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 Apollo astronauts drank the output from their on-board fuel cells. Nothing wrong with fuel cells. They just can't compete joule-for-joule against a heat engine powered by a real fuel.
OK, it’s better than battery power for cars, so what.
You need electricity to separate Hydrogen from Oxygen that mean coal fired power plants.
The electrical power grid is becoming more and more strained as more and more coal fired power plants are decommissioned thanks to Obama’s War on Coal.
Who is going to buy an electric car that is going to be prohibitively expensive to drive due to the cost of hydrogen being prohibitive due to the high cost of electricity?
I will buy an electric car (hydrogen fuel cell/electric car) when it make more economic sense to buy one than it does an internal combustion engine car.
Musk may be a government-funding leech, but he is correct on all these points.
Of course there is that little bit of hydrogen refueling infrastructure that has to be installed.
Nat gas stations (which I believe are far easier to set up) aren’t exactly springing up on every corner, at least here in the midwest.
http://cafcp.org/stations/buildingastation
It already makes sense. Don’t forget you also cut car maintenance costs.
And cheap gas won’t be with us forever.
Now’s the time.
“Nevermind that s—t, here comes Mongo.”
You are wrong. "Fuel" is your sentence is just a metaphor. Toyota is not proposing H1 fusion. We cannot yet create a sustained H1 fusion, nor even a sustained deuterium-lithium fusion, which has the lowest energy threshold.
Stop talking about fusion, people. This is not about fusion. This is a fuel cell, which is a technical term, and does not mean that hydrogen is really a fuel, in the same sense gasoline is. It is not.
Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid.
Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.
Should I be concerned about Dihydrogen Monoxide?
Yes, you should be concerned about DHMO! Although the U.S. Government and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) do not classify Dihydrogen Monoxide as a toxic or carcinogenic substance (as it does with better known chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and benzene), DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful.
Why haven’t I heard about Dihydrogen Monoxide before?
Good question. Historically, the dangers of DHMO, for the most part, have been considered minor and manageable.
While the more significant dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide are currently addressed by a number of agencies including FDA, FEMA and CDC, public awareness of the real and daily dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide is lower than some think it should be.
What are some of the dangers associated with DHMO?
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
Contributes to soil erosion.
Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.
I'm not as convinced as some. We have only begun to frack! (Actually the world outside the US has hardly fracked at all)
The infrastructure is being built.
Using Moore’s law, the internal combustion engine car in the next 30 years will be relegated to buggy whip status.
Here's how it works:
1) Somebody burns coal, or natural gas, or oil, or runs a nuclear reaction, or piles up water behind a dam, or some such thing, to generate electricity.
2) Somebody uses that electricity to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen gas.
3) The oxygen gas may be used, somehow, but it ends up in the atmosphere.
4) The hydrogen gas is combined in the fuel cell, with atmospheric oxygen to form water and electricity.
5) The water ends up back in the environment (where it originally came from); the electricity runs the car.
Beats the heck out of trying to recharge a battery.
You can't seriously make such a prediction about the oil market.
Remember, Imam Obama and the Dhimmicrats laughed at Sarah Palin when she predicted $2 gas, and said NOT A WORD when it came to pass.
Hydrogen cars are a folly, and if you knew the facts and were intellectually honest (not saying you aren't), you would agree.
Oh for cripe’s sake!
The list of things that can kill is a long one and we’re still around.
I consider it a non-issue.
Not to pick a winner, but Musk’s protests remind me of Edison’s against AC power. Let the market decide what’s best.
...
Absolutely, but Musk is an engineer and seems to make very good decisions in these matters.
The oil market will eventually rebound.
Gasoline powered cars are still economically competitive but drivers’ budgets are price sensitive.
Would Tesla exist without being able to sell ev credits to manufacturers that don’t make evs (to satisfy California and Northeast State Consortium) mandates?
Complete and utter horse hockey. Moore's Law depends solely on geometry shrink, which depend on the laws of physics. Chip sizes do not have to contend with Carnot's Law, or indeed almost any thermodynamics save heat dissipation. The heat engine is limited by Carnot's Law and the materials from which it is made.
You speak as someone who has had no science or engineering training, but is merely an enthusiast.
I’m sorry, when did the subject shift from automotive technology to astrophysics?
In the context of this thread, hydrogen is NOT a fuel. It is an energy transport medium. If we could _find_ free hydrogen in (or convertible to) a suitable form, it could be considered a fuel. Alas, it takes more energy to produce/release the hydrogen we need in a practical form than we get from using it, so it’s just a mechanism for storing & moving energy.
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