Looking at picking up a fuel cell car (Mirai/Clarity/Nexo) this weekend. Hackrs have been great for data so far. Occurred to me that I should probably see if anyone else in the LA area has experienced fuel shortages, broken pumps, lines, etc before I get “pregnant” with something that’s a pain to fuel for 10/36 and that I also have to hold for 30 months due to CVRP rebate. Anyone had any issues or have any insight? Would be much appreciated!
There were news reports of hydrogen shortages in the Los Angeles area last year, and the San Francisco area this year. The San Francisco shortage seems to be ongoing.
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I do have a Mirai in Norcal, and its being shortage for like 2 months
Toyota just keep paying me the rental car for those 2 months…
You should just double check with the dealer, what if?
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What an unnecessary, self-imposed nightmare.
Which part? Leasing a HFC vehicle or the hydrogen outages in CA?
In the spirit of alternative fuels, CA is committed to building the infrastructure for cars that can travel without range anxiety, fueled by abundant hydrogen that only burp water vapor.
The Mirai lease is subvented in a couple ways, includes a fuel card that covers all the Hydrogen you need for the lease term, and if you can’t fuel it the manufacturer puts you in a dead dino rental until the fueling station is back up.
Inconvenient? Likely. Cleaner than gas hybrids, PHEVs, and EVs? By a long shot. Much much earlier in their evolution? No doubt. A good deal with respect to TCO over the lease term? Absolutely
The only issue I have with the Mirai and Clarity FCV: it’s a 50k+ vehicle with a base base rental car interior (all the modern Toyota interiors on all models/trims are vile and impossibly cheap IMO). It’s fine, but it’s not nice.
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Exactly. Not to mention feeling the need to top up all the time. Somebody should pull the plug on this experiment which lasted more than it should have.
All good points. I am also learning that nor cal has historically been more of a cluster than socal. I wonder if any hackrs have anecdotal evidence of Los Angeles city (not beach cities) wait times or frequency of stations or pumps down for maintenence? That data would fill out the risk equation (at least for me)
Also, @pradeep was kind enough to dm me this link for station status…might be useful for those who stumble upon this thread! https://h2-ca.com 1
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Out of curiosity, what attracts you to fuel cell vehicles?
The value (to me)
I considered it one time. There is one station by my freeway entrance and another one on my way to work but I talked myself out of it after reading about station issues. Getting my third EV soon.
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Lol…this is one of the most absurd arguments of the H crowd. Does it really help you that H is abundant in the universe? Are we going to extract it for the Sun any time soon? As for cleaner than evs…please! Maybe in some parts of the world but not in CA where all H comes from nat gas and electricity comes from solar/wind in bigger percentage every year.
As far as why getting a H car…I’m no fan but between low cost, free fuel and trying new tech i can see why some go for it.
Yep, have an ev in the garage already, love em
CNG first, then sure
https://www.californiahydrogen.org/resources/hydrogen-faq/#S31
Technologies exist to produce hydrogen from every primary energy feedstock, including solar, wind, fossil fuels, coal, biomass, electricity. Currently, between 37% and 44% of hydrogen used for transportation in California is renewable. However, much hydrogen is produced via fossil fuels, especially for the oil refining, chemicals and fertilizer sectors.
Ok now do EVs and mining asteroids for rare earth metals
It’s not a competition, we need all of them. The only general purpose vehicles that meet all needs/applications run on dead dinos.
I got a peek at some longevity data on those no/low cobalt batteries yesterday from the horses mouth: 
Leasing a car that has no reliable source of fuel. Might as well run on dragon eggs.
It’s like cosplay where can reenact 1973/1979, except with CarPlay and Airbags.
Easy with the bait clickers…rare earths doesn’t mean they are actually rare on this planet…actually quite the opposite…it actually means they are hard to separate and they are not in pure state. You can find a ton of links if you really wanna read about it and not go with the usual propaganda pieces.
How is the Hydrogen being produced? It requires a lot of power to produce hydrogen.