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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe World's Biggest Car Company Wants to Get Rid of Gasoline
The first thing you notice about the Mirai, Toyotas new $62,000, four-door family sedan, is that its no Camry, an international symbol of bland conformity. First there are the in-your-face, angular grilles on the cars front end. These deliver air to (and cool) a polymer fuel-cell stack under the hood. Then theres the wavy, layered sides, meant to evoke a droplet of water. It looks like it was driven off the set of the Blade Runner sequel.
Just as the Prius has established itself as the first true mass-market hybrid, Toyota hopes the Mirai will one day become the first mass-market hydrogen car. On sale in Japan on Dec. 15, it will be available in the U.S. and Europe in late 2015 and has a driving range of 300 miles, much farther than most plug-in electrics can go. It also runs on the most abundant element in the universe and emits only heat and waterand none of the gases that lead to smog or contribute to global warming. This is not an alternative to a gasoline vehicle, says Scott Samuelsen, an engineer and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California at Irvine. This is a quantum step up.
The Mirai is hardly a speedster, though its quicker than a Prius. It can reach 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour in 9.6 seconds. When you punch it, the car feels like an electrictheres none of the vibration of a combustion engine. Driving the Mirai around a large, man-made island in Tokyo Bay called Odaiba is a little surreal. The interior is a Zen sanctuary of silence, save for the rush of wind passing around the vehicle and the occasional muffled sound of the suspension doing its work. The car can double as a mobile power station: A socket in the trunk can electrify the typical Japanese home for about a week in the event of an earthquake or other emergency.
As cool as the Mirai is, selling it is a hugely risky move. While fuel cells are a proven technology, used by NASA during Apollo missions in the 1960s to generate electricity and produce drinking water, a mass market for fuel-cell cars will require big investments in hydrogen fueling stations that may not be forthcoming. And, thanks in large part to Toyota itself, the auto industry has sunk serious money into hybrids, plug-in electrics, and advanced batteries in the expectation that these technologies will dominate the post-gasoline era, whenever that may be. Every manufacturer has multiple hybrids and electrics coming, says Mike Jackson, chief executive officer of AutoNation (AN), the largest U.S. retailer of new cars, trucks, and SUVs. And here you have Toyota saying, Were not going to go full electric. The ultimate answer is fuel cells.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-17/toyota-embraces-fuel-cell-cars-for-post-gasoline-future
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)These hundreds of articles flooding the Internet use the same misleading talking points:
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it's not a fuel unless you use energy to create it.
That hydrogen is an abundant element does not make free H2 molecules easy to find.
Plug-in hybrids have ranges far greater than 300 miles. They mean on electric power only, but on gas + electric they go further.
Hydrogen will require owners to use commercial filling stations that will make someone very rich.
In contrast, battery electric cars and plug in hybrids can charge almost anywhere without a middle man.
Hydrogen claptrap, industry propaganda, the natural gas industry's pipe dream!
(natural gas will be the most widely used fuel to produce the hydrogen)
sir pball
(4,766 posts)Not explaining since it's really basic science.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)Our extraction of carbon fuels from the lithosphere at accelerated rates is an unnatural shift in the balance of the carbon cycle.
Water vapor can and does condense without effect, but CO2 does not and increases in concentration over time and changes the acidity of our oceans.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)solar cells are getting cheaper all the time. Lots of water around.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I wrote the RPF for a 500kW two-acre solar farm and selected the vendor and refined the contract and the project was built.
I know that solar can be used to create H2, but it has to create electricity first and that electricity is more efficiently used to directly charge batteries to run the electric motors of a vehicle than it is when used to create hydrogen which must then be used to create electricity to run the electric motors of a vehicle.
Hydrogen introduces a middle step in energy transformations that make it less useful than simply charging batteries for a battery electric vehicle, and there are quite a few BEVs on the market right now, no new infrastructure required and they can run on solar, too.
I'll take 86% grid-to-wheels efficiency over 25% efficiency every time. "Grid" can be solar or hydro or wind or fossil fuel.
BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)RiverLover
(7,830 posts)Go Toyota!
IDemo
(16,926 posts)The fuel cell is simply an electric energy delivery means to the vehicle's on-board electric motor.