Toyota Mirai Fuel Cell

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Just can't get there from here. There is no path to $4 H2. Besides just look at what CA does to gasoline by adding tons of special formulas and regulations. You can bet H2 will have its own set of nonsense to keep the price high. Then you would need to add road tax.
 
GRA said:
That price is well below the average price of the used Mirais he was tracking, but what I want to know is how did it wind up in Chicago?

They tend to pop up in a few isolated locations because there are filling stations there - there are two 'industrial' (but open to the public) H2 stations in the Chicago area.

As for H2 from electrolysis at $4/kg, there is theoretically a path. You need about 50kWh/kg in electric inputs, which at current solar PPA-type prices is about $1-1.50 excluding T&D costs. Add those and you're definitely below $2 in electricity inputs. At high volumes, logistics/retail margin should be fairly similar to LNG/LPG at ~$0.50/kg. The only unknown in the long term is electrolysis/purification/pressurization equipment cost. Right now that's in the low single-digit dollar range per kg. If it drops well below $1/kg in the future, $4/kg H2 is possible.

The reason I personally don't see this ever happening is the scale factor. Hydrogen for vehicle fuels is not a mainstream prospect - it's hard to conceive of any possible future where HFCEVs are cheaper than BEVs, in fact now already BEVs outperform FCEVs on basically every relevant metric and cost trends are predictably favourable towards BEVs. You need a LOT of volume to recoup the equipment cost of hydrogen production and distribution. This is a chicken and egg issue for hydrogen, and by and large you're not going to fix that by using hydrogen elsewhere. The equipment costs to recoup are in vehicle-specific parts like pressurization, high-pressure storage and dispensing stations.

A $3M dispensing station, including capital costs and maintenance, will have to serve about 10M kg of hydrogen over its 8-year lifespan to cost as much to operate as a gasoline pump (about $0.10-0.20/gal-equiv). That is 1000 vehicles per day receiving a full tank of hydrogen. There are almost no hydrogen stations right now, and the ones that exist serve maybe 10 customers per day. Even if we completely ignore capital and maintenance costs, every fill-up costs $100 in bare equipment costs. We need 100x the hydrogen stations to even start thinking about mainstream adoption and we need those costs to go down about 100-fold, so we need 10.000x the number of hydrogen vehicles to be in the order of magnitude of scale to think about $4/kg H2.

And what do we have then? (High) Gas price equivalence. Not even BEV price equivalence!
 
mux said:
And what do we have then? (High) Gas price equivalence. Not even BEV price equivalence!
Yet for aviation, might make sense. Unless BEVs kWh/kg improves a lot. While the fuel cost might be more than aviation gasoline, the improved range and payload increase is very valuable.
 
It's even less likely that aircraft will be able to use hydrogen, because the system energy density is still very poor. You can't use liquefied hydrogen and pressurized hydrogen by itself gets to usable energy densities when you go to automotive-like pressures. For that you need about 10kg of tank for every 1kg of hydrogen. And the tank cannot be a structural part of the aircraft like it is now, so effectively you're adding more weight than that.

The tank weight combined with the lower efficiency of using the hydrogen (and producing it) make it surprisingly uncompetitive with future batteries in aircraft. The effective energy density comes in at something like 1-1.5kWh/kg.

Aircraft are much better served by biofuels, synthetic fuels or other liquid fuels.

The types of niches best served by hydrogen from electrolysis are places where you need extremely few filling stations, have a predictable consumption so you can downscale logistics as much as possible and a lot of weight/volume accomodation. Trains, in short. And stationary applications. The first hydrogen trains are sort of interesting, even as a FOAK project they are already nominally cheaper than diesel.
 
mux said:
GRA said:
That price is well below the average price of the used Mirais he was tracking, but what I want to know is how did it wind up in Chicago?

They tend to pop up in a few isolated locations because there are filling stations there - there are two 'industrial' (but open to the public) H2 stations in the Chicago area.

As for H2 from electrolysis at $4/kg, there is theoretically a path. You need about 50kWh/kg in electric inputs, which at current solar PPA-type prices is about $1-1.50 excluding T&D costs. Add those and you're definitely below $2 in electricity inputs. At high volumes, logistics/retail margin should be fairly similar to LNG/LPG at ~$0.50/kg. The only unknown in the long term is electrolysis/purification/pressurization equipment cost. Right now that's in the low single-digit dollar range per kg. If it drops well below $1/kg in the future, $4/kg H2 is possible.


They're not talking about $4/kg. H2 necessarily via electrolysis, although that's one possible pathway. They're also exploring thermochemical or photochemical production. One of the ways to reduce H2 retail cost is to remove the cost/energy of pressurization, which IIRR is around 5kWh/kg. to 700 bar, via a switch to adsorption/nanotube storage at low pressures. The on-vehicle storage weight goes up, but it doesn't have to be cylindrical to handle high pressures, so you can use odd-shaped tanks (and use a skateboard design just like a BEV). IIRC, the problem with adsorption storage is that while it's easy to get the H2 in, it's a lot more difficult to get it back out. Nanotube storage is such leading edge stuff that no one knows what will be possible/commercial. Here's one link that reports a lot of the research: https://www.greencarcongress.com/hydrogen_production/ Naturally, most of these will never be commercialized.


mux said:
The reason I personally don't see this ever happening is the scale factor. Hydrogen for vehicle fuels is not a mainstream prospect - it's hard to conceive of any possible future where HFCEVs are cheaper than BEVs, in fact now already BEVs outperform FCEVs on basically every relevant metric and cost trends are predictably favourable towards BEVs. You need a LOT of volume to recoup the equipment cost of hydrogen production and distribution. This is a chicken and egg issue for hydrogen, and by and large you're not going to fix that by using hydrogen elsewhere. The equipment costs to recoup are in vehicle-specific parts like pressurization, high-pressure storage and dispensing stations.


I disagree with you there. FCEVs still have greater practical range, especially in cold conditions, and more rapid refueling than any available BEV (even those costing thousands more), despite BEVs being at least 5 years ahead of them in development and FCEVs being built in relatively tiny numbers. That fueling is currently divorced from housing is an advantage in locations and countries with large numbers of people living in high-density housing (although a disadvantage for people who own a detached, single family home with a garage, but that's not how most of the world's car owners live). New H2 station costs in California have already come down considerably thanks to both economies of scale (more stations using the same equipment, with larger capacities thus lower cost per car served) and the usual design improvements, both of which still have a long way to go before this is a mature business ala' gas stations. And existing gas stations are where most of the H2 stations will go, given virtually the same business model.


mux said:
A $3M dispensing station, including capital costs and maintenance, will have to serve about 10M kg of hydrogen over its 8-year lifespan to cost as much to operate as a gasoline pump (about $0.10-0.20/gal-equiv). That is 1000 vehicles per day receiving a full tank of hydrogen. There are almost no hydrogen stations right now, and the ones that exist serve maybe 10 customers per day.


You're behind the times. There are more than 40 stations in California despite the construction standstill most of the past year owing to the drop in fuel supply (owing to an explosion at the main Norcal production facility), and other countries are also building them in even larger numbers. As noted above costs have come down, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. Some of the first gen. California stations (180 kg. capacity) are already requiring more than one tanker delivery a day to meet demand, with a typical fill being 3-4kg. IIRR, the new stations in Cycle 2 were required to have at least 300 (360?) kg. capacity, but First Element is building them with 500kg., using liquid H2 delivery to cut down the number of delivery trips. See https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/AB8_report_2019_Final.pdf for the most recent report on California stations.


mux said:
Even if we completely ignore capital and maintenance costs, every fill-up costs $100 in bare equipment costs. We need 100x the hydrogen stations to even start thinking about mainstream adoption and we need those costs to go down about 100-fold, so we need 10.000x the number of hydrogen vehicles to be in the order of magnitude of scale to think about $4/kg H2.

And what do we have then? (High) Gas price equivalence. Not even BEV price equivalence!


No one is claiming that H2/FCEVs are suitable for mainstream adoption yet. But then, neither are BEVs. And no one is making a profit off QC stations either, which is why both they and H2 stations are still dependent on subsidies to get built. Public L2 might or might not be profitable, but given the slow rate at which they're being built even with subsidies, the odds are against it.
 
mux said:
It's even less likely that aircraft will be able to use hydrogen, because the system energy density is still very poor. You can't use liquefied hydrogen and pressurized hydrogen by itself gets to usable energy densities when you go to automotive-like pressures. For that you need about 10kg of tank for every 1kg of hydrogen. And the tank cannot be a structural part of the aircraft like it is now, so effectively you're adding more weight than that.


While I don't see liquid H2 for retail consumer use given the safe handling requirements, I know of no reason why it couldn't be used commercially with properly trained and equipped fueling techs. That's what's being done now for water ferries and the like, and people have been handling LOX for a/c safely for decades; liquid H2 seems to be just an extension of those safety practices (protective clothing etc.). See https://www.rivieramm.com/news-cont...hydrogen-powered-car-ferries-take-shape-55559


mux said:
The tank weight combined with the lower efficiency of using the hydrogen (and producing it) make it surprisingly uncompetitive with future batteries in aircraft. The effective energy density comes in at something like 1-1.5kWh/kg.

Aircraft are much better served by biofuels, synthetic fuels or other liquid fuels.


For long-range aviation, yes, but it's in regional/commuter use where liquid H2 may have a role. As biofuels will almost certainly remain severely limited in volume, it needs to be restricted to only those tasks which absolutely require them, and that's long-range aviation.


mux said:
The types of niches best served by hydrogen from electrolysis are places where you need extremely few filling stations, have a predictable consumption so you can downscale logistics as much as possible and a lot of weight/volume accomodation. Trains, in short. And stationary applications. The first hydrogen trains are sort of interesting, even as a FOAK project they are already nominally cheaper than diesel.


Yes, trains anywhere electrification isn't economic owing to low traffic densities, but also long-haul trucking seems a likely usage. Battery weight matters there.
 
Anyone talk to a Mirai owner? This guy did...

"I was recently in the bay area and there was a line of Toyota Mirai's. I chatted with one of the owners. They are a pain in the ass. Many of the filling stations are off line. He had to drive 15 miles to this one, and at about 15 to fill from empty, car number 5 in the line is in for an hour to fill."

So much for that five minute fill up.

http://www.myrav4ev.com/forum/viewt...d&sid=5dfe3e634f372381a8ef9e8c98688e88#unread
 
smkettner said:
Anyone talk to a Mirai owner? This guy did...

"I was recently in the bay area and there was a line of Toyota Mirai's. I chatted with one of the owners. They are a pain in the ass. Many of the filling stations are off line. He had to drive 15 miles to this one, and at about 15 to fill from empty, car number 5 in the line is in for an hour to fill."

So much for that five minute fill up.

http://www.myrav4ev.com/forum/viewt...d&sid=5dfe3e634f372381a8ef9e8c98688e88#unread

My aunt leased a Mirai for the carpool sticker and free fuel. She has to drive 7-miles away from home just to fill up. Luckily, her commute is timed just right for her to get groceries along the way during the weekends (driving 7-miles to get groceries?!?!). She knows she's been lucky with it, because it's her second year with it and she's been caught without fueling access a couple times (once was more than enough of a hassle!). As soon as her lease is up, she's going to check out the RAV4 Prime. Anything with carpool access that isn't an FCEV!
 
To be fair that's just anecdotal, it'd be much more informative to gauge the experience of, say, 100 FCEV drivers and see what they do and don't like about it and what their upgrade plans would be, if they had to choose today.

There are a LOT of municipal Mirais around, like, I'd wager it is at least a plurality if not a majority. Those are driven on and off by multiple people with often just one person generally responsible for fueling or even aware of how the process works. The rest just drive them. I'd imagine, it being an EV, that the experience of most of those people has to be pretty positive. If there's a hydrogen shortage, they'll just switch over to other vehicles so no harm done.
 
mux said:
To be fair that's just anecdotal, it'd be much more informative to gauge the experience of, say, 100 FCEV drivers and see what they do and don't like about it and what their upgrade plans would be, if they had to choose today.

There are a LOT of municipal Mirais around, like, I'd wager it is at least a plurality if not a majority. Those are driven on and off by multiple people with often just one person generally responsible for fueling or even aware of how the process works. The rest just drive them. I'd imagine, it being an EV, that the experience of most of those people has to be pretty positive. If there's a hydrogen shortage, they'll just switch over to other vehicles so no harm done.

True it's anecdotal, but two out of a small total population is the beginning of a statistically significant sample size. Removing the municipal Mirais would simply make these two anecdotes more representative of the consumer population.

Anyway, I was only contributing my aunt's experience.
 
There's no question whatever that the explosion at the Air Products facility in the Bay Area last year caused a lot of H2 supply problems here, and AFAIA they aren't yet completely solved. As it is, current spacing of H2 stations in much of the Bay Area (outside the South Bay) is about 15 miles, so if your local station is out you have that far to go to another.

That being said, I see a fair number of Mirais being driven around here (that I'm two miles from a station, and am often traveling along a major arterial that connects to it probably boosts the frequency I see them) - I've even seen two at the same intersection at the same time on a couple of occasions (including yesterday), and talking with some of the owners, while they report occasional problems with supply, they also recognize that this isn't a mature infrastructure yet, and (at least the ones I talked to) are willing to put up with the occasional problems. One of the steps being taken is to refuel more frequently than they otherwise would need to, to give themselves a cushion. This is apparently a fairly common practice statewide, judging by the average fill quantity reported by the state in their annual reports.

Re fill speed, some of the first gen. equipment did have problems, but as was to be expected the 2nd gen stuff is a lot better (and required to be). Unfortunately, at the moment the 1st gen equipment still dominates, and will until they get the supply stabilized (and diversified) and can start building new sites again at previous rates.
 
Yes, there is still platinum group metal (PGM) loading in their PEM fuel cells. There is no way around that for the time being. Not sure if it's platinum in particular, they may also be using palladium or rhodium. There's something like 30g of Pt/Pd/Rh in a MIrai.
 
One ounce (28.5g) per car is the figure I've been hearing, thanks for the check mux.

From the perspective of a physicist: getting 100 kW worth of proton exchange from that quantity of catalyst is insanely impressive.
 
The platinum problem in PEMFCs isn't just centered around the amount necessary for each PEMFC stack, it's really a cumulative problem tied into a particularly nasty speculative market:
- Each PEMFC has its counterpart in platinum used for electrolyzers
- PGMs in fuel cells are inherently a lot harder to recoup, as it's much more sparsely distributed and in the form of nanoparticles that tend to erode much more easily
- Platinum is a largely speculative market with centralized, tightly controlled supply that is hard to expand

We've seen in the early '00s that even the vague promise of future FC cars sent the platinum price up to ridiculous levels. That in turn actually made the platinum so expensive that fuel cell stacks became intrinsically uncompetitive in the long run, it was that bad - it went to over $2000/oz, which is about the total materials cost of a 100kWh battery - back then. It's gone down substantially now, to the point that you can theoretically make a ~100kW PEM fuel cell for less than the cost of a 100kWh battery, but imagine what the markets would do if some large automaker would decide to go 100% with fuel cells for the future.

Diesel cat converter platinum can be recouped 98%+, PEMFCs have much lower recovery rates, I think the best rates are still well below 50%. This is not completely intrinsic (i.e. this can be improved with better technology), but until we're at parity with other catalytic uses of platinum, we're going to need to supply the rest of the platinum with mined, new platinum. That's really what the speculation is all about. There's still a large technology gap enabling good platinum recovery AND low platinum usage at the same time. Keep in mind - Diesel cat converters may have the same total amount of platinum in them, but the total platinum demand from the catalytic converter industry is just 2% of their production capacity - the part they can't recover. That makes it a completely different ball game, for now at least.

TL;DR: the platinum discussion is more complex than raw materials amount, it's a quite unique combination of materials usage, recovery and speculative precious metal markets.
 
Saying platinum is speculative is putting it mildly. It's a market that booms and busts on speculations and disruptions.
I read about it almost daily as I hold approximately 342 grams of it.

In 2000s platinum prices went to $2,000 an ounce also because of the demand for platinum crucibles that are used to melt silicon for solar cells. I read one article that said the crucibles use around 10 ounces of platinum each, but everyone that sold them was out and at one point the used crucibles were going for as much as $40,000.
 
coleafrado said:
One ounce (28.5g) per car is the figure I've been hearing, thanks for the check mux.

From the perspective of a physicist: getting 100 kW worth of proton exchange from that quantity of catalyst is insanely impressive.

Precious metals such as gold and platinum are traded in Troy ounces, approximately 31.1 grams.
 
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