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Toyota's Fuel Cell Car To Launch In Japan Next March
puddingebola writes with news that Toyota will be bringing its first fuel-cell car to market in Japan next March. It's expected to cost about $68,700, and Toyota plans to bring it to the U.S. and European markets later that summer.
With two of Japan’s three biggest automakers going all in on fuel cells, the country’s long-term future as an automotive powerhouse could now hinge largely on the success of what they hope will be an important technology in the next few decades. ... Japan’s governing party is pushing for ample subsidies and tax breaks for consumers to bring the cost of a fuel-cell car down to about $20,000 by 2025. The government is also aiming to create 100 hydrogen fuel stations by the end of March 2016 in urban areas where the vehicles will be sold initially. ... Hydrogen vehicles can run five times longer than battery-operated electric cars, and their tanks can be filled in just a few minutes, compared with recharging times from 30 minutes up to several hours for electric cars.
Where can I reserve one?
only 100 'gas stations' so far.. maybe the solar magnet engines should be employed in the push to freedom from inescapable usury etc,,,?
The Humanity?
The real price is $70,000. The target $20k price is subsidized by the Japanese government, don't expect similar subsidies in the US.
Right now at the Gas Pump we have 87, 89 and 91 gas.
Having this change to Gas, Charging, and Hydrogen would be a welcome sign.
The problem we have with our energy policies is that we are trying to find a sliver bullet. This isn't the case anymore, we will need to have a more diverse set of engines that run on different methods. This will allow for greater competition in the energy market and keep price per performance uniform.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The nice thing about fuel cell technology working it's way into to the automotive arena is that it can dovetail quite nicely with the ongoing developments being made with electric vehicles, since there is significant overlap between the two.
In a band? Use WheresTheGig for free.
RTF Summary?:
It's expected to cost about $68,700
Fuel Cells run on hydrogen. Hydrogen can be obtained by refining oil, but that is more expensive than making gasoline and the only reduction in CO2 comes from the centralization of production (easier to cleanse a refinery's emissions than a vehicle's). Hydrogen can as be obtained without oil, but it is always more difficult than electricity to create and store. Hydrogen is also more difficult to transport than electricity. And now we find out that an established, mass market auto company can't even create an inexpensive Fuel Cell car. Their effort ended up with a car that is just as expensive as a very high quality, fully electric car which was created years ago by an almost brand new car company. Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way. They are the present and future of transportation.
takes all the complexity away instantly
...a true statement in any year.
When did HFC cars start getting a range of 1000+ miles? Certainly not Toyota's. Did the petrol-heads re-entrench with the HFCs now?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
just ask jay? is this old news already? http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=leno+bmw+hydrogen
The oil industry likes fuel cells (have run advertising showing off their benefits in the past) - i.e. big money wants this to keep fuel cells going and happen.
Unsubsidized hydrogen is more expensive than gasoline (to go an equivalent distance in a fuel cell vehicle) at this point.
Electricity out of the plug, for a battery electric vehicle, in the U.S. averages $1.25 per gallon in gasoline equivalency (sometimes much less at night).
This is a well-understood technology that has existed since the 1960's -- aside from some materials tech not normally associated with car production, it isn't a big leap to create a vehicle that uses a fuel cell -- heck, they could take an existing Plug-in Prius, pull the battery pack, add-in a fuel cell, and job done.
What *precisely* is making the car this expensive? (I did not RTFA, this *is* Slashdot after all)......
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The real price is $70,000. The target $20k price is subsidized by the Japanese government, don't expect similar subsidies in the US.
Haha, yeah OK. Don't expect to see jack shit in sales without something similar.
Forget subsidies for a moment. In 2025, 20K won't buy you shit with the rate of inflation we have now!
Life is not for the lazy.
Nice to see fuel-cell cars, but they're addressing the wrong problem. Shrinking net energy availability is the problem, fuel-cell cars don't address that. I think smaller cars and (motor)bikes would be more useful. Why does a 100 pound woman buying 10 pounds of groceries need to take a 3000 pound vehicle along with her when a 20 pound bicycle and a back pack would suffice?
Just what I want, twin 10000 PSI bombs waiting underneath me for just the right fender bender.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
So for $70,000 why would I want to buy this car versus a Tesla Model S? Or two Chevy Volts?
Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way. They are the present and future of transportation.
I couldn't have said it better. Fuel cells are much of a roadbump in the long drive of automotive technology development as are 3D TVs for home entertainment (i.e., not quite as bad as DIVX, but ultimately not mainstream usable). The manufacture and distribution of hydrogen alone is a herculean task let alone the fact that it would require changes to an entrenched distribution network of gas/diesel.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
the only reduction in CO2 comes from the centralization of production
...where you can do CO2 sequestration and, theoretically, bring emissions down to zero.
(Other than that, I agree with everything you wrote. I worked in R&D on automotive fuel cells for seven years and quit because I believe there's no future in it. They might have been a good idea when the competition was lead-acid batteries, but not any longer.)
2nd comings http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlzV0JOCHp4
Why use hydrogen with a fuel cell? Why not internal combustion instead? Wouldn't it be more efficient, simple, only by-product is water, etc.?
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Great technology but they are being promoted by the fossil fuel industry because they fear electric cars. They focus on how they are clean and have invested millions in the "Hydrogen Economy (tm)" marketing to distract from the fact that Hydrogen has to come from somewhere - and that "somewhere" is the fossil fuel companies tracking. The reforming process from natural gas to Hydrogen generates massive amounts of CO2. It only shifts the problem out of the public eye. It's quite cynical what they are doing. Don't be duped
Hydrogen can be obtained by refining oil
Sure it can. But nobody does it that way. Most hydrogen comes from steam reforming of natural gas.
Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way.
Except for range, fueling time, and (maybe) cost.
Since 2008, inflation has been 3.0% or lower every single year. I'm not sure what point you were trying to make, but if it was "inflation is out of control!!" then you're obviously not reading about the history of inflation over the last 50 years.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
When technology first comes out, it's always expensive at first because they have to recoup research costs. Unless of course they decide to take a hit to improve market adoption, e.g. game consoles, but that is usually due to their money being made on something other than the actual product. After it attracts mass appeal and starts raking in the money, they can start lowering the price point significantly because it becomes self-sustaining. Then normal market forces of supply and demand kick in which affect the price. I actually want fuel cells to get popular, because they're good for the environment as they only exhaust water. I think the government, however, should mandate that in high humidity regions the local population should be required to purchase only non-fuel cell cars. But, for very arid regions this is going to finally help solve the drought issues.
On the plus side however hydrogen production would be a perfect match for intermittent power sources like wind or solar. Send any needed amounts to the grid and instead of wasting the excess run a hydrogen production plant.
That's quite high. Usually the inflation rate is calculated from some base items that may or may not be relevant. Have wages gone up at the same rate?? I'd say not, based on the fact that I and most of my colleagues earn the same as 10 years ago.
3%... if you trust those in power.
Using previous methods of inflation, we are between 6-10% inflation: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
"In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living. "
Right there in the first paragraph. $68K.
The post doesn't fail to mention the real price.
It's expected to cost about $68,700...
Nor does it claim the price is $20K. It says they hope to get the price down that far, in *part* with subsidies and tax breaks. They're not going to offer $50K in subsides on a $70K car. Most of that price reduction is going to come from improvements in technology and production scale resulting in reduced costs. (Exactly the same way that gasoline powered cars became less expensive over time, going from luxury-only contraptions to the Model T.)
Actually the recharge time for electric cars is not superior, merely stating 'electric cars are superior in every way' does not make it so.
In the case of fuel cells, they are expensive because they contain platinum. That isn't going to get any cheaper.
And the current generation of fuel cells can only use hydrogen as fuel, which is still a fossil fuel (as another poster points out, produced from natural gas). Just because they conveniently removed all the carbon for you centrally and you can feel better about none of it coming out of the tail pipe, doesn't make it less of a fossil fuel.
So long as you're allowed to leave out everything that's actually going up in price, yes. Like houses, or food, or gas, or... well, pretty much everything you actually need. But if all you buy is Android tablets, wow, inflation is low.
Sure it can. But nobody does it that way. Most hydrogen comes from steam reforming of natural gas.
Which is predictably energy-intensive.
Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way.
Except for range, fueling time, and (maybe) cost.
Twice the range is good, but nothing to write home about when diesels are now getting 800 miles, and have been getting 400 for decades — and they can be filled up with carbon-neutral fuel right now, instead of carbon-positive hydrogen-from-natural-gas.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
According to Honda's website, the Clarity has a range of 240 miles, less than Tesla's EPA range of 265. Definitely not costs seeing as how the hydrogen costs more than gasoline. But you do have fueling time, assuming you can find a hydrogen fueling station.
Right, because tesla haven't sold any of their $80,000 car that goes 1/5th of the distance, right?
What the hell kind of logic is that? Are you honestly trying to say that reducing emissions on our roadways won't help with air pollution and the heat islands caused by all of those emissions getting trapped? Are you really trying to say that scrubbing on an industrial scale is not inherently more efficient that millions of vehicles that also have to maintain horsepower? The argument is absurd.
I used to be extremely excited for fuel cell vehicles about 10 years ago. Then I learned that they don't perform well in cold weather, are very dangerous during impact, hydrogen is not easy or cheap to make, and most importantly of all, you still have to go out of your way every so many miles to find a damn station to fill up. Compare that to electric cars which require less maintenance, are safer, work better in the cold (albeit with slightly degraded performance), already have established channels for generating and distributing energy, and allow me to leave my garage fully recharged every day. At this point, electric cars have a big competitive edge and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Could I get a map of hydrogen refueling stations?
I want to plan all of my driving to remain at least a quarter mile away from those things.
One big "boom," and no one will ever drive these things again.
There's no mention of how they managed to store the hydrogen safely. It's a small and spacious gas, so trying to contain it in a high enough pressure safely to give a car powered by it enough range has been the historical biggest challenge. I want to know what guarantee there is that the hydrogen tank won't spontaneously burst, or what happens after I leave the car parked for a few weeks.
The natural gas version of the civic is available, right now, goes about 250 miles on a tank, enough for all but the most insane of commuters, and costs less than 30k.
A massive natural gas delivery infrastructure is already there, we just need a commitment, via tax credits or outright subsidies, for existing gas stations to add CNG pumps.
Switching a good portion of the auto fleet over to CNG would lower CO2 emissions and a lot of the nastyer emissions that create ground level smog
Is it as good as electric vehicles powered from a clean grid? No, but it's a great bridge technology.
Reading? About history? Fuk u m8
After owning a Nissan Leaf for 8 months, I think fuel cells are A Dump Idea. Given a choice between nearly free electric charge in 30 min vs paying for fuel cell purchase, I would rather wait 30 min.
"And now we find out that an established, mass market auto company can't even create an inexpensive Fuel Cell car."
On their first commercial try.
The inflation he quoted was based on the Consumer Price Index, a weighted average of prices for a "basket" of the 300 goods and services that American consumers spend the most on. Food, housing and transportation and related goods and services make up significant portions of this basket.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumerpriceindex.asp
Basically, you are wrong. Inflation is not only under control, most economists are deeply concerned that it is TOO LOW.
It's pretty clear the pure EVs won the race against hydrogen options so I though the days of news reports such as these was history. Looking back at the history of hydrogen offerings I can't help but think they were promoted by the oil industry as a way to slow pure EV development and as was fall back plan should someone actually work how to make a cost effective hydrogen vehicle. Lets hope that news sites such as Slashdot don't waste space on such rubbish in future.
CO2 sequestration as conventionally imagined is just a huge hand out to the coal industry though. Depending on geological strata which no one's even sure can reliably hold that much CO2 as an energy plan is just absurd. It's a plan we don't know will work, which has a limited range of viability to start with, and the results to date are not promising.
That said, Orico and the CSIRO in Australia have been doing something much cooler with the idea: chemical reactors where heat and CO2 is reacted with minerals to permanently sequester it as carbonate rock which can be dumped (or as they propose: refined into concrete). That process I fully support, since they're proposing running it as a retrofit to pretty much any fossil fuel powerplant, anywhere.
Diesels cannot, in anyway, be scalably filled with carbon neutral fuel. Biodiesel and it's ilk have all the same problems as ethanol.
Still cheaper than a Tesla.
Diesels cannot, in anyway, be scalably filled with carbon neutral fuel. Biodiesel and it's ilk have all the same problems as ethanol.
False, and also false.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Better them than us.
Though I would rather they'd make fuel cells that run on alcohol, sugar, or a hydrocarbon. I don't expect storing hydrogen will turn out very well, especially for a fuel cell for a cell phone.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Isn't in the government's interest to report a low inflation rate? Cost of living increases for government checks (social security, active duty and retired military personal, etc.) are based on the calculated CPI. The "basket items" are never revealed to the public (as far as I have been able to determine). Inflation "being under control" is just what the doctor ordered for an austerity minded federal government, is it not?
Just like the nissan leaf, it is highly overpriced, and pretty ugly. What I find interesting is that most major car makers want to go down the pay of H2, when in reality, it is one of the most expensive alternatives to gas/diesel.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You're playing the definition game.
When the common AC speaks about waste heat, they probably don't understand heat engines as you say, but what they do know is that there is several hundred degree "air" being blown out of the tail pipe that isn't doing anything other than heating the backside of the car up. That is waste heat as most people see it. You can use that heat to do other types of work. The AC mentioned turbochargers and steam turbines but in a vehicle, the most (un)obvious use of waste heat is the heater core providing heat to the cabin. If that heat wasn't routed through that exchanger, it would have been dumped into the atmosphere via the radiator. For all intents and purposes that is "waste" because then we'd need to find a new way to provide environmental control of the cabin which would require a second amount of energy input. Engine intake air was often (and still is on some cars) preheated from the waste heat off the exhaust manifold. Engine coolant heat is used to keep the throttle body from icing. On vehicles still utilizing a carburetor, the intake manifold itself is heated with exhaust to aid in vaporization. There has been a lot of uses for "waste" heat through out the history of the car. VW just heated the cabin with the heat out of the exhaust (which was a failure for other reasons). Yes, there is a limit to the realistic amount of work one can get out of that waste heat, sure, but you can't possibly tell me that we have extracted everything usable in a current generation vehicle. Typically, the limiting factor in utilizing any waste heat is financial, not physical.
Carbon fiber tanks don't violently rocket about when compromised. Instead a crack forms that quickly grows, allowing the outgassing to take place in a much less dangerous fashion than metal tanks.
Hmmm. Lets see.
.12/KWH, and only .05/KWH during the nighttime. With a battery, I get around 90% efficiency combined with 90% motor. .10/KWH. In addition, the LH2 was shipped around via truck, Then stored on a property. All of which adds costs. Then you have around 45% efficiency of the fuel cell, combined with 90% motor.
All fuel cell cars up to this point has been around 300 KM. Now, this one will be 800 KM or 500 miles. So, you can now drive 250 miles away from all 4 locations in which you can fill up at. Not, really that good at range, eh?
Fueling time does you no good when there are only 12 fueling stations in all of the USA, and only 4 cities. OTOH, you can fuel all over the USA.
In addiiton, starting next year, Tesla will be doing 90 exchanges of batteries, and will offer batteries with 500 MPC.
Costs? Hmmm. Lets see. Electricity for daytime is
OTOH, H2 has to be created from CH4, using loads of electricity that was bought at around
Just in the car itself, the electric car is around 81% efficient, while the LH2 car has less than 1/2 of that.
So..... How exactly will hydrogen fuel cells produce cheaper costs when the vehicle itself starts off far more inefficient, and then you have to waste butt loads of electricity on conversion and transportation?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
scrubbing does not remove CO2.
In fact, using LH2, will increase CO2, vs. simply using electric cars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
even better would be to charge batteries.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There's a much better article here, with numbers (including side-by-side comparisons of efficiencies of battery cars, fuel cell cars and internal combustion cars for fuel processing, fuel usage and total) and interviews with both Toyota, Plug in America etc.
You are basically correct that there are only a couple ways to get hygrogen on an industrial scale. There are of course some very promising new methods, but these are only working in the lab so far.
You also say, "Electrolysis is extremely inefficient. You loos about 50% of the electrical energy you put into this process.". ..
This is totally correct. However, does it really matter?
If I use coal or gas to create the the power, then sure it does. A lot. But what if we used something else to create the power?
What if we parked 100 square miles of solar reflectors and molten salt towers in Nevada? These type of plants generate loads of power. I could imagine to use them just to power hydrogen production. Then we do not even have to care that they only work in the day. Hell, we don't even have the problem of pollution generated from making solar power cell, since these are just mirrors. Other than keeping it clean, the power production is super cheap, so who cares if we waste half of it to make another fuel for cars which is way cleaner to use than gas?
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They have, they are the cool toy of the month... (or year)...
But the actual numbers are pretty small and will never get big until the price comes down by a whole bunch.
Actually, it goes about the same distance. When they say "5 times the range of an electric car", they are probably comparing with their own abysmal electric carts. According to Wikipedia, the Toyota FCV concept will actually have a range of 480 km (300 miles) which is pretty close to that of a Model S 85 (426 km according to the same Wikipedia article, assuming it uses the same method of range measurement).
And you can't fill it up in your own home, and a refill will cost more, etc...
Nope, I'm not getting one.
Only just: a model S 60 is $69,900. And I imagine refilling with hydrogen at a gas station will cost a fair bit more than plugging in at home, making the Tesla cheaper and much easier to operate.
The S 60 has 2/3 the range of that concept FCV (208 miles vs. 300 according to Wikipedia), certainly way more than a fifth as stated in the article, and for $10,000 more you get an S 85 with a 265 mile range.
It will be 800 km in "extended cruise mode", meaning constant low speed, the way car manufacturers used to measure range before better standards were invented. In other words, they're cheating. Actual real world range will be about the same as a Tesla S 85.
There are hundrets if fuel cell types that don't run on hydrogen.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You also may not have heard of DME, which can be created over a catalyst from cellulosic derived syngas.
I don't understand why Toyota would pursue this technology when we have batteries that are competitive with it currently and they get better every day... and battery technology is just manifestly better in that we already have electricity distributed to every location on earth... Why build a completely new, energy inefficient, liquid transportation industry just to add a middle-man to electricity distribution and make life less convenient for the the drivers?
It just seems to me like an attempt to keep hydrocarbon fuels relevant... or perhaps to see hydrogen deployed so that Toyota can keep their ICE engines relevant... It just doesn't make sense otherwise.
Yes, I'm sure there are special applications one could point to where hydrogen may make sense in some niche under some circumstances... but... for general automobile usage? I just don't get it...
We just pump out something cheap and easy to store, then make it.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/0...
What's happened to the price of houses since 2008?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.