Subscription Center
Aug 7, 2009 01:30 PM | 15
For Toyota, it's not just about hybrids (that is, the Prius). Yesterday, the company announced the results of a sunny 331-mile jaunt in Southern California from Torrance to Santa Monica and back again at the end of June. Toyota engineers, accompanied by U.S. government partners, coaxed 68 miles per kilogram of hydrogen out of the Toyota Highlander Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle (FCHV-adv). That's a range of 431 miles on a single tank at a fuel cost estimated at $2.50 per 68 miles (for hydrogen produced from natural gas).
That compares very favorably to the 2009 hybrid Toyota Highlander presently on the road, which gets 26 miles per $3.25 gallon of gasoline. The test encompassed a range of driving conditions, from high-speed highways to stop and go on the surface streets of Los Angeles and relied on gas tanks that stored 6 kilograms of hydrogen at 70 bar pressure (10,000 pounds-per-square-inch).
The Obama administration is not impressed with advances towards a hydrogen economy for cars, though, thanks in part to the exorbitant costs of the vehicles and the missing infrastructure. "We asked ourselves, 'Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?' The answer, we felt, was 'No,'" said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu in announcing budget cuts to the government's hydrogen research and development programs back in May of this year.
That hasn't stopped automakers from pursuing a possible hydrogen-car future. In addition to this Toyota test, Honda is leasing its FCX Clarity to a small number of consumers and GM continues to push its Project Driveway, putting fuel cell prototype vehicles in the hands of everyday people, though the executive in charge of it, Larry Burns, will retire later this year as part of that company's ongoing transformation.
Toyota, for its part, seems keen to pursue a range of future technologies for commercial production: hybrids, plug-in hybrids by 2012 and, yes, electric vehicles powered by fuel cells by 2015. "We are proceeding on all these fronts because there is no one solution for future needs, but the need for many," said Toyota President Akio Toyoda in a speech on Wednesday at the Center for Automotive Research's Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Mich. "Because energy solutions that work for Traverse City may not be the best for Shanghai, or Sydney, or Sao Paulo."
The trick, of course, will be making all those hydrogen highway pit stops available, wherever in the world those vehicles are tooling around. Until it's more feasible to gas up a hydrogen car, it will be hard to convince consumers to pay for one.
Tags:
prius,
fuel cell car,
fuel cell vehicle,
fuel cell,
hydrogen,
toyota prius,
hydrogen power,
toyota,
toyota highlander
More News Blog:
Next: Twitter attack triggers conspiracy theories, but few seem plausible
Previous: Monogamy Is All the Rage These Days
See what we're tweeting about
huler every minute i stay in this room i get weaker. and every minute charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger. #aintthatalwaystheway?
BoraZ Bacterium excluded from the Eukaryote Club http://t.co/NTzHwcClJw
beatricebiology Good afternoon! Did you see today's new comic yet? http://t.co/iqOPU52qfY
Deadline: Jul 25 2013
Reward: Varies
This challenge provides an opportunity for Solvers to build a web-based or mobile “app” to explore data relationships in scholarly conte
Deadline: Jul 30 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Seeker desires a method for producing pseudoephedrine products in such a way that it will be extremely difficult for clandestine che
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
15 Comments
Add CommentWhy does the Federal government need to be involved? Did they help Henry Ford get started? Forward-looking companies should take the initiative and get us to hydrogen-fueled vehicles on their own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd here's how:
Once we can easily generate the quantities of hydrogen needed, I have a quick and simple way to create a hydrogen infrastructure: fleet vehicles.
This is because fleet vehicles don't typically travel outside a geographic zone. Think of pizza delivery vehicles or vehicles for Post Office workers or taxi cabs or police patrol cars or service vehicles for the local telephone company or cable TV station, etc.
Take a company like GM who has been researching hydrogen vehicles for many years. They can get together with companies which have fuel stations in place then go to a community and offer this deal to fleet managers: "If you sign up for hydrogen-fueled vehicles we will build them and sell them to you at a minimal profit to seed the market. Then while we are building the vehicles our fueling partner here will come to your area and install hydrogen fueling stations."
This would solve multiple problems.
* It would put both vehicles and refueling in place at the same time.
* It will get local mechanics familiar with servicing hydrogen vehicles.
* It would get the general public used to the idea of hydrogen vehicles and ready to purchase them because they know they can get them both fueled and serviced.
Then as multiple towns get their fleet vehicles the fueling companies can start to build refueling facilities along Interstate highways. Think of the New York / Philadelphia / Washington corridor, as an example. Or the Erie to Cleveland to Detroit corridor as another. I'm sure you can think of many more.
I firmly believe by using existing vehicle manufacturing plants and refueling infrastructure we should be able to get well on the road to hydrogen conversion within three years.
If Toyota or GM wants to hire me to implement my idea, please get in touch.
Thank you.
Terry Thomas...
the photographer
Atlanta, Georgia USA
www.TerryThomasPhotos.com
Since H2 is out of favor with the current regime, look for this to possibly be a leader. The government's track record of picking the winning technology is not good. Look at the billions they poured into coal gasification and liquification in the 1970's. Today the feds, along with the states are pouring money into solar and batteries. Look for failure, either from the technologies themselves or the particular companies they have selected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't get it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince Hydrogen is so highly reactive, It can rarely be found in a free state on earth and therefore must be produced by chemical decomposition at the expense of energy. More energy in fact that can ever be returned by combustion or electrochemical reaction. So where's the energy coming from to produce the Hydrogen?
It seems to me that these mileage tests should be based upon the energy required to produce the Hydrogen instead of its direct use.
Am I missing something ?
Hydrogen cars are a pipe dream
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Once we can easily generate the quantities of hydrogen needed" -- No they can't. Like clk0 said, hydrogen isn't naturally occuring in nature so it needs to be produced. The easiest way to produce it is through electrolysis which is fine, but not energy efficient. But even if you had a convenient way of gather hydrogen you would still need to transport it across the country which is a major problem. Because H2 is the lightest of the noble gases it is also the least dense, making it extremely hard to transfer in pipelines since it would require an ENORMOUS amount of energy. You couldn't even use the existing natural gas infastructure to pipe H2 because hydrogen is highly corrosive. There are many, many other problems.........
"Since Hydrogen is so highly reactive, It can rarely be found in a free state on earth and therefore must be produced by chemical decomposition at the expense of energy. More energy in fact that can ever be returned by combustion or electrochemical reaction. So where's the energy coming from to produce the Hydrogen?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell I am going to shock you there by giving you your answer to your question:
From space.
Jupiter is an enormous ball of mostly hydrogen. (Saturn too by the way.)
We have to build automatic space probes who will stay in space permanently keeping doing shutle flight from jupiter to earth.
Then we will have to bring this hydrogen to the ground by one way or another such as a space airplane shuttle system (itself powered by hydrogen/oxygen) or a space pipeline attached to an orbiting space station.
We will still have to study how to recycle the oxygen we burn that will end up as water some of it in earth orbit.
Since with computers all of these can be automated once it is built we will just have to maintain it.
Let's work on this!
it is very likely metamaterials using the suns radiation could infact be used to separate water with oxygen exiting here and hydrogen there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is also liekly this break through.. A needs to be thought up (done) and B implemented (10 years say.)
So yes hydrogen may become viable...very viable but probably only with a "simple" solution like metamaterials.
The Canadian government recently concluded that hybrid vehicles are no better for the environment than conventional vehicles. Hydrogen is a quantum leap past hybrid in terms of inefficiency and makes zero in the sense department.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnless, of course you are part of the Climate Industrial Complex and have your nose in the tax dollar trough, then it is a great idea.
"The Canadian government recently concluded that hybrid vehicles are no better for the environment than conventional vehicles." That's not it at all. Which you would know if you had actually read beyond the headline of the report. Way to completely skew the report.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Canadian government concluded that offering rebates on hybrid vehicle purchases was not the most cost effective way of reducing carbon emissions. There were several reasons for this conclusion. First two-thirds of people using rebates were planning on buying a hybrid anyway, so the program was merely subsidizing this group rather than changing consumer behavior (the goal of a subsidy). Secondly, almost everyone else switched to hybrids from small cars, rather than SUVs. Small cars are relatively fuel efficient anyway, creating smaller environmental gains than anticipated.
Nowhere does it state that hybrid vehicles are no better for the environment than conventional vehicles. It focused on the economics of a program that provided small environmental gains, much smaller than anticipated, for an amount of money that could be used to greater effect elsewhere. The failure is in getting people driving gas-guzzlers to change to a hybrid vehicle.
AtlantaTerry: Yes, the Federal government did help Henry Ford, and the other car makers, by building the national highway system, without which automobiles would have been of very limited use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but this argument doesn't make much sense... :) This is what they do now also. Ford and all the other car makers had to finance anything else themselves, and financed the Federla governments on top with taxes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe car makers did NOT build the highway system. There wouldn't have been much use for cars without good roads.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou are missing something,there is a cartrage that can make instant hydrogen on demand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou are missing something,there is a cartrage that can make instant hydrogen on demand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA very good example of environmental welfare awareness. I hope other car companies promote hybrid like this. Nice post. I just hope Toyota also test more of their parts to avoid a scandal again like broken brakes and fragile parts like <a href="http://www.racepages.com/parts/pitman_arm.html">pitman arm</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts good to hear this great news...But hydrogen is very rare in nature and takes a long time to produce... So its better to produce them....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<a href=“http://weightconversion.org.uk”>Weight Conversion</a>