Hydrogen Powered Vehicles
Not long ago, General Motors and Honda announced that they’d been secretly working on hydrogen-powered vehicles. Well, Toyota also have their hydrogen car.
Honda just revealed a brand-new hydrogen-powered vehicle.
Hydrogen vs. Electric
Hyundai, they still say that hydrogen powered vehicles very much have a future now, BMW believed in in 2040, the primary mode of transportation worldwide will be hydrogen vehicles, they said that about six months ago.
However, here are some facts it’s now 14 times more expensive to drive in a Toyota Mirai, which you get free fuel for for about two years, 14 times more expensive than to drive a Tesla electric car.
what I think is the future of hydrogen, there is definitely a future for hydrogen. It’s not trucks, it’s not cars shipping, absolutely.
There’s a lot of things we’re going to use hydrogen for. It’s just not transportation, green hydrogen. Hydrogen Powered Vehicles
There’s not much of it now, but there definitely will be in the future at some point in time. So I think hydrogen has definitely got its place.
Hydrogen Prices
But here’s the thing, one of the most prominent websites in the world that basically promotes the hell out of hydrogen says that hydrogen prices have been increased, meaning they are $36 per kilo across all filling stations in the US and a similar thing has happened in Europe.
That means it’s 14 times more expensive to drive a Toyota Mirai or a Honda, whatever their hydrogen-powered vehicle is, or any other, the Hyundai Nexo, for example, than to just drive a Tesla electric But this is not really true.
The truth is, if you have solar at home, you might get it much cheaper than this.
If you plug in your EV during off-peak times, it could be way cheaper again, it might be 20 times cheaper. Hydrogen Powered Vehicles
California’s largest fuel retailer, TruZero, which operates almost all of the hydrogen pumping stations in the state, hiked the price of hydrogen.
Toyota Building Hydrogen Stations
Now, Toyota have actually joined together with hydrogen power stations to build hydrogen stations, to build them because they want to get in on this act of being able to sell hydrogen cars to their customers and then just raise the price of hydrogen to make more profits.
Anyhow, in April of 2021, the price of hydrogen was $13 per kilo. It’s now, well, just over $36 per kilo. So in the space of two years, the price tripled.
At the new price, filling a Toyota Mirai 6 kilogram tank would cost well over $200 US dollars. And that means it costs around 50 US cents per mile, or about a dollar, about $1 US for every two miles of travel. Hydrogen Powered Vehicles
Now, this, though, isn’t really true because this is based on the vehicle’s claimed driving range of 400 miles or 647 kilometers, you’re not very, very likely to get that claim range.
You’re much less likely to get a lot less range than that. So it’s probably going to cost you more like, probably closer to 75 cents per mile.
Resale Value and Customer Backlash
By way of comparison, fully charging a 60 kilowatt-hour Tesla Model 3 in California costs you around $11.94, based on the latest average electricity prices.
That’s not even off peak, that’s just the average. That’s with an official range of It’s 333 miles on a full battery. It therefore costs around 0.036 cents per mile, 14 times cheaper than the Toyota Mirai. Hydrogen Powered Vehicles
Now, of course, if you charge it home overnight as most EV owners do, it’s going to be even cheaper.
The Tesla Model 3, which is the best-selling EV in America, well, actually, it used to be, it’s the Tesla Model Y now.
It costs a lot less to buy as well than the Toyota Mirai, or at least it did. But Toyota, their sales have tanked for their hydrogen-powered Mirai, so they have offered some massive discounts.
In fact, they’ve reduced prices on some of their old, on their 2023 models by US$40,000, and they’re giving away a $15,000 fuel card, so $55,000 discount, essentially. Hydrogen Powered Vehicles
On a vehicle that only cost $65,000, making them very cheap. But usually, the price is quite a lot higher to buy a Toyota Mirai versus a Tesla Model 3.
Hydrogen Suppliers’ Practices
Now, people who own the Mirai, they have no say in this, there’s nothing they can do. There’s no competition.
Because there’s no competition in the hydrogen market, well, the hydrogen suppliers can just do whatever they want with the price.
One Toyota Mirai hydrogen vehicle owner said this, This is outrageous price gouging. Another said, This is insane I hate this car.
The resale value on hydrogen-powered vehicles has tanked, absolutely tanked, this is not just on Toyota Mirai. Hydrogen Powered Vehicles
This is on all different brands of hydrogen-powered vehicles in pretty much every country worldwide.
Time to move on to fully electric and charge for free at work. Now, I know a lot of people who charge for free at work.
The Green Dilemma
That’s a pretty smart strategy, if you ask me. A third of true Zero hydrogen supply is green, they say, one-third.
But two-thirds is made from unabated fossil gas.
While fluctuations in the price of natural gas could have affected the cost of producing the hydrogen, gas procurement prices in California have fallen dramatically from record highs at the start of the year, meaning gas prices have gone down. For some reason, hydrogen prices have tripled.