Here's what I think is their real concern: the vehicle becoming an appliance, needing little maintenance, lasting far longer than we are used to. So no need to trade in every few years. A pure electric vehicle needs no oil changes, no tune ups, little or no brake work, etc. It was recently revealed that Pruis battery packs have a realistic life of 300,000 miles.
If a plug in electric starts out with 100 mile range it would be more than adequate for a large majority of motorists-and upgrades are feasible through the life of the vehicle.

It seems obvious that Toyota would like to do the transition one (10-year) step at a time to offset development and marketing cost. That's how car manufacturers have operated for the last century.

their first step with HEVs (until 2015?), effective mass production/sales 2005 - 2015)

their second step with improved lithium PHEVs (2015 - 2025?)

their third step with post-lithium BEVs (2025 - 2035?)

Some of the ways to accellerate the transition (i.e. to shorthen each step) would be (1) with government financial incentives such as loans or subsidies. 2) with government (California style) GHG reduction regulations. 3) with progressive much higher taxes on liquid fuel.

A proper dosage of all three methods could even do better.

Good points Fred.

Between complex immature Fuel Cell technology + associated Hydrogen distribution problems and future immature e-storage on-board units with exsting electicity supply; the final choice (in my humble opinion) will be the BEVs.

One problem remains with both technologies. Everybody expects the same or better performace, range, endurance, cost, speed, accelleration etc than with the 120 years old ICE technology. First or even second generation BEVs or FC vehicles may not achieve what ICE vehicles took 120 years to develop.

Sometime during the transition period (20 to 40 years) BEVs will certainly progress far beyond current ICE vehicles. Like with horses and buggies, many will try to hold on to their noisy, dirty, polluting ICE gas guzzlers. That generation will pass or completely fade away by 2030/2050.

Could the water produced by the on-board FC be temporarily stored (on-board) and be released in the garage or used to wash the car, water plants etc.?

Re: "Could the water produced by the on-board FC be temporarily stored (on-board)"

Yes, I think water would have to be sequestered on board for winter use. One kg H2 (one gallon gasoline energy equivalence) would produce 18 kg. water, about 5 gallons by volume. To allow for 300 mile range at 75 miles per kg. H2, 20 gallons of onboard, heated and insulated water storage would be needed.

Re: "the vehicle becoming an appliance, needing little maintenance"

Electric vehicles will still require lots of maintenance. There are the usual wearing parts: brakes, tires, shocks, struts, ball joint/tie rod ends. IC engines have become very reliable. What has become less reliable on vehicles is, ironically, electronics. Fuel cells are so complex that repairs on them will make today's repairs seem child's play.

Resistance to change is a very common human trait. Very few human really wants to unset the cart. We like what we became accustomed to.

PHEVs and BEVs will require almost as much maintenance because current ICE drive trains are mostly touble free.

Electric ancillary units may eventually require less maintenance than the current mechanical units, but it may not neccessary be so during the first generation.

It will years for garage mechanics to become proficient and many may never go through the transition successfully. Older mechanics will resit more and be difficult to retrain.

Toyota have made every effort to make the Prius no worse than an ordinary car, following their dogma: 'consumers will not adopt a new technology unless it is better in every way than what is available'. But the Prius is still a gasoline car, offering no real advantages other than the low fuel consumption. The strategy that worked for a hybrid may not work as well for an EV.

I am afraid that by focusing too much on creating a vehicle without any drawbacks, they will miss out on the one with huge advantages.

We'll see who's right. I have a feeling my next car will not be a Toyota.

If we posit that Fuel Cells will cost less than $10K someday, and produce the 30 to 50 Kw necessary for sustained highway or hill driving...then, in theory they ought to get 2-3x the number of miles per liter of liquid fuel as an ICE. Ok. Swell.

If we posit that BEV battery pack will cost less than $10K someday, and hold the 60-100 KwH needed to drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and recharge to at least 50% in 5 minutes at a recharge station, then they will probably go 3-4x the number of miles per liter of liquid fuel burned at a co-generation power plant.

I like BEV better for maturing first, and having a more efficient well-to-wheels system.

There's a great illustration on NanoSolar's Blog page, http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog for Aug. 7, 2008, where they compare how far you can go on the biodiesel produced on 1 hectare of land in a year vs the solar power produced on the same land area. They suggest biodiesel could take you 21,500 Km, whereas photovoltaic could take you 3,250,000 Km. 2 orders of magnitude is pretty compelling...and we already know how to distribute electricity better than H2.

Greg Blencoe

Where I come from -30C is not considered cold. It's only the beginning temperature for what is considered getting cold. It can be colder than -30C at any time between mid-November and end of March and colder than that for long periods of time. Even in southern Minnesota, -30C can happen anytime in December, January and February. If that is the lowest fuel cell cars can get to, it's not a functional form of year-round propulsion for New England, the upper Midwest, the Intermountain and the Northern Plains.

Yes, fuel cell cars would emit about the same water vapor as ICEs, however, ICEs emit that vapor at much higher temperatures. Even so, on cold days, black ice will form at stop lights from vehicles idling while waiting for the light to change. Fuel cell low-temp water vapor released into the atmosphere directly will be like running a tanker truck down the highway spraying a fine mist everywhere.

You may know more about fuel cells than I do, but I think I may know more about cold weather.

Toyota's considerable experience with real-life automotive battery systems should be a very credible voice in this debate.

The Prius (parallel hybrid) is on to something big: very high fuel efficiency. The Atkinson-cycle engine in the Prius is capable of ~39% thermal efficiency at peak. If the Prius is to have a hydrogen-optimized ICE, the peak thermal efficiency would be >50%. The very fast combustion rate of H2 in even very lean mixture allows for more mechanical energy extraction from exhaust gas, couple with cooler combustion and rapid combustion, further reduces combustion heat loss and allowing increase in fuel efficiency . So, if the current Prius is capable of 50 mpg, the hydrogen-Prius would be capble of 50mpg x 50/39 = >64 mpg potential, which is almost FC territory.

I'm afraid that your point is moot, Fred, since the higher exhaust temp of ICE will release water as a vapor when H2 is used in an ICE.

Hydrogen is the straightest path to carbon-free, renewable-energy transportation in the foreseable future, pending Lithium-Air battery chemistry, which may be a complete game changer in itself. Starting installing more solar PV's and more wind turbines in order to harnest excess renewable electricity to make H2.

One company has a contract with the military to get water out of diesel exhaust.

H2 from solar PV's and windturbines is very expensive. The electricity from PV should be used to charge efficient batteries at far higher efficiency.

Get the highest energy density deep cycle lead batteries as TZERO once did and form them into a large battery with somewhat less than the voltage of the Prius battery. Get a boost voltage regulator to charge the Prius battery from the lead battery. Then get a buck voltage regulator to charge the lead battery from the Prius battery. These regulators can be quite simple. With a slightly different set up, Ron Gremban of CALCARS invented a similar operation with a simple relay. This sytem can allow cheap lead batteries to have a fairly long life in a Prius and give an all electric range of 20 miles or more. Firefly and EFFPOWER can make even lighter weight lead batteries.

One hundred kilograms of ML3X ZEBRA cells and case will give you 50 miles or more of full electric range in a Prius with the above system. The amount of energy that can be regenerated on a long down hill is doubled at least and some of it can be used to make the internal cells even hotter for heat storage. If a Prius owner fails to plug in the ZEBRA battery heater for three or four days and the battery is disabled, the standard Prius hybrid function is still available, and the battery can be designed to bring it back into operation quickly with regenerated or direct power from the generator.

TZERO proved ten years ago that lithium batteries or better ones were not needed for electric cars and that lead batteries could be made to work. EFFPOWER design batteries could replace even the nickel metal hydride batteries now in a Prius for less cost, even if they had to be replaced every three years.

The Prius is not anywhere near an engineers design for an inexpensive car. It is a combination of interesting designs that people thought appropriate. And there were quite a few buyers of this piece of automotive art. Just like people will buy a big fancy house.

First cheaper design point. A single piston is all that is needed for a range extender. It can be operated in three modes: high efficiency, high power, or off.

Second cheaper design point. The gear shifting and fancy gear systems can be eliminated if you have figured out how to use a large electric motor at all. Think of diesel-electric locomotives.

Third cheaper design point: if the vehicle is cheap enough it will sell in some market. The market for plug-in-hybrids is the car which makes short trips most of the time, or is used within a city. The average efficient output of the range extender will allow an infinite range of low speed city driving without delays due to low vehicle speeds. It will also allow full operation above the minimum speed on most motorways.

Fourth cheaper design point. Any hybrid type operation allows greater efficiency because a smaller more efficient engine can be used in a more efficient range.

Do not forget George Constantinesco. "His idea was to produce a low cost one hundred guinea "peoples' car'' which would travel 100 miles on one gallon of petrol at the most commonly used road speeds of 30 to 40 miles per hour. George arrived at this figure after conducting a comprehensive survey of average car road speeds and designed his car to benefit the most people, rather than a car of higher speed which would only benefit a minority. He considered that this performance and low cost could be achieved by using a cheap 500 cc single cylinder two stroke air cooled engine together with his Torque Converter transmission which would eliminate the conventional gear box and clutch. Experience in this field could then be applied to the transmission of much higher powers in heavy vehicles such as railway locomotives." (http://fluid.power.net/fpn/const/const005.html)

Forth major design point. An expensive car requires very high performance a cheap car does not. Large scale production makes a car even cheaper.

Toyota is trying to deny that very workable plug-in-hybrids can be built with ZEBRA battery technology by simply ignoring its existence and the price of the battery can be much lower if they were to buy it instead of ignore it. The battery has been tested in automobiles for more than ten years. It has been used in buses, trucks, locomotives and submarines. One company was going to build them to power electronics in hot oil wells.

The required Zebra battery high temperature operation make it unsafe in automobiles.

Hydrogen from natural gas will cost about twice as much (on a btu basis) as the original gas due to losses in steam reforming and storage.

Rogers example of the prius running on hydrogen would actually be running on natural gas with an effeciency penalty of 0.6 due to the steam reforming so your actuall efficiency counting the primary energy input to the hydrogen would be more like 40mpg which you could beat just running the prius on the natural gas (although when you account for refining & transport of the oil the gallon of petroleum has had about 10-20% of its energy used so raw mpg should perhaps be closer to the low 40's

Hydrogen from electricity will cost at least twice as much as the hydrogen from natural gas, unless it comes from very cheap off peak electricity from an abundance of nuclear and wind power (very low marginal costs) and a far better use of this electricity is to power heat pumps to store the energy as the heat and / or cold which will be required the next day or in 80% round trip efficient pumped storage, batteries & flywheels.

The saved natural gas from electricity generation and building heating (insulation & heat pumps) can be used for transport directly in small vehicles or dual fuelling in diesel engines in larger vehicles.

@3PS:

I'm with you. Most days a round-trip from our home is less than 10 miles, top speed is under 50, and I could be plugged in whenever at home. I would rarely buy gasoline driving a PHEV-10. Electricity is hydro here, so it's all good.

@fred: Having moved to Alaska later in life and seen many a car on its roof due to black ice, I share your cold-weather concerns about H20 exhaust from fuel-cell vehicles. And for interior Alaska, -22F could be 30 degrees above the daily high. Fuel cells would need to be defrosted of constantly heated when off in order to start.