California retail H2 fuel stations

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Via GCC:
California Energy Commission awards $17M to expand hydrogen refueling infrastructure
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/06/20170616-cec.html

. . . FirstElement Fuel, Inc. will develop eight hydrogen refueling stations. Five of those will be located in Southern California: in Huntington Beach, Irvine, San Diego, Santa Monica, and Sherman Oaks. The remaining three will be in the San Francisco Bay Area: in Campbell, Oakland and Sunnyvale.

Air Liquide Advanced Technologies US, LLC received funds for a refueling station in Santa Nella that will connect the Southern California and the Bay Area stations. . . .
These are all sites previously chosen for grant awards under GFO 15-605 (see upthread). My guess is that this is actually giving the money to these particular sites, presumably because they've met all the requirements to do so.
 
CAFCP list showing status of all existing or planned California H2 stations as of 7/21/17: http://cafcp.org/sites/default/files/h2_station_list.pdf

Since the last update (5/31/17, noted upthread), several of the opening dates have been pushed back, and there's been a noticeable slowing of the pace of openings. Not sure why, as the money's been allocated to most of these. Torrance (upgrade from no-retail to full retail, pushed back from July) and Fremont are the only two now scheduled to open in mid-17, with San Ramon pushed back (again) to Q3, Ontario and Woodside to late 2017, and the always 'in-commissioning' status but never commissioned (as full retail; it does operate as a dem/val site, but only for Hyundai) Cal State LA is now pushed back to 2018.

I sent an email to CAFCP telling them that CSULA's status was a joke, given that it's been listed as 'in commissioning' for over a year now. Got a nice email back from their head of outreach explaining the issues at the site, but that didn't change my opinion that they should de-list it until there's actually some real prospect of it opening within a month or two, as I think such repeated schedule delays without any change in status decrease the site's credibility (much as has happened with Tesla's schedule claims).
 
Wanting to get some exercise late yesterday afternoon, I decided to ride my bike out to San Ramon and check out the new H2 station at Toyota's regional office. Prior to this one opening, only True Zero had any stations in the Bay Area, and at least the one in Hayward charges $16.78/kg, which is high compared to the Air Products-owned stations in SoCal that charge $9.99/kg. AFAIA this is the first station in California to use LH2 delivery, which is supposed to reduce transportation costs, so I was curious to see if this station, owned by Air Liquide [Edit: actually Linde, my bad] (like Air Products an industrial gas company) would be less expensive. The station's right on Norris Canyon Road, a double-sided dispenser with 350 bar on the north side and 700 bar on the south side. But the price is $20.16/kg.! They've got to be kidding! While at that price the Mirai can still get free fuel for all 36k miles of a 3 year lease, a Clarity (60k miles on a 3-yr. lease) will have to start paying for fuel after about 48-50k miles.

More importantly, the window of opportunity for consumer H2/FCEVs in California has now narrowed considerably, with the advent of the 310 mile range Tesla Model 3 for $44k base MSRP. While real world range, especially in cold conditions, will still likely be less than a Mirai (312 miles EPA) ,the SC network is considerably more extensive than the H2 fueling network inside the state, and also outside it where FCEVs currently can't venture. The Mirai's a much less compelling car, having only four seats, pedestrian performance, a design that puts off many people, and a limited trunk space without folding rear seats. Comparably equipped the Model 3's more like $50k, and an FCEV gets double the CA. rebate bringing the cars closer together in price, but unless someone simply has no way to charge the Model 3 at low cost locally, the Model 3's a more useful car. Now that Tesla has begun to construct SCs in urban areas specifically to cater for apartment/condo dwellers in that situation, that advantage will dwindle. The sole other advantage the Mirai now has it that it can be leased (as it should be), and until Tesla offers lease deals on the Model 3 we won't know how it compares in that area.

The Clarity's a better deal than the Mirai, offering 5 seats, 20k miles/yr. lease vice 12k, 366 miles of EPA range, better performance and somewhat less off-putting looks, but its trunk is even more restricted than the Mirai's. So, for H2/FCEVs to have any hope of succeeding here, they have to increase the rate of installations of stations, especially those that allow access to more areas of the state, and they must also bring the prices of H2 and the cars down substantially, and improve their performance. Both the Mirai and Clarity are fully-equipped compared to the base Model 3, so they can be de-contented by several thousand dollars, but they really need to up their game performance-wise at the same time. And H2 still needs to be brought down to where the price/kg. is approximately double the price of gas/gallon for it to compete.
 
GRA said:
So, for H2/FCEVs to have any hope of succeeding here, they have to increase the rate of installations of stations, especially those that allow access to more areas of the state, and they must also bring the prices of H2 and the cars down substantially, and improve their performance. Both the Mirai and Clarity are fully-equipped compared to the base Model 3, so they can be de-contented by several thousand dollars, but they really need to up their game performance-wise at the same time. And H2 still needs to be brought down to where the price/kg. is approximately double the price of gas/gallon for it to compete.
When you have lost GRA, you might as well give up.

Was all the time spent on H2 worth it ? I still regret the time I spent on HD-DVD.
 
evnow said:
GRA said:
So, for H2/FCEVs to have any hope of succeeding here, they have to increase the rate of installations of stations, especially those that allow access to more areas of the state, and they must also bring the prices of H2 and the cars down substantially, and improve their performance. Both the Mirai and Clarity are fully-equipped compared to the base Model 3, so they can be de-contented by several thousand dollars, but they really need to up their game performance-wise at the same time. And H2 still needs to be brought down to where the price/kg. is approximately double the price of gas/gallon for it to compete.
When you have lost GRA, you might as well give up.

Was all the time spent on H2 worth it ? I still regret the time I spent on HD-DVD.
I'm not sure who you're saying has lost. I have lost nothing, as I don't care which ZEV tech succeeds. Now, the FCEV manufacturers and H2 suppliers may have lost, and if they don't get a move on I believe that will be the case here, which was always going to be a tough market given our low gas prices - I've always said their odds for success were much better in Europe and Asia where gas prices were higher. I think they've got at most another two years here to have a chance, or BEVs and their infrastructure will have built an insurmountable lead. In other regions the situation is more favorable to them.
 
Via GCC:
California Energy Commission awards more than $16M to Equilon for 7 new H2 stations in Nor Cal; 60 funded
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/08/20170810-cec.html

These are the remaining 7 out of 16 stations that had previously been selected under GFO 15-605 for development, and now the money is actually authorized (see previous post for the other 9). Equilon is Shell, and all 7 will be in Norcal at their stations, 5 in the Bay Area: 3 in S.F., 1 in Berkeley and 1 in Walnut Creek. The remaining two stations will be in the Sacramento area. These stations won't complete before 2018 at the earliest.
 
Via GCC:
Five additional hydrogen stations proposed for California
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/11/20171110-calh2.html

The California Energy Commission has issued a “Revised Notice of Proposed Awards” that recommends five additional hydrogen fueling stations previously recommended for funding by Energy Commission staff. The newly awarded stations are:

Beverly Hills (FirstElement Fuel)
Studio City (FirstElement Fuel)
San Jose (Shell)
Redwood City (FirstElement Fuel)
Mission Hills (FirstElement Fuel)

The Energy Commission’s commissioners must approve the awards at an upcoming meeting before they are considered “awarded.” With this addition, California has a total of 66 retail hydrogen stations open, in development, and proposed.
Unfortunately, they didn't expand the network to allow travel to any new areas, as these just add local urban capacity. They need to do both to emphasize an FCEV's operational advantages over BEVs for renters and road trips.
 
A quick summary of 2017: Only 6 full-retail stations opened, making 31 + 3 non-retail, for 34 total. This compares to 25 + 6 for 31 total last January, so progress has been well behind schedule. CEC has awarded 20 grants for new sites that may start to complete this year, and definitely will start to arrive in 2019, but they really need to get the ones that have been hanging around in "commissioning" or "construction" status since last year done. In "commissioning" are Ontario and Woodside; Cal State LA has been in commissioning status forever, and clearly should be removed from the list as nothing is happening with it. In "construction" status are Mountain View and LAX.

As noted upthread, the new stations which have received grants are all in/around urban areas except for one more on I-5 in the San Joaquin Valley (Santa Nella), so they really need to provide more stations to expand the places people can go, in addition to all these stations for routine driving.
 
The ARB report reads like an advert.

I was surprised to read that H2 still costs $10 a Kg despite the majority being sourced from NG. For the Mirai that works out to ~ 16 cents a mile ... for a car that costs $57k to the consumer ... that is thought to cost Toyota $100k in losses on every car.

They have a LONG way to go, California funded H2 fueling stations or not.
 
SageBrush said:
The ARB report reads like an advert.

I was surprised to read that H2 still costs $10 a Kg despite the majority being sourced from NG. For the Mirai that works out to ~ 16 cents a mile ... for a car that costs $57k to the consumer ... that is thought to cost Toyota $100k in losses on every car.

They have a LONG way to go, California funded H2 fueling stations or not.
There is certainly a way to go, and no one has ever said otherwise. OTOH, tossing around figures like $100k loss per Mirai for Toyota is based on what evidence - only Toyota knows how much each Mirai costs them, and they're not saying. As Toyota, along with Honda and Hyundai are still eating ca. $15k in fuel costs per FCEV, the cost to the consumer per mile remains zero up to that limit.

Also see:
DOE analysis suggests rapid convergence of FCEV and BEV TCOs; FCEVs less expensive for majority of LDV fleet by 2040; mass compounding
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/01/20180114-doe.html
 
WetEV said:
GRA said:
As Toyota, along with Honda and Hyundai are still eating ca. $15k in fuel costs per FCEV

At $150 per kWh, the expected battery cell cost in 2025, that would be the same as adding 100kWh.
Uh huh, and at $4/kg., DoE's target price for H2, it will be more than competitive with gas. Who knows when either tech will actually get there.
 
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