I believe that the EV-FCHV well-to-wheel comparisson would only be fair if they included EV well-to-wheel efficiency with the energy coming from renewable sources like hydro, wind, solar and nuclear (or the energy mix of selected countries). The world is heading towards renewables, so it is silly to base the calculation on natural gas which is a quickly diminishing resource and not even very representative as the source of power generation.

Of course, it would seriously change the result to the advantage of EVs so I believe Toyota has some agenda distorting the calculations. They probably believe that they have a better position with FCHV developments than with EV development so they push FCHV technology. They should stop spreading BS and start working harder on their EV program and battery systems.

I meant to say
"I believe they leave out the efficiency of batteries .."

For an electric vehicle, natural gas is converted to electricity to run the motor of the car.

For a FCV, natural gas is converted to H2 which is then converted to electricity to run the motor of the car.

So how is it that an FCV is more efficient if ultimately both of them convert electricity to run the motor, but one of them requires an intermediate step of hydrogen? Of course, I am leaving out details like charging and discharging the battery, compressing and transporting hydrogen, etc. I still find it hard to believe, however, that EV's are 33% efficient while FCV's are 40%. Are they including the extra weight from the batteries, too?

I love how these articles compare current technologies to future technologies. It goes like this: how well do current EV's stack up to future FCV's? Is the assumption here that today's battery technology will be unchanged for the next 10 years. It could be very well true that batteries continue to improve to the point that FCV's will never be a viable option.

Toyota wasn't part of the "Big 3" SuperCar and FreedomCar failed tax handouts. Instead, Toyota marketed the Rav4 EV (until Chevron ended the batteries), Prius, and engineered hybrid options - so there's a fuel cell possibility.

Still, it's easy to promise six years from now. A cost reduction factor of 100 seems pretty impossible.

Toyota will mass produce battery EVs in the US by 2012. That is interesting and might be trusted as it is only 3 years away.

However, it sounds hopelessly naïve to believe in a 90% reduction in the cost of fuel cells in 6 years from today and then a further reduction to 99% of current prices for fuel cells. That is not going to happen with a platinum based fuel cell. Platinum costs 1400 USD per ounce (30 grams) and its price has been increasing ever since vehicle producers started to use it for emission control devises. See links below.

For comparison the current generation fuel cell in the Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell electric vehicle use 80 grams of platinum and it only last for 50.000 miles of driving. See links below.

Links:
Price of platinum
http://www.platinum.matthey.com/pgm-prices/price-charts/

Platinum in Equinox Fuel Cell
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/09/gm-2gen-20090928.html#more

Duration of Equinox Fuel Cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Equinox#Fuel_Cell

I reiterate Anne's comment that "H2 does not fall out of the sky".
Today, there is no H2 infrastructure.
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They might be able to build them cheaper but if you can't fill it up, who's going to buy them?

FC vehicles are one more type of Extended Range Electric Hybrid with the low cost ICE genset replaced with an extremly expensive FC stack. Both are EVs with various e-storage unit size.

FC vehicles will require a very expensive (non-existant) hydrogen infrastructure. Was it fully figured in Toyota's evaluation?

Where clean renewable electricity is already available, at a rather low cost, a PHEV with a very small efficient on-board ICE genset could easily replace the two vehicles proposed by Toyota.

In many countries, most people cannot afford one vehicle let alone two vehicles. Will Toyota convice the world to two vehicles.....?

However, an FC vehicle may be an added option in the vehicle mix. An FC operated directly from NG may represent a valuable option. Instead of drawing power from the grid it could supply enough power for two to three houses and would not need an Hydrogen infrastructure.

Um it makes sense tho I expected some of the numbers to be a bit better.

Remember well to tank for ev includes AVERAGE eff of power plants and losses in power lines and in the charger and battery. So ya 100 kwh of nat gas would in most cases result in 39 kwh in a pack. And we already knew both the motor and the dc ac converter were not 100% so um ya 85% makes some sense.

So ya 33% overall is close to what you would expect.

On the fuel cell side...

We already knew nat gas to h2 is far better then nat gas in a power plant and down the grid and through a charger.

The 67% for 10k psi and 69% for 5k is close to what one would expect as most forms of h2 generation from nat gas are 80% ish eff. As for the tank to wheels remember this is a hybrid AND fuel cells are improving in eff. We now know toyotas fuel cell stack is 59% tank to wheels and we know they are using the same ac dv thinger and motor as the ev so that took it from 100 to 85... so the fuel cell itself is taking it from 85 to 59 so um er uh it looks like they are targeting 70% eff fuel cell and hybrid drive combo thingywhatzit which oddly enough is the goal they ALL made back years ago for the rollout of fuel cell cars.

Well-to-wheels numbers look cooked to me. 67% from CH4 in ground to highly compressed H2 in tank seems very unlikely to me. Combined-cycle power plants running on CH4 do much better than 39%.

As someone else commented, a better near-term option is to run your Prius on domestic CH4--fill up at home, extremely clean, no foreign oil.

Anne said:

"EV's and renewable electricity must be rolled out in parallel. Both rollouts will take a minimum of 4 decades to complete."

I'd agree that it may take 40 years to convert our electricity generation over to renewables, but I would tend to think EV's will have taken over much sooner than that. It seems pretty reasonable that within 5 years we will be able to buy plugin series hybrids with 140 mile range and better performance than existing gasoline powered cars, priced below $25,000 (when Chevron's NiMH battery patent expires in 2014 these great inexpensive batteries will again be available for use). Since the range anxiety issue is nil with plugin hybrids, I can't see any rational consumer not buying a plugin series hybrid in favour of a purely gasoline powered car. This will be in 5 to 10 years' time. And considering that the average lifetime of a car nowadays is 10 years, and that people will be itching to get rid of their gasoline powered cars when EV's come out, I think the transition will happen much faster.

This is something FCV's will have to compete with, and I can't see how they will be able to do this.

@ToppaTom

You make a good point. If the efficiency difference between FCV and BEV, as claimed by Toyota, simply comes down to the method used in converting natural gas to electricity, then isn't it more efficient over-all to install the Fuel Cells at power plants to replace heat cycle turbine generation?

After-all, an FCV is basically an EV so must have a battery pack anyways. Putting millions of high pressure, highly explosive, hydrogen storage tanks onto the world's roads can be avoided by simply using centralised generation using FCs.

I don't recall any news regarding a Fuel Cell utility grade power generation plants to replace turbine generation methods.

Paul, I think it comes down to cost. A fuel cell sized for a power plant would be ridiculously expensive. But a combined cycle gas power plant isn't. Whereas a fuel cell sized for a car is still expensive, it is in the same ballpark as a regular car. But putting a 60% efficient combined cycle natural gas power plant in every car.....

Ok to understand whats going on here are some simple facts.

In one generation gm will have increased durability 400% from 30k miles to 120k.

In 1 generation they dropped platinum use by 63% and they intend to do it again by even more in the generation after that.

In one generation they replaced 8 expensive and large hydrogen pumps with 1 the size of a finger.

In one generation they replaced 800 very expensive and hard to make separators per stack with stamped stainless steel plates that can be made 10000 times faster and massively cheaper too. AND they intend to need fewer of them.


On top of all this the membranes they use got alot cheaper more durable and because they made the cells 60% smaller they use 60% less membrane as well.

Oh and dont forget to note the gm stack ALSO included the motor on the bottom...