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.”
The market has already voted “NO”. That is why these scams are being given subsidies.
hydrogen:battery::led:cfl
The Hindenburg, coming to a street corner near you soon.
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Until the sun begins to emit more energy, there is no hope for global warming.
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Why, the Friends of Congress and the President, of course.
Certainly those will be the principal beneficiaries.
I briefly worked in the fuel cell industry. They sound all great and wonderful until the temperature falls before freezing. I have faith in engineers at Toyota though. What I don’t enjoy is paying $13,000 of my tax dollars to the people who buy them. I’m still driving a 20 year old beater and no one is giving my $13,000 to buy a brand new car.
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>> “Until recently, there was little economic incentive to dump the IC engine car.” <<
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There will never be a PRACTICAL incentive to do so!
All electric vehicles will forever leave you subject to the whim of tyrannical men, with no possibility of relief.
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1. For the same energy as gasoline, electricity costs 5 bucks a gallon, and it's going up fast. You need much more than a gallon of electricity (equivalent) to make a gallon (equivalent) of hydrogen.
2) Hydrogen doesn't compress to a liquid at vehicle operating temperatures, it remains as a gas, which must be compressed for storage. Even at 10,000 psi, an extremely high pressure, hydrogen occupies 7 times the volume of gasoline, NOT including the tank. My 4000 psi oxygen tank weighs about 80 pounds, and stores a couple of gallons.
3) There is simply no hydrogen supply and delivery system anywhere close to being available in the US.
Maybe when the Sun goes Super Nova.
Ed
It still takes energy to make hydrogen, either through chemical synthesis from hydrocarbons or electrolysis from water using electricity. Thus a hydrogen powered car still has a major environmental impact, which really is not environmentally important. but politically is.
Until there is cheap cheap cheap electricity from solar or wind, the least cost of horsepower to the wheels is the internal combustion engine. The cheapest way to do this is with compressed natural gas. The use of compressed natural gas will require the least amount of new infrastructure to provide stations to refill your vehicle.
The United States has cheap natural gas in huge excess. The only viable source of cheap electricity with current technology is nuclear power. Unfortunately that source is no longer viable politically due to the environmental Luddites.
I hope those bastards freeze in the dark huddled around a broken windmill surrounded by solar cells that do not work on cloudy days and have a limited lifespan.
“Who will be the beneficiaries of this vast competition?”
Why, the Friends of Congress and the President, of course.
Certainly those will be the principal beneficiaries.
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No man. When you have this kind of vast systemic competition—it means that the cost of transportation steadily subsides. The chief beneficiaries of this competition are the people who use the systems. That’s us. We have moved inside of a monopoly for over a century and paid for it. In the not distant future the costs are going to wrung out of the whole transport system. The results will be an enormous surge of wealth for everyone.
I briefly worked in the fuel cell industry. They sound all great and wonderful until the temperature falls before freezing. I have faith in engineers at Toyota though. What I don’t enjoy is paying $13,000 of my tax dollars to the people who buy them. I’m still driving a 20 year old beater and no one is giving my $13,000 to buy a brand new car.
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What I’m looking forward to is fuel cell cars competing against electric cars competing against gasoline fueled internal combustion engines competing against natural gas fueled internal combustion engines. This sort of competition will just squeeze the costs out of the whole transportation system—to the benefit of the whole world.
The only viable source of cheap electricity with current technology is nuclear power. Unfortunately that source is no longer viable politically due to the environmental Luddites.
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There is so much popular agitation—even in leftist circles— for msr & lftr reactors these days that I would not be surprised if the NRC budged.
The competition to be first in these 4th generation reactors is going to get very hot in the next year or so. I think Google is going to jump into the game. People will suddenly realize Holy Sh-t both google and Bill gates are in on this play.
The market has already voted “NO”. That is why these scams are being given subsidies.
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This is all very well and good. But both Japan and Germany have realized that they can never ever be energy independent as long as they rely on oil. Not just that. Even more than the US —they can’t afford to be shipping trillions of yen euros dollars and deutschmarks overseas to pay for oil.
These folks are serious engineers with serious money to back their efforts and a serious passion to make alternative fuel automobiles cheaper than internal combustion engine autos.
You wanna bet against these folks. I wouldn’t. Its going to happen. The world is changing. Get used to it. In this case its a very good thing.
The Hindenburg, coming to a street corner near you soon.
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In due time both electric cars and fuel cell cars will pose an existential threat to internal combustion engines. This will set off a massive systemic competition between these different kinds of fuels/drive trains —that will drive down costs. The whole world will be the chief beneficiary.
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>> “Until recently, there was little economic incentive to dump the IC engine car.” <<
.
There will never be a PRACTICAL incentive to do so!
All electric vehicles will forever leave you subject to the whim of tyrannical men, with no possibility of relief.
................
This is all very well and good. But both Japan and Germany have realized that they can never ever be energy independent as long as they rely on oil. Not just that. Even more than the US —they can’t afford to be shipping trillions of yen euros dollars and deutschmarks overseas to pay for oil.
These folks are serious engineers with serious money to back their efforts and a serious passion to make alternative fuel automobiles cheaper than internal combustion engine autos.
You wanna bet against these folks. I wouldn’t. Its going to happen. The world is changing. Get used to it. In this case its a very good thing because competition between these fuel systems will drive down the cost of transportation to the benefit of the driving public.
You are under the delusion that Government will not pick the winners and losers.
This is not 1910.
Energy is the MOST political and strategic commodity in the world.
Because it is the most lucrative.
He with the best lobbyists and lobbying program will win this, hands down.
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