Toyota workers assemble the Mirai, which runs off hydrogen, at the automaker's Motomachi plant in Japan on Tuesday. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg)
Posted on 02/25/2015 12:04:07 PM PST by ckilmer
Toyota this week officially rolled out what it's betting will mark "a turning point" in automotive history — a sleek, affordable, eco-friendly "future" car that can drive for 300 miles, takes less than five minutes to charge and comes with three years of free fuel.
It's everything haters of gas-guzzling car culture could love. And the biggest name in electric cars hates it.
Toyota's Mirai (meaning "future" in Japanese) will be one of the first mass-market cars to run on hydrogen fuel cells, which convert compressed hydrogen gas to electricity, leaving water vapor as the only exhaust. As opposed to getting plugged in overnight, the sedan will need only about three minutes to get back to full charge, a huge boon for convincing the world's drivers to convert to a cleaner ride.
But the green technology has found a surprisingly forceful critic in Elon Musk, the electric-car pioneer and founder of Tesla Motors, maker of battery-powered cars like the Model S. Musk has called hydrogen fuel cells "extremely silly" and "fool cells," with his main critique being that hydrogen is too difficult to produce, store and turn efficiently to fuel, diverting attention from even better sources of clean energy.
"If you're going to pick an energy source mechanism, hydrogen is an incredibly dumb one to pick," Musk said last month in Detroit. "The best-case hydrogen fuel cell doesn't win against the current-case batteries. It doesn't make sense, and that will become apparent in the next few years."
But Toyota, one of Big Auto's few pioneers of fuel-efficient cars like the Prius hybrid, has not been content to let Musk's aggression stand. Bob Carter, a Toyota senior vice president, slapped back at Musk last month by criticizing his sole focus on battery-powered cars: "If I was in a position where I had all my eggs in one basket, I would perhaps be making those same comments."
The electric-car infighting has opened up a huge division over the future of zero-emission cars. Although they make little sense anywhere else now but California, home of the nation's few hydrogen refueling stations, Toyota and its home country of Japan are investing heavily into ushering in what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called the world's "hydrogen era."
The Mirai is an absolute oddity even in the world's still-small green car market. A dozen workers in blue hard hats will hand-craft the cars without help of conveyor belt, turning out only three a day, Toyota said. The small-batch operation will roll out 700 this year for the U.S., Japan, Europe, and crank up to 2,000 starting next year.
Toyota plans to sell the Mirai for about $45,000 in the U.S., including about $13,000 in federal and California incentives, starting next year. It will sell to the public in Japan next month.
At 300 miles, the four-seat Mirai offers the longest range of any electric vehicle on the market (and more than Tesla's $80,000 Model S, which gets 265 miles). A full tank of hydrogen, Toyota adds, has enough energy to power the average American home for a week.
But hydrogen fuel cells carry their own challenges. To sell successfully in America, the cars will need a nationwide infrastructure for recharging (a problem Musk has sought to get around through Tesla's national network of "superchargers.") Though its emissions are greener, hydrogen is now mostly sourced from natural gas, which carries its own environmental impacts.
But Toyota has been strong in its defense of hydrogen, saying it will give drivers far quicker refueling times and farther range than the typical battery-powered electric car.
Toyota is not the only automaker pushing hard on fuel cells: The hydrogen-powered Hyundai Tucson is now available in California, and Honda's fuel-cell car is expected to roll out next year.
But Toyota has been one of its biggest boosters, opening its more than 5,000 fuel-cell related patents up for free and saying it wants to build and fund new fueling stations, first in California and then stretching to the east coast. California is investing tens of millions of dollars to build 28 new hydrogen recharging stations, on top of the 10 it was home to as of last year.
Japan has proven to be far more embracing of the "hydrogen society," investing in self-service hydrogen stations, easing fuel-cell regulations and offering about 3 million yen (about $25,200) in incentives to early Mirai buyers. Prime Minister Abe, one of the first to receive a Mirai, said he wants all of Japan's agencies to have one, too.
Although Mirai production began in December, Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, marked Tuesday as the official roll-out date. Five years ago to the day, a congressional panel grilled Toyoda about the automaker's recalls for unintended acceleration programs, a long embarrassment for the major Japanese brand.
“For us, that date marks a new start,” Toyoda said. “This is not to reflect on the past, but rather to celebrate Toyota’s new start, where we take a fresh step towards the future.”
So where is the electricity coming from to hydrolyze water into hydrogen (fuel) and oxygen? It will come from coal burning power plants. If it comes from a natural gas fired power plant then it makes more sense to burn natural gas directly in an internal combustion engine. Nuclear power to produce hydrogen is also non polluting
If the electricity come from hydro-electric power then hydrogen makes sense and will truly be non polluting. Wind and solar are a joke and only exist due to an array of gov’t payoffs
You jest.
Uhgglee...
You are a dreamer!
There is absolutely nothing good about dependency on something that can be turned off in a moment, and cannot be replenished without electric power to the grid.
It’ll kill millions in a day.
This is beyond Nevill Shute’s “On the Beach” tenfold.
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FreeRepublic has become CaptiveSheep voluntarily!
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Well, I can’t say it’s a good-looking car. It looks like a late-model Corolla with a bizarre body kit grafted onto it.
I can’t say I quite grasp the cost advantage of a fuel cell vehicle, either. Taking natural gas, which the vehicle could run on quite economically and well as it stands, and using additional energy to convert it to hydrogen can’t be doing anything to reduce operating cost.
I’m not impressed by nothing but water coming out of the exhaust. The “green” aspect matters not at all to me.
You’re right—right down the line.
The point is the car is improving and the people behind it show in every way that they have the will and the way to continue to make improvements. That’s the main takeaway.
You are a dreamer!
There is absolutely nothing good about dependency on something that can be turned off in a moment, and cannot be replenished without electric power to the grid.
It’ll kill millions in a day.
This is beyond Nevill Shute’s “On the Beach” tenfold.
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So you’re a supporter of the internal combustion engine via gasoline or natural gas and fuel cell cars. That’s fine.
The Amish don’t care to be on the grid either. Their issue is not with electricity. Its rather with the grid. As a result there are amish bishops here and there allowing their congregations to use solar to generate electricity on their own property because the electricity doesn’t come from the grid.
Elon Musk is also very interested in solar power for his electric car batteries — not—of course because the power does not come from the grid—but rather because he’s a part owner of a big solar power company. And of course because he’s also building a big battery plant for cars and houses with solar power.
Are you starting to get the picture?
So where is the electricity coming from to hydrolyze water into hydrogen (fuel) and oxygen?
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right now natural gas is the source of hydrogen for fuel cell cars. water is still a dream.
I agree that 4th generation nuclear power plants especially via msr and lftr reactors will deliver the real energy revolution—which is electricity prices at least 1/3 the price of current cheapest coal or natural gas fired electrical generation plants.
In fact, I think that should be on the republican agenda as a counter sign to the lefts clean energy vision —which is rapidly taking shape. Solar and wind will reach grid price parity without price supports —with natural gas and coal in a decade at their current rates of price decline. They are already at grid parity in the southwest with price supports.
Republicans should promise to push the research in 4th generation lftr and msr reactors to collapse the cost of electricity. That’s the real revolution.
Energy is the MOST political and strategic commodity in the world.
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I don’t disagree with you even a little bit. I just don’t think you have noticed the power shifts around the world.
The entire world outside of OPEC want to get out from under the thumbs of opec and russia. Everyone in the world outside OPEC and Russia sees alternate fuel cell cars as ALSO a way to disconnect from a reliance on oil based cars.
So while there is lots of oil money around to protect oil interests. There is even more money available to protect the alternative fuel industry.
Think about it for a second. Germany and Japan have no hope of every becoming energy independent as long as they run on internal combustion engines. Neither country has any hope of trimming their debt overhang as long as they run on internal combustion engines.
These folk are among the best car engineers in the world.
What will they do.
They will keep pushing and improving alternative fuel cars —until their specs are better than those of internal combustion engine cars.
They have come a great distance in the last ten years. Expect them to cross the goal in terms of performance and price in the next 10 years.
American companies will be there too. At least with electric cars. Maybe not with fuel cell cars.
On the issue of electricity, the best solution is AC to the location and DC within the location, but that has not happened yet (and may not ever).
Sometimes, we need outside the box thinking.
No! You’re wrong!!! (grin)
:’) As leeches go, he has a pretty small appetite, plus, he actually produces something in the process, as opposed to all the de facto money-laundering ops run by Obama cronies.
I would have to bet against them and the U.S. federal government aka Obama. So yes I will bet against them. Their technology is high tech smoke and mirrors and would not exist without subsidies. It must be great to have Uncle Sugar help pay for your passions.
Everything in the universe requires energy. How do you figure to ever be independent of it?
Do you understand that foregoing the use of the most economical source of energy creates a relative disadvantage to the on doing the foregoing? So let’s say the entire world except for the U.S. manages to quit using the most economical source of energy and in its place uses less economical alternatives (if it requires subsidies it is less economical). The U.S. would then be left as the sole consumer of the most economical fom of energy which is getting even more economical since no one else is using it. The result would be world dominance. We can only hope the rest of the world is so stupid.
Of course the U.S. is right behind Germany and France in Stupid.
Debt overhang is because of the internal combustion engine? Got you elimaNate the internal combustion engine today in those countries their debt would skyrocket. Maybe they could elimInate their socialist communist spending habits, which included whacko energy subsidies, and live within their tax revenue.
You are dead right that neither fuel cells or electric cars are as economical as gasoline right now. Nevertheless the world will keep pushing them until their price/performance reaches parity or better with internal combustion engine cars. Even before this happens a massive competition will break out between these competitive systems which over time will collapse the price of energy and transportation for all energy/transport systems.
You have described a beautiful thing.
Debt overhang is because of the internal combustion engine? Got you elimaNate the internal combustion engine today in those countries their debt would skyrocket. Maybe they could elimInate their socialist communist spending habits, which included whacko energy subsidies, and live within their tax revenue.
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The USA has been shipping 500 billion dollars overseas every year for a couple decades to pay for foreign oil. The Germans and Japanese have no internal oil industry like the USA. So they are also shipping 100—200 billion annually overseas to pay for their oil. This money transfer is unsustainable for everyone.
How does the “USA” Ship money overseas. Please explain that statement.
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