Wednesday, October 28, 2015

2016 Toyota Marai

In the States, the electric-hydrogen hybrid Marai sedan is available only in California for now, with an MSRP of around $55K-$60K. It's been for sale in Japan for over a year. Will this car catch on like the Prius? All signs indicate no, there are too few hydrogen refueling points at this time. That could change but it seems unlikely. The word "Marai" translates to "the future". MPG for the Marai is around 60, but the math doesn't seem to add up when you can buy a 50+ mpg Prius with a half-priced MSRP.


Posted by K2

1 comment:

  1. BobinottDecember 27, 2015 at 12:23 PM

    I have not looked closely at the Toyota hydrogen cell story, but I did read about an earlier Honda effort (also in Southern California). I was quite impressed, because Honda was using solar-powered refueling stations, which separated hydrogen from tap water and emitted oxygen as a byproduct. You then ran the hydrogen through your fuel-cell car to generate electrical energy for "go power", and emitted water back into the atmosphere from the tail pipe. It seemed almost too good to be true. On the other hand, I haven't seen Honda continuing on that path, so maybe it was too good to be true.

    I just checked the latest info from Honda, and I see that their upcoming Hydrogen Cell offering is based on a fueling station that extracts hydrogen from natural gas. So much for severing that carbon-based umbilical cord.

    To me, the plug-in or hybrid electrics also don't truly solve the problem of carbon emissions. They just displace the emissions to the electrical generating station. In many cases, that means a carbon-based fuel like natural gas (or worse, coal) is still being burned to provide us with locomotion.

    I guess I must continue my quest for the Holy Grail

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHsbwY4EPyA

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