Are we likely to see an all electric IS300?

[ganzoom]

4 hours ago, Linas.P said:

 I can own hydrogen car without much issues today

So why don't you have one?

If you want people to take you seriously you have to follow up words with action, otherwise you are just another nutter on the internet to be ignored.

Plenty of people here have now given real world experience of why EVs work fine, where is your experience of hydrogen fuel cell cars working fine??

[Guest]

6 hours ago, paulrnx said:

This is interesting thanks. Could you give me a bit more information about this one please. What car / where charged and how. Genuinely interested.

He has a Kia Niro, I know he charged at Gretna green and Glasgow on his way to Inverness and on the way back, I think he uses the Kia charging network where he can but this was scarce in the north of Scotland so he looked up public charging points and used them over his 3 day NC500 trip, he had one occasion where it didn’t work straight away but a quick phone call sorted it, he has been all over the country in it but obviously the far north of Scotland was the most challenging because of its remoteness, the charging situation will only get better as the network grows………..obviously if you drive 600 miles across Europe every day of your life an electric car is probably the wrong choice at the moment😉

[Malc]

Gentlemen, I don't doubt for one minute that BP and other oil/petrol/gas moguls will develop quite quickly their Hydrogen Fuel capabilities, vide I mentioned that BP is already developing it's own specific Hydrogen Fuel plant somewhere in the north of England ............ I believe the oil moguls have significantly given up on UK based oil exploration, and won't dig for coal so Hydrogen Fuel it will most certainly be

I know for a fact that BP have been developing " electric " power modes for decades in their own global research establishments and it's possibly very relevant that they haven't created their own " Battery " concepts these recent decades ..........  maybe coz there's better alternatives, economically etc for them to pursue commercially .....  e.g. oil and gas .............. and now Hydrogen Fuel ........ I don't think cash for research and development has ever been a limiting factor .........  just is it worth it in the long run ......  and Hydrogen Fuel seems to be the next stage for them

And with the super technology for this mode already well established by the likes of Toyota and Honda and I dare say a few other motor manufacturers .... I don't doubt that this will become the clean motoring mode for the quite soon future ..  say 10 / 20 years ...  a mere blip in time in motoring history and development.

UK Govt and others around the world will, as normal, fail in their aspirations to curtail motorists in doing much of what they wish to do, touring and travelling and commuting etc by car .......  and travelling quite quickly but I might say probably not at  nano-second   0 - 100 kmh or even mph ...  which speed is quite irrelevant to almost everyone on this planet ..........

I'm sad to see that stupid questions asking when when when will YOU have a Hydrogen Fuel powered car to Prove whatever aren't too uncommon, even on this illustrious forum 

Malc

[ganzoom]

1 hour ago, Malc said:

I'm sad to see that stupid questions asking when when when will YOU have a Hydrogen Fuel powered car to Prove whatever aren't too uncommon, even on this illustrious forum 

The thing with forums is everyone can what they like when they like, and people do.

If I win the lottery tomorrow I will buy everyone involved with this post what ever brand new car they want.....

.....Just because I've said it on a forum does it make it ture??

Hydrogen fuel cells are available to buy, so what I don't understand is why aren't the forum members whom seem to believe in the technology so much not buying them???

Action speaks louder than words, I believe we will see autonomous cars on our roads at somepoint. However I also accept it may not happen, but I'm willing to put my money down to back my beliefs.

So until people who promote hydrogen as the answer actually acts and share with everyone how easy hydrogen fuel cells cars are to live with, there really isn't even a 'discussion' to be had.

Act on your beliefs, otherwise its just a load of hot air :).

[doog442]

In the interest of balance I watched this last night. Harry Metcalfe Interviewing Lord Bamford and getting a look at JCB who have developed their own hydrogen engine, mainly because of the impracticalities of powering those sort of vehicles with batteries and their workload .

Lord Bamford touches on many of the concerns raised on here including some of the politics involved. I think we need to keep an open mind on the way forward. Certainly if heavy Industry type vehicles (HGVS / Plant / Tractors etc)  can get a grip on hydrogen we might expect to see it expand quite rapidly elsewhere. 

 

[Mincey]

50 minutes ago, doog442 said:

Certainly if heavy Industry type vehicles (HGVS / Plant / Tractors etc)  can get a grip on hydrogen we might expect to see it expand quite rapidly elsewhere. 

 

I saw somewhere (here in fact: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9805555/Motorway-speed-limit-cut-60mph-reduce-illegally-nitrogen-dioxide-emissions.html look for the blue box on the right about halfway down) that they're going to trial a section of road with overhead lines for electric lorries with pantographs similar to railway locomotives. Given that the overhead lines on railways come down on occasion, causing utter chaos, it strikes me that hydrogen powered HGV's would be a far better alternative. One plus though, this electric system could keep all the lorries in lane one, leaving lanes 2, 3 and 4 for the rest of us 🙂

[Linas.P]

5 hours ago, ganzoom said:

So why don't you have one?

If you want people to take you seriously you have to follow up words with action, otherwise you are just another nutter on the internet to be ignored.

Plenty of people here have now given real world experience of why EVs work fine, where is your experience of hydrogen fuel cell cars working fine??

This is absolute nonsense claim - why should I have one? This is purely feasibility consideration.

As I said before I have previously considered BMW i8 and found it to be not feasible to own, because I can't charge it! Simple... Which part of it you don't understand?

There are currently no hydrogen car which I like (I want coupe), because basically there are are only few cars on sale today - Toyota Mirai and Hyundai Nexo. However, the fuel itself is feasible because I live 5 miles from Rainham hydrogen station. 

I don't need to own the car to be taken seriously when talking about feasibility of the fuel itself. I know for a fact and it is fairly obvious that if tomorrow I would have to buy either BEV or HCV, HCV is the only one which I can own. Not even "prefer to own", but "can only own", because I can't own BEV. Besides I neither need a car at the moment (I actually don't have one for last couple of months), but as well I don't mind running ICE. Pollution form cars is just a scape goat, I am not saying it does not matter, but being at 2.4% globally (2.1% diesel and 0.3% petrol) I somehow don't feel guilty at all using petrol car (after all me switching to EV would reduce 0.1% of pollution).

Finally, your question about "where is the experience of hydrogen car owners"? That is stupid question as well. Why it is stupid? Because there is no experience to talk about, it is like difference between owning petrol vs. diesel car (or maybe more correctly LNG), the experience is exactly the same as if you would have petrol car. The reason anyone is even question BEV is because experience owning BEV is significantly different because owner has to consider charging time all the time. On HCV you don't care - it is same as petrol, when you low of hydrogen you drive to the station and in 2-3 minutes you have 400miles range. Like if you compare first Mirai, then it would be identical to owning Prius... I doubt Prius owner would see any difference if one day they would be given Mirai. However same Prius owner would see significant difference going into Tesla Model 3... both positive and negative. 

Do you really think police would run fleet of Mirais if they would be unfeasible?

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/toyota/mirai/102985/fleet-of-11-toyota-mirai-police-cars-to-enter-service-with-the-met

James May had both Mirais, you can check on his experiences yourself - 

 

 

[Las Palmas]

11 hours ago, Linas.P said:

For some time... yes. But eventually it will not be practical. I would say in ~10-15 years from ban ICE will become ~sort of classics and collectables, not really something you could justify just driving around.

But maybe I am just worrying to much - I can own hydrogen car without much issues today, if they have at least 100 (although potentially it could be like 2000-3000) hydrogen station by 2030 it won't be an issue anymore. And BEVs will look funny by then with their dirty batteries... we will think for ourselves - "how could have we been so short-sighted and caused another diesel gate". 😄 

It is completely our own fault that we have incompetent politicians ruling our countries. They are elected by us.

[ganzoom]

22 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

 I live 5 miles from Rainham hydrogen station.

So you live 5 miles away from a hydrogen fuel station - 20 miles was your 'limit' I believe. Yet you still wouldn’t buy one, but keep on telling others how great it is as a technology.......Do you see how hard it is to take anything you say as credible??

 

[Linas.P]

6 minutes ago, ganzoom said:

So you live 5 miles away from a hydrogen fuel station - 20 miles was your 'limit' I believe. Yet you still wouldn’t buy one, but keep on telling others how great it is as a technology.......Do you see how hard it is to take anything you say as credible??

This is absurd. Why would I buy car which I don't need? Do you understand what word "feasibility" means?

We actually had similar conversation here about Lexus 200t engine. I always said it is 💩, but there were people who said - "how could you know if you don't own it". For one I knew exactly why and secondly eventually I bought RC200t (because of reasons) and everything I said about the engine being 💩 was absolutely correct, to some degree I was even slightly disappointed that my statements were so accurate (because I had slight hope it will not be as bad as I thought).

"So do you own hydrogen car? No? Why don't you own it? Then you can't say it is bad or would not be feasible!" That is idiotic and not constructive argument, because then we can only have conversation about the things we own.

 

[Shahpor]

Well, that was half an hour wasted I am never getting back...

Take it from someone who has just seen this thread and read it in one go - you are going around in circles and neither side is going to convince the other, so why bother?

Ultimately, the Electric vs Hydrogen debate is going to be on going for a while and only time will tell which one is going to work out better.

[Linas.P]

3 minutes ago, Shahpor said:

Well, that was half an hour wasted I am never getting back...

Take it from someone who has just seen this thread and read it in one go - you are going around in circles and neither side is going to convince the other, so why bother?

Ultimately, the Electric vs Hydrogen debate is going to be on going for a while and only time will tell which one is going to work out better.

That is why I never even read threads if they have escalated into more than 2 pages before I see them. By now you should have learned the lesson that disappointment was inevitable  😄

[dutchie01]

The debate between BEV and hydrogen will be going on for a while but it is purely theoretical. Whatever ones opinion or preference ( i have none ) the fact is that the automotive industry has already chosen. The train has left the station and hydrogen is toast.

Over the past years car companies have been investing crazy amounts of money in developing electric cars that are now starting to arrive at the marketplace. Over the next years an avalanche of models will hit the showroom. The VAG group is investing 87 BILLION usd, Mercedes Benz 47 and BMW 30. Retooling of their plants is underway and just imaging only the consequences of weight per car up from average 1200 to 2050 kg. Massive consequences. They will want to see return on investment so for the next decade EV it will be.

Sorry to spoil the party.. 

[Malc]

11 minutes ago, dutchie01 said:

They will want to see return on investment so for the next decade EV it will be.

I think you're probably absolutely right in your thoughts.............  however, after the EV tooling has been fully depreciated etc then ............  when BP and the other " moguls " have their Hydrogen Fuel plants properly on-stream, we will see the likes of Toyota, Honda, Kia, Tata vying for pole position with Hydrogen fuel cars ....  catching up with the changeover to Hydrogen Fuel by much of the world's HGVs, Buses and heaven forbid JCBs

I mention Tata coz of the likely preponderance in the home-country too, to follow the India Govt quest for fuels other than oil based ........  and prioritising Tata  (  hahahaha, as if they would eh ! ) and of course Tata already in the mainstream for buses and all things motorised in India ........... a growing wealth economy of 20% of the world population 

The world's changing and us poor souls in the West will wake up to much different and envy the motorways and motoring credence of India and Africa .....  now where's my huge Toyota Land Cruiser amazon diesel thingy 

Malc

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, dutchie01 said:

The debate between BEV and hydrogen will be going on for a while but it is purely theoretical. Whatever ones opinion or preference ( i have none ) the fact is that the automotive industry has already chosen. The train has left the station and hydrogen is toast.

Over the past years car companies have been investing crazy amounts of money in developing electric cars that are now starting to arrive at the marketplace. Over the next years an avalanche of models will hit the showroom. The VAG group is investing 87 BILLION usd, Mercedes Benz 47 and BMW 30. Retooling of their plants is underway and just imaging only the consequences of weight per car up from average 1200 to 2050 kg. Massive consequences. They will want to see return on investment so for the next decade EV it will be.

Sorry to spoil the party.. 

I think there are many good points... especially that business have invested in this technology and they want to get their money back... and even if that is not the best solution they will stick with it because of the money. 

Likewise it is true that hydrogen is currently struggling because of infrastructure. BEVs took existing infrastructure no matter how flawed and thus the have head start. It is not fault of Toyota that our goverment(s) where possible will take opportunity to do nothing and for that reason we don't have hydrogen network.

Now to say train has left is little bit premature, because based on current known reserves we we simply don't have enough lithium to replace every car with BEV. Even considering our currently limited market and production it is estimated that we will run our of lithium in 17-50 years. I am not even talking about consequences of mining all this lithium it what is currently extremely polluting process.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/is-there-enough-lithium-to-maintain-the-growth-of-the-lithium-ion-battery-m

As this article concludes - cars will not be for everyone in future... and you know we can continue to dream, but the reality is - everything leads into this. They want to take our freedoms away and squeeze us into stinky public transport. OR we can join that chap which set-out to walk 200 miles... because we may go back to the stone age in future and will do a lot more walking...

So inevitable we need alternatives as BEVs are just not sustainable as single type of car. And what is the resource we have abundantly on our planet... yes that is water and water can be converted into hydrogen... I think I know the answer to the questions... what is next big thing... 

Now again you were very quick to dismiss viability of hydrogen... but just for a second  consider this - do you know why BMW allowed Toyota to use Z4 as a basis for Supra? It was a deal that Toyota will allow BMW to join their hydrogen research and share technology in the future. For now hydrogen may not be main focus, but you can rest assure it is plan-B in everyone's pocket.

Finishing, on rather sad note - the reality as always going to be the following: goverment will encourage the wrong thing, everyone will jump on it (like it was with diesel), we will develop wrong technology and in 15 years time everyone will realise that we wasted all this effort... as not only we run out of lithium, but in process mining it we have destroyed the planet even more than it was before and now we have fleet of aging BEVs which we can't replace and all that infrastructure to charge them which we will need to convert to something else. This has happened with diesel quite recently so not so hard to remember and this will happen again if we continue to look into all the issues without understand the context and making single issue solutions... like in this case BEVs addresses CO2 issue and only this issue alone, without looking to wider impact.

[paulrnx]

7 hours ago, ganzoom said:

So you live 5 miles away from a hydrogen fuel station - 20 miles was your 'limit' I believe. Yet you still wouldn’t buy one, but keep on telling others how great it is as a technology.......Do you see how hard it is to take anything you say as credible??

 

I don’t see the link between thinking Hydrogen is the way forward and actually going out and buying one. That link just isn’t there. I think a McLaren is the best sports car money can buy but I won’t be going out to buy one. For many reasons.

[Las Palmas]

22 hours ago, dutchie01 said:

The debate between BEV and hydrogen will be going on for a while but it is purely theoretical. Whatever ones opinion or preference ( i have none ) the fact is that the automotive industry has already chosen. The train has left the station and hydrogen is toast.

Over the past years car companies have been investing crazy amounts of money in developing electric cars that are now starting to arrive at the marketplace. Over the next years an avalanche of models will hit the showroom. The VAG group is investing 87 BILLION usd, Mercedes Benz 47 and BMW 30. Retooling of their plants is underway and just imaging only the consequences of weight per car up from average 1200 to 2050 kg. Massive consequences. They will want to see return on investment so for the next decade EV it will be.

Sorry to spoil the party.. 

I do not think you are right in all you say, but for sure the big companies will try to get as much out of the investment in EV as possible.

What I hope in this debate is actually only that a few will open the eyes to see that climate change and a lot of other problems are due to our destruction of the planet.

That the batteries will become more efficient is clear, but while waiting for that to happen we are digging for cobalt and other needed products in vulnerable places where we, the rich, are not paying a price but leave it to the poor. The more efficient batteries will not be available the next 10 years no matter how optimistic some are and while waiting the big companies will get their money back on the batteries available now.

The hope that the companies that are investing in hydrogen will be able to deliver before is green and that is the option, I see best for all of us.

Not just for us lucky enough to live in the rich part of the world. Remember that we are few and they are many.

[Mincey]

19 hours ago, paulrnx said:

I don’t see the link between thinking Hydrogen is the way forward and actually going out and buying one. That link just isn’t there. I think a McLaren is the best sports car money can buy but I won’t be going out to buy one. For many reasons.

But their dealers are hopeless and the cars fall to bits! Give me a Ferrari any day  🙂

 

 

[Las Palmas]

Now

If you have the time to hear what a guy who maybe knows more about cars than many of us here on the forum do you might get the idea that even if both types of cars are limited by their re-fuelling /filling there is only one winner:

 

As long as we do not think that the future of coming generations is their problem.

[Linas.P]

3 hours ago, Mincey said:

But their dealers are hopeless and the cars fall to bits! Give me a Ferrari any day  🙂

 

 

But according to Gang... you are not allowed to say this because you don't own McLaren. End of discussion mate😁

I think apart of opening discussion about climate change (which is important) it as well relates to the topic quite a bit.

For example I don't really need a car at the moment, but let's assume one day I will have the use case for car again. Secondly let's assume that by then I could not buy diesel or petrol and there is new Lexus IS on sale. 

If that Lexus IS is BEV, then I am out of luck because I can't own one, but if they would make Lexus IS Hydrogen car I would absolutely buy it and be very happy with it, because it would cover all my needs and I would not need to alter my driving at all. So it is valid discussion.

Other thing which I found quite surprising is how "self-proclaimed environmentalists" are fighting against hydrogen technology. It would seem to me that anything that is better for planet than fossil fuel would get support. After all what is the difference whenever people drive BEV or Hydrogen car if that makes planet cleaner?! But for some reason we have few people who seems to be hell bent to deny viability of any technology as long as it is not BEV... this begs a question - are they somehow benefiting from it? Maybe they invested in it? why they are so scared about there being an alternative to Battery technology and Tesla? 

[ColinBarber]

3 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Other thing which I found quite surprising is how "self-proclaimed environmentalists" are fighting against hydrogen technology. It would seem to me that anything that is better for planet than fossil fuel would get support. After all what is the difference whenever people drive BEV or Hydrogen car if that makes planet cleaner?! But for some reason we have few people who seems to be hell bent to deny viability of any technology as long as it is not BEV... this begs a question - are they somehow benefiting from it? Maybe they invested in it? why they are so scared about there being an alternative to battery technology and Tesla? 

Format wars don't help anyone, especially when we are talking about huge investments needed to make either as convenient as ICE currently is. Better to fully back one than to dilute the benefit by partially backing two.

Use hydrogen for where it is most applicable: ships, construction machinery,  large trucks or long distance public transport.

[doog442]

3 hours ago, Linas.P said:

but if they would make Lexus IS Hydrogen car I would absolutely buy it and be very happy with it, because it would cover all my needs and I would not need to alter my driving at all. So it is valid discussion.

 

Sorry 'mate' but I don't believe for a minute you would drive a Lexus that didn't fit your view of what a Lexus should be. 

Without doubt the performance would be pretty dire and having read thousands of your posts moaning about performance across every model apart from the ISF / GSF / RCF and stacking up rival companies as a comparison why would you suddenly change your tune now ? 

If you really felt that strongly you'd dip your toe in the water, get the Toyota but you won't because its slow and expensive. Its also not a million miles away quality wise than some of the offerings Lexus pertain to be a Luxury vehicle so don't blame inferior quality. A hydrogen Lexus will also be slow (by your standards) and even more expensive. 

 

[Linas.P]

35 minutes ago, ColinBarber said:

Format wars don't help anyone, especially when we are talking about huge investments needed to make either as convenient as ICE currently is. Better to fully back one than to dilute the benefit by partially backing two.

Use hydrogen for where it is most applicable: ships, construction machinery,  large trucks or long distance public transport.

What why isn't hydrogen applicable for cars? And why ignore obvious issues with infrastructure BEVs have, which makes them quite exclusive. 

The reality is that BEVs are banking of technological breakthrough which currently don't exist. They need to find alternative to cobalt and lithium, make batteries solid state and find a way to charge them in couple of minutes (5 minutes at most) to be able to challenge ICEs.

The hydrogen cars only lacks infrastructure - specifically hydrogen stations, but the cars themselves are there and technology are ready to use. You can fuel one same as you can fuel ICE and they have great range. 

For me it is quite clear that we need to support both if we want to phase-out ICE cars by 2030 and still drive same number of cars and same distances. However, just working with BEVs I suspect solution will not be ready in time and something else will need to happen - either we push the date back or half of the population will have to find other methods of transportations. And I find it unacceptable. 

[ColinBarber]

18 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

They need to find alternative to cobalt

They already have. Some of Tesla's vehicle today use iron-phosphate cathodes and are cobalt free.

Johnson Matthey have Nickel cathodes which drastically reduce cobalt.

[paulrnx]

I think, judging by the enormous effort that all car makers are now going to, that BEVs are here to stay. We’ll have to make huge investments in our generating capacity and distribution facilities to make it work but I suspect it will happen. Not by 2030 though so I suspect this date might move right a little. I’d like to see an IS BEV, I really would. Hoping to get an extended test in a UX E soon.