Toyota Mirai - Hydrogen powered car
 

I searched a bit, and found nothing and was surprised.

Has anybody seen this car yet?

https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/


2016 Toyota Mirai. $57,000 hydrogen powered car. Thoughts?

Toyota is going all in on Hydrogen. That's saying something considering Toyota is currently the world leader on Hybrids. I wouldn't buy a Mirai, but will not be surprised when 90% of cars sold in 2030 will be running on dat 'dro
.

I am excite.

DID AUTOMAKERS NOT LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE HINDENBURG?

To the best of my knowledge the auto makers do not plan to attach a flimsy eight hundred foot bag of hydrogen to the top of the car as the fuel cell.

But if they do, they should coat it with an extremely flammable metalized conductive paint.


I think it was conductive. I don't remember exactly.

You mean........ Tcoat it???

In for destructive testing videos

Doh!

And what inside source do you have from Toyota about that? HUH?!?!?

Their top hydrogen researcher Haruto Von Zeppelinshi. Oh wait... shit.

NEIN NEIN NEIN!!!!

How did Honda hydrogen car experiment go in CA? They were leasing it years ago, anyone know?

Must've been good enough to consider moving forward with the infrastructure.

See, fuckin' attotaso.

In a seriousness, would like to see hydrogen powered cars take off. Though, it does make me wonder why propane and natural gas aren't being developed further.

Is this post from 2006? I thought everybody realized hydrogen as energy storage was mediocre at best.

I mean, 2030 hydrogen cars errywhere is totally plausible with a couple breakthroughs but to call it a certainty is a gamble.

Edit: Maybe my next new sports car could be a hydrogen RX...
I mean, Mazda's already built prototypes...
:drool:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNV8qi_rJBg"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNV8qi_rJBg[/ame]

Some arguments from the man. This shouldn't be yours or my only source of information because it appeals to his authority (a logic fallacy). Nevertheless, I don't see this one growing like I do electric cars.

I saw one driving on highway in LA one night. It has really cool lights. 😘

But knowing how many hydrogen gas station are there..... Let's give that guy a round of applause .


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Previous reports/estimates on Hydrogen powered cars assumed full hydrogen power. Toyota's approach is to use Hydrogen as an alternative to gasoline in Electric Hybrid vehicles (an evolution of their current hybrid technology in the Prius). The idea is that Hydrogen "burns" cooler than gas allievating the need for their current cooling systems while still extending the range of pure electric vehicles (the pure EV's achilles heel).

Toyota calculates that battery technology will not attain the level of storage and efficiency needed to achieve >300 mile range between recharge while being able to be recharged quickly enough to fully meet the needs of those traveling outside of their city. Also, batteries are heavy.

With a hydrogen + electric hybrids, their new powertrains are smaller than even their current gas+electrics, the range is equal to a standard gas vehicle, the eMPG hovers in the 70s, and it takes about 5 minutes to refill the hydrogen tank.

Toyota's investment includes R&D for hydrogen station infrastructure improvements on a per region basis (in the U.S. starting with the Southern California to Norther California corridor, also in Norway and Sweden) working with the State of California and UCI's AP&E program. Currently there are 9 Hydrogen stations in CA, 19 being built and $30M set aside for Y2018 for additional stations. The State of California has set aside $200M to reach 100 stations by 2024.


Musk has a vested interest in selling as many batteries as possible. He's definitely not the man, he is just a man. Tesla itself isn't so much a business to sell cars, rather a way to get people using electric vehicles and eventually buying Musk's batteries. He doesn't want to be Henry Ford, but instead John D. Rockefeller. I see Toyota, Mercedes, Boeing, Tata, Honda, and GM as being greater corporate authorities on the matter.

In 2030, hydogen will not hold 90% market, not even 50%. The market will still have gasoline vehicles but will be more blended than it is today.

Historically, and currently, gasoline is basically all you can get in most places, there are some hybrids, full EVs and now Hydrogens, but still mostly gas.

In 2030, I'd wager a good mix of gas, diesel, hybrid gas/electric, full electric, solar electric, hydrogen.


Expect more change in the driver vs driverless transition than the gas vs alternative fuels transition.

I was exaggerating to make a point. Notice the tone of the post. You're probably right about all of the above.

AHHHH I re-watched Dr. Strangelove this weekend :) you guys made me think of it again

That would make them hydrogen powered airplanes.

I think this statement is way off. He is not looking to monopolize the market for personal growth. He has given up his patents to promote the growth of electric cars. He is trying to revolutionize space travel for the prospect of advancing space travel and possible multi planet colonization. He gave up the plans for the hyper loop because he was too busy, but so others could use it. He is also the major shareholder in SolarCity. The man is doing a lot to advance green technology and take the world out of its reliance on fossil fuels in an effort to prevent global warming. I really don't see the comparison.

Like I said, don't just take his words because they are his words, but he makes some good points in the video, and they man has his fingers in a lot of green projects, but it may say something that he doesn't in hydrogen cells.

Musk was also a founder of X.com which later "became" Paypal. Paypal's business model was to collect interest on deposited account funds while not being subject to banking laws, by not becoming a bank. To Paypal's dismay they found that people didn't leave money in their Paypal accounts long enough to support Musks' business model. When that became apparent, Musk enacted a ponzi-style method of locking countless customer accounts for "potential fraud" so that they could hold their monies and collect interest by force. After this became public knowledge Paypal was subsequently sued by its' users class action style and paid more than $9million dollars in that single suit. After which Paypal was sued by multiple other business entities for the same practice that Musk brought about.

After these policies become public knowledge Musk was ousted (bought out). His business model relied on fraud and obviously didn't work. Paypal retooled and then leaked a story that he was excused for wanting to change the database back end of the company. Nobody bought that.

Musk is not some eco-green-space warrior. He's a business person trying to rehabilitate his image so that he can make money selling batteries. The only way to do this is to drive demand by showing viability/desirability of electric vehicles. Competing technologies will of course be panned by such a person. The history of alternative energy technologies are littered with this kind of conduct. Musk, despite making a cool car for rich folks, and angling for FAT government space contracts is not above doing the same. His history building a business model of misery with Paypal is evidence that he's not above that.

Sounds like an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. Got a link? I have been a Paypal user from its early days, and I can recall a time I requested a refund/freeze because someone screwed me by lying on their ad. Their arbitration process pissed off the seller, but we reached an agreement on his shady sale. I can't speak for everyone's experience going through the arbitration process, but I almost lost $650 if it wasn't for the way Paypal did things.

Regardless, we can agree to disagree about whether Elon Musk "is the man". I don't see the point in arguing the subjective use of that phrase to describe him. Most of your arguments seem more like ad hominem attacks against the character of Elon Musk and not to the validity of his objections to fuel cell cars.

Look, I dig the idea of using an alternative to oil. Obviously we can't make oil; we can make biofuels, but an alternative to oil is necessary, and hydrogen fuel cells are a good alternative. The main point Musk made was that hydrogen is not a direct fuel, but a way to store electricity. Electricity is used in electrolysis, for instance, to make hydrogen, so that later in the car hydrogen can be used to make electricity. This, he argues, is inherently less efficient than storing that electricity in a battery. Moreover, electricity can be generated in a number of clean ways, but hydrogen needs to come from somewhere; it can't come from wind lol right? Currently 95% of hydrogen fuel comes from fossil fuels, but only 67% of electricity comes from fossil fuels.

The cool thing is that electricity for cars could be 100% supplied by wind, thermal, hydro and solar electric sources if we built those sources. BUT...IF we wanted to make hydrogen fuel cars because we didn't work together to make Elon Musk's 2 minute battery swapping a reality...AND IF we wanted to make hydrogen fuel cars because we were never able to improve batteries to gain enough range to thus remove all existence of range anxiety...AND IF it was still necessary to make fuel cell cars THEN we would still need to build more wind, thermal, hydro and solar sources because it will always be less efficient using electricity to make hydrogen to make electricity to power cars than just using electricity to power cars.

^^^ I feel like my arguments against fuel cells will be ignored for more rants against Elon Musk... staying tuned... :popcorn:

I've seen this thing on the road. It has no exhaust pipes. It's ugly. It only emits water drops from the back so if you're driving behind this thing, stay away because it will splash dirty water on your mint car bro. oh and its FUGLY

Say what you want about Musk, I'm not a big fan myself, but the fact is that his grasp of Hydrogen as fuel is rooted in sound physics. What he says in that video in regards to what it takes to make hydrogen a fuel source is fact. Every time energy transfers medium there is a loss, from chemical to thermal to kinematic (current fossil fuels) or kinematic to electrical to chemical to electrical to kinematic again (water power to a battery powered electric), hydrogen, at our current levels of technology, is an extremely lossy way of providing energy to the consumer and it poses problems that we do not currently have economic solutions to.

That bit about Toyota believing that battery tech won't be able to beat hydrogen is interesting, that's really the only thing in this entire thread that made me take note. Toyota isn't dumb, neither is Musk, and objectively it'd be foolish to bet against either.

But my problem is that 4th paragraph, all that money to develop plants and infrastructure to produce and transport hydrogen, let alone actually storing it effectively on a production vehicle, requires leaps and bounds in material science and affordable hydrogen production. You talk about heavy batteries meanwhile the hydrogen tanks in the Mirai weigh 200 lbs! And it's made of a carbon fiber reinforced nylon, this thing ain't cheap. Yeah, it's easy to then point to the Model S' 1,200 lb battery, but we're talking about the race to replace fossil fuels, not which one is better today. The fact is most of the world population has access to electricity, the infrastructure is there today operating electric vehicles and can be incrementally upgraded if the technology demands it, meanwhile the US department of energy currently lists 23 hydrogen stations.

I tried to find how many stations were in Japan but got lazy, this article says that it costs >$3 million to build one hydrogen station in Japan, even if we assume optimistically that we can do it in the US for $1 mil a piece, we need to replace >150,000 gas stations, a $1.5 billion dollar investment that doesn't even cover the cost of generating hydrogen on the scale necessary for it to be the primary fuel choice.

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-japan-l...ty-vision.html

Hydrogen needs a shit ton of work to be viable (primarily in cost effective generation and supply infrastructure as well as tanks on the cars), electric is viable today and is just one breakthrough away from overtaking fossil fuels; the better battery.

My opinion? Bio-diesel. We don't need a solution for the first world countries, we need one that will minimize the ecological impact of the 3 billion people in the third world who are quickly gaining access to technology. Unless you ban burning organic fuels, for the foreseeable future they beat the shit out of anything else we've come up with. A 1L plastic bottle filled with petrol will allow a man to travel 60+ km on his scooter, they sell them on the side of the road in many poorer countries. That's what you have to beat to truly change the world, the fact that you can slog a gallon of liquid that can transport you to a job two cities away as cheaply and easily as you and I refill our drinks at the soda fountain or grab a jug of milk. Compared to a 1,200 lb battery charging for an hour or a 200 lb hydrogen tank pressurized to 10,000 psi, there's a long way to go before burning organic fuels is eclipsed by anything.

http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/e066d2e96c...les-bcen3j.jpg