Toyota switching gears?

[Azimuth]

IMHO, Toyota should give up on hydrogen. Sell the IP to Cummins or Ballard. Gaseous fuels were a flop in the consumer market - GM and Honda tried to sell a CNG Lumina/Malibu and Civic to the public. Only the GSA and California’s DGS bought them.

A local transit agency spent almost $10 million to install H2 infrastructure at just one bus yard. That’s including LH2 storage, cyrogenic pumps, vaporizers and CH2 storage. A majority of it is tricked in from one of the major gas suppliers.

What in your opinion should they pursue instead?

 

[nthach]

What in your opinion should they pursue instead?

BEVs. It’s where the consumer market is settling towards. If GM, Ford, Mopar and Honda failed to sell the public on gaseous fuels, and the Mirai never sold beyond San Francisco and LA while Tesla uptake increased exponentially, it should have told Toyota something.

H2 is a no brainer for transit and trucking - many transit authorities and trucking fleets are familiar with gaseous fuels, and how to handle them.

 

[PandaBear]

BEVs. It’s where the consumer market is settling towards. If GM, Ford, Mopar and Honda failed to sell the public on gaseous fuels, and the Mirai never sold beyond San Francisco and LA while Tesla uptake increased exponentially, it should have told Toyota something.

H2 is a no brainer for transit and trucking - many transit authorities and trucking fleets are familiar with gaseous fuels, and how to handle them.

H2 leaks a lot more than CNG, and CNG doesn't do well in long haul either due to fuel density. LNG can boil and must be on once in a while to keep the refrigeration going and burn off the boiled off gas, not good for residential vehicles.

 

[Torrid]

BEVs. It’s where the consumer market is settling towards. If GM, Ford, Mopar and Honda failed to sell the public on gaseous fuels, and the Mirai never sold beyond San Francisco and LA while Tesla uptake increased exponentially, it should have told Toyota something.

H2 is a no brainer for transit and trucking - many transit authorities and trucking fleets are familiar with gaseous fuels, and how to handle them.

The Mirai would have never made it past California anyway. There's no hydrogen stations outside of California in the US. I looked into this a while back. The closest hydrogen station to me in Wisconsin is in Canada, 919 miles away. It's promising technology, but fueling due to the low adoption is so expensive right now. If it took off I definitely could see it being competitive though.

 

[nthach]

The Mirai would have never made it past California anyway. There's no hydrogen stations outside of California in the US. I looked into this a while back. The closest hydrogen station to me in Wisconsin is in Canada, 919 miles away. It's promising technology, but fueling due to the low adoption is so expensive right now. If it took off I definitely could see it being competitive though.

Shell, CVX, XOM, Valero, Tesoro, Petro-Canada and Marathon would be all over H2 if it was viable for the hoi polloi. But the bandwagon drove away a while ago. The only parties who are even involved in H2 are public transit, a bus builder(New Flyer), Cummins and Ballard.

I guess all of Toyota’s lobbying and trying to steer the EPA was for naught.

 

[nthach]

H2 leaks a lot more than CNG, and CNG doesn't do well in long haul either due to fuel density. LNG can boil and must be on once in a while to keep the refrigeration going and burn off the boiled off gas, not good for residential vehicles.

Yea, I’d trust a Tesla in my garage over a Mirai. At least HVIL codes are logged and you can at least see and hear arcing.