Just driven a hydrogen car *MIRAI

[MikeyM]

I've driven the Hydrogen buses used by Stagecoach in Edinburgh and it did feel smooth..but yes, an uneasy feeling to think of what your sitting on 🤔

 

The locals don't help since they lovingly call them the "Bomb Bus" lol

[Aashenfox]

The tank bomb thing, just so much reminds me of the Star Trek Voyager episode The Omega Directive...

 

In that episode, a civilisation slightly more advanced than us (in the show, not as we are now), has perfected a free energy source based on an incredibly volatile fuel (one molecule can destroy all planets and rupture subspace within a light year), the omega particle. Of course, since this civilisation has 'grown-up' with this danger, they have all kinds of safeguards and for a time, there was no issue and their experiments were going well, they had solved the 'free fuel' issue. Unfortunately, as I imagine the case with the hydrogen tank, it only takes one failure to end the show. Sure enough, that civilisation destroyed most of its planet and surrounding subspace in a spectacular explosion.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Aashenfox

[davey_83]

^ This guy......................

[Aashenfox]

Sorry if my sillier posts are not welcome, I can be a bit of a clown at times, I don't mean to **** anyone off.

 

Bored at work, too much coffee, what can I say?

 

Don't block me though please! I do try to balance my idiotic posts with useful ones.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Aashenfox

[gangzoom]

The government has such a large part to play in all this, it needs to decide what to do and support it. UK average electricity consumption is something like 4500 to 5000 kWh per year. Lets say for arguments sake the model X 90 takes 90 kWh to charge each time (it takes more as I understand it as the actual on board charger uses energy to charge) and you charge the car say once a week that just over 4000 kWh of power to run your car doubling your household energy consumption.

 

I keep shouting about infrastructure, and its boring, no where near as exciting as pointing at shiny technology and things that move on their own etc. but the tech has never been the problem, for EV to really take off the UK needs to essentially double its electricity power output (assuming all the above is true which I appreciate its not likely to be) - so all this talk of having the majority of cars on the road as EV in a few years time doesn't seem to sit in line with the governments plans on energy provision?

 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars don't solve the problem of energy generation.

 

Hydrogen is an incredibly unstable molecule, it wants to react with everything all the time. Isolating it, storing it, transporting it, compressing it is hugely more complicated than petroleum.

 

It took an electrician 30 minutes to install a 32amp car charger at my house 2 years ago, and that charge rate is enough to fill even the Tesla using nothing but really cheap off-peak night electricity. I plug the car in when I get home and wake up every morning with a fully charged car... Far more convenient than having to find even a petrol station to fill up every week.

 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are like mini discs, trying to be the future but not able to look beyond the way things were done in the past.

 

Electricity is so easy to generate compared to messing around with hydrogen, and if you have a way store it in a battery why would you want the hassle of putting in extra steps??

 

The public has already pretty much spoken on hydrogen fuel cell cars versus EVs. Whilst Tesla, GM, Nissan, are shifting 100ks of EVs and soon to shift significantly more as battery prices fall, Toyota is stuck trying to flog their Dodo and with not much success..... The MIRAI maybe expensive but a Tesla P100D is more than double the price, yet still no one is buying the MIRAI whilst Tesla current has a 2 month back order on the P100D even in the US market!!

Edited April 7, 2017 by gangzoom

[davey_83]

As with anything, only time will tell. Hydrogen vehicles orbeit commercial vehicles have been around for many years like EV. Right now for the masses the big wave is hybrid, then it'll be EV's in one form or another.

 

Tesla is the new Prius, it's fashionable as was the Prius 15yrs ago in Hollywood. Tesla don't just do cars so can draw from experience from many industries much like Toyota.

Edited April 7, 2017 by davey_83

[coldel]

The government has such a large part to play in all this, it needs to decide what to do and support it. UK average electricity consumption is something like 4500 to 5000 kWh per year. Lets say for arguments sake the model X 90 takes 90 kWh to charge each time (it takes more as I understand it as the actual on board charger uses energy to charge) and you charge the car say once a week that just over 4000 kWh of power to run your car doubling your household energy consumption.

 

I keep shouting about infrastructure, and its boring, no where near as exciting as pointing at shiny technology and things that move on their own etc. but the tech has never been the problem, for EV to really take off the UK needs to essentially double its electricity power output (assuming all the above is true which I appreciate its not likely to be) - so all this talk of having the majority of cars on the road as EV in a few years time doesn't seem to sit in line with the governments plans on energy provision?

 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars don't solve the problem of energy generation.

 

Hydrogen is an incredibly unstable molecule, it wants to react with everything all the time. Isolating it, storing it, transporting it, compressing it is hugely more complicated than petroleum.

 

It took an electrician 30 minutes to install a 32amp car charger at my house 2 years ago, and that charge rate is enough to fill even the Tesla using nothing but really cheap off-peak night electricity. I plug the car in when I get home and wake up every morning with a fully charged car... Far more convenient than having to find even a petrol station to fill up every week.

 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are like mini discs, trying to be the future but not able to look beyond the way things were done in the past.

 

Electricity is so easy to generate compared to messing around with hydrogen, and if you have a way store it in a battery why would you want the hassle of putting in extra steps??

 

The public has already pretty much spoken on hydrogen fuel cell cars versus EVs. Whilst Tesla, GM, Nissan, are shifting 100ks of EVs and soon to shift significantly more as battery prices fall, Toyota is stuck trying to flog their Dodo and with not much success..... The MIRAI maybe expensive but a Tesla P100D is more than double the price, yet still no one is buying the MIRAI whilst Tesla current has a 2 month back order on the P100D even in the US market!!

 

Oh I agree, plugging the car in overnight works for more households than getting a hydrogen car - however the above still stands, if half the cars on the road became EV overnight the country would have catastrophic black outs and an energy provision crisis without the capability to move all that energy demand from petrol pumps to electricity. Its great Tesla, Jaguar etc. are having a go at EVs but the government has no plan that I have read of to meet the power provision of this 'predicted' seismic shift to EVs in the country.

[davey_83]

Not all households have a drive or assigned parking................ What if you have two EV's, use a splitter? Go out at 2am ever night to swap the cars around.............

[coldel]

On this I also agree, I dont have a drive, a few houses up a guy plugs his Golf into an extension cable lying on the pavement, if anyone falls over that...claim!

[Aashenfox]

Not all households have a drive or assigned parking................ What if you have two EV's, use a splitter? Go out at 2am ever night to swap the cars around.............

 

Traditionally, human beings have been good at very quickly inventing or adapting whatever's needed to implement a technology. I can't think of anything historically which would have quite the same scale, but I also don't think everyone will want to swap on the same day either, so I figure it'll be about as big a project as when they standardised roadsigns, for example, obviously they didn't do them all on the same day, it had to be gradual, but also quick, just like installing required infrastructure for large numbers of EVs will be, when the market saturation hits that critical mass that someone deems it necessary. Perhaps that's something of an entitlist view, since I'm not proffering any suggestions that counter the perfectly valid points you have made, but I want to say it's not that, I just have faith in the bright people that put their minds to solving problems such as these for their living.

 

Don't disagree with any of your points, just taking a 'don't worry too much about it, it'll be alright!' point of view.

[Zeezeebaba]

I think due to cost alone petrol vehicles and petrol hybrids will be around for decades yet. Hydrogen is a better fuel for the environment until you consider the cost and energy needed to produce it then the argument for it falls by the way side.

Diesel will die a death that's for certain.

The focus should be on renewable energy for power generation as currently we don't have the means to charge everyone's car should EV become mainstream.

I have no issue with EV I applaud it, Tesla are basically at a stage now that Toyota were at with the Prius over a decade ago.

They will get there I have no doubt but at the moment they can only appeal to a select few who only need a car for certain jobs and have the facility to charge them at home.

 

[gangzoom]

 

In that episode, a civilisation slightly more advanced than us (in the show, not as we are now), has perfected a free energy source

 

We are much closer to this than many people realise, California (home to more Tesla's in the world than anywhere else) has just breached the 50% mark interms of solar power generation!!

 

This achievement causes havoc for energy pricing because you cannot simply shut down a traditional power station for a few hours to accommodate the extra solar energy been generated, but at the same time solar/wind energy is FREE power, your not burning natural gas/paying to keep a nuclear power station going. So as a business (which utility companies are) they have the dilemma of trying to work out what to do with all that extra electricity!!

 

The UK may not have much sun, but anyone whos been anywhere near north Scotland will know just how much wind resources the UK has, both on shore and off shore. Combine renewable electricity generation with battery grid storage to smooth out the peaks/trough and we are virtually there interms of free unlimited electricity!!

 

The revolution that is coming to the energy market is going to overshadow even the transition to EVs, which ever way you look at it the oil age is coming to an end, and companies like BP know it which is why they are desperate for hydrogen fuel cell cars to succeed, because at least that way they can claim they are still needed to supply fule for transportation.

 

https://electrek.co/2017/04/07/solar-power-breaks-50-of-california-demand-for-first-time-driving-negative-wholesale-electricity-rates/

[gangzoom]

Just seen this article it appears the problem face by California and Germany interms of having TOO MUCH cheap electricty is happening here too!!

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/06/national-grid-pay-power-plants-shut-summer/

 

So bizarraly the predictions of the UK running out of electricity generation capacity is the complete opposite from the truth, where year on year demand is falling!! Yet our energy bills are going up and the UK government still pushing ahead with building a foreign owned nuclear powered kettle, those guys in Downing street really need to start looking after the national interest first instead of their our share portfolios!!

Edited April 8, 2017 by gangzoom

[davey_83]

Yep all old news sadly, issue is we can't store the power generated from these sources. Then can't react to peak times to keep all the lights on.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/11218297/Wind-farms-paid-43m-to-switch-off.html

 

 

[coldel]

Gas and Oil is also free like wind, solar and tides, you have to pay to extract it just in the same way you have to extract and convert wind and tides - the difference is its RENEWABLE. But one thing solar, wind and tide power isn't is free as the cost to build, convert, transfer (which is a challenge for offshore wind farms where power is lost in the transfer process) and then store the power all costs money just like burning stuff. Its a common misconception about power.

 

I have had many interesting chats about power (one of my good friends is an MD at an energy company) - the challenge for cars moving to EV at scale is the infrastructure and energy supply. Oil is non issue in terms of supplying energy to households (as it only accounts for 1% or something like that), the issue is moving cars away from petrol into using a different channel of power i.e. via the home. Of course in the UK demand over summer for energy drops as we warm up and we have a positive net use of energy, over winter we do not - we have a number of permanent energy lines into Europe where we run a deficit over the course of the year in terms of what we sell into Europe vs what we buy, if we had energy surplus this wouldn't be the case.

 

I am pretty sure no one on here thinks coal and gas are the future of energy production, as its not renewable, but the governments provision for this is not there. They are investing in wind but turbines are massively expensive (which is why billions of tax payers money subsidises energy companies to build them) and are highly volatile in their operation. It seems a no brainer to just build a tonne of renewable energy generators but its expensive and volatile in its output.

[Zeezeebaba]

The irony here is that 60% of the solar products installed in Germany were manufactured by BP. BP for cost reasons axed their solar program a few years back.

[Jetpilot]

 

Here we go again

[coldel]

I know! But its on topic, kind of

[Zeezeebaba]

They gave it up to find and fund new oil and gas fields. The whole thread has been about alternatives to such fuels and the viability of hydrogen vs others. Perfectly on topic as you can see

[davey_83]

Pretty sure our children's kids will look back at the internal combustion engine, the same way most of us lot do the steam engine.

[Aashenfox]

Pretty sure our children's kids will look back at the internal combustion engine, the same way most of us lot do the steam engine.

 

[davey_83]

Love it!!

[gangzoom]

The whole thread has been about alternatives to such fuels and the viability of hydrogen vs others

 

And here is why hydrogen cars(for personal use anyways) is dead already.

 

Our Model X had a starting price of £64k so pretty similar to the MIRAI, but just significant quicker, can seat 6 instead of just 4. Whilst the MIRAI really is only viable for people who happen to live next to the half a dozen hydrogen fuel stations in the UK, and will never travel more than 150 miles away from a hydrogen fuel station, in under 3 weeks I've covered 1000 miles in the Model X and yet to run the battery down to below 20% charge or even bother to charge it beyond 90%.

 

Our Model X is also the slowest/shortest range car Tesla does, the top spec 100D will do well over 300 miles on a charge and can regain nearly 100miles of range in 10 minutes on a Tesla supercharger.

 

So battery EVs already have more range than hydrogen cars, and speed of recharging on EVs is quickly closing the gap as well. Add in the fact the only local infrastructure needed to run EVs is 1hr of a local electricians time to add a 32amp socket to a house versus about £2 million for a new hydrogen fuel station+running costs, I honestly cannot think why Toyota is still wasting time on the MIRAI, its already dead end tech!!

 

Finally and most importantly whilst alot you guys like to express your opinions on alternative fuel cars I'm actually spending my hard earned cash on these things.... So its people like me Toyota have to persuade to buy the MIRAI.

 

My wifes car will be replaced by an alternative fuel car in the next few years, the budget will be a healthy one - enough for a decent spec iPace if Jag delivers the goods. But we aren't even going to bother looking at hydrogen fuel cell cars for all the reasons stated.

 

Ultimately companies that build these cars still need to make money and as they say 'the customer is always right' sooner or later Toyota will have to acknowledge the simple fact whilst plenty of people (like my self) are spending £60k+ on alternative fuel cars, most aren't even giving the MIRAI a second glance. So even if the engineers at Toyota keep on pushing the tech the guys who hold the purse strings will soon put an end to the whole thing.

 

Edited April 9, 2017 by gangzoom

[Zeezeebaba]

That's just it though at the moment, 64k for a car. Good for you trailblazing away and reporting back how good the app on wheels is.

The only chance you will ever get me in one is when they cost a third of that and the ICE is dead. I'm a petrol head and quite old fashioned about it, I agree with your sentiments to a degree but I can't get excited about the death of my only hobby just yet

[gangzoom]

That's just it though at the moment, 64k for a car.

 

Absolutely agree £60K+ is horrific amount of money to waste on a car, but I've always loved wasting money on cars. Most of our peers waste their money on posh food/cloth/holidays, we choose to waste it on cars instead .

 

I cannot remember ever been as excited about the future of cars as I'm now, I understand some of you guys disagree but its my money to waste/spend.....

 

The MIRAI though I just don’t get, I've looked into all the sale promotions but once you cut through the marketing BS you realise your looking at a technological Dodo.

Edited April 9, 2017 by gangzoom