What exactly is the benefit of Gray Hydrogen?

"Today, most hydrogen is known as “gray”hydrogen. It’s derived from natural gas using an energy-intensive process that emits a lot of carbon dioxide."

So if it doesn't solve the emissions problem, why bother? A simpler thing you can do with Natural Gas that also emits carbon dioxide is burn it. This is what CNG vehicles do. CNG sold at the pump is conveniently measured in Gasoline Gallon Equivalents (GGE) so as to make it directly comparable with petrol/gasoline. CNG is available nationwide, and stations in my area of Illinois are charging right around $2.50/GGE. As you note H2 stations--of which there are 53, all in CA--are currently charging $36/kg. Let's pretend that Toyota makes both a straight CNG Corolla as well as a hybrid one, and look at purchase price vs. cost per mile:

Corolla XSE: $28k, 34mpgge combined, 7.3 cents/mile
Corolla Hybrid XLE: $28k, 46 mpgge combined, 5.4 cents/mile
Mirai XLE: $51k, 71.8m/kg, 48.6 cents/mile

So twice the upfront cost for a similarly-sized (interior space) car, 10x the cost per mile, and you can only drive in a limited area in California.

As to why it's so expensive? Here's True Zero's letter to customers

 

I had a Mirai. The car itself is excellent. Genuinely top quality. The advantages of a 5 min fill ups are real. The problem, now, is you often can't get H2 and when you can it costs a ridiculous amount of money.

 

How to make the H2 car better, give it a bigger battery. There is a clue in there somewhere.

 

To get the H2 car industry going for now with low cost fuel, until infrastructure has been built and scale can push the costs down of even blue and green H2.

It's the same with batteries. The production of those batteries is extremely polluting at this time. That's why you can actually get a PHEV as the greenest car in the USA right now, according to one study.

 

Right now, Toyota Motor Corp hybrids great for mass market.
Right now, lithium ion powered EV's niching early adopters for small market share.
Five to ten years' time, breakthrough in alternative battery chemistry powered EV's for the mainstream market!

Hydrogen?
Infrastructure too complex and costly, plus energy efficiency is poor @ 1/3 of EV's; hydrogen's energy per unit volume is also poor, such that storage takes up too much space - solid state batteries already taking a long time to develop, so hydrogen stored in solids is a long way away. Plus hydrogen price at the pump way too high. Very unlikely that hydrogen will ever make it.

Nuclear?
Nuclear-electric powered motor vehicles sounds great.
Heats water to spin turbine to generate electricity for electric motors.
However, too many motor vehicle accidents leaking radioactive material.
Also, a lot of radioactive waste for storage dumps.
Plus, the odd terrorist using nuclear generator to make nuclear bombs.

 

And this is what will make non-plugin hybrids win out in the end for the short and maybe medium term.

The mass of people (as opposed to early adopters) don't want to be bothered by having to plugin their cars at home, or be hunting around for chargers.

They want something that is AS EASY TO USE AS THEIR CARS NOW, and in the case of non-plugin-hybrids, there is absolutely NOTHING THAT YOU HAVE TO DO DIFFERENTLY in order to realize savings.

Call it the lazy man path.

I agree mostly, especially for passenger cars. I do think H2 for long range heavy duty commercial vehicles is what will win out, simply because of the much longer ranges per extra weight and faster refueling for these big commercial vehicles vs their BEV counterparts.

 

Resistance is futile. Change is coming and we have to adapt.

 

“The mass of people (as opposed to early adopters) don't want to be bothered by having to plugin their cars at home, or be hunting around for chargers.

They want something that is AS EASY TO USE AS THEIR CARS NOW, and in the case of non-plugin-hybrids, there is absolutely NOTHING THAT YOU HAVE TO DO DIFFERENTLY in order to realize savings.”

There is absolutely nothing easier than home charging. To argue otherwise is simply asinine.

 

I could argue that doing the exact same thing as they did before with gas cars, IS easier. The path of least resistance.

With plugins, it's just one more thing that people have to do. It might have been a long day, they're tired, all they want is to go home, watch some TV and have dinner. Park the darn car and get on with life.

Also, there is the point that MANY MANY people don't have easy access to home chargers. So, something more to worry about, charging outside the home.

Again, early adopters have no problem with such additional steps, but I'm almost pretty sure the masses of people think of cars as a tool that gets them from A to B, and should not add more complexity to their daily lives. Most are resistant to change, especially change that is major and will require big changes in habit.

 

Heard on review today that when the reviewer got into the LC500h hybrid, the dash showed 740 miles of range. Thats 16 five minute fill ups if one drive 12K a year.

EVs have a loooooooooong way to go

 

Well, plus the hybrid (HEV) range will barely be affected by temperature. The EV range of PHEVs of course will be affected, but that's usually a small part of its total range anyways.

Use an HVAC and the range of a BEV will be dramatically lowered compared to a gas or hybrid car (mostly because gas holds significantly more energy than any battery and heat is a by product of combustion already in ICE-tied cars)

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a3...fect-ev-range/

Heating or air conditioning is a big deal in an electric vehicle, for two reasons: First, the total amount of energy onboard is dramatically less than what's available in a typical gasoline car. Every bit of energy used has a more noticeable impact on range. For example, a 15-gallon gas tank holds the equivalent of 505.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy. That's more than six times what our Model 3 carries fully charged. The second reason is that, unlike in a gasoline-fueled car, where waste heat from the engine is used to heat the cabin with little impact on efficiency, an EV's heat or A/C is also drawing directly from the battery. Any energy used for comfort can't be used for propulsion.

 

And only ~15-20% of that chemical energy contained in the gasoline ends up doing useful work (i.e., moving the car forward), with the rest lost as heat. Pretty remarkable.
And as you can see from these graphs in the link below, the efficiency of an internal combustion engine has pretty much maxed out, starting to reach the limits of thermodynamics: https://visualizingenergy.org/maximu...nes-1700-2000/
It has taken 200-300 years of the industrial revolution to reach where we are today.

Electric vehicles (being relatively new compared to the time period of the internal combustion engine) one could argue are the starting stages of where internal combustion engines once were long time ago.
Battery technologies are improving at a rapid pace, and efficiencies will improve, weights will go down, different battery chemistries will emerge to improve efficiency, increase energy density, etc. etc.

This is just the start of the electrification revolution.

 

Most of the heat lost is through the exhaust, and some of this heat can be used to generate electricity (!) or warm up the car (and it passengers) and engine (such as in the Prius).

 

I guess I'm asinine then. Nothing easier than spending 5 mins to refuel a hybrid every 2 to 3 weeks while I'm out an about.

 

Yeah I don't get the whole "I don't want to be bothered to plug my car in" thing. Its just automatic, we get home, we get out, plug the car in. Its second nature. Even driving a PHEV and a ICE car, when I drive the PHEV car I have never forgotten to plug it in. The plug is right next to the car.

What IS a bother is having to stop at a gas station, which invariably happens when I am running late one morning and I get in the car and I'm like "damn! I need to stop for gas" while an EV would be fully charged. Then at times its cold, hot, snowing, raining and I have to get out of the car to fuel it. I just don't see on any level where having to fuel your car out in the world is not a imposition while plugging it in parked in your garage is an imposition

Now, charging the EV out in the world, thats a PITA. Charging at home though I don't see how that is anything but an improvement.