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Pages with tag Toyota

  • Hydrogen is going the distance: Toyota surpasses 3,000 Hirai Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle sales in California
  • Tesla Prep For Model 3, Lucid Air PR, Self-Driving Bolt EV -- Transport Evolved Feb 18, 2017: GM expands Maven car sharing to Los Angeles. Latest Tesla update provides real-time Supercharger status, preparing for an influx of more EV drivers. Adds data about congestion at upcoming supercharger stations so you can make additional plans. Toyota Mirai Fuel Cell Sedan recalled for software glitch that's expected to be rare but wasn't found in testing. EV Sales in Norway, where electric car sales are extremely popular, top 37 percent of new car sales last month (January 2017). That's just 13% from bypassing the 50% sales level. Hyundai announces $29,500 entry-level price (MSRP) for 2017 IONIQ EV, and combined with tax incentives it is extremely affordable. Jason Hughes, a famous Tesla Hacker, hacks his Model S to make it 30% more powerful. Electric bus maker, Proterra CEO predicts one-third of all new busses will be electric in just four year’s time (by 2021), and by 2030 all such busses will be electric. Daimler announces their Smart brand will become an all-electric brand in the U.S., completely eschewing gasoline. Was Waymo’s Brain Drain caused by overpaying its staff? It seems Waymo's parent company (Google/Alphabet) paid those employees enough to make them independently wealthy, allowing them to leave to start their own self-driving-vehicle startups. Kia exec says NIRO EV will hit market in 2018. Mercedes-Benz starts small series production for Daimler Urban eTruck. A patient Bolt EV owner has driven their car 300 miles on a charge, or 70 miles more than the EPA rating.
  • Toyota Research Institute introduces next-generation automated driving research vehicle at CES
  • Toyota and Fenix demonstrate first hydrogen fuel cell UTR: At freight yards like the Port of Los Angeles, Utility Tractor Rig's are hauling containers back and forth. At that port there is a high concentration of these trucks, overwhelmingly diesel powered, which makes for a high concentration of horrid air pollutants. This hydrogen fuel cell truck is one possible solution to the problem. In this application a fuel cell does not have the disadvantages of their use for passenger cars - the UTR's do not travel far, and can therefore be refueled on site.
  • Toyota and Kenworth collaborate to develop zero emission trucks
  • Toyota and Shell one step closer to a hydrogen refueling network in California: Fuel cell vehicles are supposedly the solution that will one day eliminate the need for battery electric vehicles. What's missed is the expense for hydrogen refueling stations (over $1.5 million apiece) versus the much lower cost for DC fast charging of battery electric vehicles (under $100,000). That means the same pool of money could build a whole lot more DC fast charging stations than hydrogen. The $16 million here to build 7 hydrogen stations could build 160 or more DC fast charging stations.
  • Toyota doubles-down on zero emissions heavy-duty class 8 trucks:

    Toyota is sticking with hydrogen fuel cells, this time for a class 8 heavy duty truck. The truck was unveiled at a meeting of the Center for Automotive Research, and increases the estimated range to more than 300 miles per fill. The vehicle operator has a larger sleeper cab than the previous iteration. The previous iteration began operation in April 2017 and has logged almost 10,000 miles of testing in real world service at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Toyota plans to put the new vehicle into operation this fall.

    The design uses the fuel cell drive train from the Toyota Mirai - two Mirai fuel cell stacks plus a 12 kiloWatt-hour battery pack.

    The described target is not long-haul trucking, but drayage trucking. That is, the trucks driving back and forth between cargo ships and train depots and warehouses. There's a large number of these trucks the vast majority of which are diesel powered and produce a horrid form of air pollution.

    Former Toyota business partner, Tesla, is targeting a different market with their battery-electric class 8 truck. Namely, the long haul trucking market.

  • Toyota drives the future of zero emission trucking:

    Toyota has long held off from supporting electric vehicles, instead relying on hybrids and fuel cells as their contribution to cleaning up the transportation system. In this project Toyota is deploying prototype fuel-cell class 8 big rigs in the Port of Los Angeles area. The task of drayage trucks is delivering containers offloaded from ships at the port over to rail facilities a few miles away. Traditionally this has been done with regular diesel-powered big rigs, and as a result the area around the Port of Los Angeles is horribly polluted.