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.”
We pay around 42¢ per gallon in taxes, which does not explain the difference.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=10&t=10
“In addition, the electric grid is having to be upgraded at tremendous cost to permit this excess.”
No it isn't. The vast, vast majority of electric car charging happens at night when there is a couple hundred gigawatts of unused grid capacity. All electric cars come with a “delayed charging” setting so that you can program it to not start charging until the middle of the night. “Time-of-use” electricity plans are becoming more common these days that offer discounted rates at night because of all the unused capacity at that time.
That seems reasonable.
I used to work at a large manufacturing plant here in Indiana. We were one of the top 4 users when it came to sucking juice. Hot afternoons in the summer we were always on call from the utility to taper usage as needed.
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>>”No it isn’t. The vast, vast majority of electric car charging happens at night when there is a couple hundred gigawatts of unused grid capacity” <<
Not so at all!
The vast majority is done during the work day, between when employees arrive and depart.
Power companies, counties, states, all provide card-lok charging stations for electric cars. Few people are willing to pay the $4000 installation cost for a home charger.
Wow, that is completely false! There was an article a few months ago about how most Chevy Volt owners just use a standard 120 V household outlet to charge overnight. That is because you can fully charge the car in 10 hours using such an outlet, even less if you didn't use the entire 40 mile range the day before. (78% of Americans drive less than 40 miles a day to and from work, and 51% drive less than 20 miles[1], so this is likely.)
Furthermore, your $4,000 price for 240 V home chargers is total baloney. Prices are between $500 and $1,000.
The fact is, almost all charging is done at night, in people's garages, when there is no strain on the grid.
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The price of the hardware for the standard car charger is $1100.
Installation depends on how far from the branch panel it has to be run. The permit is usually $1500 or more. $4000 is about average for the total.
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What state are you in? I've never heard of a four-digit permit cost. Can you provide a link or any evidence to back this "$1500 or more" figure up?
It seems like you are trying hard to use worst case numbers. The link I provided (here it is again) had prices for various garage chargers all of which are between $450 and $1,000 (none of them are $1,100). As far as installation, if your house was built in the last 30 years then it should only cost around $200.
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In California, there is no such thing as a bldg permit for less than $1200 that I have ever encountered.
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Predicting against scientific advances just because it can’t currently be figured out is a losing strategy 100% of the time.
WGAF what Tesla is doing....without huge subsidies Tesla would be doing nothing...
Tesla is not economically viable...remove the subsidies it gets and the whole thing collapses.
And the fact that they have a longer range battery still does not confront the primary limitation of batteries...
Batteries are never 100% efficient-—they never and can never put out the amount of energy that is put in. And battery efficiency degrades from the very first charge-discharge cycle. It will always take more and more energy input for the same amount of output.
And batteries die...the greatest determining factor of its’ lifespan being the number of charge-discharge cycles-—IOW, the more you use it the shorter its’ lifespan. That will NEVER change...again, basic battery physics.
And the cost of replacing that battery...1/4 or more than the entire cost of the car....how can that ever compete on any scale with a modern internal combustion engine?
And of course none of this includes the cost of disposal/recycling of the batteries....nor the cumulative amount of resources spent on EV battery R&D, most of which is heavily subsidized without the prospect of any return on that money spent anywhere on the horizon...
Why is it so hard to accept that the ICE is by far the most efficient form of transportation energy, and will be for the foreseeable future?
Why is it so hard to accept that the ICE is by far the most efficient form of transportation energy,
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True now. Except the “by far” part is steadily shrinking.
and will be for the foreseeable future?
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Less true. An article of faith—unless the foreseeable future is less than three years or so. If this is a tough notion and you need to see in order to believe—then visit Reno Nevada where the Tesla battery gigafactory is now ahead of schedule. Tesla now figures it will start production next year. That will cut the cost of batteries in half.
Okay, so you were making it up. That is the problem with debates like this, so many people have heard made up numbers designed to paint EVs in the worst light possible. Here is what charger permits actually cost in California:
“In California, permit costs for home EVSE installations vary widely – the average permit cost is about $200, but permits can range from $50 - $600.”
Yes, but no mechanical system in the world is 100% efficient, so you are creating a straw man. Battery efficiencies are in the high 90s, so this is a not a real world issue.
With the cost of electricity being equivalent to around a dollar a gallon, you save money without needing to be absolutely 100% efficient.
“And battery efficiency degrades from the very first charge-discharge cycle. It will always take more and more energy input for the same amount of output. And batteries die...the greatest determining factor of its’ lifespan being the number of charge-discharge cycles-—IOW, the more you use it the shorter its’ lifespan. That will NEVER change...again, basic battery physics. And the cost of replacing that battery...1/4 or more than the entire cost of the car....how can that ever compete on any scale with a modern internal combustion engine?”
These aren't your smartphone batteries. From an article from a couple of weeks ago:
“Based on 84 data points from the 85-kWh version of the Model S and six from 60-kWh cars, the study concludes that the Model S will retain about 94 percent of its capacity after 50,000 miles, with losses thereafter shrinking to about 1 percent per 30,000 miles. That means that after 100,000 miles, the typical Model S is projected to retain about 92 percent of its battery capacity and range.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3258415/posts
92% after 100,000 miles means that all the fear-mongering about EV battery life was way overblown.
“And of course none of this includes the cost of disposal/recycling of the batteries...”
These batteries are too valuable to be thrown away, even when they have lost 30% of their capacity and are no longer suitable for automobile use. There are programs set up to reuse these batteries for home electricity storage. Tesla also has a recycling program in place. And the Prius battery, for example, is completely recycled:
“Forget those fears that hybrid and electric vehicles will result in landfills full of dead batteries. When Toyota hybrid battery packs reach the end of their lives, every piece is recycled. And it's all because of a program launched a year ago by Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. and its dealers.”
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120102/RETAIL07/301029980/1147
“Why is it so hard to accept that the ICE is by far the most efficient form of transportation energy, and will be for the foreseeable future?”
With electricity costing around a dollar a gallon equivalent, and battery prices being cut in half every few years, your statement is not based on the reality of the situation.
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