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They're going to have to pay people to take those Mirais at the rate things are going.
by emodendroket 3y ago
They're going to have to pay people to take those Mirais at the rate things are going.
- standeven 3y agoWow, you weren’t kidding. I just checked Autotrader and low-ish mileage 2017 Mirais start at $6k. Business idea: buy Mirais, pull out and sell the H2 systems, and drop in battery packs to make them BEVs.
- RandomWorker 3y agoRetrofit would be between 15-20k a piece, are you able to sell them for 30-40k? Where’s the profit?
- LoganDark 3y agoI think you'd have to lift the entire cabin in order to fit a big enough battery underneath it. Still, not quite outside the realm of possibility. Sillier things have been done by individuals before.
- dhahlen 3y agoIf you look at cutaways of the hydrogen vehicles, there is an enormous amount of space used for tanks and the fuel cell etc. The battery layout could be closer to that of a Polestar 2 rather than the more common 'skateboard' battery pack. Not that it would be an easy project!
- wkat4242 3y agoYou can also just burn the hydrogen in an engine. The Mazda R8 could run on hydrogen thanks to its rotary engine. Still need the huge tank though :)
- LoganDark 3y agoYou can do that without having to make any changes to the fuel lines / injectors?
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoI believe fuel cell vehicles convert hydrogen to electricity and then have electric drive trains.
- yreg 3y agoIsn't this an interesting opportunity for Japanese buyers to import back?
- eethawkey 3y agowrong side of road?
- Scoundreller 3y agoProbably shares enough parts with another Toyota to not be too difficult to swap it back.
- emodendroket 3y agoAnd use their plentiful hydrogen stations?
- yreg 3y agoYes. Wikipedia says there are 167-181 stations in Japan, while USA had 58.
- emodendroket 3y agoBy way of comparison, there are just under 30,000 gas stations in Japan, which itself represents a 50% dropoff from previous peaks and leaves some people needing to drive long distances for gas (c.f. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01830/#:~:text=As%20the%20number%20of%20gas,for%20Natural%20Resources%20and%20Energy https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01830/#:~:text=As%20th....). That's still pathetic.
- kolinko 3y agoH2 systems and electronics themselves are worth more than $6k probably.
- userbinator 3y agoOr just LS swap them.
- thot_experiment 3y agoI can't imagine this would be easy to do, but I will 100% click the youtube video when someone does.
- Scoundreller 3y agoBuy it. Store it in an arctic tundra desert protected from the elements. In some decades, some country will roll out mass nuclear and dirt cheap H2 and you'll export it there as a $$$ vintage H2 car and make bank.
- Symbiote 3y agoThere are a few bits operators in the USA using or planning to buy hydrogen buses. If the fueling system is compatible, perhaps they would use these cars as company vehicles. I can't think of anyone else that would have a private hydrogen fuel station.
- linguae 3y agoYeah, I purchased a brand new Mirai in late 2022. I was excited about hydrogen, but the past year has been very rough, with dramatic price hikes on fuel as well as station reliability issues. Thankfully in Silicon Valley (where I work) I’m mostly unaffected by the closure of Shell’s stations since there was only one (South San Jose), but this is bad news for people living and working in areas where Shell was the primary provider of hydrogen; there aren’t many hydrogen stations to begin with, and the loss of a hydrogen station could be a nightmare for a Mirai driver. The Mirai itself is a wonderful vehicle, but I don’t recommend purchasing one; for me I believe it was a huge financial mistake. I still owe about $35K but I’d be lucky to get an offer for $15K if I were to sell it now. I’m active in a Mirai Facebook group and I’ve heard stories of dealerships refusing to accept Mirais as trade-in offers, and I’ve also heard of trade-ins falling through because the owner’s Mirai loan was so underwater that attempting to roll over the remaining Mirai loan’s balance on another vehicle exceeds the lender’s loan to value limits.
- apexalpha 3y agoWhy did you even buy this? Is there any advantage this has over a BEV or normal petrol car?
- theshrike79 3y agoToyota was pretty much giving them away. Huge subsidies on prices, amazing load offers and I think you could get a card for 15k of free H2. It was a good offer in theory, but the H2 infrastructure never caught up.
- readthenotes1 3y agoIt doesn't answer for the OP. He still owes $35k on an experiment.
- linguae 3y ago1. I wanted to drive a zero-emissions vehicle. In 2022 gasoline prices in California reached record-high prices, and I believed it was a good time to look at alternatives. 2. I live in an apartment complex that lacks EV chargers. My landlord has no plans to install them, so buying an EV meant being entirely dependent on public chargers. 3. The hydrogen situation looked more optimistic in 2022, with new stations being planned and with infrastructure improvements Coming Soon(TM). Of course, gasoline prices fell, but hydrogen prices went through the roof in 2023. When I bought my Mirai in November 2022, hydrogen cost $19.70/kg at True Zero stations; most stations in Silicon Valley are operated by True Zero. A month after I purchased my Mirai, prices rose to $23.75, then again the following month to $26.75. These price hikes were blamed on the spike in natural gas prices that occurred in early 2023. But while natural gas prices did fall, hydrogen prices never fell; in fact, they kept increasing until it reached $36 in summer 2023, which remains the price at True Zero stations. Thankfully True Zero’s stations in Silicon Valley have been relatively reliable. Every now and then there would be supply-related outages, but they have been resolved relatively quickly in Silicon Valley. However, the situation is different in Southern California, and I feel especially bad for Sacramento-area Mirai drivers, who are reliant on one Iwatani station that gets so much traffic that there is a waitlist app! People have waited hours in line for fuel there. The silver lining is that my Mirai came with a $15,000 fuel card that I use for purchasing fuel, so I don’t have to deal with the direct costs now. However, at $36/kg my card will likely run out by the end of the year, and once it does I’m on the hook for paying nearly $200 for a full tank, with a range of about 300 miles. By comparison, the Prius c that I traded in upon purchasing my Mirai cost $56 to fill up when gas was $7/gal, and it had a range of roughly 360 miles. I’m hoping that hydrogen production will increase this year as a result of the energy bill Biden signed last year, which has provisions for investing in hydrogen. The Mirai is a wonderful luxury car, but I admit that if Toyota announced a buyback option for the Mirai, then I’d hand over the keys immediately and revert to a hybrid like a Prius or a Crown.
- happytiger 3y agoHave you see the fuel price for those things? It’s obscene. And it’s not like you can make your own fueling station at home. Doing so it an hilariously difficult engineering with plenty of potential to blow yourself up. I mean it’s easy to make hydrogen. It’s just difficult to make hydrogen at this scale and even when you do it still has to be compressed. To build one in California costs 1.5-2m, and I actually found the company that owns the patent on the home hydrogen refueling system, but I imagine that’s not cheap enough to make up for the money saved on the car. https://residentialhydrogenpower.com/product/sfha-model-300/ https://residentialhydrogenpower.com/product/sfha-model-300/