Toyota Mirai Fuel Cell

[GRA]

I should probably take down that picture, huh?

Oh, I don't know. If anything it shows that it's hard to make the Mirai any uglier than it already is

[GRA]

I wonder if the new Mirai will even be able to increase range; with the stations being standardized at 700 bar and the non-interior space in a sedan being about as fully packed as it can already be, I wonder where the additional pressure vessels could sit.

Most likely a question of reducing the size of the largest tank and adding another, as Hyundai did when going from the Tucson to the Nexo.

They're already underperforming w.r.t. most BEVs in both effective range and charging speed, so they need to up their game if they want to make the new properly series produced Mirai a success!

You've lost me there - how is a Mirai " underperforming w.r.t. most BEVs in both effective range and charging speed"? https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/mirai/20 ... ntest.html


Effective range, although not as good as the Clarity or Nexo, is still as good or better than the vast majority of BEVs, especially in winter, and fueling time is comparable to liquid/gaseous-fueled ICEs. Lack of fueling infrastructure and fuel price are the major issues, not range or refueling speed.

[DaveinOlyWA]

^^^
Those sales numbers are comical. I really wonder if it was worth it for Toyota to go that direction for CA ZEV credits vs. building another compliance BEV.

Meanwhile, for the last few months, Tesla seems to be selling over 10K units/month in the US.

Comical? Maybe. Directly in line with what Toyota has been doing for the last decade? Absolutely. Maybe the taste in my mouth created by the PiP Prius' 8 mile EV range still lingers but the company is truly all but dead to me. As you know; that is a significant event for me.

[DaveinOlyWA]

Effective range, although not as good as the Clarity or Nexo, is still as good or better than the vast majority of BEVs, especially in winter, and fueling time is comparable to liquid/gaseous-fueled ICEs. Lack of fueling infrastructure and fuel price are the major issues, not range or refueling speed.

I am amazed you made this statement without a single "if"

Just how fast is the refueling time when it requires a 15 minute detour to get to the likely one and only station in region?

[GRA]

Effective range, although not as good as the Clarity or Nexo, is still as good or better than the vast majority of BEVs, especially in winter, and fueling time is comparable to liquid/gaseous-fueled ICEs. Lack of fueling infrastructure and fuel price are the major issues, not range or refueling speed.

I am amazed you made this statement without a single "if"

Just how fast is the refueling time when it requires a 15 minute detour to get to the likely one and only station in region?

You need to read more carefully. From the sentence of mine you quoted - I've highlighted the relevant section for you:

Lack of fueling infrastructure and fuel price are the major issues, not range or refueling speed.

[DaveinOlyWA]

Effective range, although not as good as the Clarity or Nexo, is still as good or better than the vast majority of BEVs, especially in winter, and fueling time is comparable to liquid/gaseous-fueled ICEs. Lack of fueling infrastructure and fuel price are the major issues, not range or refueling speed.

I am amazed you made this statement without a single "if"

Just how fast is the refueling time when it requires a 15 minute detour to get to the likely one and only station in region?

You need to read more carefully. From the sentence of mine you quoted - I've highlighted the relevant section for you:

Lack of fueling infrastructure and fuel price are the major issues, not range or refueling speed.

Ah missed that for sure.

[GRA]

We're all guilty of skimming from time to time, and miss items "hiding in plain sight."

[DaveinOlyWA]

We're all guilty of skimming from time to time, and miss items "hiding in plain sight."

Well in my case its reading from the phone. Text is set to max size so I can only see about 3-5 words on two lines at one time so a lot of scrolling. It is conceivable I simply scrolled past the key phrase w/o even knowing it...

[mux]

The point is exactly that even though you can typically refuel in about 10 minutes start to finish, you require detours and planning all the time. This in turn really limits the effective range, because you can't even plug in to get to the nearest actually working, not-repressurizing fueling station - you have to keep some reserve (most drivers seem to err on the side of caution and keep ~20-30% reserve) to be able to refuel.

I'm not saying this is an inherent issue with all hydrogen cars ever, it's just that BEVs have gone from being demonstrably inferior in both range (sub-100mi) and refueling speed (maybe 50kW if you're lucky and it's not cold) to superior range (300-350mi actual range) and charging speed (250-350kW, plug&charge, no detours, no queues) in the span of the existence of the 1st gen Mirai. In the meantime, the only way hydrogen has been able to sort of respond is by making a physically significantly larger car to accomodate an extra fuel tank (Nexo) and building about 1/5th of the promised new fueling stations, both in Europe and the US.

This is not news, but it's typical that we see this happening for an alternative fuel again and again. Remember CNG? That was supposed to be the bees knees, and it theoretically was: about 30% lower emissions without the need for any other changes to the car, smaller engines for the same power. It even had the advantage over hydrogen that you could refuel at home, if you had mains gas. But large fuel tanks and very sparse fueling stymied the technology. There were plenty of promises even by oil companies like Shell and BP that they'd offer CNG widely, there were large metro areas that retrofitted buses and taxis to CNG and built their own publically funded refueling infrastructure. All of this has happend over the past 20 years or so, and where is it now? It's basically a zombie technology.

Before CNG, it was liquified gas.

I've predicted this for 10+ years now, but this is what's happening to hydrogen and has been for all the time I've been involved with the tech. Nobody still supporting hydrogen vehicle technologies at this point will be easy to convince of this - obviously this is a self-selecting group - but it's pretty obvious. I'm really surprised BEVs have been able to garner so much support and have progressed so much in so little time.

[arnis]

Interesting, what is more efficient: Mirai or some long available CNG Vehicle, for example VW Passat CNG.
And we make both fuels carbon neutral.
(for CNG lets do this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction )

As of right now there is a thing called biomethane that is pretty much CO2 neutral, but how about making CH4 from CO2 and H2.