7 ms·

Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future

26 points by gopi 12y ago

protomyth 12y ago
"the only byproduct is water, which exits through the tailpipe" How much water are we talking about and what effect is this going to have on a highway in the north in winter?
- nrb 12y ago
  It's in the same ballpark as the amount of water vapor that comes out of the tailpipe of an internal combustion engine.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  Comparable to the amount of water produced by gasoline vehicles.
MrGuyUser 12y ago
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it's very rare on earth so it has to be manufactured. So the oil companies totally would love you to switch from the oil they will sooner or later not be able to fracking get anymore to hydrogen which they can raise prices on until the day when nuclear fusion becomes something they could sell again as long as it remains expensive enough to be sellable. Hydrogen is dumb, at 300 miles / 450kms a fuel cell I notice there is no mention of the price which is laughably much more than gasoline is today. Then they say that mileage is further than "most" electric cars. True except for the Tesla which actually 85kwh edition has at least 450kms of range. And also Hydrogen cannot be regenerated from breaking which makes it less efficient than full electric. In the future it maybe possible to charge your car with solar or wind or fart energy, but not if your Petrol Company lobbied alternative fuel car runs on a Hydrogen Fuel Cell and has the acceleration of a brick on wheels at 0-100kms in 9.6 seconds. A hummer does that in around 10.5 seconds.
- teraflop 12y ago
  The article does mention price: "While EVs take hours to recharge, the fueling cost is a fraction of the roughly $45 a hydrogen fill-up will cost." That's more expensive than gasoline, but as of a few months ago the price difference would have only been about 30% compared to my relatively fuel-efficient Honda Fit. The gap is larger now thanks to the recently plummeting gas prices in the US, of course. > And also Hydrogen cannot be regenerated from breaking which makes it less efficient than full electric. As the article doesn't mention but Wikipedia does, the Mirai also has a battery and supports regenerative braking. It's basically a hybrid car that uses a fuel cell instead of a gasoline engine.
  - MrGuyUser 12y ago
    Ok I was wrong about the regenerative breaking. It makes sense since it would be easy to implement. Most of the drive system of a Hydrogen Car will be electric already. It will use batteries as well. The world will once again be at the whim of the hydrogen producers which would likely be Shell, BP or Exxon. Electric cars are only going to get better and generating your own power is only going to get easier. Oil companies don't like the loss of control. Hybrid's pull some tricks to save fuel, but I might argue they have much more points of failure and are harder to fix when they do fail. I predict that on Dec 15th they will sell one or two of these cars to Toyota Executives whom receive a bonus just a little more than what the car would cost if they did.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Keep in mind that the $45 fill-up cost is for about 300 miles of driving, versus 4-500 miles for a typical gasoline car. At current prices, my Prius v will go about 500 miles on a $30 fill-up, which would cost $75 for hydrogen, assuming $45 gives you 300 miles. Even if gas goes back to $4/gallon, it's still $45 for ~500 miles. A full charge on a Model S would cost me something like $8, by comparison. Less if I went for time-of-use metering and charged it at night.
- secabeen 12y ago
  They don't mention the price because current systems cannot accurately measure the amount of H2 being dispensed into the car. Every Fuel Cell car comes with free fuel coordinated by the manufacturer.
henrikschroder 12y ago
Good that there's serious money being sunk into alternatives to electric cars, more is always good. But I'm seriously tired of the fact that all articles about fuel-cells enthusiastically exclaims that "it's only byproduct is water!!!!", as if hydrogen was some sort of magic alternative to hydrocarbons. It's not, it's an energy transmission medium, not an energy source. For fuel-cell cars to work, you would need to have energy some place that consumes water and splits it into hydrogen and oxygen, releasing the oxygen into the air, and the hydrogen into containers that can then go into some sort of infrastructure such that individual cars can be filled up with it as necessary. And if you think about the amount of gasoline infrastructure that exists, we'd have to pretty much duplicate that, or convert that, into hydrogen shipping infrastructure, which is a pretty tall order. But for electricity, we already have the infrastructure. If you have a house, you have a place for filling up your electric car, and you have a method for paying for the energy that your car consumes, and there is a way to move the energy from wherever it is produced to your house. So the story for electric car adoption is "You don't have to take trips to the gas station anymore!", but the story for fuel cell car adoption is "You have to take trips to a new type of gas stations that don't exist yet!". That's quite a hurdle...
- henrikschroder 12y ago
  The only game-changer I could see there would be if we could make some sort of in-your-home hydrolyzer, so that you just connect water and electricity to it, and it connects to your car to fill it up. That's on-par with the convenience of an electric car, if we ignore the safety issues of hydrogen gas leaks in urban neighbourhoods...
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Regenerative fuel cells are cells with an in-cell hydrolysis system; if you could incorporate them, a fuel cell vehicle would have pretty much the same recharging UX as any other EV. Even with stationary at-home electrolysis systems, if you don't store more than one fill-up in the system, there's marginal additional risk compared to having a hydrogen-fueled vehicle in the first place.
jobu 12y ago
There have been two major hurdles for the development of hydrogen fuel-cell cars: 1) storing the hydrogen - hydrogen is extremely corrosive, and not very energy dense compared to gasoline 2) variable energy output - fuel cells are good at producing a steady, constant amount of power, but the power requirements of a car can be quite variable (especially for city driving) Anyone have details on how Toyota overcame these?
- secabeen 12y ago
  On 2), the Mirai has a 1.6kWh battery. I believe the model is an electric motor driven by the battery, which is recharged by the fuel cell.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  On #1, energy density isn't a huge problem; sure, hydrogen is worse than gasoline in energy:volume (though much better in energy:mass), but its energy:volume is better than that of existing battery technologies -- this is one of the advantages FCVs have over battery-powered EVs. #2 is similar to problems solved by Toyota's gas-electric hybrid design, and Toyota's Fuel Cell Vehicle's back to their earlier demonstration Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle version of the Highlander use a similar approach, with a battery to buffer the fuel cells output the same way that the battery is used in their Hybrid Synergy Drive to buffer ICE output.
  - throwketchup 12y ago
    On #1, it actually is a problem. Look at the range of the fuel cell cars that have been released or announced. None of them have even as much range as a Tesla Model S (and they cost more...). It also presents a problem for refueling. There is no reason to expect a hydrogen car to refill any faster than a natural gas car (and plenty of reasons to think it will take longer to get the same amount of range). If you aren't familiar with natural gas cars, take a look at the Edmonds's long term review of the Honda Civic NX. Frankly, I don't see how hydrogen cars are going to compete with electrics in terms of range, performance or refuuling time. Who is going to buy them? And we are subsidizing the hydrogen infrastructure, why exactly?
- 12y ago
mrfusion 12y ago
So why can't we just run fuel cells in reverse to refill the h2? That way you could just treat it like a more efficient battery.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  You can design fuel cells that will let you do this, but they are, IIRC, both more expensive and bulkier, so not ideal for most vehicle applications.
tsotha 12y ago
Batteries are far closer to being practical than fuel cells. Particularly hydrogen fuel cells which would require new infrastructure.

26 points by gopi 12y ago

"the only byproduct is water, which exits through the tailpipe" How much water are we talking about and what effect is this going to have on a highway in the north in winter?

nrb 12y ago
It's in the same ballpark as the amount of water vapor that comes out of the tailpipe of an internal combustion engine.
seanflyon 12y ago
Comparable to the amount of water produced by gasoline vehicles.

MrGuyUser 12y ago

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it's very rare on earth so it has to be manufactured. So the oil companies totally would love you to switch from the oil they will sooner or later not be able to fracking get anymore to hydrogen which they can raise prices on until the day when nuclear fusion becomes something they could sell again as long as it remains expensive enough to be sellable. Hydrogen is dumb, at 300 miles / 450kms a fuel cell I notice there is no mention of the price which is laughably much more than gasoline is today. Then they say that mileage is further than "most" electric cars. True except for the Tesla which actually 85kwh edition has at least 450kms of range. And also Hydrogen cannot be regenerated from breaking which makes it less efficient than full electric. In the future it maybe possible to charge your car with solar or wind or fart energy, but not if your Petrol Company lobbied alternative fuel car runs on a Hydrogen Fuel Cell and has the acceleration of a brick on wheels at 0-100kms in 9.6 seconds. A hummer does that in around 10.5 seconds.

teraflop 12y ago
The article does mention price: "While EVs take hours to recharge, the fueling cost is a fraction of the roughly $45 a hydrogen fill-up will cost." That's more expensive than gasoline, but as of a few months ago the price difference would have only been about 30% compared to my relatively fuel-efficient Honda Fit. The gap is larger now thanks to the recently plummeting gas prices in the US, of course. > And also Hydrogen cannot be regenerated from breaking which makes it less efficient than full electric. As the article doesn't mention but Wikipedia does, the Mirai also has a battery and supports regenerative braking. It's basically a hybrid car that uses a fuel cell instead of a gasoline engine.
- MrGuyUser 12y ago
  Ok I was wrong about the regenerative breaking. It makes sense since it would be easy to implement. Most of the drive system of a Hydrogen Car will be electric already. It will use batteries as well. The world will once again be at the whim of the hydrogen producers which would likely be Shell, BP or Exxon. Electric cars are only going to get better and generating your own power is only going to get easier. Oil companies don't like the loss of control. Hybrid's pull some tricks to save fuel, but I might argue they have much more points of failure and are harder to fix when they do fail. I predict that on Dec 15th they will sell one or two of these cars to Toyota Executives whom receive a bonus just a little more than what the car would cost if they did.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Keep in mind that the $45 fill-up cost is for about 300 miles of driving, versus 4-500 miles for a typical gasoline car. At current prices, my Prius v will go about 500 miles on a $30 fill-up, which would cost $75 for hydrogen, assuming $45 gives you 300 miles. Even if gas goes back to $4/gallon, it's still $45 for ~500 miles. A full charge on a Model S would cost me something like $8, by comparison. Less if I went for time-of-use metering and charged it at night.
secabeen 12y ago
They don't mention the price because current systems cannot accurately measure the amount of H2 being dispensed into the car. Every Fuel Cell car comes with free fuel coordinated by the manufacturer.

henrikschroder 12y ago

Good that there's serious money being sunk into alternatives to electric cars, more is always good. But I'm seriously tired of the fact that all articles about fuel-cells enthusiastically exclaims that "it's only byproduct is water!!!!", as if hydrogen was some sort of magic alternative to hydrocarbons. It's not, it's an energy transmission medium, not an energy source. For fuel-cell cars to work, you would need to have energy some place that consumes water and splits it into hydrogen and oxygen, releasing the oxygen into the air, and the hydrogen into containers that can then go into some sort of infrastructure such that individual cars can be filled up with it as necessary. And if you think about the amount of gasoline infrastructure that exists, we'd have to pretty much duplicate that, or convert that, into hydrogen shipping infrastructure, which is a pretty tall order. But for electricity, we already have the infrastructure. If you have a house, you have a place for filling up your electric car, and you have a method for paying for the energy that your car consumes, and there is a way to move the energy from wherever it is produced to your house. So the story for electric car adoption is "You don't have to take trips to the gas station anymore!", but the story for fuel cell car adoption is "You have to take trips to a new type of gas stations that don't exist yet!". That's quite a hurdle...

henrikschroder 12y ago
The only game-changer I could see there would be if we could make some sort of in-your-home hydrolyzer, so that you just connect water and electricity to it, and it connects to your car to fill it up. That's on-par with the convenience of an electric car, if we ignore the safety issues of hydrogen gas leaks in urban neighbourhoods...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Regenerative fuel cells are cells with an in-cell hydrolysis system; if you could incorporate them, a fuel cell vehicle would have pretty much the same recharging UX as any other EV. Even with stationary at-home electrolysis systems, if you don't store more than one fill-up in the system, there's marginal additional risk compared to having a hydrogen-fueled vehicle in the first place.

jobu 12y ago

There have been two major hurdles for the development of hydrogen fuel-cell cars: 1) storing the hydrogen - hydrogen is extremely corrosive, and not very energy dense compared to gasoline 2) variable energy output - fuel cells are good at producing a steady, constant amount of power, but the power requirements of a car can be quite variable (especially for city driving) Anyone have details on how Toyota overcame these?

secabeen 12y ago
On 2), the Mirai has a 1.6kWh battery. I believe the model is an electric motor driven by the battery, which is recharged by the fuel cell.
dragonwriter 12y ago
On #1, energy density isn't a huge problem; sure, hydrogen is worse than gasoline in energy:volume (though much better in energy:mass), but its energy:volume is better than that of existing battery technologies -- this is one of the advantages FCVs have over battery-powered EVs. #2 is similar to problems solved by Toyota's gas-electric hybrid design, and Toyota's Fuel Cell Vehicle's back to their earlier demonstration Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle version of the Highlander use a similar approach, with a battery to buffer the fuel cells output the same way that the battery is used in their Hybrid Synergy Drive to buffer ICE output.
- throwketchup 12y ago
  On #1, it actually is a problem. Look at the range of the fuel cell cars that have been released or announced. None of them have even as much range as a Tesla Model S (and they cost more...). It also presents a problem for refueling. There is no reason to expect a hydrogen car to refill any faster than a natural gas car (and plenty of reasons to think it will take longer to get the same amount of range). If you aren't familiar with natural gas cars, take a look at the Edmonds's long term review of the Honda Civic NX. Frankly, I don't see how hydrogen cars are going to compete with electrics in terms of range, performance or refuuling time. Who is going to buy them? And we are subsidizing the hydrogen infrastructure, why exactly?
12y ago

mrfusion 12y ago

So why can't we just run fuel cells in reverse to refill the h2? That way you could just treat it like a more efficient battery.

dragonwriter 12y ago
You can design fuel cells that will let you do this, but they are, IIRC, both more expensive and bulkier, so not ideal for most vehicle applications.

tsotha 12y ago

Batteries are far closer to being practical than fuel cells. Particularly hydrogen fuel cells which would require new infrastructure.