Toyota – creating a path to the future

The Mirai fuel cell powered car will cost about £36k in the US or £63k in UK (incl vat). In September 2015 you can buy one (or try to at least).  Just a few years ago, many fuel cell pundits said that at $1m dollars each, fuel cells were never going to be commercially viable.  This Mirai offers normal range, quick refuelling, good economy (equivalent to 60 mpg), 0-60mph of 9.6 seconds. And of course, the only emission is water.  To make more of the fuel cell, Toyota are offering a conversion unit that can power your house (9Kw output) if the lights go out. Think about that - wherever you house is!

And not just Toyota - Honda, Nissan and Hyundai all have fuel cell cars in the pipeline. It does look like we have entered the fuel cell era.

Some pundits are still slating fuel cells (including the owner of Tesla), who look at the overall fuel efficiency and say that batteries are miles better.  CST has difficulty in believing there are intelligent beings on this planet that wish to misrepresent the world changing revolution that fuel cells offer to humankind.  These people are simply nasty.  They wish to put their own people above and beyond the rest of us.  Their view is a stupidly narrow view of the world and the future. What frightens them is that fuel cells are now changing the game forever.  It is the ‘final’ energy source that humans will generally use until we find some exotic way of turning matter directly into energy.  This is likely to be thousands of years in the future.

To rub it in, Toyota has thrown open all of it’s fuel cell patents (some 5,800) so that other manufacturers can jump on the bandwagon to the future of not just transport but of ALL energy production and use.  Well done Toyota, they are a truly remarkable company. Take a look at their corporate goals, vision and philosophy – a model for the world moving forward.
(see: http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/)

We can now glimpse the future.  Fuel cells offer to bring cheap power to each and every place on the globe.  The pundits say they are inefficient, well so is all life itself, only turning a fraction of the sun’s energy into something useful.  The sun provides us every day with over 17,000 times MORE than all of the energy we use.  The argument is not about efficiency, it makes no difference.  The discussion is about production, capture and distribution of energy.  The areas we need to consider are the costs of production – solar panels, nuclear plants, fuel cells and distribution systems.  These will fall as manufacturing efficiency improves (by applying new science and automation). Energy will become cheaper and cheaper in the future - but what are we going to do with it?

Utilising fuel cells, enables us to create energy and save it (as hydrogen) from almost any source, and then use it anywhere – as electricity or via electric motors turning it into a motive force.  So, we can now imagine many scenarios that are literally world changers.  Mass produced solar panels and small hydrogen producing units (already available) put them anywhere the sun shines and you have a local, cheap, clean, sustainable energy source that is not time limited and can be distributed locally.

Imagine taking this technology and plonking it down in an underfunded, poorly educated region.  Within just a few months this region could have it’s own power source; electricity, lighting, heating, vehicles, farming, workshops, pumped clean water systems, pumped sewage, internet connection, computing, educational provision (mooc’s et al).  We now have ALL of the technology to do this effectively and relatively cheaply.

Even for western civilisation, take the current solar and wind systems (that are time constrained), it makes them hugely more viable.  Just use the off-peak power and turn it into hydrogen and store it for later use.  Oh, but the conversion is not very efficient – it’s FREE energy that is currently just dumped! (And in the UK, this downtime is still paid for by us & so it really would be free energy).

The UK is working (slowly) towards a hydrogen distribution system see: http://www.ukh2mobility.co.uk/  At least this is something, but with this game changing technology we should do much more and more quickly.  The sky is the limit now that we have proven cheap fuel cell technology.  CST has waited 30 years for this – for everyone’s sake lets just get on with it.

HM Government - how about simply drawing a line in the sand for petrol and diesel vehicles – all of them gone from British roads by say 2030?

That would put the cat amongst the pigeons - enabling UK business and research to power into the future creating world leading technology for hydrogen energy conversion and distribution systems.

(see http://www.itm-power.com/about/technology)

Toyota’s fuel cell research – Toyota is a truly visionary company. 

It is now clear that fuel cell technology is here to stay, and it may provide more of a kick-up the backside than anyone yet expects.