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Toyota Announces Plans For Fuel Cell Car By 2015

Posted by samzenpus on from the power-up dept.

puddingebola writes "Toyota has announced plans for a fuel cell powered car at the Tokyo Motor show. From the article, 'Satoshi Ogiso, the Toyota Motor Corp. executive in charge of fuel cells, said Wednesday the vehicle is not just for leasing to officials and celebrities but will be an everyday car for ordinary consumers, widely available at dealers. "Development is going very smoothly," he told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the Tokyo Motor Show. The car will go on sale in Japan in 2015 and within a year later in Europe and U.S."'"

1 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:they've had this place since what 2010? by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hydrogen itself is just made with electricity and water.

    Yes, except that is not really how most of it gets made.

    Frankly, one of the cheapest sources for hydrogen is from natural gas:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Steam_reforming

    Besides, where is all the electricity going to come from to do from pure water? Coal fired power plants? Yea, that sure fixes the problem!

    So either you take it from natural gas, which is about 80% efficient, or you take it from water which isn't efficient at all and get the electricity from coal power plants, which isn't clean either.

    I'm all for replacing oil and gas as our fuels, but unless we use nuclear energy to power the Electrolysis to pull it from water, this isn't solving anything.

    BTW, less than 5% of hydrogen is actually obtained from water, 95+% is obtained from fossil fuels.