Posted on 05/12/2015 6:54:49 AM PDT by thackney
You expect a certain sort of magic from a car like Toyota's Mirai, the world's first mass-market, hydrogen-powered all-electric named after the Japanese word for "future." It maxes out at 300 miles, refuels in five minutes and spits out zero emissions except for water, all for tens of thousands of dollars less than Tesla's electric Model S.
But behind the wheel of the four-door Mirai, which California drivers can buy in October for around $50,000, what you get is something much more, well, boring: a smooth, quiet, mid-size sedan you wouldn't find out of place in a school pick-up circle. And that's what makes it so fascinating.
Toyota let us test-drive one of its prototypes this week, and it became clear why one of the world's biggest automakers is making a huge bet on hydrogen as a future fuel for the world's roads. The Mirai is responsive, futuristic, fully featured and fun to drive, the kind of car you can see beating gas guzzlers at their own game.
But the Mirai's journey to automotive acceptance is already dotted with a number of potholes, not the least of which is criticism from the most notable face in electric cars, Tesla founder Elon Musk, who has called hydrogen fuel cells "extremely silly," fool cells" and "bulls--t" (more on that in a minute)...
That helps get the Mirai up to a maximum driving range of around 300 miles, enough so that the typical driver wouldn't suffer "range anxiety" on a daily commute....
But opening up a number of hydrogen stations won't be easy, or cheap: Outfitting a single station for driver-ready hydrogen could cost about $1 million. Battery-powered, plug-in cars have a similar problem, though they can at least connect to the electric grid. There's nothing like that for hydrogen.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
(speechless)
Amen
The answer has been sitting right in front of us for, let’s see now, the last FOUR decades?
It’s nuclear power, people! Clean, and current reactor designs make it very safe to use.
If only the enviro-Nazis were neutralised, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, and EVs would be a normal, unsubsidised method of propulsion.
People with older cars, and engine builders, would continue to burn hydrocarbons.
please point me toward a functioning fail safe nuclear power plant design, tia
I wish. Such is the power of the environmentalists that such designs are still drawings in a notebook.
The one new plant in the US is using 1970s tech, simply because the construction has dragged on as long...there’s a thread on FR about it....
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