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Toyota's Fuel Cell Car To Launch In Japan Next March 216
puddingebola writes with news that Toyota will be bringing its first fuel-cell car to market in Japan next March. It's expected to cost about $68,700, and Toyota plans to bring it to the U.S. and European markets later that summer.
With two of Japan’s three biggest automakers going all in on fuel cells, the country’s long-term future as an automotive powerhouse could now hinge largely on the success of what they hope will be an important technology in the next few decades. ... Japan’s governing party is pushing for ample subsidies and tax breaks for consumers to bring the cost of a fuel-cell car down to about $20,000 by 2025. The government is also aiming to create 100 hydrogen fuel stations by the end of March 2016 in urban areas where the vehicles will be sold initially. ... Hydrogen vehicles can run five times longer than battery-operated electric cars, and their tanks can be filled in just a few minutes, compared with recharging times from 30 minutes up to several hours for electric cars.
Why does the post fail to mention the real price? (Score:2, Redundant)
The real price is $70,000. The target $20k price is subsidized by the Japanese government, don't expect similar subsidies in the US.
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Re:Why does the post fail to mention the real pric (Score:4, Insightful)
So long as you're allowed to leave out everything that's actually going up in price, yes. Like houses, or food, or gas, or... well, pretty much everything you actually need. But if all you buy is Android tablets, wow, inflation is low.
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Right, because tesla haven't sold any of their $80,000 car that goes 1/5th of the distance, right?
Nice to see. (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now at the Gas Pump we have 87, 89 and 91 gas.
Having this change to Gas, Charging, and Hydrogen would be a welcome sign.
The problem we have with our energy policies is that we are trying to find a sliver bullet. This isn't the case anymore, we will need to have a more diverse set of engines that run on different methods. This will allow for greater competition in the energy market and keep price per performance uniform.
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Re:Nice to see. (Score:4, Interesting)
Going to hydrogen gas is also NOT a environmentally sound solution either.
Dispute the press and common belief otherwise, moving to Hydrogen does not reduce emissions overall, but is actually worse. Now I'm not saying that what comes out of the tailpipe of a hydrogen powered car is anything but water and heat, but the issue is where and how you produce hydrogen gas on an industrial scale. You basically have two choices on how you want to produce hydrogen gas, electrolysis or reforming natural gas.
Electrolysis is extremely inefficient. You loos about 50% of the electrical energy you put into this process. For now, electricity is produced MOSTLY from fossil fuels (especially in Japan right now) so it would be more efficient to just burn the fossil fuel in the automobile. Heck, it's more efficient to use a rechargeable battery instead of electrolysis and hydrogen as fuel.
Reforming Natural Gas is also not efficient and releases significant amounts of carbon-dioxide. I do not know the exact numbers on how efficient this process is, but it involves heating the gas and passing it though a catalyst, then compressing and cooling to separate the gas fractions to isolate the hydrogen gas. This requires both electricity and natural gas to do. This is obviously going to waste energy. So one can confidently claim that using this method is clearly going to be inefficient compared to just burning natural gas as a motor fuel. (Not to mention that there are problems with using hydrogen produced from this process in fuel cells due to the impurities produced from the hydrocarbon used as a source of hydrogen.)
All this is just simply nuts if you ask me. What we need to really do is burn natural gas as motor fuel, at least for the foreseeable future. If we ever really run out of fossil fuels (or if we want to plan to stop using them) then the only choices are electric power (rechargeable batteries, with renewable sources/Nuclear/Fission) and bio-mass fuels (diesel from vegetable oil, alcohol) assuming the latter doesn't cause food shortages and starve folks.
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You mean it's not a closed system?
I love how you illustrated the point. Excellent way to explain this. I'm guessing though, that it will be lost on most of the people who read it, even on SlashDot as I've run into difficulty trying to find a majority that understand the thermodynamic concept of entropy enough to understand that "waste heat" isn't being wasted....
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See what I mean? You totally missed what "waste heat" is when talking about heat engines, but I don't suppose they teach basic thermodynamics in high school or to programmers in college...
So, thanks for proving my point...
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Electrolysis may not be the most efficient way, but neither is carrying an extra 1,000lbs worth of batteries to haul around your electricity - as a Tesla does (comparision: Tesla Model S vs. Honda FCX Clarity).
But efficiency may not be that much of an issue. When you think about it, solar power can never be very efficient because the vast majority of solar power never comes anywhere remotely near earth. Yet solar power can still have a significant impact.
Why, let's just take some of Germany's new 22GW sol
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I'm not sure to laugh at that or not... I sure hope you are NOT serious because it's pretty funny if you take it that way, still....
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It is a bit fanciful, but every part of it would be demonstrable at a high school science fair.
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If there was a high school science fair project that demonstrated some sort of free energy, I would definitely sit up and take notice. If only to debunk it.
But who said anything about Free energy? It could be anything generated by a Bunsen burner or pond pump. In the real world, it could be anything from Germany's solar plants, or Iceland's abundant hydroelectric or geothermal power.
I don't see where you get "Free energy" from that.
We don't ever need to get beyond 'cost effective' - that would be fine.
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Re:Nice to see. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, current sources of hydrogen suck. But if we use solar and wind power to drive the electrolysis plant, we could solve two problems at once:
- variability of wind and solar vs. grid demand: hydrogen is storable enough that you could produce it when the grid has an excess of available power.
- transportation that doesn't depend on fossil fuels.
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How about one that's not a piece of shit?
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Why do you have to wait for the charge, if you can just replace the battery?
Spoken like a true cell phone user. Who is going to keep thousands of fully charged 1000lb batteries all around the nation so you can visit your site of the day?
You don't think you're gonna pay for that?
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mmmmmm.. Carbonated water is Soda water! I LIKE it! (Even without the sugar and caffeine added.)
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I laugh at people like you when I drive by in my Leaf in the car pool lane.
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You're going to feel really dumb about this, really soon. There are already multiple different battery technologies in development that have met all these requirements. Well, I suppose with a big enough filling system, liquid hydrocarbons could be hard to beat for refill times...
The Japanese government is going to feel dumb about this hydrogen car idea too. Just like so many others have before them.
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What's wrong with lithium-based batteries? Lithium-air batteries are among the most energy-dense new technologies. Lithium can be recycled, but we currently just can't be assed to do that because it's so cheap and plentiful.
If you're worried about any potential lithium shortage, you REALLY wouldn't want a car that runs on gasoline.
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10 years ago, we'd never consider getting rid of copper lines to the home.
Oh, you mean for DATA.... Ah... Well, I guess that because we use Aluminum for power delivery, you are still correct..
Could dovetail with current electric vehicles (Score:3)
The nice thing about fuel cell technology working it's way into to the automotive arena is that it can dovetail quite nicely with the ongoing developments being made with electric vehicles, since there is significant overlap between the two.
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If you think of a fuel cell as a source of electrical power, your average hybrid car would require little "adjustment" (at least in the drive train) to accommodate getting power from a fuel cell instead of a generator attached to a gasoline engine.
But, this whole fuel cell thing is nutty from the start. Not a good idea.
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Only if your goal is to make electric cars much more expensive. Each Honda Clarity FCX costs about $125,000 to manufacture. I haven't heard about any huge breakthroughs that would make this Toyota significantly less. The manufacturers are willing to take a huge loss on each one for a variety of regulatory and PR reasons. Increasing production from their currently tiny numbers isn't going to decrease the unit cost by that much since lots of exotic materials and components are required.
For recurring costs
This is the final nail in the coffin of Fuel Cells (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuel Cells run on hydrogen. Hydrogen can be obtained by refining oil, but that is more expensive than making gasoline and the only reduction in CO2 comes from the centralization of production (easier to cleanse a refinery's emissions than a vehicle's). Hydrogen can as be obtained without oil, but it is always more difficult than electricity to create and store. Hydrogen is also more difficult to transport than electricity. And now we find out that an established, mass market auto company can't even create an inexpensive Fuel Cell car. Their effort ended up with a car that is just as expensive as a very high quality, fully electric car which was created years ago by an almost brand new car company. Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way. They are the present and future of transportation.
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Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way. They are the present and future of transportation.
I couldn't have said it better. Fuel cells are much of a roadbump in the long drive of automotive technology development as are 3D TVs for home entertainment (i.e., not quite as bad as DIVX, but ultimately not mainstream usable). The manufacture and distribution of hydrogen alone is a herculean task let alone the fact that it would require changes to an entrenched distribution network of gas/diesel.
Re:This is the final nail in the coffin of Fuel Ce (Score:5, Interesting)
the only reduction in CO2 comes from the centralization of production
...where you can do CO2 sequestration and, theoretically, bring emissions down to zero.
(Other than that, I agree with everything you wrote. I worked in R&D on automotive fuel cells for seven years and quit because I believe there's no future in it. They might have been a good idea when the competition was lead-acid batteries, but not any longer.)
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CO2 sequestration as conventionally imagined is just a huge hand out to the coal industry though. Depending on geological strata which no one's even sure can reliably hold that much CO2 as an energy plan is just absurd. It's a plan we don't know will work, which has a limited range of viability to start with, and the results to date are not promising.
That said, Orico and the CSIRO in Australia have been doing something much cooler with the idea: chemical reactors where heat and CO2 is reacted with minerals
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Hydrogen can be obtained by refining oil
Sure it can. But nobody does it that way. Most hydrogen comes from steam reforming [wikipedia.org] of natural gas.
Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way.
Except for range, fueling time, and (maybe) cost.
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Sure it can. But nobody does it that way. Most hydrogen comes from steam reforming of natural gas.
Which is predictably energy-intensive.
Electric cars are superior to Fuel Cells in every possible way.
Except for range, fueling time, and (maybe) cost.
Twice the range is good, but nothing to write home about when diesels are now getting 800 miles, and have been getting 400 for decades — and they can be filled up with carbon-neutral fuel right now, instead of carbon-positive hydrogen-from-natural-gas.
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Diesels cannot, in anyway, be scalably filled with carbon neutral fuel. Biodiesel and it's ilk have all the same problems as ethanol.
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Diesels cannot, in anyway, be scalably filled with carbon neutral fuel. Biodiesel and it's ilk have all the same problems as ethanol.
False, and also false [nrel.gov].
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According to Honda's website, the Clarity has a range of 240 miles, less than Tesla's EPA range of 265. Definitely not costs seeing as how the hydrogen costs more than gasoline. But you do have fueling time, assuming you can find a hydrogen fueling station.
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All fuel cell cars up to this point has been around 300 KM. Now, this one will be 800 KM or 500 miles. So, you can now drive 250 miles away from all 4 locations in which you can fill up at. Not, really that good at range, eh?
Fueling time does you no good when there are only 12 fueling stations in all of the USA, and only 4 cities. OTOH, you can fuel all over the USA.
In addiiton, starting next year, Tesla will be doing 90 exchanges of batteries, and will offer batteries with 500 MPC.
Cost
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In the case of fuel cells, they are expensive because they contain platinum. That isn't going to get any cheaper.
And the current generation of fuel cells can only use hydrogen as fuel, which is still a fossil fuel (as another poster points out, produced from natural gas). Just because they conveniently removed all the carbon for you centrally and you can feel better about none of it coming out of the tail pipe, doesn't make it less of a fossil fuel.
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In fact, using LH2, will increase CO2, vs. simply using electric cars.
Hydrogen will be here next year... (Score:3)
...a true statement in any year.
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Free beer tomorrow!
Five times? (Score:2)
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Good to keep in mind... (Score:2)
Unsubsidized hydrogen is more expensive than gasoline (to go an equivalent distance in a fuel cell vehicle) at this point.
Electricity out of the plug, for a battery electric vehicle, in the U.S. averages $1.25 per gallon in gasoline equivalency (sometimes much less at night).
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The oil industry likes fuel cells (have run advertising showing off their benefits in the past) - i.e. big money wants this to keep fuel cells going and happen.
They like them because they can get their fingers into your hydrogen. The problem with electricity from their standpoint is the same as Tesla's supposed free energy system. You can get it out of the sky. Batteries keep getting better long past the point where the doomsayers said they would, and cheaper as well. It doesn't take a crystal ball to figure out that it's going to get downright convenient to get your energy without any grid infrastructure whatsoever, and they will not have that. At least, not any
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All the hydrogen they use in these cars will be produced by steam reforming natural gas. It's the far cheapest way to make the gas.
At that point why don't you just use a natural gas ICE and skip the whole convert to hydrogen and all the losses it generates.
What makes it so expensive?? (Score:2)
This is a well-understood technology that has existed since the 1960's -- aside from some materials tech not normally associated with car production, it isn't a big leap to create a vehicle that uses a fuel cell -- heck, they could take an existing Plug-in Prius, pull the battery pack, add-in a fuel cell, and job done.
What *precisely* is making the car this expensive? (I did not RTFA, this *is* Slashdot after all)......
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Once fuel cells are common people won't wast time stealing catalytic converters.
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Heck just getting your hands on hydrogen gas to put into your storage system is quite the process. In fact, I would think it is the bulk of the effort and energy consumption here.
Supersize Meal... and a Diet Coke. (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice to see fuel-cell cars, but they're addressing the wrong problem. Shrinking net energy availability is the problem, fuel-cell cars don't address that. I think smaller cars and (motor)bikes would be more useful. Why does a 100 pound woman buying 10 pounds of groceries need to take a 3000 pound vehicle along with her when a 20 pound bicycle and a back pack would suffice?
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Because there are times when she needs to take five 200 pound adults and their luggage 300 miles and she can afford only one car.
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The problem is the inefficient distribution of homes, work and entertainment places, a concept best conveyed by the term "suburbia". Sure, it's nice and probably healthier to live far from the smoke stacks and whatnot of urban existence, but if we want to make the least environmental impact we'd all be living in 1000-storey super skyscrapers or manmade mountains, venturing beyond the city limits only for the occasional sightseeing tour or safari.
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Which would be relevant if SUV's were remotely safe...
As it stood for a long time, SUVs were big...and little else. Any car with a decent roll cage and side-airbags was likely going to come out of all but the most disasterous scrapes much better, since it wouldn't be rolling and caving in the roof on it's occupants.
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Because that woman doesnt exist. In reality its 300 pound woman buying 15 pound mcdonalds lunch.
Jumped Off the Hydrogen Train (Score:2)
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In addition, the impact depends on the storage means. But to be fair, it is not much different than any other form of storage. Basically, you have energy that is stored and capable of fire and explosion. Interestingly, with how many accept the danger of gas/diesel, H2 should not be that big of an issue.
BUT, all of the rest that you say is correct. In fact, H2 will ALWAYS remain very expensive compared to plain old electri
Hydrogen Refueling Map? (Score:2)
Could I get a map of hydrogen refueling stations?
I want to plan all of my driving to remain at least a quarter mile away from those things.
One big "boom," and no one will ever drive these things again.
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I have one here, on this blank sheet of paper.
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For America, here you go. [energy.gov] All 12, in 4 locations.
What is interesting is that the price of these would be equal to about $7/gal gas.
CIVIC GX (Score:2)
A massive natural gas delivery infrastructure is already there, we just need a commitment, via tax credits or outright subsidies, for existing gas stations to add CNG pumps.
Switching a good portion of the auto fleet over to CNG would lower CO2 emissions and a lot of the nastyer emissions that create ground level smog
Is it as good as electri
Glad to see someone developing fuel cells (Score:2)
Better them than us.
Though I would rather they'd make fuel cells that run on alcohol, sugar, or a hydrocarbon. I don't expect storing hydrogen will turn out very well, especially for a fuel cell for a cell phone.
that is one ugly car (Score:2)
Better article (Score:2)
There's a much better article here [hybridcars.com], with numbers (including side-by-side comparisons of efficiencies of battery cars, fuel cell cars and internal combustion cars for fuel processing, fuel usage and total) and interviews with both Toyota, Plug in America etc.
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Just what I want, twin 10000 PSI bombs waiting underneath me for just the right fender bender.
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Re:10000 PSI Bomb (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, given the standard size of a car and the amount of energy you could store in each of the three cases discussed, I would think that gasoline would be the hands down winner for the biggest boom. Hydrogen would run dead last.
Hydrogen's biggest benefit would be that any leaks would quickly dissipate, epically out doors, while hydrocarbons sink and stay close to the ground.
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You've been watching Myth-busters again eh?
High pressure vessels don't generally "blow up" creating shrapnel and the energy released when they vent is pretty limited. Just not enough energy there to overcome the generally over engineered pressure vessel which is designed to withstand the working pressure plus a fairly large safety factor. As long as it stays attached to the car, if you punch a hole in it somehow (or more likely knock the pipe fittings screwed into it off) it's just going to vent. Ventin
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Mythbusters debunks this. Every single pressure vessel explosion they've ever done has involved having to disable 2-3 different safety features in dramatic ways, and then subjecting the whole thing to absurdly extreme conditions before anything happens.
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Yea, my point exactly. Didn't they have to use a high powered rifle to get that scuba tank to come apart? Or was it C4? I forget....
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Hydrogen is extremely reactive, the instant it leaks out.
So what's the flash point of hydrogen? It may be reactive, but it's not going to just explode unless you have the right mixture and an ignition source. I've played with H2 on occasion (in small quantities) and it's not that dangerous.
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HFC Cars *are* electric cars. Hydrogen *can* come from fossil fuels, but can also come from water, or other sources.
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And when it comes to declaring HFC an electric car, well, no. It is a hybrid, nothing more. Just becuase it uses motors to drive the wheels does not mean that it is a true electric car.
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The future. Perhaps before you can get a $20K Tesla.
Unless you'll settle for a forklift. These are starting to make big inroads on battery powered forklifts in warehouses.
Re:Hydrogen? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a common, but knee-jerk reaction. But as bad as it looked, I think many would be surprised to learn that most of the people aboard the Hindenburg survived the disaster despite it being engulfed in flames hundreds of feet off the ground.
Imagine if it were filled with gasoline fumes. Everyone on board would've been dead as well as most of the people on the ground.
Toyota was fired bullets at its pressurized tanks. Regular bullets just bounced. 50 cal rounds too chunks out. It took an armor piercing round to penetrate the tank. When that happened, the hydrogen simply leaked out. And, being lighter than air, it just rose up into the atmosphere instead of pooling on the ground.
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When that happened, the hydrogen simply leaked out. And, being lighter than air, it just rose up into the atmosphere instead of pooling on the ground.
I don't assume they're going to put the fuel tanks on the roof of the car?
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Hey, don't we all want flying cars?
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The point is that hydrogen is very light. It doesn't easily accumulate in rooms since it's much lighter then air - when it leaks it disperses. Unlike say, heavy petroleum fumes, which hang around and accumulate near the ground.
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I don't assume they're going to put the fuel tanks on the roof of the car?
Why would you think that that would even be a good idea? It would actually be much safer than mounting a gas tank up there (and much lighter)
But Honda, Hyundai and Toyota, (among others) have not found it necessary.
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Even better... Just burn Natural Gas in existing equipment.... Very clean compared to gasoline or diesel and refueling times that rival hydrogen.
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Industrial-scale hydrogen production comes from natural gas anyway, so it solves nothing (look up steam reforming).
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And the fuel cell is MAX 60%. [slashdot.org]
But, otherwise, you are correct.
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So for $70,000 why would I want to buy this car versus a Tesla Model S? Or two Chevy Volts?
Thanks you for weighing in, Elon. I think I can give you some answers....
1) The Toyota is cheaper.
2) It can be refilled quickly.
3) GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, (and even Hyundai, for fuck's sake) don't agree with you.
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....there are coming innovations in materials and geometries for anodes and cathodes that in the next 5 years are going to make batteries staggeringly better not only in storage, but also in their ability to be recharged. ....
That was ten years ago. Still waiting. Ye old 18650 are everywhere and don't seem to be going anywhere, anytime soon. Not even in the next 5 years.
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Sadly, those of you with your mouth hooked to the front zipper of big oil, well...
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I've been driving a Leaf for a month, and I agree. I *never* wait to refuel. I just plug in at night. It's so civilized.
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The real issue is that this fuel cells are impractical, as is H2 inself.