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Toyota's new commercial response to Elon: "Fueled by BS"

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Toyota's got a new commercial out as a direct response to Elon Musk's comments that fuel cell cars are BS.


more details: http://www.inc.com/ananya-bhattacharya/morgan-spurlock-calls-BS-elon-musk.html

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what they conviently forgot to mention though is how much wasted energy was spent to convert the BS to purified gas and converted again using a steam methane reformer to convert to hydrogen to power the vehicle. all that wasted energy. it's worth pointing out this chart which clearly shows how inefficient hydrogen powered cars are when compared to battery powered electric vehicles:

hydrogencar.png
 
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I like how they gloss over the energy required to turn the manure into hydrogen. As if loading manure, driving it to a processing center, using steam and heat, blah blah blah, were free. Sure the generation of electricity isn't free, but the economy of electricity production is so far ahead of the economy of hydrogen production (and rapidly getting cheaper) that the comparison between electricity and hydrogen is still laughable.

The only people excited over this are those who will make billions from converting the "everything" to hydrogen so that they can sell hydrogen to gullible consumers at perhaps a slight savings over gasoline.

(Cross-posted with above. Please see the above post for a visually attractive alternative to my rambling.)
 
Finally had the time to watch it. Wow just wow. It shows that Toyota's target audience are people who haven't graduated high school.

"Hydrogen is abundant". "There's lots of hydrogen in manure". "Here's a steam methane reformer- this is where the magic happens". "With the help of steam and heat the hydrogen is stripped from the manure".

Wait, so the steam and heat just magically appeared from nowhere!?!

This was episode one of "Toyota fueled by everything"

Can't wait for episode 2: "This is the ocean. It's full of hydrogen. We just pop the water in to our magical hydrolysis machine, powered by solar power and wind turbines and just like magic compressed hydrogen appears in the other end" (no mention, of course, of the efficiency)

I'm hoping that at least a small segment of the population will be smart enough to question where the ENERGY actually comes from. (Hint: it doesn't come from the hydrogen in the same way the energy in my car battery doesn't come from the Lithium or Cobalt).
 
"Here's a steam methane reformer- this is where the magic happens". "With the help of steam and heat the hydrogen is stripped from the manure".

Wait, so the steam and heat just magically appeared from nowhere!?!

^^^ This! I couldn't believe they just glossed over that as if it didn't matter. Forget about the gas-powered tractor to load the gas-powered pickup truck to transport the manure to the field.
 
I call bullsh*t on that piece of marketing smoke and mirrors.

It certainly will impress people who know nothing about science. Remember, the guy in the video is "an engineer"! So golly gee he must be smart.

On the plus side, it's not every day that you get to see a slick corporate video showing cows defecating.
 
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I wonder how much electricity could be produced from the methane from that cow manure .. would be funny to see a side by side comparison of how many miles the cow manure would push a hydrogen car and how many it would push a BEV, especially when you balanced the wasted energy from the hydrogen process to the EV side.
 
Toyota's got a new commercial out as a direct response to Elon Musk's comments that fuel cell cars are BS.


more details: http://www.inc.com/ananya-bhattacharya/morgan-spurlock-calls-BS-elon-musk.html

- - - Updated - - -

what they conviently forgot to mention though is how much wasted energy was spent to convert the BS to purified gas and converted again using a steam methane reformer to convert to hydrogen to power the vehicle. all that wasted energy. it's worth pointing out this chart which clearly shows how inefficient hydrogen powered cars are when compared to battery powered electric vehicles:

View attachment 79136

these guys from Toyota are smoking their own BS. Unbelievable that they can be so ignorant.
 
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I was particularly amused by the ICE pickup truck they used to transport the manure to the processing facility. So many people conveniently ignore the costs of transporting fuel, though admittedly that's less than some of the other inefficiencies in the chart below the video.
 
@OP - Glad you brought attention to this. I was well aware of the energy investment needed to harvest hydrogen. What I was not aware of was that fuel cells are only 50% efficient (?!?) I mean that seems crazy. Why are we subsidizing a technology that's currently extremely inefficient? I guess ICE are much less than 50%, but we ought to be turning over a new leaf with alternative fuels. Maybe 10 years down the line when the chemistry improves...
 
Very well done commercial if you don't know the truth behind it. Most people won't be bothered to do any research but the fact that they can't find any fuel stations might help lead them to BEVs anyway.
 
I wonder how much electricity could be produced from the methane from that cow manure .. would be funny to see a side by side comparison of how many miles the cow manure would push a hydrogen car and how many it would push a BEV, especially when you balanced the wasted energy from the hydrogen process to the EV side.

This sounds fun. My car gets three miles per hundred pounds of BS!

Well, at least Toyota didn't lie outright in this ad - they merely neglected to put some pieces into perspective (and thereby left the audience with some false impressions - but I've seen much worse in advertising.)
Walter