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Refueling Hydrogen Cars in California is So Annoying, Drivers are Suing Toyota (yahoo.com) 213
The Los Angeles Times spoke to Ryan Kiskis, an environmentally-conscious owner of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (the Toyota Mirai):
He soon learned that hydrogen refueling stations are scarce and reliably unreliable. He learned that apps to identify broken stations hand out bad information. He learned that the state of California, which is funding the station buildout, is far behind schedule — 200 stations were supposed to be up and running by 2025, but only 54 exist. And since Kiskis bought his car, the price of hydrogen has more than doubled, currently the equivalent of $15 a gallon of gasoline.
With fueling so expensive and stations so undependable, Kiskis — who lives in Pacific Palisades and works at Google in Playa Vista — drives a gasoline Jeep for everything but short trips around the neighborhood. "I've got a great car that sits in the driveway," he said. Bryan Caluwe can relate. The retired Santa Monican bought a Mirai in 2022. He likes his car too. "But it's been a total inconvenience." Hydrogen stations "are either down for mechanical reasons, or they're out of fuel, or, in the case of Shell, they've rolled up the carpet and gone home." And don't get Irving Alden started. He runs a commercial print shop in North Hollywood. He leases a Mirai. He too loves the car. But the refueling system? "It's a frickin' joke."
The three are part of a class action lawsuit filed in July against Toyota. They claim that Toyota salespeople misled them about the sorry state of California's hydrogen refueling system. "They were told the stations were convenient and readily available," said lawyer Nilofar Nouri of Beverly Hills Trial Attorneys. "That turned out to be far from reality." The class action now amounts to two dozen plaintiffs and growing, Nouri said. "We have thousands of these individuals in California who are stuck with this vehicle." Kiskis believes Toyota sales staff duped him — but says, "I'm just as irritated with the state of California" for poor oversight of the program it's funding...
Hyundai also sells a fuel cell car in California called the Nexo, and although the the suit is aimed only at Toyota, the hydrogen station situation affects Hyundai too.
Toyota told The Times it's "committed to customer satisfaction and will continue to evaluate how we can best support our customers. We will respond to the allegations in this lawsuit in the appropriate forum."
The article does note that the California Energy Commission awarded an extra $9.4 million to hydrogen station operators this year to cover "operations and maintenance" — and that hydrogen cars have their advantages. "The full tank range is 350 to 400 miles. A fill-up usually takes no more than five or 10 minutes.
"But unlike electric vehicles, you can't fill up at home. You have to travel to a dedicated fueling station...."
With fueling so expensive and stations so undependable, Kiskis — who lives in Pacific Palisades and works at Google in Playa Vista — drives a gasoline Jeep for everything but short trips around the neighborhood. "I've got a great car that sits in the driveway," he said. Bryan Caluwe can relate. The retired Santa Monican bought a Mirai in 2022. He likes his car too. "But it's been a total inconvenience." Hydrogen stations "are either down for mechanical reasons, or they're out of fuel, or, in the case of Shell, they've rolled up the carpet and gone home." And don't get Irving Alden started. He runs a commercial print shop in North Hollywood. He leases a Mirai. He too loves the car. But the refueling system? "It's a frickin' joke."
The three are part of a class action lawsuit filed in July against Toyota. They claim that Toyota salespeople misled them about the sorry state of California's hydrogen refueling system. "They were told the stations were convenient and readily available," said lawyer Nilofar Nouri of Beverly Hills Trial Attorneys. "That turned out to be far from reality." The class action now amounts to two dozen plaintiffs and growing, Nouri said. "We have thousands of these individuals in California who are stuck with this vehicle." Kiskis believes Toyota sales staff duped him — but says, "I'm just as irritated with the state of California" for poor oversight of the program it's funding...
Hyundai also sells a fuel cell car in California called the Nexo, and although the the suit is aimed only at Toyota, the hydrogen station situation affects Hyundai too.
Toyota told The Times it's "committed to customer satisfaction and will continue to evaluate how we can best support our customers. We will respond to the allegations in this lawsuit in the appropriate forum."
The article does note that the California Energy Commission awarded an extra $9.4 million to hydrogen station operators this year to cover "operations and maintenance" — and that hydrogen cars have their advantages. "The full tank range is 350 to 400 miles. A fill-up usually takes no more than five or 10 minutes.
"But unlike electric vehicles, you can't fill up at home. You have to travel to a dedicated fueling station...."
Shoulda boughta... (Score:3, Informative)
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The favoured transport of Chechen militants?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/che... [yahoo.com]
Tesla - Elon Musk's ode to planned obsolescence. (Score:2)
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Censor troll moderation makes as little sense as usual. Then again, a have to agree that your attempted joke didn't work too well. Lots of fresh material flops, but Slashdot tends to have too many old jokes.
Try to explain a light bulb joke to a millennial... "Why would you want to change a light bulb? Did your lawyer make you take it out of your will?"
Re:My kid bought a Tesla. (Score:4, Informative)
Battery gave up. Now her Tesla is a No va, been decorating her driveway for months. It'll cost THOUSANDS of dollars to get it fixed BY TESLA, nobody else is even allowed to wash and wax it, let allone fix it.
Who told you that? At least two companies do Tesla battery pack disassembly and repair now: Gruber Motor Company and Precision EV Repair. I'm pretty sure there are others.
It will still likely cost thousands, but far fewer thousands.
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Battery gave up. Now her Tesla is a No va, been decorating her driveway for months. It'll cost THOUSANDS of dollars to get it fixed BY TESLA, nobody else is even allowed to wash and wax it, let allone fix it.
Who told you that? At least two companies do Tesla battery pack disassembly and repair now: Gruber Motor Company and Precision EV Repair. I'm pretty sure there are others.
It will still likely cost thousands, but far fewer thousands.
I had never heard of these two companies before, so I looked them up on Google. Gruber is only located in Phoenix. Precision is only located in Iowa, but they'll arrange for shipping your "component" to their factory, although I'm not sure if that means you ship the entire car or find a way to disconnect the battery yourself and ship the battery.
Maybe there are others, but basically these services theoretically exist but are not practical for almost all Tesla owners in the entire country.
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Tell your daughter to learn laws like the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act and grow the fuck up.
Actually, just point her to this post, you don't have to tell her anything. Let me educate the idiotic.
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Tell your daughter to learn laws like the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act and grow the fuck up.
Is this the same law that theoretically allows John Deere owners to arrange for the repair of their vehicles independently of John Deere? The truth is that the law is only as effective as one's ability to fund good lawyers and to find helpful judges.
Re:Naah, just give me your address. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll talk to you myself, from my muzzle to your ear. Nice 'n' private.
Somebody gives you some advice that shows alternatives do exist. You/she are free to go investigate them & decide for yourself or herself.
But YOU have to be a POMPOUS PUBLIC A$$ about ther whole thing instead.
GEEZ YOU ARE A TROLL
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Just report the comment as a threat. If he wants to play stupid games, he can win stupid prizes.
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What is the battery warranty in the US, 8 years and 120k miles?
How old is this thing?
Re:How is my real world experience trolling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Copying and pasting your comment all over the place, misspellings included, doesn't make it any truer. There are multiple companies that work on Tesla's, much less just wash them.
The particular lack of details and strange wording make me thing that you might not even have a daughter, much less one that owns a Tesla, much less a broken one.
Are there broken Tesla vehicles? Sure. But then, I have my brother's broken ICE van under my carport right now. Right now, I suspect a busted head gasket, plus the positive wire to the purge valve solenoid isn't delivering enough watts to activate it, so check engine light. I am not looking forward to that tear down.
A Tesla with a busted battery would be so much easier.
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A Tesla with a busted battery would be so much easier.
I take it you have a two-post lift. You'd need one to get the battery out without a lot of hassle. Working on vans does absolutely suck though. The screws on the back of the injection pump backed out because Bosch is a fucking pathetic shit show now that apparently doesn't understand thread locker or lock washers. This caused both a fuel leak down the front of the motor (and because of Mercedes' fuckery, this fuel leak proceeds down across the alternator when it happens) and eventually, the intermediate gea
Didn't do their homework (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe *before* you buy an alternative fuel vehicle, you should first do some research and make sure you'll actually be able to buy said alternative fuel?
Before my partner and I even went shopping for an EV last year, the first order of business was making damn sure there was capacity available in the breaker panel for installing an EVSE. Next step was downloading ABRP and making sure any of the potential road trips we might want to potentially make would be doable. Only then, did we start actually shopping for the EV (ultimately deciding on a Bolt EUV). It would've been absolutely moronic to bring home a car we couldn't use.
Re:Didn't do their homework (Score:4, Interesting)
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Even with no high powered EVSE, an EV can at least trickle charge from a normal wall outlet.
We were looking at a daily round-trip commute of about 55 to 61 miles, depending on the non-toll vs toll routes. That's beyond what would be a reasonable recharging time with a L1 connection, so it was L2 or bust.
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Well, at least you did your research.
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Here in London, we put in a home charger when we got our first EV back in 2015, and it made all the difference. Funnily enough, yesterday for the first time, I was sufficiently disorganised that I needed to drive and hadn't made sure the car had enough range at the time I had to leave. So I had a quick look on ZapMaps (our better version of ABRP ;^) and found a rapid charger 2 miles away from home*. 15 minutes there and I was good to go. Couldn't have done that back in 2015 with my Zoe -- the charging netwo
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wished they still made the Volt. That 50mpg gas generator would make for a fantastic backup plan if you have to evacuate due to forest fires, hurricanes, etc. The sort of thing that will congest stations and highways. Having a 500mi escape solution is worth keeping around,
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How does a 16 gallon tank fill faster than a 10 gallon one?
A lot of cars that get 30+ mpg only have ~10 gallon tanks.
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From what I've read, if you hit congestion/blocked traffic, the model 3 might actually work better - less likely to run out of power than an ICE is stuck idling on the highway.
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I live in hurricane territory. I'm not fleeing in my model 3 when a class 5 rolls in. I want to be able to get away.
At least in Florida, all gas stations are required by law to have backup generators for this reason, so after the storm passes, they're open. Meanwhile, if the electric grid is down, once you've used your electricity, you're down too. And in the case of Florida, if the storm is large enough, you're really screwed because there's not really anyplace to go. Not Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and maybe as far north as the Carolinas, and that happens a lot more commonly you think. Hurricane Michael in 2018 comes
Re:Didn't do their homework (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is not that. When the Mirai was new, hydrogen was all the rage. There were a few gas stations that did it (and Toyota would only sell you a vehicle if you lived near to one of them).
The problem is, it's a few years on, and those gas stations haven't been maintaining the hydrogen pumps as rigorously. That and Toyota has seemed to lost interest in it, as hydrogen seems to be less the next generation fuel.
Now, with an EV, it's less of a problem as you can fuel up anywhere there's a plug. With hydrogen, you're limited to places that sell it. And those places are becoming scarce as pumps break down and don't get fixed.
Hydrogen is not going to be the fuel for the next generation. It's too inefficient if you want green hydrogen, and blue hydrogen is just another form of fossil fuel. Hydrogen also doesn't store well - the Mirai's tank will boil off in a couple of weeks - that's right, park the car and you'll go from full to empty in a couple of weeks. Now, it's a hydrogen EV, so you aren't completely stuck as you have a battery that can take you to a station (that's what limits where you can buy it)
Hydrogen is unlikely to be the next fuel - it's got all the inconvenience of gas cars, except your tank drains itself. You have to drive a lot to make it worthwhile, and the fuel is expensive. There is literally no practical reason to get a hydrogen vehicle over a gas or electric. But in the hype of hydrogen a few years back, well, it seemed the future, and did offer the quick fill ups of gas cars.
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Then the tank in your car is broken.
The Mirai uses high pressure gas tanks, not liquid hydrogen.
So nothing can boil off.
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The problem is, it's a few years on, and those gas stations haven't been maintaining the hydrogen pumps as rigorously.
The problem is, everyone is figuring out that it's a boondoggle. Shell alone closed 12 percent of the hydrogen filling stations in California (six out of seven of theirs.)
There is literally no practical reason to get a hydrogen vehicle over a gas or electric.
And there never was, and fraud was used to sell them. They claimed there would be more filling stations, when they had no plans to build any, and nobody else had a commitment they couldn't escape from. They claimed filling would be faster than EVs, when in fact it is sometimes slower. They claimed it would be safe, but there were multiple
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Maybe *before* you buy an alternative fuel vehicle, you should first do some research and make sure you'll actually be able to buy said alternative fuel?
This is the point of the lawsuit. When all research points to marketing materials that make promises, when it shows that local facilities are available, but your actual experience differs it is grounds for a lawsuit. I can research how many hydrogen stations there are all I want, it doesn't help me if when I go there with my car it's out of order.
In order to have real world experience people need to provide real world experience. There was no way of being an early adopter in hydrogen and realising that the
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In most countries renting a car is absurd expensive.
E.g. Germany.
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Maybe *before* you buy an alternative fuel vehicle, you should first do some research and make sure you'll actually be able to buy said alternative fuel?
That's not unreasonable, but Toyota still defrauded them into making the purchase by telling them a bunch of lies, and we should not lick their boots by allowing them to get away with it. Let us hold salesmen accountable for their lies. Let us hold the dealer accountable for their salesmen. And let us hold Toyota accountable for the actions of its franchises. They decide who gets to be a dealer and carry their logo on a big sign. It would be absolutely moronic to not treat this as fraud.
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Toyota should be be building out the stations (Score:2, Informative)
The best thing Tesla ever did, and I personally think the entire reason for the success they have enjoyed, is that they massively built out a good, reliable charging network even before a lot of people had cars - because how could you get much of a user base if people had anxiety about going places?
Tesla made sure there were few places you could go without knowing you'd be able to charge.
Toyota really seems to want to push hydrogen electric cars out of the small niche they are in. I'll believe they are ser
My daughter's Tesla needs thousands of dollars ... (Score:3)
...in repairs - the battery's toast. Not "I heard it from a man who knows a fellow who says it's true" - my daughter. She's still paying for the Tesla.
I'll get downmodded for relaying my personal knowledge on the subject - and I'm sure I'll continue to get people here insisting that I'm making this up - because for some folks, Goodfacts are better than Truefacts.
Re:My daughter's Tesla needs thousands of dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
You might be getting downvoted because it's not relevant to the topic. I can promise you there aren't that many pro-Tesla people on this site...
I also get the general vibe that a lot of detail is missing from the story? Like "Boo hoo my daughter's Tesla needs thousands of dollars in repairs and all she did was drive it into a lake" kinda vibes. If she bought it new - so new that she's still making payments - it's absolutely under warranty (unless, again, there's more to the story...) If she bought it used then it's kinda between you and who you bought it from.
But either way sure, you got a lemon on your hands. That's not a Tesla exclusive thing. My brother once bought a used car and the engine blew itself up within two weeks. Shit happens. Even new cars sometimes have catastrophic failures, but when that happens they either get it fixed under warranty or get the dealer/manufacturer buys the car back.
=Smidge=
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Still random anecdote. How many miles on the car and what exactly happened. The Tesla batteries don't "just fail", given that you have many parallel cells in series.
Re: My daughter's Tesla needs thousands of dollars (Score:2)
Re:My daughter's Tesla needs thousands of dollars (Score:4, Interesting)
You're still missing the crucial detail:
- Did she buy new or used?
- What specific exclusion in the warranty have Tesla relied on?
Personally, I think you're being downmodded because you're posting the same thing with very little variation in words or content many times under the same article, and that pisses people off.
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Technically yours is still an anecdote lacking sufficient information to be meaningful... like witch model, how many odometer miles, and were there any extenuating circumstances.
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Why would anyone say you're making it up? If you get downmodded it's for thinking anecdotes = data. I feel sorry for your daughter, but I know countless people who are insanely happy with their Teslas, some of them who bought them when the model S first came to market who are still enjoying them just fine.
Personally though I had to have a complete engine rebuilt on a Subaru Liberty - so expensive that I ended up having the engine replaced instead, the difference between me and you - I don't hold this up as
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It got replaced under warranty (EU) and I got a loaner car free of charge for the time it took to repair my car.
The only downside was that the loaner sucked compared to my own car
Re:My daughter's Tesla needs thousands of dollars (Score:4, Informative)
Except that none of that is true, despite you posting it all over.
What's really screwing her right now, assuming your story is true, is just letting it sit. Either get Tesla to fix it under warranty, which it should be if she's still paying for it, pay Tesla to fix it, or pay a 3rd company to fix it. They're legally required to allow that.
What do you mean "screwed cut rate"? The aftermarket Tesla repair places I've read about are decently up front about their services, they offer guarantees, etc...
What I'm picturing right now is that if her battery isn't under warranty, it pretty much has to mean that she bought a used Tesla without remaining warranty. Or she managed to bust the mile limits like the one Uber driver.
If it is out of warranty, go with getting the battery pack tested, and refurbished if that makes sense. Don't sit around complaining, that helps nobody.
Re:Toyota should be be building out the stations (Score:5, Interesting)
The best thing Tesla ever did, and I personally think the entire reason for the success they have enjoyed, is that they massively built out a good, reliable charging network even before a lot of people had cars
As an owner of a non-Tesla EV, even I'll admit I'm envious of their charging network. Of course, it remains to be seen if that continues to be the case since Musk fired off the Supercharger department.
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For Tesla the task was much more manageable, the charging s
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Yeah let's do that, get a company with no history in operating major hazard facilities to build them. What could go wrong...
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Toyota is not only making cars.
The cars they sell are the field test for the future hydrogen economy.
They have a 30 year plan with another 20 years in concept phase after that.
Asia has under developed rail network. But many heavy gear is running on nat gas. Trucks and busses.
Gasoline stations could indeed fabricate their own hydrogen. Just ramp it a bit down when one is using the charger.
Basically everything that is burning gasoline or diesel can be converted to burn hydrogen.
However the master plan is elec
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> They have a 30 year plan with another 20 years in concept phase after that
*checks date*
They've been at it for 32 years and they are worse off now than they were when the Mirai launched. I don't think their plan is working out.
=Smidge=
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You posted this same comment a bunch of times without any evidence or even details. I'm perfectly ready to believe Tesla is screwing over your daughter, but you've given us nothing to go on.
I had a Toyota once (Score:2, Informative)
A Prius Prime 2020, that was the worst car I ever had,everything that had code in it crash at a time or another.
Car radio, reboot on it's onw reason and start playing radio or apple Auto music.
Trac control (i live in Canada) stop working when even I really need it.
Comsumtion can be 1l/100 or 40l/100 for any reason it decide.
The car even start the gas engine out of no where when the car was parked in my driveway
I had video proof of everything, and Toyota don't want do anything, like, everything was a feature
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I had an '02 Camry. Drove the heck out of that thing, still one of the nicest cars I've ever owned. Other than that it started costing a fortune in fuel as gas prices rose, it was great.
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Our 2015 Camry is great - we've had zero problems in the six years since we bought it.
This reminds me of hard disk drives (Score:2)
Honestly I don't really like their cars not enough room up front I'm a pretty big guy. Much prefer Honda or even Hyundai now that they've got their shit together.
But I can't help but think of all the people who will never touch a Seagate hard drive in their life or a Western digital drive or a whatever because they had one crash on them
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Toyota is objectively the most reliable car company in existence second only to Honda. But all it takes is one bad experience and people are going to rail against it.
Toyota is objectively the best at making reliable engines, but they are also objectively shit at software. The unintended acceleration code review done by the Barr Group found literally dozens of code paths which could cause unintended acceleration. They also found that Toyota programmers had not only not followed industry standards, they had not even followed their own inferior internal standards.
I can't help but think of all the people who will never touch a Seagate hard drive in their life or a Western digital drive or a whatever because they had one crash on them.
I can't help but think of all the Seizegate drives I've had to rescue from being unable to spin up by whacking
Guy buys a hydrogen powered car⦠(Score:2)
Re: Guy buys a hydrogen powered car⦠(Score:3)
Ukraine uses unwanted Toyota Mirai as... (Score:2)
There is a use for them after all
Ukraine uses unwanted Toyota Mirai hydrogen cars as huge bombs
https://youtu.be/-STHvI2ebTk?s... [youtu.be]
The Ukrainians should launch a buyback program (Score:2)
They're getting some good use out of them [interestin...eering.com] as VBIEDs with the "E" built right into the drive train. That way, these owners can have some money to get a car that isn't an evolutionary dead end and the Ukrainians can get more weapons.
If you think it's annoying now (Score:2)
Just be glad some bureaucrat gave you a free pass on the industrial rules for handling hydrogen. Otherwise you'd be in the full hardhat, safety glasses gloves, steel toed boots and nomex outfit.
Hydrogen makes more sense for (Score:2)
...buses and trucks. Due to the network effect, it won't work well for cars until there's a sufficient number.
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The new busses in Bangkok are all electric.
I just did figure yet if they are battery or hydrogen driven.
They have a water outlet. But likely that comes from the AC and humid air.
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They work fine, especially for the city-busses that stop a lot.
On certain places that the busses will stop for longer times (end of the line & bus stations) we installed overhead chargers.
Those chargers can boost the busses in a few minutes a la a fast charger. And then tickle recharge themself from the grid connection.
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I will try to find a place where they are parked over night. So I can look closer. At the moment I see them only at bus stations along the road. The long distance buses are still all on nat gas. Ah, I have an idea, I know where there is a Terminal bus station for 2 lines of the blue buses, the drivers make a break there, then I can take a look.
Re:Why don't Californians... (Score:5, Funny)
Just start advocating more for alternatives to driving, such as better public transportation?
Who needs a car when you can just pick up a rental scooter out of the nearest lake, dry it off, and go for a spin!
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California is working on building more rail but all slashdot does is bitch about it being communism.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Re:Why don't Californians... (Score:4, Informative)
LA to SF is under 400 miles. LA to San Diego is 120 miles. LA to Sacramento is under 400 miles. Sacramento to San Diego is a smidge over 500 miles.
These are all totally routine distances between major population centres, with all the long ones (ie excluding LA to San Diego) being the equivalent of Paris to Marseilles on the TGV (480 miles in 3.5 hours).
There may be reasons why you can't get high speed rail to work in California, but it's not the distance between population centres.
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And you're right, and logically what we should be doing is installing elevated PRT in city centers and then pushing it outwards. But we are married both to cars and to massive capital projects like full size rail which has to run on the ground to be cost effective and therefore can't be cost effective because you have to pay for that ground and too much of it is privately owned.
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Perhaps, but that’s not the reasoning that the OP was making. It could also be solved with better local transit, and there’s nothing physically impossible about that, either.
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Re: Hippocrits (Score:2)
I think the "hippocrits" gave that away...
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Maybe he meant hippopotamus and English isn't his native tongue?
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While Toyota might not be a USA company only Tesla has more parts made in the USA than Toyota.
Think about it, why would a very lean-efficient Japanese company make cars built to USA government standards in Japan and then ship them to the US?
My 2007 Camry was 90% made in Detroit it has the stamps to prove it. The only thing that was build out of country was the wiring harnesses which was made in Mexico but installed in Detroit.
80% of Ford's and Chevy's are made 100% in Mexico.
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Hydrogen is a great fuel. The problem is manufacturing it. Imagine spending $10 worth of electricity to make $5 worth of hydrogen.
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Imagine spending $10 worth of electricity to make $5 worth of hydrogen.
So what you're saying is, it's still better than Bitcoin.
Hydrogen sucks as an energy storage system (Score:3, Informative)
Hydrogen is a great fuel. The problem is manufacturing it. Imagine spending $10 worth of electricity to make $5 worth of hydrogen.
lol, your $10 gets you hydrogen gas. You now have to compress it, dissipate the heat from compressing it, store it (which for hydrogen is very difficult) and then transfer it to your car. Valves for liquid hydrogen might be the hardest part. It is very difficult to make a seal that will hold hydrogen, ask Boeing, and even if a little bit leaks it will cool the surrounding parts, condensation will form which will then freeze. The freezing will stick things together and push your valve apart at the same
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And there's the fact that hydrogen will just migrate right through most seals, because it's so small.
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and lets not forget hydrogen embrittlement.
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That too!
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The car uses two compressed gas tanks with 70Mp pressure. /. Is full with old farts that never updated their 35 year old school knowledge (which mostly was wrong anyway, like the myth that "hydrogen goes through everything. It does not. It only goes through metal - if I was not in a shaky bus, I would explain you how that works)
The valve problem got solved long ago.
To have a hydrogen gas explosion, many odd things have to come together. E.g. closed garage, a leaky tank and the right mixture with oxygen.
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The car uses two compressed gas tanks with 70Mp pressure.
How is that not a bomb waiting to explode when major crash deforms the pressure container?
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Because it is extremely difficult to crash something that is build like a tank - pun intended.
In the car those gas tanks are in special armored compartment. Which basically can not break in a car accident. You would need to drop it from an airplane or something.
Seriously: to destroy such a gas tank, especially a filled one, you need an anti tank missile. That is not a joke. At an empty tank you can try to fire with a hand gun. It is 3 layers of different kinds of Kevlar and Nylon and glassfibres. It is basi
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Pump it out of the ground:
https://www.euronews.com/next/... [euronews.com]
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You'd still need to purify, compress, and ship it. While the possible quantities are exciting for current hydrogen use, they're considerably less exciting if you plan on replacing fossil fuels with it.
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"... simply run electricity through water to refuel" is one of those useless statements that's superficially true but completely falls apart when you start getting into the practical implementation.
Let's say a HFC vehicle has a fuel tank capacity of 5KG. Let's say you had the most efficient electrolytic cell ever invented, which is about 90% (for reference, most alkali cells like you'd DIY are like 50-60% at best). Filling that 5kg tank would take 216KWh of energy, which does not include energy to compress
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A hydrogen powered vehicle should be able to make its own fuel, with its own batteries, out of water. Otherwise what's the point? Capitalism's made everyone fucking retarded.
If you've figured out how to make perpetual motion happen, by all means apply for a patent; you're going to be a very rich man.
OTOH if you simply don't understand how physics works or why such a thing is considered impossible, then maybe go easy in the "R word" when describing the people who do understand.
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Since hydrogen is a good solution because you can simply run electricity through water to refuel, it seems the curse of the middleman has struck again.
You've yaddyyaddered a very complex topic. Simply run electricity through it? What you get out a very low density H2 composition which can barely sustain a flame, all the while your electrodes are being eaten away to the point where you'll be replacing them before you have enough H2 to even get your car moving.
Generating hydrogen at enough quantity continuously to burn is complex. Here's a couple of the things you need:
1: Water purification system. - If you don't have deionized ultra-pure water you damage y
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Your point number 3 is nonsense. Electrolysis is in 50% range efficient.
That is not great but not "a Fuckton" bad.
Especially if you use excess solar or wind energy.
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If you want to make H2 from excess solar sure, but use it for the industry or long-term storage (summer => winter)
Using electricity to make H2 for cars is just dumb.
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Using green electricity is the only way to make clean hydrogen. ... who cares if the efficiency of the production process is low when the energy is close to free?
Look at Iceland
You should google a bit around. On this laptop I have no book marks. Every few years is a "world hydrogen" conference. Leading research country is Australia.
In Germany we have household solutions where solar panels produce during summer electricity and H2. The H2 is stored and used in winter in an intentionally inefficient fuel cell.
Toyota made the motor in my Ford. (Score:2)
I have a 2016 Ford Fusion Hybrid EV. The electric motor was made by Toyota. It's a little sealed box on one side of the transmission, sealed metal plates and lots of non-verbal stickers that give me the impression I'll die if I open the box - but the one with English words printed on it says "Toyota" clear as can be. I hear Ford's making their own electric motors now, and doesn't need to buy them from Toyota. If Toyota hates electricity, I wonder what they'll do with the plant that makes those motors?
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What makes you think a Toyota Mirai doesn't have electric motors in it? If I was buying a new car now the Rav4 PHEV would be high on my list, beside the Cybertruck I got in line for the night it was announced. I think both are likely amazingly good and reliable vehicles, notwithstanding your C&P anecdote.
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Perhaps you did not notice: the article you are commenting on is about an electric car made by TOYOTA.
Perhaps you also do not know that Toyota is one of the biggest vendor of hybrid cars. Those have an electric engine, you know?
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I wonder how much of it was just down to pride. My sense is they bet big on hybrid, it did amazingly, but they never saw EVs coming, and then got into post hoc rationalisation to make themselves feel better once EVs got traction.
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Re: Toyota Hates Electricity (Score:2)
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It's worse than you know. It's only 10minutes *if* your dispense supports pre-cooling functionality and *if* the dispenser isn't in heavy use. H2 refuelling companies not only sell dispensers based on the capacity of the cooling system to increase charging rate, but also a statistic of how many vehicles it can charge in any given hour - limited by the capacity of the electrolyser and the size of a storage tank.
The problem with the storage tank... it's hydrogen. It's *NOTHING* like gasoline infrastructure. W
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since there's no way to determine who is responsible for the stations
They aren't suing people responsible for stations. They are suing people who said stations were plentiful and reliable.