Hydrogen is Ridiculously Expensive, or Free - 2016 Toyota Mirai Long-Term Road Test


We've been been recording the price of hydrogen every time we fill our 2016 Toyota Mirai, and the numbers are alarming at first glance.
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We've been been recording the price of hydrogen every time we fill our 2016 Toyota Mirai, and the numbers are alarming at first glance.
Comments
Q: If greenies can't get behind H2, who can?
A: Those governments Toyota and Hyundai can convince to subsidize this boondoggle.
I'm only half-joking...
And if I tried to home brew my own hydrogen, I'm sure I'd be bald and beardless in short order.
First uttered when the original Prius was released. And look where we are now.
But to use the hydrogen, you run into the problem of compressing it and storing it - this is where you go from dangerous to downright stupid if you're trying it at home.
Make sure you wear goggles!
Twitter: @Edmunds_Test
I love the earth as much as anyone else (well, maybe not, but I Don't Mess With Texas). The fact is, people with budgets and families still care WAY more about miles per dollar than we do about emissions.
Twitter: @Edmunds_Test
1. The high price of hydrogen.
2. Its high variability between vendors.
3. Tesla's expectation that it can profitably sell the Model 3 at a low price.
It all depends on volume.
1. With only a few hundred fuel cell vehicles being served by $40M worth of hydrogen stations today, their operating companies True Zero and Linde have to charge a lot. Expect the price to come down if and when the volume rises to thousands and then tens of thousands of fuel cell vehicles.
2. One might expect prices to vary when volume varies, which is more acute at low volume. Normally competition in the marketplace would level that playing field, but in this case it is not the consumer paying but the car companies, who are motivated to keep all hydrogen vendors alive and therefore to pay what is fair rather than what is most competitive. In three years there will either be a much higher volume of fuel cell vehicles, allowing that market to become more like normal markets, or the whole hydrogen highway concept will have been seen to be an experiment that failed.
3. Tesla has an enormous investment in its Nevada-based Gigafactory predicated on high volume of Model 3 sales. This is a bet-the-company move that will either make Tesla highly profitable or put it in a very bad position if the planned-for volume does not materialize due to a significant fraction of the roughly 400,000 who preordered asking for their $1,000 back. The effect of the latter could turn out like a run on the banks: heavy withdrawals may be seen as a bad sign encouraging yet more withdrawals, a positive feedback with negative consequences for the banks. It is therefore very much in Tesla's interest to not let such a run get started.