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[파이낸셜 타임즈 영문판] 토요다의 차기 차량생산 모델은 수소연료차

by 煌錦笑年 2015. 10. 29.


중동에서 풍비박산을 거듭하는 워싱턴은 

폭스바겐 사를 상대로 전 세계적인 미디어 구라퍼갠더를 시전하여 

일반 국민들을 대상으로 전 세계적인 혼란상을 부추겼고,

유로6 기준 미달 방식의 사기를 쳤다는 식으로..

그 다음에 일본 르노-닛산 얼라이언스의 

회장 카를로스 곤.

 
폭스바겐 사태의 배후에는 

워싱턴이 있으며 유럽 자동차 산업에 대한

제동을 목적으로 시비를 거는 것이라고 주장.

 

폭스바겐은 아무런 문제도 없으며 

충분한 연구개발로 글로벌 규제안을 

충실히 따르는 회사를 상대로

워싱턴이 의도적인 거짓언론 플레이를 통해 

내용을 부풀려 공격을 한 것..이라고 


대놓고 워싱턴에 직격탄..



어제 기사에서는 한국에서도 

미국과의 차별을 막아 내자는 취지로 폭스바겐 측에 소송을 걸자는 

법무법인 변호사의 주장이 튀어 나오고.. 



이미 15년전에 수소엔진 탑재기술을 마친 회사..

'이미 기술적으로는 완료...단지 우리는 (시장이 열리기를) 기다리고 있을 뿐..' 이라는 배너광고를 

국제 자동차 전시회장에 내 거는 회사를 상대로 워싱턴은 객기..광기를 부린 셈..


그런다고 자국산 자동차 산업이 이득이 있어 보이지가 않아.



그러나 문제의 핵심은 

미국의 자동차 시장이 세계 1위라는 것은 이제 사라진 신화.

중국시장과 유럽 유라시아의 시장이 중국을 중심으로 향후 독주를 하게 되는데

이건 순전히 아시아 시장판도 중심으로 변화 한다는 얘기.


그런데 문제는 2016년도 부터 중국은 

친환경 하이브리드 차량에 대한 전면적인 생산, 수입 및 판매를 

포괄적으로 병행 할 예정인 것이다..


판도가 바뀌겠지.. 


이미 미국 내 대형  메이저 에너지 업계의 수장들은 석유시대는 이제 완전히 끝났다고..공동으로 

합창하는 현실에서 튀어 나온 워싱턴의 폭스바겐 사태 주도..


일종의 산업적인 컬러혁명 인셈 이거나..

달러기반 산업의 카르마 인지도 ..


그러더니..

3 일전 파이낸셜 타임즈 영문지의 업계동향 란에는
토요타 사는 향후 석유자동차 생산 대신 수소연료차를 생산하겠다고..


배기구에서 맹물이 떨어지는 자동차 엔진..

그럼 그 많은 자동차들의 연료로써 

수소를 어떻게 대량생산 해낼 수 있는가..라는 의문이 뒤따르게 되는데..


일단 바다를 바라보면, 무궁한 수소의 보고가 되겠고

그러한 꿈의 청정시대를 준비하기 위한 전 단계 과도기로써

토요타 사의 발표처럼 수소연료전지 (Hydrogen Fuelled & Cell)방식차량을 활용하게 되겠지..


이차전지인 Lithium-ion Polymer Battery 방식과는 조금 다르긴 하다만..


리튬은 더 이상 희토류 자원이 아님.

바다에서 대량으로 채취하는 기술도 있고.

그 전단계에서 자원전쟁들을 벌이고 있고

남미 국가들의 희토류들을 죄다 사들인 중국 측의 

이데올로기적 자본의 태풍도 몰아쳤던 것이 전년도 였고..


희토류가 대단히 풍부한 지역 중 하나가 북한..

냄비에 라면을 끓일 때 ..냄비바닥을 녹여 구멍을 낼 정도라는 그 비싸다는 유연탄이

저렴한 무연탄 보다 훨씬 많은 나라.. 

석유도 산동반도 이남과 평양지역 지하를 거쳐 우측 동해지역까지 걸쳐져 있는..

없는게 없는 북한.. ;;


..


암튼 토요타와 폭스바겐 사의 선전을 기원하며..

이는 모두 카쟈르 에너지 체제에 대한 반격의 일환들인 셈..


그리고 반중력 Keshe Technology 도 공존하는 현실..

백신주입과 암환자 양산에 선구적인 

미국 의학체계를 붕괴시킬 그날을 기다리며..


그러나 MPR 이 먼저 이지 않을까...


암튼, 

폭스바겐과 이를 뒷받침 해줬던 독일 의회의 승인, 및

토요타 사 등 친환경으로 내달리려는 모든 업계들의 공동 반격을 기대하며..




http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a2d9151e-7427-11e5-a129-3fcc4f641d98.html#axzz3pvEzXar2



ft.com companies industrials >


Last updated: October 25, 2015 6:44 pm


Toyota bets the future car will be fuelled by hydrogen



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A Toyota worker checks a Mirai fuel-cell vehicle on the production line of the company's Motomachi plant

Toyota showed off a special version of its new Mirai saloon this week to celebrate Back to the Future day.

The Japanese carmaker’s take on the time-travelling DeLorean from the popular movie series has the trademark gull-wing doors and the same, bare-metal bodywork seen in the Hollywood film.

But Toyota’s car is not fuelled by banana skins. This one runs on hydrogen.

Mirai — meaning “future” in Japanese — is Toyota’s fuel-cell vehicle, a hybrid car powered by two tanks of high-pressure hydrogen and an electric motor. For the world’s biggest carmaker by sales, this is no mere movie tie-in project. It is Toyota’s next big visionary bet.

Akio Toyoda, chief executive, has called the fuel-cell sedan a “new start”. The project is an important part of Toyota’s ambitious plan, announced last week, to virtually eliminate petrol and diesel engines from its fleet by 2050 — a drive that has taken on urgency across the industry following the Volkswagen emissions scandal.

The hydrogen car represents a key moment for a company that may be making record profits but is still recovering its poise after a global recall over unintended acceleration.

The move echoes Toyota’s big bet two decades ago on petrol-electric hybrids. The company launched the Prius in 1997 and has now sold 8m vehicles worldwide, turning Toyota into a leading green-car company.

The Prius sells at a price competitive with alternative technologies and requires no charging infrastructure, because the electric boost is provided by energy from regenerative braking.

“When we developed the hybrid, all we had to do was design a great car,” says Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of the Mirai.

With the £66,000 Mirai, however, “no matter how good a job Toyota does, Toyota alone cannot make this technology popular”, admits Mr Tanaka. “We really need to build an ecosystem.”

Fuel-cell cars — which are effectively hydrogen-electric hybrids — cannot be recharged at home, so drivers are reliant on public filling stations, which at the moment are rare. Hamburg, where Toyota launched the Mirai in Europe this month, has four. But that is the same number as in the entire UK.

Infographic: Toyota’s Mirai

Analysts at Goldman Sachs say hydrogen stations require upfront investment of $3.2m-$4m, versus about $800,000 for petrol stations, meaning infrastructure may be slow to develop.

“That’s not range anxiety. That’s range panic, because you just can’t use the car,” says Andy Palmer, the Aston Martin chief executive who oversaw development of the all-electric Leaf while at Nissan.

The cars are expensive, too, because of the costly fuel stack at the heart of the vehicles. The Mirai is priced the same as a BMW 7-Series, a luxury executive saloon. The Hyundai ix35, the first production fuel-cell car, is not much better at about £53,000.

Infographic: How the fuel cells at the heart of the Mirai work

As a result, doubters say fuel-cell vehicles are driven by government policy rather than consumer demand. It is unclear whether the loss-leading vehicles will ever be profitable without government assistance.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that fuel-cell cars will remain a niche proposition until at least 2025, when they will account for 0.5 per cent of global sales. IHS Automotive, a research group, predict conventional electric vehicles will be at 1.3 per cent by then.

First released in Japan in December last year, Toyota this month began handing over the Mirai to the early adopters, business leaders and public agencies in Europe that it hopes will spread the word and start building the ecosystem.

To foster the production of rival cars, the company released its fuel-cell patents in January, echoing a similar move by Tesla on electric vehicle patents.

Recent weeks have seen the likes of Porsche and Audi launch luxury challengers to Tesla’s electric cars, and many carmakers are also pushing into hydrogen technology.

“Car manufacturers are betting on red or black,” says Mr Palmer. “Almost everybody has hedged their bets.”

Hyundai’s fuel-cell car, the ix35, started production in 2013. Honda, which has been collaborating with General Motors, plans to release a competitor next year. A Nissan vehicle, jointly developed with Daimler and Ford, is expected in 2017.

Some analysts say the scandal at VW, which last month admitted cheating in US emissions tests of its diesel vehicles, will accelerate the shift towards hydrogen cars, whose only emission is water.

In depth

Volkswagen emissions scandal

VW emissions scandal'

The German carmaker is engulfed in the worst scandal in its 78-year history after it admitted to manipulating emissions test data on its diesel vehicles in the US and Europe

Read more

“Until ‘dieselgate’ . . . the very strong pull was from Asia,” says Henri Winand, chief executive of Intelligent Energy, a British fuel-cell technology specialist. “That has changed substantially over the past few weeks.”

Other benefits of the technology include a long range — the Mirai can do 550km on one fill-up, according to European laboratory tests — and rapid refuelling. It takes just three to five minutes. Electric recharging, on the other hand, takes hours and fights have already broken out at some stations in California. It “is like filling your petrol tank with a syringe”, says Mr Winand.

One hydrogen dispenser is capable of supporting 80,000km of travel a day, versus less than 6,000km for a quick-charge electric point, according to BMW.

Toyota believes the Mirai can achieve an overall carbon emissions reduction — including factory production — of 50-70 per cent versus conventional petrol and diesel models, depending on whether the hydrogen is produced from renewable sources such as wind and solar. Using green energy to power electrolysis allows the energy to be stored as hydrogen.

Not surprisingly, fuel-cell technology is appealing to governments. Germany, which has invested heavily in renewable energy in recent decades, plans to have 400 hydrogen filling stations across the country by 2023.

Heinrich Klingenberg from hySolutions, a Hamburg public-private partnership, says hydrogen will be a “game-changer”.

Until ‘dieselgate’ . . . the very strong pull was from Asia. That has changed substantially over the past few weeks

- Henri Winand, chief executive of Intelligent Energy, a British fuel-cell technology specialist

“As long as we’re talking about vehicles that are in interurban use, with a mileage of 50km, that’s all very fine and I can do it with battery [electric] vehicles,” he says. “But as long as it’s heavy duty or I want to do longer mileages, then I do believe we have to have a different type of power train.”

Toyota also sees fuel cells as just one form of propulsion that will be used in combination with other technologies — from large cars and trucks powered by hydrogen, through smaller hybrid and plug-in hybrid passenger cars, to electric city cars.

“It’s not really a question of which one to go for, one or the other,” says Mr Tanaka. “Toyota does not deny the idea of pure” electric vehicles.

“[But hydrogen] satisfies most of the requirements people would want for their first car,” he adds. “Although it takes time, we are all very committed to this technology.”

Mirai shows off technology
 

The Toyota Mirai does not wear its technology lightly.

A futuristic, 4.9m-long saloon, the car has an aggressive, boxy shape and huge grilles that dominate its front end, offering an instant reminder that this is not your average runabout.

The air intakes behind those grilles are integral to the advanced technology inside the vehicle. Oxygen, drawn in through the slats, and hydrogen stored in two tanks pass over a stack of fuel cells, causing a chemical reaction that produces electricity to power the motor. The only emission is water.

Get behind the wheel, and the Mirai — effectively a hybrid vehicle — drives like a polished electric car. Other battery-powered models, such as the BMW i3 and the Renault Zoe, can feel jumpy in city traffic. But the Mirai is super-smooth.

It’s also quiet. The electric motor is, of course, near silent, punctuated only by the fizzing noise of the hydrogen being pumped to the fuel-cell stack. The Japanese company has also worked hard to keep out exterior noise, using acoustic glass that reduces passing lorries to a mere whisper.

The Mirai is, and feels like, a big car — offering the sizeable but stealthy road presence of a Tesla Model S.

The question is, will customers be prepared to part with a similar amount of cash — the Mirai will cost £66,000 in the UK — for an obscure technology that could leave them with an acute case of range anxiety?

Assuming you can find a place to refuel, it costs about €45 in Germany for a fill-up. Home charging stations seem an unrealistic prospect.

The Mirai comes with all the tech trimmings of a modern car — lane departure warning, collision avoidance, a JBL sound system. But both the interior and the overall performance lack the “wow” factor toted by cars aimed at a similar audience — that is, premium, green, design-conscious drivers.

The mere presence of hydrogen — highly flammable and once used to make bombs — may also deter some buyers.

But here, Toyota has armed itself for the battle. The company loaded the car with two full tanks of hydrogen and dropped it from 10m. It also shot the tanks with military-grade rifles. The gas harmlessly dissipated from the pierced canisters.

If a leak occurs in transit, on-board sensors are set to pick-up the escaped gas and shut off the hydrogen system.

So, the Mirai is a safe, clean and silent driving experience. But it could never be called explosive.

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COMMENTS (142)

 

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LucfromMontreal

Overnight charging adds more than 200 KM. I have a very standard 240 volt 40 amp home charger that adds 50 km per hour of charge on my Tesla.  This means that from 6 pm to 8 am I can add about 600 km of storage, more than you need since on a daily basis you will consume no more than 100 km. I charge my car once every 3 days on average with my home charger.  

Jim Bullis, Miastrada Company

Why do we have to hear from some analysts who show themselves to be unqualified by telling us that for hydrogen vehicles the 'only emission is water'.

I can imagine a world using only green energy, but would expect that world to be operating at a pre-industrial age level of energy demand.  That reduced level of demand could be filled by a realistic level of green energy output. I would respect an analyst who discussed this kind of future. 

At the very core of the vehicles, the electric car has it over the hydrogen car because it does not require the fuel cell system, which is rather more efficient than the heat engine but much less than a simple battery.  If we consider the point that electricity is collected from a renewable source, the hydrogen car system is about equal to the electric car system as to efficiency of that collection process, whatever it is.  So all we need to compare is the battery charging and discharging vs. the hydrogen manufacturing and recombining.  References to efficiencies in the range of 70% seem to be floating about for the fuel cell apparatus.  Similar efficiencies seem to be possible for hydrogen production from water.  The net advantage seems to be definitely in favor of the simpler electric vehicle.  Actual data continues to be evasive on this entire subject.

But neither will operate for many years to come without the main source of electricity being fossil fuel based power plants,  only coal and natural gas systems exist with sufficient reserve capacity that they can respond to load variations.  Now that natural gas is so very cheap, it may be a real competitor to coal.

I wonder if Japanese industry is thinking they will call our bluff on renewable energy, and shame us into the necessary expense to actually get a truly renewable energy base.  Until we actually do that, maybe they figure to just game the system in the same way as the electric car folk do it now.  Would they actually be trying to play the PR showmanship game that Tesla has mastered?   

Marcus

@Jim Bullis, Miastrada Company IMHO an "battery only" car cannot be made with a battery, that lasts for the entire vehicles lifetime. on the other hand Toyota has shown, that a hybrid with it's buffer battery can be designed to last (because the battery does not need to be filled up>80% and it never Needs to be depleted <30% - the buffer battery is always kept within it' s comfort zone).

The hydrogen car also is one such setup, that can be designed to last!. Fuel cells may need a few more years of Research but there is no sign of lifetime limitation so far. Also in hydrogen car the battery (again, just like in a hybrid) only serves as energy buffer - and can be made to last.

The next BIG advantage of hydrogen is, that the production and filling of the car are Location and time Independent. Excess electricity of some offshore Windpark, during a low electricity consumption hour, can be used to produce hydrogen. This way there is NO Need for additional power plants. You can just use energy, that would otherwise go unused.

Jim Bullis, Miastrada Company

@Marcus @Jim Bullis, Miastrada Company

Thanks for making important points. 

Maybe the fuel cell lifetime is not a settled issue.  I also am wondering about the chemical processing in the electrolysis.  And there seems to be no end of surprises about batteries. 

I step back when it comes to chemical engineering.  That is an extensive field that I never got below the surface of.

Marcus

@Jim Bullis, Miastrada Company I think you deliberately misinterpret me:

My Point is, that fuel cell lifetime will be excellent - about the lifetime of a car.

The battery lifetime of battery only cars will not reach that point for the time being - they will need replacement unless you are happy with 50% range loss after 12 years. That is why the resource-balance for battery only cars is questionable, unless they are engineered VERY well (i3 REx anyone?).

marketthinker

BMW have announced that from 2022 all of their cars will be hybrid electric - utilizing the systems they have in the i3 and i8 - and that includes Rolls Royce. This is the only way they can hit the emissions targets post VW. This is the big break - previously the big auto companies have had so much invested in traditional internal combustion engines they have done everything  they can to undermine EV, now they have to change.  Initially people will use mainly the petrol, but as the battery range extends to current Tesla levels they will increasingly move to electric power. Plug in overnight to a standard socket and you can add 150 to 200km range. Plug in at work likewise. Add  200k range with a supercharger in 20 minutes while you take a cup of coffee. It's not the same as filling up in 5 minutes, but everything else is so much better. Remember land lines? You never had to remember to charge your phone up, but err that is about it. Free or almost free fuel also makes a massive difference. Hydrogen requires a multi billion $ infrastructure to be built, but who will fund it? Government can't  justify it versus hybrid electric where there is already a fully built infrastructure.  This has Sony Betamax written all over it

David Wilkins

The Mirai is a marvellous machine but faces one insuperable difficulty in the near term. A hydrogen fuel cell car is an electric car without range problems - that's its big selling point. But before hydrogen can catch on, with affordable cars and a comprehensive refuelling infrastructure, existing battery cars will probably already be available offering full range at mainstream prices, shutting the door for the time being to hydrogen.

We're already there with Tesla, but that capability is also in sight for the Leaf too, which is going to a 30kWh battery pack (previously 23kWh) now and ultimately, it is reported, 40-48kWh.

Hydrogen will be more attractive at some stage thanks to weight savings compared with a battery-only car, and more efficient fuelling as described in the article - but that more efficient fuelling will only be possible when the infrastructure is there.

kevtheclaret

.....and on the plus side, California could use the extra water generated by 14,000,000 cars.

Just how much water will 14,000,000 hydrogen cars generate?

kevtheclaret

A petrol station may well cost $800,000 to set up, but I wonder what the equivalent cost was when the internal combustion engine first took off for the masses? 

Surely it's up to governments to support the growth of green transport if they're really serious about emission reduction.

Another approach may be for Toyota to go into partnership with an existing company with petrol station infrastructure, It's like cornering the future as reliance on hydrocarbon fuelled transport falls off.

SirT

This is a Betamax cul de sac.

Why when you can get a Tesla model S which runs on electricity would you use electricity to create Hydrogen only for it to generate electricity to run the car.It is like going to London via Paris from Edinburgh

E. Scrooge

@SirT Let me know when you are actually able to drive out of the cul de sac, or drive cross country without the mandatory re-charge every 200 to 300 miles?   How many total hours lost re-charging along your extended journey?  I'll take the betamax any day.

SirT

@E. Scrooge @SirT With Tesla 200 miles plus range i would need to stop for a loo break at least once and in the UK you cannot drive hundreds of miles without driving into the sea.Also if you can do more than sixty miles per hour average with our crowded roads you would be lucky,after two hours behind  a wheel i would definitely need a stop.

possiblycertain

@SirT @E. Scrooge With 4 hydrogen filling stations in this country vs electric batteries that take hours to recharge on normal sockets, both options are pretty useless so far. Cars will always use some power idling in a traffic jam, so you can't even put a reliable number on the range.

SirT

@possiblycertain @SirT @E. Scrooge Tesla has 20 Superchargers in uk free for Model S in half hour they give extra 170 mile range just enough time to goto the loo and get a coffee.A Tesla only uses juice while moving.Also just googled and Models S has 300 plus range and there are public chargers at motorway Service stations.Just read Auto express Tesla review very impressive


E. Scrooge

@possiblycertain @SirT @E. Scrooge I suspect that more hydrogen filling stations would be put into production as investors see a demand needing to be met with a sufficient supply.  For driver traveling longer distances, electric cars at the moment are impractical, except for those who have the luxury of time to recharge their cars.  Most working people do not have that luxury, therefore the sales are not likely to be robust.  In urban areas, a whole different story.

jabailo

@SirT 

Electricity generated from what?  Coal?

Or solar cells that are at best 10% efficient?

Hydrogen can be produced cleanly from a real fuel, natural gas, that is completely cheap and universally available all over the world.

Battery cars are a net fuel energy loss...Hydrogen a net energy gain!



E. Scrooge

Toyota is on to something big.  And if they can make it main stream, and safe as possible, the hydrogen tanks on board the vehicles, they will have a very significant answer to so many environmental and consumer usage solutions.   The downside, becomes a whole new dimension of the term car bomb.

jabailo

@E. Scrooge 

Hydrogen floats...unlike gasoline or Tesla's heavy batteries that sit on the ground and burn.

If the unlikely happens since the Hydrogen tanks are composite material and Kevlar shielded, the hydrogen would quickly dissipate. 

E. Scrooge

@jabailo @E. Scrooge Seeing how combustible hydrogen is, unless the gas was concentrated in a  safer metal hydride, which can shrink the size of the fuel cell significantly, my fear is the fast dissipation of the gas near a spark or flame would be very dangerous indeed such as in a very bad collision.  I think there is a gentleman in Royal Oak, MI who has the patent on the metal hydride storage and release of the hydrogen gas.

jabailo

@E. Scrooge @jabailo 

The argument for solid storage of hydrogen is spurious.  First of all it adds weight and volume where none is needed (and thus has the same disadvantage as a chemical battery).  A compressed gas is the most efficient way to store hydrogen, lowest weight.    Also with a hydride you still have to reconstitute the gas as gas so it's no safer.  The amount of gas routed to the fuel cell at the point of generation is very small so there's little material to combust.  In addition the Mirai is loaded with vents and sensors.   Of course you have to remember that hydrogen floats.  It doesn't pool around where there is a vent, so this is not a problem unlike say heavy and flammable chemical batteries which often spontaneously catch fire and burn for many minutes on the ground.


dimengineer

One major issue with Hydrogen is that the storage regulation are ferocious. Many factory sites will not allow hydrogen anywhere on site, because it is very dangerous, and the regulation are fierce.


I would not park a hydrogen powered car inside a garage for example. Way too dangerous.. 

jabailo

@dimengineer 

You do realize that nearly every city on earth is networked by natural gas pipelines already?  And the number of issues is nearly infinitesimal compared to the everyday use of millions of tons.

dimengineer

@jabailo @dimengineer  Have you ever looked at the regulations surrounding the use and storage of hydrogen? I have - and as I say they are really, really stringent. They are in a totally different category to those of natural gas.

jabailo

@dimengineer @jabailo 

Yes, I've examined some of the specifications for non-brittle materials.

However, you should look at the plans for bi-modal natural gas and hydrogen transport through the same system.    Even still, there are already massive hydrogen pipelines in operation across the US and Europe and elsewhere.

You wouldn't know it from the naysayers, but there is already a robust use of hydrogen in industry throughout the world, with large scale production and shipping of hydrogen going on each and every day.   Natural gas itself, which is pervasive in our lives, is essentially a hydrogen carrier (CH4) and gasoline is also a tree of hydrogen bonds.

From the Rocking Chair

Unfortunately, this article gives no technical details upon which to base some economic judgement.

How many kilos of hydrogen does this care take to go 550km?

The US Department of Energy, which has been testing wind-generator produced hydrogen has a whole section of its website devoted to data.  Their estimate for the Northeast US is anywhere between $2.76 to $4.79 per kilo of hydrogen.  But without the information about hydrogen use of the cars, the readers here have no basis to analyze what is written.

From the Rocking Chair

If there were a way to produce hydrogen at home (solar cells generating electricity powering electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen, all for a reasonable price), then this would be the end of the oil industry and fossil fuel (and a number of governments/nations around the world who depend on oil revenues).

Not to stir the conspiracy theory plot, but how much research into the simple production of hydrogen has been bought up by the oil companies, their associated industries, and/or these sensitive but rich countries?

jabailo

@From the Rocking Chair 

There is already enough hydrogen being produced at low cost to power millions of fuel cell vehicles.   Hydrogen is created and used in large quantities in industry by profitable companies like Praxair, Air Liquide and others.


Vanbrugh

Hydrogen may be a key future fuel - but probably not for our generation. The process to create the hydrogen fuel is currently too expensive and energy intensive to make it commercially  viable. As other comments state, it is arguably not the cleanest and most environmentally friendly manufacturing process either. We have a lot further to go technologically before this becomes the vehicle  fuel of choice. 

LucfromMontreal

Hydrogen is crap, the future is Tesla.  The article is misleading and probably paid for by Toyota, charging at Tesla supercharger stations barely takes 20 minutes for a 50% surcharge. 

Rex

@LucfromMontreal And how much of that technology is unique to Tesla and protected by IP ?

The future may well be battery powered EVs but that doesn't mean it has to be Tesla.

Your post is misleading and probably paid for by Tesla.

11AD

@LucfromMontreal

The future is electricity. 

Tesla being but one player - especially once BMW, Audi and Porsche will finally get serious.

Whether the energy storage will be in the form of H2 or batteries, that is the big question.

Sorry but "20 minutes for a 50% surcharge", to use your own words, that is crap.

one hydrogen dispenser is capable of supporting 80,000km of travel a day, versus less than 6,000km for a quick-charge electric point, according to BMW."

That means that you need 13.3 superchargers to get the energy distribution equivalent of one H2 pump.  A small gas station with 6 H2 pumps would be the equivalent of 53 supercharging stations : quite a parking lot.

Using the $300k number you used in a previous post, that makes supercharging stations much more expensive than H2 stations.

I prefer the idea of all electric cars, but we have to face the reality of recharging issues.

I think that the future is with swappable battery packs - something Tesla has already brilliantly demonstrated :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

LucfromMontreal

@11AD  That's not crap at all, in the meantime you go for a coffee same as you do for any refills. Besides, a single charging station take-up very little space so adding more of them is no issue.

LucfromMontreal

@11AD Besides you forget that it is very easy to install your own charging station at home with an electric car. I have a 240 volt 40 amps plug at my condo. It recharges at around 50KM per hour of charge which is plenty to keep me filled up at 400 km of daily driving range.  The SuperCharger network is only valid when I decide to go for a long drive. I've driven Montreal to Toronto twice this summer and used the SC network of Tesla with no problems.

11AD

@LucfromMontreal @11AD I really like Tesla but you are not honest here.

Yes, the first few times around you can wait 20 minutes and talk about your great new car with onlookers. But soon real life comes back and you will want to be in and out of a refueling station in less than 5 minutes, with a 300+ miles charge.

As to charging stations, please spend more time understanding what this means :

one hydrogen dispenser is capable of supporting 80,000km of travel a day, versus less than 6,000km for a quick-charge electric point, according to BMW."

If you have 1 or 2 electrical cars around, a few chargers will be fine. But if there were a lot of electrical cars around, charging stations would need to have 50 spots to be the equivalent of a normal 6 spots gas station.

LucfromMontreal

@11AD DO you think I care what BMW says?  I have my own charging station at home.  Try that with hydrogen then call me  back.

11AD

@LucfromMontreal @11AD OK Luc, it seems that energy density and operations management are not your thing.

LucfromMontreal

@11AD I have a 240 volt 40 amp charger in my garage, I can charge from 6pm to 9am at around 50 km per hour of charge. What do you not understand in that?

LucfromMontreal

@11AD I don't need a charging station I have one at home!

dimengineer

@LucfromMontreal @11AD  Again, once everyone has a charging system at home, you'll really need  to beef up the grid (big time) to get those thousands of amps down just one street. There are a lot of logistical issues with  electric cars which become more obvious once you think about it for a few minutes

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