California's Hydrogen Highway Adds Another Station

plover writes Scientific American notes that a new hydrogen refueling station has been added in Sacramento, bringing the state's total to ten. This was timed to coincide with Toyota's Japan release of their first commercially available fuel cell vehicle, the Mirai. Toyota is scheduled to start selling cars in Northern California next year.

Comments

Ten! Stations

[CrimsonAvenger]

Well, I know I'm ready to buy a hydrogen burner, knowing that there are ten refueling stations in the entire State....

Re:Ten! Stations

[Anonymous Coward]

immigration does that...

Re:I suppose this is a good thing...

[savuporo]

Well to wheels, hydrogen is probably the most polluting fuel cycle imagined. At present like 95% of the hydrogen supply comes from fossil fuels, and end to end cycle efficiency is even lower than an average gas guzzling SUV.

Rather than trying to push this into passenger cars, working on hydrogen based long haul trucks and airliners makes a lot more sense. But even then the theorethical "green" benefits are not clear cut.

Toyota's mirai

[kruach aum]

Mirai means (far) future in japanese, as opposed to shourai, which means near future.

Re:Toyota's mirai

[rmdingler]

It is assumed the Mercedes Hindenburg II LS will be a viable competitor.

Re:I suppose this is a good thing...

[plopez]

I don't think t make sense in any way. The large carbon foot print and the fact it does nothing to wean us off of hydrocarbons makes t a bad idea. It makes more sense to burn natural gas. I cuts out middle man for lower costs and pollution. And a better developed infrastructure.

In case anyone else is behind on this

[phantomfive]

I wasn't aware that hydrogen fuel cell cars were already approaching production. Here are the stats for the Toyota Mirai:

Cost: $57,000 (before taxes and rebates)
0-60: 9 seconds
Range: 300 miles
It's a hybird, so it also has a battery pack (like the Prius)
You have to dump the resulting water

At the moment, most hydrogen is generated using fossil fuels (much like electricity), so it is only one of a two-part process if we wish to stop releasing CO2.

Re:In case anyone else is behind on this

[wonkey_monkey]

You have to dump the resulting water

I assumed you meant that it was contaminated or something, and wasn't safe just to vent from the car, but it seems that...

The Mirai has a button labeled H2O that opens a gate at the rear, dumping the water vapor that forms from the hydrogen-oxygen reaction in the fuel cell.

Is this really not something they could automate?

Re:I suppose this is a good thing...

[mspohr]

Most hydrogen comes from natural gas (with lousy conversion efficiency. If you get your hydrogen from electricity, it has even worse efficiency. It uses about four times the electricity to make hydrogen and then convert it back to electricity in your "fool cell" vehicle as just putting the electricity in your vehicle and bypassing the whole hydrogen part.
Plus, electricity is everywhere, literally everywhere. Anyone can just plug in at home and work, etc. With hydrogen, you have only ten places to refuel in California... not going very far.

Only 118,746 ...

[jamesl]

... to go.

The USA had 118,756 filling stations (gas stations) in 2007 according to the Census
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

Not quite ready for prime time.
Drivers will likely have to take a slight detour to reach the station, which is in an industrial section of West Sacramento, next to a cement factory that is currently being demolished.

The station was originally planned at a Shell station 2.5 miles away in a much busier section of town, but building codes required setbacks too wide to fit the hydrogen infrastructure within the station.

Re: Only 118,746 ...

[Irate Engineer]

There was actually very good infrastructure in place for liquid fuel engines since kerosene (for lanterns and such) was widely available and sold in metered amounts from pumps in the late 1800s. It was not nearly the stretch to extend that network for gasoline dispensing as it would be to build a completely new infrastructure for hydrogen fuel.

Hydrogen, from generation to storage to use, is a bad, inconvenient, and very expensive idea.

Re: Only 118,746 ...

[WindBourne]

in fact, the cars from before about 1950's burned gasoline, ethanol, diesel, or ..... kerosene. As such, they worked with the fueling stations that existed for heaters and lanterns.

And yet, most car makers and oil companies want to push H2
while Musk continues to push plain old electricity.
I wonder who is likely to win considering that in another 3 years, the Tesla model 3 will costs around 35K and they will be making 250K cars / year? That will put them in ~ top 25 car makers.

Spent 100 million on what?

[Whatsmynickname]

Hydrogen stations in California have had a choppy rollout. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) first created the "hydrogen highway" concept in 2004 by executive order and budgeted $15 million for hydrogen demonstration projects, stations and buses through 2008. Schwarzenegger increased spending in 2007, signing A.B. 118, which provided roughly $90 million for hydrogen through this year. A bill that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed last year, A.B. 8, reformed the funding process, allocating $20 million per year through 2023 or until 100 stations are built.

So CA has spent $100 million so far, and all we have are 10 stations? Where did all the money go?

Hurray for competing standards of nonsense!

[DaHat]

On the one side we have the entrenched and largely ubiquitous gasoline infrastructure trying to keep electricity from becoming the dominant (good luck)... the recent upstart of hydrogen which requires you to rather carefully plan your commute... and LNG sitting there in the corner saying "Don't forget about me guys!"

It's like Verizon vs ATT on pay-per-view side and Sprint in it's own ring waiting for T-Mobile to arrive on PBS.

It's pretty easy to guess which is going to get the bigger numbers in terms of revenue.