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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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