Toyota Announces Plans For Fuel Cell Car By 2015

puddingebola writes "Toyota has announced plans for a fuel cell powered car at the Tokyo Motor show. From the article, 'Satoshi Ogiso, the Toyota Motor Corp. executive in charge of fuel cells, said Wednesday the vehicle is not just for leasing to officials and celebrities but will be an everyday car for ordinary consumers, widely available at dealers. "Development is going very smoothly," he told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the Tokyo Motor Show. The car will go on sale in Japan in 2015 and within a year later in Europe and U.S."'"

they've had this place since what 2010?

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

I remember at least 2 years ago, Toyota had this plan. Hydrogen isn't as bad as people make it out to be. You just need special materials to work with. If you go steel, it just gets owned. So special materials are expensive in the short run until they're manufactured. Hydrogen itself is just made with electricity and water. It isn't much different than electric cars in that regard. The main difference is electric cars need expensive batteries. Hydrogen cars only need a pressurized tank. I think in the long run hydrogen cars can win out. Do go investing in hydrogen refilling stations just yet though like that electric car got ahead of the curve.

Re:they've had this place since what 2010?

[TheLink]

If they use hydrocarbon fuel cells the cars may be able to use the existing fuel stations (likely to need filters to prevent poisoning from impurities). They'd probably still release CO2 but be more efficient.

Far more convenient than cars with hydrogen tanks.

Re:*Yawn*

[ahabswhale]

I was going to say wake me when they make a Toyota that can actually keep me awake. They truly make the most boring mass market cars on the planet to drive. Quite an achievement IMHO given their resources.

Re:they've had this place since what 2010?

[vux984]

esides, where is all the electricity going to come from to do from pure water?

Seems like a good application for solar.

Possibly eventually even bypass the electricity step and just use solar energy to produce hydrogen directly.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/09/27/solar-hydrogen-production-efficiency-world-record-broken-wormlike-hematite-photoanode-crushes-old-record/ [cleantechnica.com]

5% efficiency so we're not exactly there yet, but its a possible direction for future breakthroughs.

In the meantime, solar electric arrays to power electrolysis seems like it beats "coal plants".

Re:I don't get it

[orzetto]

I am a researcher working in hydrogen & fuel cells, so I'll just spill the beans:

And the hydrogen probably takes up more space than a gallon of gas (a guess --- does someone know?).

It does, but not so much. Storing H2 at 700 bar requires a hefty pressure tank. They are fairly safe but that doesn't make them lighter. That's why hydrogen is suited for larger vehicles (family wagon, SUVs, long-range trips, trucks etc.). Short range is better served by batteries.

What are we destroying to make the hydrogen?

If you have cheap electricity, then it's water. You electrolyse it at the station and do not need to ship hydrogen around or build a gas network. You can also reform natural gas, which is cheaper, but then you need to clean the hydrogen really well: requirements on purity are 99.99% hydrogen, and other components are very severely limited (e.g. sulphur down to 4 parts per billion). It is debatable whether the purity standard is really necessary, though, it may be unnecessarily strict.

Main reason not to use electricity directly, as in batteries: batteries are heavier, and if you want to double energy storage in a battery car you need to double the batteries (which is not going to double the range—the batteries are heavy too). If you want to double the energy storage in a hydrogen car, you only need to double the hydrogen storage, the fuel cell (the expensive part) is still the same. And hydrogen storage is not nearly as heavy as its battery equivalent, also factoring in that fuel-cell conversion is about 50% efficient.

Why is investing in a new infrastructure -- hydrogen distribution --- a good thing?

As I said above, a good alternative is not to have the infrastructure, but to produce and compress hydrogen locally at the station. The idea is that even with all the losses (hydrogen production, compression, fuel cell) the system is still more efficient that oil (drilling, extraction, transport, refining to gasoline, transport, combustion engine). More importantly, hydrogen can be produced starting from anything: natural gas, oil, solar, you name it. Gasoline comes only from oil (or coal if you want to go Fischer-Tropsch, but that's not really efficient and has large emissions).

Does this process change the net amount of water in the ecosystem in a way that would have impact in 50 years?

No, the quantities are minimal compared to the oceans. Any day you will have far more water passing through your shower than out of your exhaust. 100 km of travel in a fuel-cell Mercedes B-class (yes I drove it :-) produce about 9 kg (i.e. 9 liters) of water. Besides, that hydrogen was produced from water from the biosphere anyway, so no balance is disrupted.

Re:they've had this place since what 2010?

[Solandri]

Just to put some numbers on this:

Natural gas power plant: 60% efficient
Electrical transmission from plant to home: 98% efficient
Battery charging: 75% efficient
Net efficiency: .6*.98*.75 = 44%

Natural gas power plant: 60% efficient
Electrolysis next door to power plant: 65% efficient (this is about the best you can get in a lab, so I'm being generous)
Hydrogen fuel cell: 75% efficient (again being generous - they've gotten over 90% in a lab, but anything over 50% commercially is good)
Net efficiency: .6*.65*.75 = 29%

Gasoline engine: ~30% efficient

Yes the gasoline engine suffers additional losses when operating outside its optimal RPM, and the transmission. But electric motors are the same when not run at their optimal RPM. So I've omitted the last step in the power transfer to the wheels.

The only way hydrogen fuel cells make sense compared to regular gasoline cars (never mind EVs) is if you don't use electrolysis and liberate the hydrogen directly from petrochemicals like natural gas. If gasoline-like refueling is an important market factor, I think biofuels are going to end up the winner, not hydrogen.

feasible but zero demand

[spage]

All the comments about H2 efficiency and explosive risk completely miss the point. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been feasible for years, there have been a few Honda Clarity and Mercedes B-Class FCVs driving round Southern California (which has the ONLY public refueling stations in the entire USA) for several years.

The problem is demand. If you care about the environment you plug in for your regular commute. You can can already buy a plug-in hybrid for half the price and lower running costs than these 2015 cars. As Volt owners gleefully report, most drivers travel for hundreds of miles recharging at home, but for long trips the car has the quick refueling of gasoline that's available everywhere.

There's a market of people who don't want any tailpipe emissions and can't plug in and regularly drive long distances and live near the handful of H2 stations and are willing to spend a lot of money on a new technology, but it's vanishingly small!

Eventually fossil fuels could be so expensive or restricted that H2 will be the range-extender we use for our plug-in vehicles, if ethanol from biomass doesn't work out. But that's a long way away. Meanwhile Toyota and Hyundai are very cagey about whether you can plug in their HFCVs; it seems the answer is No. Their cars have a battery and motor so plugging in is the cheapest way to drive the first few miles, and I think soon consumers will reject a motor-driven car that you can't plug in. The comparative reviews of the first HFCVs against 2015's plug-in hybrid cars will be brutal, and there will be dozens of "gotcha" pieces, wherein the brave reporter drives out of Southern California and gets stranded.