Re:Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future
by MrGuyUser on Friday December 19, 2014 @04:47PM
(#8774727)
Ok I was wrong about the regenerative breaking. It makes sense since it would be easy to implement. Most of the drive system of a Hydrogen Car will be electric already. It will use batteries as well. The world will once again be at the whim of the hydrogen producers which would likely be Shell, BP or Exxon. Electric cars are only going to get better and generating your own power is only going to get easier. Oil companies don't like the loss of control. Hybrid's pull some tricks to save fuel, but I might argue they have much more points of failure and are harder to fix when they do fail. I predict that on Dec 15th they will sell one or two of these cars to Toyota Executives whom receive a bonus just a little more than what the car would cost if they did.
Re:Toyota Embraces Fuel-Cell Cars for Post-Gasoline Future
by mikeash on Friday December 19, 2014 @05:19PM
(#8774876)
Keep in mind that the $45 fill-up cost is for about 300 miles of driving, versus 4-500 miles for a typical gasoline car.
At current prices, my Prius v will go about 500 miles on a $30 fill-up, which would cost $75 for hydrogen, assuming $45 gives you 300 miles. Even if gas goes back to $4/gallon, it's still $45 for ~500 miles.
A full charge on a Model S would cost me something like $8, by comparison. Less if I went for time-of-use metering and charged it at night.
That's more expensive than gasoline, but as of a few months ago the price difference would have only been about 30% compared to my relatively fuel-efficient Honda Fit. The gap is larger now thanks to the recently plummeting gas prices in the US, of course.
> And also Hydrogen cannot be regenerated from breaking which makes it less efficient than full electric.
As the article doesn't mention but Wikipedia does, the Mirai also has a battery and supports regenerative braking. It's basically a hybrid car that uses a fuel cell instead of a gasoline engine.