JG Pasterjak said:
It seems like there's a great documentary somewhere in finding out how hydrogen cars actually came to market. I mean, it's a cool technology and totally worth developing and exploring, but still just absolutely screams "not ready for prime time" when it comes to being a commercially viable product. Producing fuel at consumer scale has always basically been a net loser, and the infrastructure makes the current EV charging landscape look like McDonald's.
So I'm really not sure what Toyota's motivation is here. They may as well be releasing a Betamax at this point.
I'm sure that documentary will come out some day. It's a combination of throwing weird niche technologies at the wall to see what sticks, car companies that slept deep into the 21st-century EV renaissance scrambling for a substitute (mainly Toyota), and fossil fuel companies trying to trick us into continuing to run our cars on fossil fuels (look at where practically all of the available hydrogen comes from...) that led to hydrogen cars ever making it past the prototype phase.
I like to say that hydrogen cars offer the best selection of the worst downsides: High up-front vehicle costs and a relatively slow refuel process like an EV, expensive fossil-sourced fuel that you have to go to a station to get like an ICE, and nightmarish fuel transport and storage issues unique to hydrogen cars.
californiamilleghia said:
there would be more filling stations if the hydrogen buses , delivery trucks , etc would allow the public to fill up ,
the local hydrogen filling station is just at a regular gas station , at least its at a freeway offramp and not in some industrial area......
And then what about filling at the shop that fills your welding tanks?
Just not ready for prime time yet :(
There was a period that the public could fuel at one of our CNG depots. You can't imagine the ways that could berkeley up a day. No one staffs for outsiders to come in, it's not a terribly quick process, and if someone's car has an issue and takes out our equipment we're not filling any buses that day. Hydrogen is the first alternative fuel I've seen us pass on so whoever ran the numbers here couldn't get it to make sense compared to electric.
In the cutaway image, it looks like there are 2x charging/ refueling ports. The rear one seems to have an orange HV cable, is it a normal EV charging port? In an 'emergency' you could use a normal BEV charger to get 29miles of range? Congratulations, you have a 2011-2012 Nissan Leaf with a fuel cell range extender.
If you wait ~3 years, you'd be able to drive around within (more or less) the eastern half of Colorado (and a little bit into WY and NM).
CSU (Colorado State) and a CO-based startup announced (back in spring 2024) that they are getting ~$9M to install 3x hydrogen fueling stations along the east side of the Rockies (Pueblo, Denver, Ft Collins) and keep 'em running until the stations break even. IDK if there is any ETA on break-even. Link to article
It looks to me like the rear is the hydrogen port and the front is an EV charging port.
It does have an EV charging port so you can use it as a 29-mile EV.
