Toyota’s Mirai Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Priced from $57,500 in the U.S.
With incentives, it could be less than $46,000 in California (where I no longer live). And Toyota says they will supply ‘complementary hydrogen for up to three years’. But where are the hydrogen filling stations? Maybe this is the chicken that lays the eggs. Or the egg that hatches the chicken.
How does it look?
That’s a nice way to put it. The first word that popped into my head upon seeing the front end was ‘fugly’.
The Elio motors car is supposed to be out next year. 84mpg on the highway and $6800 new.
For poor/broke/frugal people it could be a car worth buying. The gas savings alone would be about $100/month for regular driving, paying for the car in 6 years.
It reminds me of the Reliant Robin, but without the stability issue.
How far does it go between hydrogen fill-ups? I would buy one if I could make refueling work.
ETA: Reading Johnny L.A.'s post, I’m an idiot. But I still want one.
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The problem here is why on earth would you buy one of those when you can buy a nice used Honda Fit for the same money?
The ultra-cheap car model still works in places like India where people have a phobia for used cars, but it hasn’t really worked in the US since the days of the Yugo. The people who are getting excited abut the Elio either have short memories or are laboring under some large misapprehensions of how the car market really works.
As for the hydrogen car, only a few years ago I was pretty sure hydrogen cells were going to be the way of the future, but looking at what Tesla has done I have to admit that a lot of the insurmountable problems with battery-electric cars seem to be a whole lot more surmountable. It looks like the hydrogen cars will have a range advantage but not as much as it once looked and the quick-charger infrastructure has an ever-growing head start.
There are currently fewer than a dozen hydrogen refueling stations in the state of California currently operating and although there are around fifty in development they are mainly geared toward fleet users which operate in a limited and regular “patrol orbit” rather than normal commuter or general transportation avenues. The singular exception is along the West Bay (San Francisco) commuter alley, where trendy early adopters with excess money may be sufficiently numerous to support a niche market for hydrogen vehicles.
Hydrogen as a general transportation fuel makes little sense. Being gaseous in normal ambient conditions and also being of such low molecular weight that it can escape all but the tightest seals, it is a difficult fuel to handle, not to mention its potential for flammability (and the difficulty of visually detecting a hydrogen-fed fire) and detonability. The poor density of gaseous hydrogen is such that it requires enormous storage volume per unit of energy delivered (liquid isn’t much better and requires cryogenic conditions) and special materials to ensure that hydrogen neither escapes nor embrittles fuel system components, and also requires a larger infrastructure to deliver and store the fuel. And the catalyst in PEM fuel cells are notoriously prone to damage from contaminants down to levels that are barely detectable.
And for all of the taunting of hydrogen as a “clean” fuel, this is only true if you look at it from pump-to-wheel. Looking at the total fuel cycle, unless hydrogen gas is produced by electrolysis (an enormously energy inefficient method of energy conversion) all extant and proposed methods of mass hydrogen production have a carbon footprint comparable or greater than just pumping petroleum out of the ground and using it to run conventional internal combustion engines. Car manufacturers are interested in producing limited numbers of hydrogen-powered cars in order to meet government regulations that allow them to avoid having to meet more stringent fuel economy standards elsewhere, but nobody who is knowledgeable about hydrogen energy conversion believes that hydrogen vehicles will represent more than a small niche of users, primarily fleet users and any commuters who can conveniently piggyback on fleet infrastructure. Hydrogen fuel cells are one technology that makes electric battery-powered cars look attractive by comparison; at least battery technology offers some hope of significant improvement albeit not to the extent of providing comparable service to gasoline and diesel powered automobiles.
As alternatives to petrochemical fuels go, ethanol, methanol, and dimethyl ether all make more sense in that they can be refined or synthesized from various sources, can be used in fairly conventional internal combustion spark or diesel engines as well as turbine and rotating continuous wave detonation engines, have good energy density with relative ease of storage, and are only moderately corrosive compared to other alternatives. That we will not be able to produce any of them with existing methods in the same volume as petrochemical fuels is true (at least, not from agricultural sources) but this is also true–likely moreso–of hydrogen.
Stranger
I love the technology, but I was wondering some stuff that Stranger just answered. Here in Denver (and I assume other cities) you can find special parking spaces for Tesla cars that’ll give you a 30-minute recharge (never checked to see if there is a [del]charge[/del] fee for doing this). But whether or not it’s free the advantage is obvious: electricity is everywhere and creating a supporting infrastructure for electric cars is pretty easy and requires absolutely no storage vessels. What are you gonna do with hydrogen? Electrolysis at the (now appropriately named) gas station? Underground storage bombs? Why not skip that step an just recharge the car? Mass-produced hydrogen, as Stranger pointed out, can ultimately be dirtier than even coal/gas-produced electricity and so defeats the intent of “clean” fuel cars.
hydrogen is an energy storage medium, not a source. it takes energy to produce it, and since we obey the laws of thermodynamics in this house you get less energy from it than it took to produce it. Or you get it from petroleum, which then makes it pointless. Hydrogen as applied to vehicles is essentially a battery.
seems like it would make more sense to keep working on EVs.
