You can get a Chevy Bolt for an affordable price. Also, the government doesn’t prevent affordable cars from non-authoritarian, non-human rights defying countries. So Leaf is affordable. And of course you don’t need an EV. Honda Civic (made here) is affordable. Subaru Forester is affordable (I think made here). Camry…

Came here to write this, but you beat me to it. This is especially true of SpaceX.

If they aren’t reliable (or at least reliable-ish) they won’t cut it here. There is a big difference from the random crap people buy for their homes and something you depend upon to get to work (to make a living). Or even forget work, people will not tolerate un-relability when they need to get their kids to soccer,…

That’s why the report is almost useless. I expected to click on the link and find some even rudimentary numbers behind this and of course there were none. They criticized Toyota with like zero numbers to back it up, when it’s probable that Toyota’s past 20, 30, 40 years of better than average fuel economy more than…

It wasn’t the soft/cushiness that was the problem. It was how they wore. Not sure if it was the cushion material, or the springs (or both) but both driver and passenger front seats felt very worn-in very quickly. And the material, besides looking of low quality, just didn’t hold up either. Was fine when new, and the…

Excellent point, especially in the town we lived. When it randomly bricked the car we just pulled the fuse and then never cared to bother to diagnose the problem.

Along the same lines...the Ford Escort?

My parents (and then my sister) had a 1998 Lumina just like this, but in red. And while the MSRP (according to KBB) was $18,785 I think they got it for something like $15k. Size-wise this was a lot of car for the money, but it was pretty bare bones. In another reminder of how far cars have come from even then, $15k is…

This is of course true and makes it very difficult, but remember the amount of lines would be much less. Not going to everyone’s house like natural gas.

That is a fair point. Especially when you look at just delivering electricity for charging cars. Our electrical infrastructure already exists. Needs an upgrade (looking at you Texas), but that is fairly straightforward to fix.

These are all good points and certainly a demerit for hydrogen. But gasoline and batteries are also fire dangers. And from what I have read that deliberate type of failure above is not the typical failure mechanism of these tanks. More likely just to crack and create a jet of hydrogen. And then you need to have both a…

I only give the weight because that is the spec that is readily available. But you are ignoring one key aspect of hydrogen vs gasoline. It can be compressed. The Mirai’s hydrogen is compressed to 10,000 psi. While that is only 5.6 MJ/l compared to 32 for gasoline, it is still sufficient, especially when combined the…

In these discussions of hydrogen everyone lists reasons why it won’t work and those reason are usually wrong. But here, finally, JaredTheGreek makes the best case against hydrogen. More efficient, and easier, to just send the electricity to everyone’s house and have them fill (charge) there than using the electricity…

You wouldn’t use tanker trucks long term. You would pipe it in a manner similar to our natural gas infrastructure. See my comment below (above?) on this. Yes, it’s new infrastructure which can certainly be prohibitive, but at one point we didn’t have natural gas infrastructure either (or EV chargers).

The Mirai (currently on sale, or lease rather) packs 5.65 kg of hydrogen. That, in energy, is equivalent to 15.4 gallons of gasoline. When Motortrend last tested the Mirai, it had 331 miles of range, real world tested.

I have always wanted to see someone write something on the migration of cars through their life cylce. Like a deep dive into the subject. Though I would probably prefer from a US perspective.

Hydrogen infrastructure wouldn’t look much different than our current natural gas infrastructure. You wouldn’t pipe to people’s homes (though you could), but rather from production stations distributed out to compressing stations that would serve like current gas stations. Downside of piping hydrogen is that you…

While I would love to comment on the CEO of Toyota’s comments (I agree-ish) with him, I really want to comment on...

Looks like we got a visit by the fun police.

I routinely reference ‘Waterworld’ and know one ever knows what I am talking about.