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At one point recently the Mirai came with a fuel incentive program: when you buy the car, Toyota gives you a gift card worth $15,000 towards fuel at hydrogen st

At one point recently the Mirai came with a fuel incentive program: when you buy the car, Toyota gives you a gift card worth $15,000 towards fuel at hydrogen stations. An interesting second part of the program was that if you live near a hydrogen station but it's broken, Toyota will instead reimburse a rental car and gas for the rental, one week at a time but presumably for as long the hydrogen fuel station remains broken.

kccqzy 7mo ago
$15,000 worth of fuel card sounds generous until you find that hydrogen stations have jacked up prices to $36/kg.
- smcin 7mo ago
  Full tank capacity of a Mirai is ~5 kg / (120 liters in volume).
- stbtrax 7mo ago
  still means nothing, what is the mileage or $/mi there?
  - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
    Apparently 1kg of hydrogen is about 60 miles range, which seems like a lot, but apparently fuel cells are that good. Currently hydrogen fuel if you can get it is about 15 quid a kilo in the UK, giving a tank range of around 400 miles for £80. This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric. By comparison Autogas LPG is around 92p/litre (or about £1.80 per kilo) and in a very large heavy 4.6 litre Range Rover you get around 250-300 miles for your £80 tankful, depending on how heavy your right foot is.
    - foota 7mo ago
      > This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric Is electric charging more expensive in the UK than petrol? That's nuts.
      - michaelt 7mo ago
        According to [1] it breaks down like this: EV at rapid/ultra-rapid chargers: 25p/mile Petrol, diesel: 15p/mile EV charging at home: 8p/mile This is because there's a government price cap on home electricity, but not on commercial electricity - and rapid chargers are all commercial (and of course for-profit). [1] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-car-public-charging-costs-rac-charge-watch/ https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-...
      - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
        It is if you use a rapid charger. If you're fortunate enough to be able to do what you need with a car within 50 miles or so of your house and leave it overnight to charge, it's cheaper. At present, EVs do not solve any problem I have.
        Symbiote 7mo ago
        Very few people would use 100% rapid charging. Even on a long journey, they can arrive home with, say, 5-10% remaining, and recharge at home. (The car calculates this automatically.)
        ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
        The range of most EVs is only about 120 miles, which isn't especially useful when they take around six hours to charge.
        foota 7mo ago
        Maybe most EVs in the wild, but no way for EVs being sold today. There are only 5 cars on this list below 200: https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-consumption-epa-vs-edmunds.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons..., and more than half above 300.
    - stoneman24 7mo ago
      If you can get a cheap electric overnight home charging tariff in the UK, then the electric cost is lower. Mid week, I charged 43kWh for the cost of £3.04 (7p per kWh). My home charger does 7kwh in a hour. Usual mileage is about 4 miles per kWh (typical rush hour drive into Edinburgh). That should give me about 170 miles of range. Scaling it to 400 miles (400 miles at 4 miles per kWh is 100 kWh which at 7p each is about £7. Pretty much an order of magnitude better than your estimate. I admit home charging is the best arrangement and I am fortunate to have it. I did a holiday trip to the highlands and used public/hotel chargers which were closer to your numbers but also much faster (up to 150kWh per hour capacity). I think that even discounting hydrogen engineering difficulties, the infrastructure for electric is pretty much in place and the race of the technologies is over.
      - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
        The problem is that using an EV makes living in the Highlands far more expensive even allowing for the cost of diesel, because you're forced to use rapid chargers at great expense - if they're available, and actually working - or a quick trip to the shops becomes an overnight stay.
newyankee 7mo ago
I think a few people were expecting the same cost curves that happened with batteries to happen with hydrogen but it seems the challenges are more difficult to overcome. Otherwise I think a Solar PV plant combined with Captive hydrogen production for refuelling on major highways sounds interesting, at least in countries like US, Australia etc. I believe this is not just about PEM or AEM electrolyser or specific tech, it never got the scaling boost. Ironically the stack comprising fuel cells of different types is possibly very well studied since decades. For me the Wells to wheel efficiency never made hydrogen worthwhile for short to medium distances and this battle is effectively over.
- _aavaa_ 7mo ago
  Forget the type of electrolyzer, even if they were free hydrogen would still be expensive. The challenges with hydrogen getting cheaper are thermodynamic and can’t be innovated around. The amount of energy required to electrolyze water simply cannot drop by 10x. The other difficulties (low energy density, ability to leak through many materials, massive explosion risks, near-invisible flames, etc., etc.) are all inherent to H2 as a molecule.

kccqzy 7mo ago

$15,000 worth of fuel card sounds generous until you find that hydrogen stations have jacked up prices to $36/kg.

smcin 7mo ago
Full tank capacity of a Mirai is ~5 kg / (120 liters in volume).
stbtrax 7mo ago
still means nothing, what is the mileage or $/mi there?
- ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
  Apparently 1kg of hydrogen is about 60 miles range, which seems like a lot, but apparently fuel cells are that good. Currently hydrogen fuel if you can get it is about 15 quid a kilo in the UK, giving a tank range of around 400 miles for £80. This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric. By comparison Autogas LPG is around 92p/litre (or about £1.80 per kilo) and in a very large heavy 4.6 litre Range Rover you get around 250-300 miles for your £80 tankful, depending on how heavy your right foot is.
  - foota 7mo ago
    > This makes it a little more expensive than diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the same price as electric Is electric charging more expensive in the UK than petrol? That's nuts.
    - michaelt 7mo ago
      According to [1] it breaks down like this: EV at rapid/ultra-rapid chargers: 25p/mile Petrol, diesel: 15p/mile EV charging at home: 8p/mile This is because there's a government price cap on home electricity, but not on commercial electricity - and rapid chargers are all commercial (and of course for-profit). [1] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-car-public-charging-costs-rac-charge-watch/ https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/charging/electric-...
    - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
      It is if you use a rapid charger. If you're fortunate enough to be able to do what you need with a car within 50 miles or so of your house and leave it overnight to charge, it's cheaper. At present, EVs do not solve any problem I have.
      - Symbiote 7mo ago
        Very few people would use 100% rapid charging. Even on a long journey, they can arrive home with, say, 5-10% remaining, and recharge at home. (The car calculates this automatically.)
        ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
        The range of most EVs is only about 120 miles, which isn't especially useful when they take around six hours to charge.
        foota 7mo ago
        Maybe most EVs in the wild, but no way for EVs being sold today. There are only 5 cars on this list below 200: https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-consumption-epa-vs-edmunds.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons..., and more than half above 300.
  - stoneman24 7mo ago
    If you can get a cheap electric overnight home charging tariff in the UK, then the electric cost is lower. Mid week, I charged 43kWh for the cost of £3.04 (7p per kWh). My home charger does 7kwh in a hour. Usual mileage is about 4 miles per kWh (typical rush hour drive into Edinburgh). That should give me about 170 miles of range. Scaling it to 400 miles (400 miles at 4 miles per kWh is 100 kWh which at 7p each is about £7. Pretty much an order of magnitude better than your estimate. I admit home charging is the best arrangement and I am fortunate to have it. I did a holiday trip to the highlands and used public/hotel chargers which were closer to your numbers but also much faster (up to 150kWh per hour capacity). I think that even discounting hydrogen engineering difficulties, the infrastructure for electric is pretty much in place and the race of the technologies is over.
    - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
      The problem is that using an EV makes living in the Highlands far more expensive even allowing for the cost of diesel, because you're forced to use rapid chargers at great expense - if they're available, and actually working - or a quick trip to the shops becomes an overnight stay.

newyankee 7mo ago

I think a few people were expecting the same cost curves that happened with batteries to happen with hydrogen but it seems the challenges are more difficult to overcome. Otherwise I think a Solar PV plant combined with Captive hydrogen production for refuelling on major highways sounds interesting, at least in countries like US, Australia etc. I believe this is not just about PEM or AEM electrolyser or specific tech, it never got the scaling boost. Ironically the stack comprising fuel cells of different types is possibly very well studied since decades. For me the Wells to wheel efficiency never made hydrogen worthwhile for short to medium distances and this battle is effectively over.

_aavaa_ 7mo ago
Forget the type of electrolyzer, even if they were free hydrogen would still be expensive. The challenges with hydrogen getting cheaper are thermodynamic and can’t be innovated around. The amount of energy required to electrolyze water simply cannot drop by 10x. The other difficulties (low energy density, ability to leak through many materials, massive explosion risks, near-invisible flames, etc., etc.) are all inherent to H2 as a molecule.