not some half-assed compromise.
And it isn't hydrogen. Sorry bud. There's just no good way to get hydrogen to consumers.
If you are referring to electrolysis, it is my understanding electrolysis does not scale very well. And if you're just going to use electricity to make the hydrogen, why not just skip the hydrogen step and put the electricity directly into cars? It isn't like hydrogen is especially convenient to transport or store. Though I know there are ways to use the heat from a nuclear reactor to directly create hydrogen from water. Not sure how that scales though of if it is more or less efficient than using the heat to make electricity.
In 2008, Hyundai announced its intention to produce 500 FC vehicles by 2010 and to start mass production of its FC vehicles in 2012.[12] In early 2009, Daimler announced plans to begin its FC vehicle production in 2009 with the aim of 100,000 vehicles in 2012–2013.[13][14] In 2009, Nissan started testing a new FC vehicle in Japan.[15] In September 2009, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Nissan and Toyota issued a joint statement about their undertaking to further develop and launch fuel-cell electric vehicles as early as 2015
Do you know with 100% certainty that hydrogen is better than electric? No, you don't. Both require development of future technology, and as that develops, one type may be better than the other. We will find out.
But there's no sense in putting all your eggs in one basket. Keep investing in both, and hopefully one of them will work. There is still no guarantee of that, even.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Subject says it all.
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It doesn't matter. Conversion from electricity and water to hydrogen and back can be very efficient.
And yet almost nobody does it. Most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels.
The problem with electric cars is energy storage (batteries), and hydrogen can be stored more easily than electricity.
Actually hydrogen storage is fraught with problems. And not just "oh, but we can fix that" problems. It is more like hydrogen is just not very convenient. For example, hydrogen has a nasty habit of slowly breaking down metal (embrittlement). There's much more room for improved battery technology than there is for hydrogen storage and transmission. Besides, we already have the infrastructure to deliver electricity to every home. What's the point in introducing the hydrogen middleman?
Wow dude, as if gasoline weren't some dangerous liquid that we pump into cars?
It is flammable, but that's about it. It is actually pretty safe. It isn't like splashing a bit on you is going to cause serious burns
All the major car manufacturers are still researching hydrogen. If they think it still might have a chance, you ought to figure out why, instead of throwing your brain-dead speculation on Slashdot.
I've done plenty of research and reading in this area. Hydrogen has too many problems. In many ways it is an unnecessary step. If you produce hydrogen from fossil fuels, you're not doing much better than burning gasoline and if you make hydrogen from electricity, you're wasting perfectly good electricity that could just as well go directly into cars. In practice, what benefit does hydrogen actually have? None. It is a pointless conversion in most cases.
Car manufacturers doing research in this area is just due diligence at this point. They need to keep current just in case there is some big breakthrough, but for the most part, they're committing to electric as an alternative.
The infrastructure is not there yet. If I live in an apartment (city dweller?), where do I plug it in? If I have a house, but no garage, where do I plug it in.
Yes, some few companies are equipping their parking lots with plugin terminals. Very few. And as far as street side (parking meter?) plugins? I can see serious vandalism, just for the lulz.
A 50 mile range means that I have to manage the cars fuel every day. Doesn't sound like fun to me.
I love the idea of an all electric. But I just can't see it yet.
Size has nothing to do with safety. The Smart Car earned the top safety rating from the IIHS. It uses a very sophisticated airbag system to protect the occupants.
That being said, I wish the U.S. would relax the safety regulations on cars. Motorcycles have essentially no safety while cars have so many requirements that it is nearly impossible to build a truly efficient car. I have wished we would do the same thing they do in Germany and other European countries, which is to allow ATVs to be converted and licensed for street use. This would at least be a good place to start.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Yes, gasoline is a flammable liquid with a high-ish vapour pressure at room temperature and pressure...
Hydrogen is a gas at room temperature and pressure, and an extremely low density one at that (in fact, you'll struggle to find a less dense gas - it's the lightest element, but exists as a molecule, still helium is more dense, the next closest).
What the GP was mentioning was the assertion that pumping liquid hydrogen at a filling station would be "safe and easy" (in comparison to gasoline). Liquid hydrogen is a cryogen - that boils at -252C (-450F), so not only is it a) very energy intensive to liquify (either by pressurising and chilling, or just chilling), it will furiously boil when pumped up out of the dewars you keep it in.
The only real way to "safely" store it (without having to consider cryogenic issues like venting, ice build up on the outside of valves and pipework, extensive lagging and bulky dewars etc, is to store it as a compressed gas.
The problem with that takes us back to density: it has a very low energy density, so you need very high pressures to store lots of it (ie, enough to give you similar range to gasoline).
You certainly won't be pumping it as a cryogenic liquid out of a fuel pump into your car in the same way you currently pump gasoline, and to think that liquid gasoline and liquid hydrogen are broadly similar in safety (in terms of the precautions and risks involved in storage, usage and handling) as you suggest with your flippant and uninformed statement that starts with a sarcastic "wow" is just laughable.
The major research right now is "how do we increase the energy density?" - we had effective hydrogen fuel cells back in the 60s - we sent them to the moon on Apollo, but they had to be fuelled with LOx and LH2, which was hazardous, but handy since they were using millions of gallons of the stuff anyway to power the rocket engines themselves, bleeding off a little to run the fuel cells was just a bonus. We simply can't do that in a consumer vehicle, so we need a way to carry enough hydrogen to make fuel cells really worth it, hence research into new polymers that can "absorb" it like a sponge, or new materials that enable us to make higher pressure storage tanks etc.
Hydrogen is not an energy source; it's an energy storage mechanism. You need to compare the merits of hydrogen against the merits of batteries, not electricity.
When did the Nissan LEAF's range get downgraded from 100 miles to 73 miles? Is it by the same process Top Gear used to determine the Tesla Roadster's 55 mile range, or by these guys 313 miles (official range is 244 miles). If we want to start using the actual range instead of the advertised range as the range number, can we also start using the actual mpg for cars instead of the advertised number?
For reference: I've owned a plug-in converted Prius for over a year and a half and speaking from experience, my assisted mode (electric motor constantly assisting gas engine) is roughly 32 miles. In the summer I rarely dip below 100mpg, but in winter I am lucky to get 80mpg. EV range is roughly 18 miles in summer, but it doesn't even work in winter (Prius limit, not conversion kit limit). I used $143.28 worth of electricity (including taxes and delivery fees) keeping my car charged, and filled up on gas once every 5-8 weeks.
It allows me to make my weekend trips for kids sports, shopping, and various errands near the neighbourhood without using a drop of gas. Now that I've had a taste of what an electric car would be like to own I want one. Making trips to the gas station seem so inconvenient now, my car sits in the driveway for 12-18 hours a day; sometimes it sits there all day. It sits in the parking lot at work for 8 hours a day. Why can't that time be used to trickle charge my car so I don't need gas?
The electric charging infrastructure already exists, it's pre-installed into every home and office parking lot. The same just cannot be said of hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't a power source, it's a power medium like batteries. Hydrogen cars today have a range similar to electric vehicles. The hydrogen version of the BMW 7 series has a range of about 125 miles; just 25 more than the Nissan LEAF's range (if we only use advertised ranges). The Tesla Model S can be equipped with a 300 mile battery pack for a vehicle MSRP of $77,000; the BMW is worth $1,000,000 (though is has an attractive lease option).
Hydrogen just adds a level of complexity that simply doesn't exist for electric vehicles. EVs will not replace all cars, at best today they can be a second car, or a single car for someone who lives in a town where everything is less than 30 miles away. Commuting, doing errands, short (less than 100 mile) trips is what you'd get an EV to do; if you do more of everything else (road trips, on-the-road salesman, long drives, etc) then don't buy an EV.
No it wouldn't. Energy density by volume of liquid hydrogen is 1/3 that of gasoline. So unless you're willing to carry around 3 times teh amount of fuel, I don't think you're getting the same range. And even then, do you really think it is reasonable for every car to carry 40 gallons of liquid hydrogen around with them? I don't.
Why compress it. it's lighter than air. You could have floating cars. The question is does "BMW Hindenberg" or "Toyota Hindenberg" have a better ring to it?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Actually hydrogen storage is fraught with problems. And not just "oh, but we can fix that" problems. It is more like hydrogen is just not very convenient. For example, hydrogen has a nasty habit of slowly breaking down metal (embrittlement). There's much more room for improved battery technology than there is for hydrogen storage and transmission. Besides, we already have the infrastructure to deliver electricity to every home. What's the point in introducing the hydrogen middleman?
Hydrogen does not need to be stored as pure hydrogen. There are new ways of storing hydrogen being developed, for example via carbazole: http://www.techthefuture.com/energy/renewable-fuel-offers-alternative-to-battery-powered-electric-cars/ You tank "energy rich" carbazole, and when the hydrogen is discharged (while driving), the energy deficient carbazole is stored in a separate tank. Back at the filling station, that "used" carbazole is pumped back (and reused), and you get your primary tank full of energy rich carbazole again.
The really big advantage of hydrogen is that filling up your car takes exactly as long as it does now for a standard car. No "recharging overnight", you can refill the car in a minute or two. So you can refill in the middle of a journey without having to stay at a hotel - you can use the hydrogen car like a car. And the range of a full tank of hydrogen is also bigger than any affordable battery you can have in a car right now.
Yeah, that Tesla is expected to be around $60 when it launches. The gas Scion IQ is $15k, so I expect this to be at or under $20k. Not even the same ballpark.
I wish Aptera was succesful, that would have been a radical concept and may have reached under $30k. Batteries just don't have the energy density yet (or in the near future), when you turn on heating, airconditioning, your electronics. I think a combustion-electric, like a train, is a superior solution for now (not like the hybrid cars on the road now, that give the motor a direct connection to the wheels), allowing you to drop in any type of motor - gas, diesel, stirling, etc.
Anyway, Scion's competition will be the Honda Insight, Honda Fit, Toyota Prius, and Smart Car - not the Teslas of the world. (Even if all of them aren't electric.)
Why would the battery run out? Unlike a gas engine, an electric car doesn't need to "idle".
Note the qualification, "with AC". AC uses a lot of power; in a car you'd simply steal a little from a belt running off the engine. But in the electric car you need to run the AC motor constantly, using up a much larger percentage of your "fuel" than you would in a an electric car.
Yes others have noted accessories run off a separate battery. But that presents two unpleasant scenarios:
1) You are stuck in the middle of traffic and the AC cuts out hours away from home.
2) The accessory battery runs out and to keep the AC going you start draining from the main battery, taking out your range.
Both unpleasant and not things you need to worry about as much in a car today. If you were pretty low of gas you might not run the AC either for a while - but only to make it to a gas station, not all the way home...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Smart cars make little sense in probably 95% of the US, where their small size is of no advantage.
But put one in a place like Key West or NYC and it will shine : parking is so much easier (or makes that impossible spot, possible – saving you the $20 parking fee), you aren't blocked by double-parked cars, you can fit in very narrow streets comfortably, etc ... And in these places acceleration is not so important, while cargo capacity is more than enough to make your daily commute and pick up some groceries on the way back.
From solar power, which is widely available, and only requires painting something black in this case, maybe adding some reflectors? Except, of course, that's not how we do it :p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"