Toyota 'Mirai' Fuel Cell Sedan

[Oba]

Which is precisely why they never expanded the program. It was never about the practicality of swapping, this was always done purely as a CARB credit grab.

If your thought is 100% true, they would have shut down the swap station on the day after the CARB rule change.

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Carbon fiber tank at 3600psi or less with natural gas:

 

[EarlyAdopter]

If your thought is 100% true, they would have shut down the swap station on the day after the CARB rule change.

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Carbon fiber tank at 3600psi or less with natural gas:

If that's a failure at 3600 psi, I'd hate to see a failure at the 10,000 psi of the Mirai.

 

[GoTslaGo]

Here's a link to an older thread/topic regarding toyota fuel cells and tesla. Interesting companion link with some background political and history discussions.

Hey, y'all, Toyota believes BEVs are impossible...

 

[MacroP]

I'm pretty confident Toyota is simply pushing their fuel cell vehicle is because of the Japanese government's push for hydrogen powered vehicles to be the highlight of the 2020 Olympics including building a crap-load of refueling stations. There would certainly be plenty of Japanese companies currently receiving heavy subsidies for these cars and fueling infrastructure. If you notice the press releases for this Mirai car - they refer to a certain amount on the roads in Japan by 2020. That's a very convenient year considering it's the year of the Tokyo Olympics. I wonder how passionate they (Toyota) will be once the Olympics are over and all of their funding is gone. Merely a PR stunt for the Olympics (again) IMO. The Fukishima disaster was the catalyst for this push.

Remember the 2012 London Olympics with the Hydrogen buses and taxis. Never really progressed any further after the Olympics were finished. Ended up not being very green after all and are not being used anymore as they cost too much to run.

Ironically - this year's Olympics maybe much closer to 'green' or 'carbon neutral' than either London or Japan will ever be considering Brazil's major (light) vehicle fuel is 'mostly' ethanol based and not petroleum based.

 

[miimura]

Though I understand the sentiment, I disagree with the conclusion. I expect hydrogen car fires to get the same level of over exposure as Tesla battery fires have gotten. For one, I expect them to be spectacular, and in today's news world, hydrogen fire spectacular is going to get a lot of coverage.

And a hydrogen explosion, car or station, is going to be ... big coverage. I expect the first explosion to be just about the end of hydrogen fueled vehicles.

You do know that there have been Hydrogen Station fires, right?

Hydrogen Tank Rupture In Emeryville Prompts Evacuations CBS San Francisco

http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/2012/128642.pdf

This report summarizes the investigation of the release of approximately 300kg of hydrogen at the AC Transit Facility in Emeryville, CA. The hydrogen release was avoidable in both the root cause and contributing factors.

 

[CuriousG]

I feel like I saw a unicorn today as I was getting off the freeway in midtown Sacramento. I ended up behind a brand new Murai without plates and only advertising the dealership that sold them the car. Only got a glimpse of it for about 30 seconds before the light changed and it turned while I went straight. If only I got a picture of that rare sight.

 

[JohnSnowNW]

I feel like I saw a unicorn today as I was getting off the freeway in midtown Sacramento. I ended up behind a brand new Murai without plates and only advertising the dealership that sold them the car. Only got a glimpse of it for about 30 seconds before the light changed and it turned while I went straight. If only I got a picture of that rare sight.

Well, since several dealerships have been asked to stop delivering the Mirai, due to lack of fueling stations, I'd say they're going to continue to be quite rare...especially ones lacking dealer plates.

Toyota Asks Some Of CA's 8 Mirai Dealers To Hold Off Deliveries

 

[dhanson865]

Well, since several dealerships have been asked to stop delivering the Mirai, due to lack of fueling stations, I'd say they're going to continue to be quite rare...especially ones lacking dealer plates.

Toyota Asks Some Of CA's 8 Mirai Dealers To Hold Off Deliveries

If they had just put a J1772 plug on it and a 2KW charger on board it could at least limp around as a city car.

 

[ecarfan]

Just another bump on the road headed towards the failure of HCEVs as a viable transportation choice.

 

[Oba]

If they had just put a J1772 plug on it and a 2KW charger on board it could at least limp around as a city car.

Don't they receive emission credit based on refueling speed? The current standard in California is 95% full in 15 minutes (written specifically with hydrogen in mind, and penalizing Tesla for their "battery swap" fiasco).

If they put a slow plug on it, it wouldn't meet that standard, and it would cost Toyota mucho dinero in lost credits.

 

[mspohr]

Don't they receive emission credit based on refueling speed? The current standard in California is 95% full in 15 minutes (written specifically with hydrogen in mind, and penalizing Tesla for their "battery swap" fiasco).

If they put a slow plug on it, it wouldn't meet that standard, and it would cost Toyota mucho dinero in lost credits.

The rules were written specifically for H2 cars and to exclude Tesla.
However, Tesla built the battery swap station to meet the letter of the rules and received the credits.
You might call this a fiasco since uptake has been very slow... or you might call it savvy business since they got the money in spite of the rules being written to exclude them. I believe the value of the credits is much more than the cost of the battery swap station.

 

[dhanson865]

Don't they receive emission credit based on refueling speed? The current standard in California is 95% full in 15 minutes (written specifically with hydrogen in mind, and penalizing Tesla for their "battery swap" fiasco).

If they put a slow plug on it, it wouldn't meet that standard, and it would cost Toyota mucho dinero in lost credits.

I would assume the credit is based on fastest refueling speed if more than one is available.

If you can refill the hydrogen in 3 minutes or spend 20 hours on L1 I'd assume the 3 minute option would give them the credit especially since that is intended to be the primary refueling method and the J1772 would be for emergency use only.

 

[Yggdrasill]

If they had just put a J1772 plug on it and a 2KW charger on board it could at least limp around as a city car.

It wouldn't be much use, though, without a bigger battery. Even if the entire 1.6 kWh battery is available, that's only 3-6 miles.

 

[CuriousG]

If they had just put a J1772 plug on it and a 2KW charger on board it could at least limp around as a city car.

Didn't the concept originally have some type of J1772 so that it could charge an EV car in case it was out of juice? Oh the irony.

 

[pmadflyer]

Don't they receive emission credit based on refueling speed? The current standard in California is 95% full in 15 minutes (written specifically with hydrogen in mind, and penalizing Tesla for their "battery swap" fiasco).

If they put a slow plug on it, it wouldn't meet that standard, and it would cost Toyota mucho dinero in lost credits.

Since the Mirai can only be fuelled to 50% using existing stations...

 

[Saghost]

Didn't the concept originally have some type of J1772 so that it could charge an EV car in case it was out of juice? Oh the irony.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's a CHAdeMO plug so that you can power a home from it with an adapter/inverter - apparently a significant selling point for EVs, PHEVs, and FCEVs in Japan after Fukishima.

 

[Zextraterrestrial]

Since the Mirai can only be fuelled to 50% using existing stations...

Is this completely true? I looked for info about the Coalinga station and it does seem to be a 70 Mpa pressure station which is the same as the Mirai tanks.
only 1 station though ... so not sure if I'd even consider that 'existing'

 

[JohnSnowNW]

Is this completely true? I looked for info about the Coalinga station and it does seem to be a 70 Mpa pressure station which is the same as the Mirai tanks.
only 1 station though ... so not sure if I'd even consider that 'existing'

No, there are stations in CA that can dispense to 10,000 psi. The issue is that Toyota states that only two of the stations currently operating can fuel the Mirai. That is why dealerships have been given the mobile refueling stations, but they can only dispense at 5,000 psi.

 

[RubberToe]

This entire debacle unwound even faster that I thought possible. It goes to show you how thoroughly Tesla thought things through with the Supercharger network. And that was 4+ years ago when they first started thinking about it.

How dumb is Toyota management? Someone showed them how long distance EV's could be made viable years ago. They completely ignored that "lesson", for whatever reason, and painted themselves into a corner that there is no getting out of. They need someone in upper management with 1/10 the vision of Elon. That would have saved them billions of wasted $$$. I'm betting that the first law suit over these still born atrocities will be arriving before the end of the first quarter. We are one "Hindenburg" incident away from those cars being banned for use in the state.

RT

 

[stopcrazypp]

Is this completely true? I looked for info about the Coalinga station and it does seem to be a 70 Mpa pressure station which is the same as the Mirai tanks.
only 1 station though ... so not sure if I'd even consider that 'existing'

For the purposes of the ZEV credits it doesn't matter. The latest version of the rules has an explicit exemption for hydrogen vehicles. They can get the full credit even if no such station exists. Of course the rule only lasts until 2017, so it'll be over pretty soon anyways.