Interesting to see Toyota and some other brands recently announce their next gen eco friendly cars will be hydrogen powered rather than battery-electric or hybrid.
Why do they have to be so complicated & expensive . Why not just make basic shopping baskets that will do 50Km using standard lead acid batteries , put recharge stations at s marts to charge up for trip home ? . . plenty enough for school run & mrs shopping , which according to a US survey is the biggest use of petrol .
harm_less,
May 1, 3:50am
The same arguments could be levelled at the size of fuel tanks in ICE vehicles.
tamarillo,
May 1, 4:48pm
Have you looked in to how hydrogen can be made? Basically fossil fuels. That's why most manufactures have gone off idea. At least electricity CAN be made without burning fossil fuels.
brapbrap8,
May 1, 5:24pm
And Hydrogen CAN be made using electricity from renewable sources via electrolysis. Even steam reformed hydrogen is said to be far more fuel efficient than using the fossil fuels directly to power a vehicle, and in addition hydrogen can be produced from things like ethanol and methanol rather than fossil fuels using steam reforming.
Tesla batteries are coming, might change things in time.
serf407,
May 8, 12:51pm
The Toyota Mirai fuel cell car is pretty expensive at 7 million yen, depending on the model you could purchase 3 new hybrid cars for the same cost.
http://toyota.jp/mirai/grade/ It might be a while before there is any volume of used fuel cell cars in Japan available for the used export market. http://toyota.jp/carlineup/ (Some are 'delights' that might appear on our roads at some stage)
I heard a bit on my steam radio the other day - A development for city delivery type vehicles. Esp short travel start and stop rubbish collection trucks.
All wheel electric drive, regenerative braking, and a unit they called a 'range extender' that consisted of a generator driven by a small gas turbine or a piston engine, the bonus here being the motor would run at its most efficient speed and load. - ie a small engine working hard.
tamarillo,
Jun 6, 4:53pm
Brilliant. Guess that on the main highways of Europe it would be worth the cost of the superstructure, which would be huge. But with the traffic jam line of trucks it would add up, maybe. I'm sure they've done sums. Did you hear that interview with American guy who company is converting dump trucks into electric. He cleverly thought about the most likely trucks for current technology and focused on these stop start, heavy trucks that only do short distances in built up areas. I'm now really looking forward to driving an electric car, want to feel that torque.
tintop,
Jun 6, 5:10pm
Snap!
lookoutas,
Jun 6, 5:38pm
I fixed one of those Mitsi Outlander's last week. Required quite a bit of braille to sort out the gear change, but was very impressed with the "go department". Lucky we have a few K's of main road to get to the paint shop, and it accelerated away from 80kph very well. That would be my gripe, but I could feel it would do the job. It would be good to own it, and really give it some stick, but a customers car is never given that treatment.
Only drawback for the Insurance Co was the $1500 head light. (Good job)
And so there you have it - a rumour that one of the leading manufacturers of ICE and hybrid production performance vehicles might - by 2017 - have a car to compete with the Tesla S - which beat it to production by 5 years. I think they'd be swallowing dead rats while they come up with plans for a full EV.
thewomble1,
Jul 24, 5:57am
I would love to run/use an electric car but can not find an extension chord long enough.
Seems to me electric is not just inevitable, but it's like an avalanche slowly gathering strength as it goes downhill, it will be here soon and will sweep old tech fossil fuel cars away. Internal combustion engines are unbelievably complex just to do the same job as a simple electric motor, seems to me it's similar to when piston powered aircraft were replaced by jets - fiendishly complex machines at the peak of development swept away by much simpler technology. We will look back and wonder how anybody thought driving your family around with a large quantity of highly explosive fuel behind you was a good idea. And the idea of filling up your car in the pouring rain or snow will seem antiquated compared to just parking in your nice warm garage and plugging in. How quaint we will say!
apollo11,
Jul 28, 5:42am
It all boils down to the cost and weight of the battery pack. It will be interesting to see what happens to battery prices once the Tesla gigafactory is up and running. The electric motor is a very simple concept, however the car repair shops needn't worry - there will be multiple onboard computers to have to diagnose when your car is giving you the BSOD.
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