Japan To Offer $20,000 Subsidy For Fuel-Cell Cars

An anonymous reader writes "Toyota is on track to launch the first consumer fuel-cell car in Japan next year, and the country's Prime Minister says the government wants to assist the new alternative to gas-driven vehicles. Shinzo Abe announced that Japan will offer subsidies of almost $20,000 for fuel cell cars, which will decrease the Toyota model's cost by about 28%. He said, "This is the car of a new era because it doesn't emit any carbon dioxide and it's environmentally friendly. The government needs to support this. Honda is also planning to release a fuel-cell car next year, but experts expect widespread adoption to take decades, since hydrogen fuel station infrastructure is still in its infancy."

Why isn't the U.S. doing things like this?

[kheldan]

You want people to adopt electric cars and hybrids in greater numbers sooner? You want to wean the general populace off of fossil fuels? This is how you do it! Of all the complete wastes of money the U.S. government commits, this comparatively speaking would be a drop in the bucket and of great long-term benefit to the entire country. While we're at it how about they sink some money into electric vehicle support infrastructure like rapid charging stations, too?

weird choice

[Trepidity]

My impression is that, 10 or 15 years ago, electric vehicles and fuel-cell vehicles were perhaps equally good candidates for "future non-petroleum car technology", but that electric vehicles have been developing much faster, while fuel-cell vehicles have been going nowhere. Why now place a large bet on fuel cells?

Re:weird choice

[Nemyst]

I'm guessing because A) Japanese manufacturers have been focusing on fuel cells and B) electricity in Japan is quite expensive, reducing incentive to use it. Japan's power grid is also fairly strange and I'm not sure it'd be able to bear heavy electric car usage.

Re:Absolutely - it is filthy

[cerberusti]

Even if we could produce it in a reasonable manner hydrogen is highly explosive, very easy to ignite, cryogenic when liquefied (as in 20 K cryogenic), and likes to leak out of most containers at an impressive rate (even very well sealed and cooled containers which you could not practically place in a moving vehicle).

Leaks can also cause spontaneous ignition due to the fact that unlike most gasses, hydrogen warms on expansion and requires a terrifyingly low amount of energy to ignite.

There is effectively no way to overcome the practical issues with using dihydrogen alone as a fuel source while being competitive with anything else. It must be bound to another atom, such as carbon (and if that counts as hydrogen powered we already have it with gasoline.)

In the US we will end up doing exactly what you mention: We will burn the natural gas directly for energy, because that is a sane thing to do. It is stable and easy to store compared to hydrogen, and the energy density is good enough.