Landon Hall

The flex-fuel Dodge Charger shows you can be both green and cool

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Aaron Walsh’s first car was a 2008 Chrysler Sebring flex-fuel, meaning it could take E85 or any other ethanol blend. It was a good car.

But his new car … wow. The 2012 Dodge Charger, in Tungsten Metallic gray. Now that’s a proper car for a young man. And Walsh never would have bought it if it didn’t come in a flex-fuel version.

“That’s my biggest reason for using it,” says the student from Haslett, Mich., just east of Lansing. “I absolutely hate the petroleum industry.”

His reasons are mostly environmental: the BP spill in the Gulf, etc. “I could go into it, but it would take a long time.”

The point is, he did something about it, and that something came around the time he decided he needed a vehicle upgrade. Walsh already knew the benefits of ethanol because of his father, who works for the state of Michigan, which encourages state employees to put E85 into their flex-fuel vehicles. So right around his 21st birthday, last June, he found the Charger and its 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 engine.

“I wanted something that didn’t have to run on gasoline,” he said. “And the first thing I wanted was an electric; I was really into the Chevy Volt. But then I realized a college student doesn’t have $40,000. Then I looked and saw that the Charger is $24,000.”

Walsh, who attends Lansing Community College, says finding an E85 station isn’t difficult. “It keeps getting easier and easier,” he says. He posts his fill-up data to his Twitter feed, @gasisoutrageous (his account name is #Number1BigHero6Fan … hey, dude has other interests besides ethanol), and he regularly gets in the twenties for mpg. Also, E85 is a lot cheaper than regular gasoline at many stations in the Lansing-Haslett area. Nationally, E85 was only $1.86 a gallon Thursday, 23.7 percent cheaper than E10, according to E85Prices.com.

Price isn’t the only benefit to buying E85. Higher ethanol blends burn more cleanly and efficiently than E10 (what most of us call regular gas). Using more alcohol fuels displaces oil, strengthening the overall U.S. economy, creating domestic jobs; reducing oil consumption is better for our air, water and health.

But the price at the pump is still a big factor, and most Americans know this. Walsh knows it, and needs it. He works at a convenience store, and says his dad has been helping him out covering the cost of payments and upkeep. The vehicle is also not exactly ideal for the brutal Michigan winters, with is rear-wheel and slick tires.

But he loves it. Using ethanol doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your car at the same time. And that roaring engine runs great on high-octane E85.

“When I started driving, whenever I would slam on the accelerator pedal, I’d just hear dollar signs. Now I like the performance. I actually bought that car just because of the engine.”

Other posts in our “Share Your Story” series:

Arctic Leaf

Is Tesla really all that disruptive?

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Elon Musk’s dream of revolutionizing the auto industry seemed to lose some of its luster last week as the fledgling electric car company ran into a few roadblocks in getting its new models into consumer hands.

The $35,000 Model X is scheduled to be leaking out to a few early customers late this year. Then full-scale production will begin in 2016. But already there is talk of delays and missed deadlines, so there might be an asterisk attached to those numbers soon.

The ultimate goal is selling 50,000 Model X’s by 2017, which still seems way over the horizon. A lot of those sales were supposed to come from China, and that’s developing into a problem. Musk was in China last week talking things over with Zhao Kuiming, head of Tesla’s China sales division, but Musk has already decided to “reboot.” It appears that Chinese buyers are still spooked by the lack of recharging stations, even though there have been a few grand openings around Beijing. Tesla was hoping to sell between 4,000 and 8,000 models in China in 2015, but only 120 cars were sold in January. Musk has cut the China staff from 600 to 420 and is recalculating just what can be expected from the Middle Kingdom. The tastes of the few Chinese millionaires who could be counted on to purchase the Tesla as a status symbol aren’t going to get him very far.

All this has spooked investors as well. They’ve driven the price of Tesla stock down nearly 20 percent since the start of the year. Once the highest flyer on the market, Tesla peaked at $293 a share last September, but it’s been a long descent ever since. Prices lingered around $180 per share last week. Even then, Tesla is trading at 232 times its expected earnings for 2015. The average stock on the NASDAQ, where it trades, is 21 times earnings. All this has lifted the short interest on Tesla stock to 27 percent of floating shares. The average on the NASDAQ, once again, is only 5 percent.

Nevertheless, all this could turn around quickly. Tesla already has 20,000 pre-orders on the Model X, and there is every reason to think its release could revolutionize the industry, much as Musk says. As it is emerging, the Tesla is going to be a device much more attuned to electronics and Silicon Valley as it is to Detroit and the auto industry. Musk is already introducing over-the-air (OTA) updates of the car’s software in a model, much more like an iPad than a Ford Focus. All those features you see advertised by the major automakers — rearview cameras, automatic emergency braking — will be standard in the Tesla. Musk is already talking about an automatic driving feature that will allow drivers to guide the car hands-free on Interstate highways. Of course, there are lots of state regulations that will have to be satisfied before this feature can go into effect. California, Nevada, Michigan, Florida and Washington, D.C., already have laws allowing driverless vehicles driving, but it’s unclear how Tesla’s system will be judged under these statutes.

Also decided at the state level is the question of whether Tesla can sell directly to customers or must work through established car dealerships. These laws are generally put into effect at the behest of local dealers to prevent the major auto companies from setting up their own shops. But Tesla has run afoul of the law in many states. The company just won a major victory when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie came down in favor of Tesla. Georgia has also opened its doors to direct sales at five stores. But West Virginia has gone in the opposite direction, banning sales of Tesla altogether. There probably aren’t that many potential Tesla customers in West Virginia anyway.

Perhaps the unkindest cut came from Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins, who wrote a piece titled “Tesla: Just Another Car Company.” If you wanted to insult Elon Musk, you could hardly do better. “Elon Musk has proved that a market exists for electric cars, despite their many inconveniences, especially if they come wrapped in taxpayer subsidies,” Jenkins wrote. “But he hasn’t proved he can make a profit.”

Jenkins sees the Tesla operating in a niche market, in which a small percentage of customers are willing to ignore the problems in order to be “green.” Once this niche is filled, however, the market will thin out quickly. “Uber is disruptive,” he writes. “Tesla isn’t. Tesla is disruptive mostly of a driver’s confidence that he’s going to reach his destination without needing a tow.”

Yet this perspective is probably too negative of Tesla, and electric cars in general. There are people whose driving needs it fits perfectly. “I own a Tesla. It is beyond spectacular,” wrote one of the commenters to Jenkins’ piece. “The car has Di Minimus maintenance as there is nothing to break.” “That is why I bought a Tesla,” says another. “At 270 miles to start with, range anxiety is not my problem, yet. I rarely drive over 100 miles in any given day, and if I needed to, my Chevy Tahoe is still in the garage.” I have friends in Baltimore who bought a Nissan Leaf as a second car to tool around the city and love it.

So Tesla may just be filling a niche, but it is still a sizable one. Infrastructures can change a lot faster than we anticipate, especially where there is a demand for it. Tesla’s stock may be overvalued and due for another nosedive. But the company is still making big changes in the way we power our cars.

Fuel Freedom Staff

7 Stories about our Broken Fuel Economy

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1. Making tough choices

Fuel prices might be low now, but everyone expects them to rise again any day. When that happens, people on fixed incomes have to choose what’s more important. Rent, food, medicine?
STORY1
Share your story…

2. The Future

An unsustainable fuel economy will make the future uncertain, too — unless we change it.

STORY2
Share your story…

3. Small Business

Even entrepreneurs who are used to solving problems on their own have to face the fact that there’s only one fuel they can put in their tanks. When that fuel costs more, their profit margin takes a hit.

STORY3 (1)
Share your story…

4. Everything is Connected

When it costs more to ship broccoli, the cost of broccoli goes up. The same goes for literally everything in the economy. Permanently lower fuel prices would save everyone money.

STORY6
Share your story…

5. Making it Work

There are ways around the frustration of volatile fuel prices, like taking public transit (if it’s available where you live and work).

STORY7
Share your story…

6. Taking Matters into your own Hands

Willis was so fed up with high prices he decided to leave the pump behind altogether and make his own bio-diesel!

STORY5
Share your story…

7. Or just Rock Down to Electric Avenue…

If you can afford it, an electric vehicle could solve all your fuel price problems (lucky you!). The rest of us will have to wait — and work — for a healthier fuel economy.

STORY8

Share your story about how fuel prices affect you, and how saving at the pump could help you and your family.


Landon Hall

10 people who turned anger into solutions for high gas prices

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So we’ve heard from Americans who say high gas prices have disrupted their lives and their work. Let’s shift to the people who are more than mad as hell. They’re mad enough to turn their energy into action.

Among these 10 ideas, what’s the most practical for your life?

 

“I just ditched my old 1998 Volvo S70 for a used Prius, and it is so much more fun to fill a 10-gallon tank than an 18-gallon one. And have it last more than a week of heavy Los Angeles commuting. It’s still new to me, so I still kind of giggle every time I fill up the tank. I’m thrilled to put the money I save toward better things.”
— Jennifer

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“We save a lot of money in the summer because my wife takes the bus to the south side of Madison to go to work, and I pick her up in the afternoon, about 4 miles south of our home. If I was to take her to work and pick her up, it would be 48 miles round-trip, morning and afternoon. The bus is cheaper.”
— Laverne F., Madison, Wisconsin

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“As gasoline was so high for so long, I made a bio-diesel processor from a old electric water heater and made my own fuel for the oil furnace and my old 1984 GMC van with a diesel engine. I still received 21 mpg. Begging for grease was the hard part.”
— Willis W.

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“I wish I had a good story for you, but my wife and I drive a plug-in Chevy Volt. We hardly ever stop at a gas station, except perhaps once every 6 weeks or while on an occasional trip. When we top the tank, it seldom takes more than 5 1/2 gallons, i.e. less than $20 worth of premium fuel. The main reason that we stop at gas stations these days is to get an automatic car wash.”
— David and Barbara G., Gaithersburg, Maryland

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“Still wondering how to convert my 99 Ford Expedition to NG?”
— Gary S., Laguna Woods, California

(We’re checking around to find a SoCal CNG conversion business. Will update later.)

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“I have not visited a gas station since September 2014, when I took delivery of my Tesla. However, I still pay for my daughter’s gasoline, suffer the financial cost, and contribute to the oil industry’s wanton environmental degradation. Savings at the pump could help me fund her college education.”
— Dr. George

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“Go electric. I did and am receiving my Tesla next week. No more gas at all.”
— Bob

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“Today we bought a 2014 Ford Focus, a flex-fuel vehicle which enables us to use E85 for fuel. A small contribution to energy independence.”
— David

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“We need a blender pump [for ethanol] in every station.”
— Melvin M.

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“I top off my cars with E85 when I can. I fill up once a month with a discount at Kroger. I am really pushing to get Kroger to provide ETHANOL pumps and shop at the same place!”
— Gerard R., Stone Mountain, Georgia

 

Incidentally, here’s a handy guide to flex-fuel vehicles on the market.

Landon Hall

‘If they raise gas prices, they should be raising the salaries’

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Last week we shared stories from people whose quality of life has been affected by the unpredictable ebb and flow of gasoline prices. Visit our Facebook page and read the great discussion riffing on our last post, about Troy Harper in Missouri, to get an idea of how hot-button an issue this has become.

Today we’re passing along sentiments about the work Americans do and how the cost of fuel makes that tougher.

Some workers get paid by the hour, others are salaried, and still others are in business for themselves. Gas prices take a bite every time.

Here are a few of the responses we’ve received:

 

“I have to work one and half days just to fill my car, just to get to my job. That’s what I spend a week. If they raise gas prices, they should be raising the salaries.”
— Jose G., Streamwood, Illinois

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“My wife and I both work at different times of the day, so we can’t carpool, and driving two cars every day gets too costly, at $3 to $4 a gallon. Not only us, but everybody that has to work has to give up something in order to make ends meet.”
— James

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“As a business owner (lawn maintenance), even a few cents per gallon makes a big difference in my profit margin. My company uses approximately 100 to 130 gallons per week, sometimes more. So the cost of fuel has a large bearing on our workload. Lower prices would really help our bottom line.”
— Keith M., Boca Raton, Florida

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“Gas prices affect me and my job, where most of my profits go toward fuel prices, [since] I’m on the road most of my time. Please lower the gas prices so we can get more out of our earnings, to spend more on family needs. There is no reason to have such high gas prices.”
— Frank C., Rancho Cucamonga, California

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“I am a self-employed courier. I work only part-time now, but the price of fuel for my car has a big impact on my business. You just don’t make as much. With high fuel, prices everything goes up in America. Were are an economy on wheels, as you can tell with all the over-the-road trucks out there today. Fuel affects almost everything and makes it much more difficult to earn a living.”
— Flip P., York, Pennsylvania

 

Related posts:

 

 

Landon Hall

Missouri dad perfectly sums up the frustration of volatile gas prices

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Recently we started asking Americans to share their stories about the true cost of unpredictable gas prices. We got an earful.

But out of all the dozens of submissions we received — some only a sentence, others full-on essays — perhaps no one expressed that collective frustration better than Troy Harper of Independence, Missouri.

Here’s what he wrote:

“I used to have a pickup truck [a green 1981 Ford F-series Explorer] with dual tanks. I could usually fill it up for about 30 bucks. That was back when I was in my early 20s, somewhere in 1993 or ‘94. I can remember complaining about the gas prices then. Oh, if only could only go back and warn myself about what was gonna take place in my future, I’d sink every penny I had into crude oil. Because from there on, fuel prices continually increased! Before long it was 3 bucks a gallon and beyond that. It never hit $4 a gallon for regular, but if you wanted mid-grade or super-clean, you were basically paying in blood.

“I got married and had a family, 1996-’97. We had two kids about four years apart. I worked a full-time job had to get a car in order to get around and get back and forth to work. We went on vacations and went to see our families and camped out and went fishing and to the drive-in theater all the time, when we could. But as fuel prices got higher and higher, those trips became fewer and fewer. With the price of fuel rising, the price of everything else rises: food, clothing, household necessities, everything.

“I drove a truck for a produce company [Original DeFeo Produce], locally … I delivered fruits and vegetables to grocery stores and restaurants. Diesel prices were ridiculous. The prices of our products were forever increasing, a fuel surcharge was eventually imposed on our customers, just to cover fuel prices. At almost 5 bucks a gallon it was becoming a huge problem. Our customers’ businesses were seeing less and less business, yet the prices kept increasing. I watched several of these businesses eventually close their doors for good. Even the company I was working for went out of business in March of 2013. It had been in business in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, for over a hundred years. It was family owned and had thrived for a long time, but with the economy bottoming out and our customers closing, it was inevitable. I like to believe that fuel prices played a major role in that factor. As it did in all our lives.

“Currently, the prices have been relatively cheaper. As of today, at a Shell station I saw it for $2.20 a gallon in Independence, Missouri. That’s much better, but I don’t know how long those prices will last.”

—

To learn what you can do about volatile gasoline prices, check out our Take Action page. Among the list of choices, watch the movie PUMP on DVD, instantly on iTunes or Amazon, or coming to a college

Arctic Leaf

President Obama, DOE boost alternate fuels

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President Obama burnished his legacy as an environmentalist last week by mandating a huge cut in greenhouse gas emissions among federal vehicles. The aim is to cut emissions for 40 percent by the year 2025.

The executive order will increase the percentage of the government’s 636,000 vehicles that run on alternative fuels. Improved gas mileage on new internal combustion engines can account for only a small fraction of the required reduction, so the only alternative will be to increase the number of non-gasoline engines in the fleet. Among the frontrunners will be cars running on compressed natural gas, electric vehicles, propane-powered cars, vehicles running on gasoline-ethanol combinations, hydrogen vehicles, and all manner of hybrid combinations of any of the above Obama’s order built on a previous executive action in 2009 that has helped reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 percent. The 40 percent reduction will be measured against levels in 2008, right before Obama took office.

As of 2013, more than 200,000 of the federal fleet of 635,748 vehicles were alternative-fuel vehicles. The most common of these were the 180,000 cars running on an ethanol-gasoline mix. But the new cars are expected to be of the more experimental variety. It is anticipated that, by 2025, half the federal vehicles will be some kind of plug-in hybrid.

The White House pointed to the efforts of large private companies such as IBM, GE, Honeywell and Walmart in meeting the same standards of switching to alternative vehicles in their fleet. The president’s spokespeople said the combined effort would be “the equivalent of taking nearly 5.5 million cars off the road.”

The president’s order was not the only effort by the federal government to increase its fleet of alternative vehicles. The Department of Energy announced a $6 million program to accelerate the alternative vehicle market. DOE said the purpose of the grants will be to get people accustomed to the idea of driving alternative vehicles. Eleven projects will be funded around the country. They will include:

  • Clean Fuels Ohio will sponsor the Midwest DRIVES initiative to make alternative fuel vehicles available to select company fleets on a short-term lease basis. The program will used data collected from these experiments to encourage other companies to lease AFVs as well.
  • Penske Truck Leasing of Reading, Pennsylvania, will make compressed natural gas heavy-duty trucks available to cross-country truck fleets on a 1-to-3-month basis. The object will be to test consumer satisfaction.
  • The Florida Office of Consumer Services, Office of Energy, will make available plug-in hybrid vehicles to car rental companies in the Orlando area. With Disney World at its doorstep, Orlando is the nation’s largest car-rental market. The idea will be to accustom renters to the advantages of plug-in hybrids.
  • The Triangle Council of Governments around Research Triangle Park will supply vehicles powered by CNG, electricity, propane, E85 and biodiesel over a three-state area that will include North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The object will be to encourage fleet purchases.
  • The Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle Demonstration Program, run by ASG Renaissance of Dearborn, Michigan, will attempt to stimulate consumer awareness and demand for PHEVs by placing them in the hands of media influencers. It is hoped that a social media campaign through Facebook and Twitter will bring positive coverage.
  • The West Virginia University Research Corporation will develop a curriculum for training promoters and repair specialists for alternative vehicles. The National Alternatives Fuels Training Consortium will provide marketing and outreach for the new curriculum.
  • The National Fire Protection Association of Quincy, Massachusetts, will develop curricula for the use of alternative vehicles in fire protection, emergency services and first responders to auto accidents.
  • The North Central Texas Council of Governments will develop a curriculum for use of propane, electric and natural gas vehicles for fire marshals, code officials, mechanics and technicians, and first responders. The program will be offered in four states of the Southwest.
  • The University of Central Florida will establish a training program for the use of CNG, electric and propane vehicles by first responders, college instructors, tow-truck operators and salvage/recycling vehicles. Hands-on training will be supported by vehicles supplied the National Association of Fleet Managers.
  • The Metropolitan Energy Center of Kansas City will collaborate with State Fire & Rescue Training institutes in Kansas and Missouri to adapt existing alternative fuel safety curricula to their existing training structures.
  • The National Association of State Energy Officials will work with its network of State Energy Offices, the National Governors Association, and the International Emergency Managers Association to help incorporate alternative fuel and advanced vehicles into multiple emergency preparedness plans.

So there’s plenty going on in the advance of alternative vehicles. It will take more than a drop in the price of oil to discourage these programs.

(Photo: POET LLC)

Landon Hall

Here’s what Americans are telling us about the price of gas

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We asked, and you delivered.

At the start of our “Share Your Story” campaign, Fuel Freedom Foundation sent out the call: Tell us how volatile gasoline prices, which peak and plunge without warning or explanation, affect your daily life.

We got dozens of responses, from all age groups and all regions of the country. Here are some of the best:

 

 “I would love cheaper gas prices, because my boyfriend and I share my van, and several days a week, I have to drive him to work, then go back home, run errands, or take kids to school, then go back and get him later. It takes a lot of gas to do that.”
— Eileen N., Selma, N.C.

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“I can’t raise my wage whenever I want. It’s hard to budget when you know they will raise the price every week — just ’cause they can, I guess.”
— Tim H., Coldwater, Michigan

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“Fuel prices are the only thing in my budget that I can’t consistently account for … it’s infuriating.”
— Manny L., Daly City, California

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“My new granddaughter lives in Odessa, and I can’t afford to take my medications AND go to see her on my fixed income. Groceries and goods are transported to stores by truck, and higher fuel prices are passed on to the consumer by increased food and goods prices. My dollar isn’t worth as much with the higher fuel prices. If gas goes up to $4 a gallon again, I will barely afford food and clothing, much less any traveling to see my granddaughter. Our economy will suffer greatly if fuel prices don’t stabilize around $2 a gallon or less.”
— Gary S., Rowlett, Texas

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“I spend about $300 to $500 a month in fuel. There are some months that we are struggling to pay for food. The trade-off is that the rent is cheaper the further you are from the city, but the gas is killing us.”
— Abe F.

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“I’m on SSDI [Social Security Disability Insurance]. When fuel prices go up or stay high, it’s really simple to explain: I have less food to eat, and I might not be able to buy all my medicine. I have also had to cancel some appointments. Sometimes doctors have to be put off for a later date!”
— Steven D., Des Plaines, Illinois

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“I drive a car with 40 miles to the gallon, and I am still struggling with gas prices. Especially soaring gas prices in Arizona. During the Super Bowl, gas prices dropped to $1.70 a gallon. It was such a stress relief having to pay $15 to fill up my gas tank for the week. But after that week was over, gas prices went up to $2.49 in just a week. It is unfair that big companies do this to people. I can’t even imagine how people live with bigger engines. Having to shovel $80 for a tank that lasts a week.”
— Thomas M., Phoenix

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“Gas prices have kept me from seeing my brother, who is 75 years old and lives 240 miles from me. He won’t be around forever, but the jerks screwing us with high gas prices will. I hope they someday get judged on making travel for the retired so hard. They need to lose all their money and see what it’s like.”
— Calvin

—

We’ll be posting more responses over the next week or so. If you’re wondering what you can do about the unending rollercoaster of oil and gas prices, there’s plenty, so visit our Take Action page, where you can learn more about our mission to reduce oil consumption. You can sign our petition asking major fueling retailers, like Costco, to offer consumers alternative fuels.

Also, check out our companion site, which is all about the stupendously great documentary film PUMP.

Landon Hall

This guy watched PUMP, got mad, and went looking for E85

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Glenn Peterson watched PUMP the Movie on iTunes recently. And frankly, it made him angry. Which can be a good thing, if you take that anger and turn it into something constructive.

The part of the film that motivated Glenn to do his small part to end our oil addiction was when Jason Bateman, in that soothing voice of his, mentions that you can look on the Internet to find fueling stations that sell ethanol blends. As it happened, Glenn already owned a flex-fuel vehicle, a 2011 Chrysler Town & Country. Like 17 million other FFVs on the road in the U.S., it was made to run on E85.

Glenn went on E85Prices.com and found a Propel Fuels station about 10 miles from his home in San Diego that sells E85 (a blend that’s actually between 51 percent and 83 percent ethanol, the rest traditional gasoline).

“It was $3.06,” Glenn said, noting that regular 87-octane gas, E10, was selling for about 20 percent more. “So I filled up then, and anytime I thought of it afterwards, I would go there. It’s a little out of the way, but not that far out of the way.

“If a bunch of people do a bunch of small things, it’s like one big thing. And unfortunately … I talk to people at where I work about E85, and it’s just amazing, the misconceptions. I work with a lot of really smart computer people … it’s like they’ve got that part of their mind closed. And I don’t get it.”

Glenn, 54, bought the van in 2012, and a few months later he drove his family to his hometown of Minot, N.D., on vacation. He already knew about FFVs and E85, but even though he was on the lookout for stations that sold the fuel, he couldn’t find any. On the trip back, they pulled off I-80 in Rock Springs, Wyo., and spotted an E85 sign at a Kum & Go station.

“My wife took a picture of me fueling up. I was just so happy I finally found it!” Glenn said.

But his wife drove the van more than he did, and it was just more convenient to fill up at Costco whenever she went shopping there. Then came PUMP, and now the Petersons are an E85 family.

So what got him so angry watching it?

“I was just so mad at [Standard Oil baron John D.] Rockefeller for everything he did, to basically get us into the mess we are now. But I’ll also admit the government and … we basically let that happen to us. So we are as addicted to oil as we can be.

“And oh by the way, I called Costco. I talked the guy who runs their gas program and asked him why they didn’t have E85. He didn’t think there would be a demand. And I’m like, ‘Well, you’re mistaken, sir.”

That reminds us, Glenn: After you’re done watching PUMP and ready to get involved, one of our projects is to convince as many independent fueling retailers (the ones who aren’t obliged to sell a particular oil company’s gasoline) as possible to offer alternative fuels to their customers.

Sign our petition asking them to do just that. And keep sharing your stories about high gas prices and solutions with us! You can also join the conversation on Fuel Freedom’s Facebook page and on Twitter.

Arctic Leaf

Toyota, California go for hydrogen

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California, the home of Elon Musk and his Tesla venture, is about to embark on another technological initiative as well — a car driven entirely by hydrogen.

In late February Toyota began producing and selling the Mirai (the name means “future”), a hydrogen-powered vehicle that will be available in Tokyo this year and go on sale in the U.S. in December. Always conscious of its history and ready to make amends, Toyota made the announcement five years to the day after it testified before Congress about a sudden accelerator problem that caused the company a great deal of embarrassment and led to a recall. “Every Feb. 24, we at Toyota take the opportunity to reflect on the recall crisis, doing everything we can to ensure its lessons do not fade from memory,” company CEO Akio Toyoda said. “For us, that date marks a new start.”

To say that Toyota is being cautious in entering the hydrogen car market would be an understatement. The Mirai won’t even be mass-produced but is being hand-crafted by Japanese workers who are turning out three cars per day. The model will sell for $57,000 in Tokyo and is not designed to take off like a rocket. The company only plans to sell 2,000 individual models in Japan this year. “The Mirai program, especially once all the research and development costs are factored in, is clearly unprofitable at this point, and even selling a few thousand units at $57,500 each is not going to turn the tide,” the Motley Fool’s Alexander MacLennan wrote. “But the Mirai is not about short-term profits; it’s about long-term market advantage through brand acceptance and technological development resulting in better vehicles.” Even Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe got into the act, saying we are headed into a “hydrogen era.”

Right now Toyota’s main rival as an alternative to gasoline will be Elon Musk’s all-electric Tesla Model 3. Musk is not taking the challenge lightly. He has called the hydrogen car “an extremely silly idea” and mocked its fuel cells as “fool cells.”

But Musk might have reason to worry. The Mirai will offer drivers a range of 300 miles and take only three minutes to fill its tank. Tesla’s Model 3, due out in 2017, will offer only a 265-mile range and consume 40 minutes to offer an 80 percent recharge of its batteries. (Ideally, EVs should be recharged overnight.) Of course, the big test will be the availability of refueling stations, and here electric vehicles have a big head start. Tesla already has 393 Supercharging stations nationwide and is building them out as fast as possible.

There are only a dozen hydrogen stations now, all of them in California, as a result of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “hydrogen highway” initiative of 2004. But California has seized the gauntlet again and is promising to spend another $20 million in building out the Hydrogen Highway with 28 new stations in the next few years. The Mirai will be initially aimed exclusively at California and its requirements for zero-pollution vehicles, then try to expand to the East Coast as well. Hyundai’s hydrogen-powered Tucson is already being sold in California.

Where Toyota and Tesla have found agreement is in opening up their patents to rivals to try to promote the technology. Musk famously made his EV patents available last year, and now Toyota is doing the same with its hydrogen research. The obvious aim is to get other manufacturers involved in order to increase the demand for fuel outlets. “We think this is a different way to look at the market and collaborate and hopefully with this get a lot more people coming into the game,” Nihar Patel, Toyota’s vice president of North American business strategy, told Forbes.

Still, the switch to hydrogen vehicles has some challenges ahead. Musk’s main criticism — echoed by many others — is that hydrogen fuel is too difficult to handle and transport. Hydrogen is, after all, the smallest molecule and leaks through everything. One of its biggest critics is Joseph Romm, who worked in the Clinton administration promoting the technology and finally became so disillusioned that he wrote a book critical of the technology called The Hype About Hydrogen. Romm is now a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and heads the Climate Progress blog. Another problem with hydrogen, of course, is that it is not available as a free resource but must be manufactured from other resources, principally natural gas. This, of course, requires costs and energy.

Still, hydrogen vehicles have the advantage of producing no air pollution (its exhaust is water vapor) and will be able to reduce the release of carbon into the atmosphere, since the CO2 is easily captured in the reforming process. Overall, hydrogen is likely to be a big plus for the environment.

It also offers car buyers what may be the most important factor in reducing our foreign oil dependence — free choice. It hardly matters if electric vehicles prove to be more popular than hydrogen vehicles or vice versa. The important thing is that they will both be available as alternatives to gasoline-powered cars. They could also open up the door to other alternative fuels: compressed natural gas, E85, and the dark horse of them all, methanol manufactured from natural gas. All these alternatives cannot help but make a dent in our current dependence on foreign oil.