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standeven

Wow, you weren’t kidding. I just checked Autotrader and low-ish mileage 2017 Mirais start at $6k.

Business idea: buy Mirais, pull out and sell the H2 systems, and drop in battery packs to make them BEVs.

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Retrofit would be between 15-20k a piece, are you able to sell them for 30-40k? Where’s the profit?

Or just LS swap them.

I can't imagine this would be easy to do, but I will 100% click the youtube video when someone does.

H2 systems and electronics themselves are worth more than $6k probably.

I think you'd have to lift the entire cabin in order to fit a big enough battery underneath it. Still, not quite outside the realm of possibility. Sillier things have been done by individuals before.

If you look at cutaways of the hydrogen vehicles, there is an enormous amount of space used for tanks and the fuel cell etc. The battery layout could be closer to that of a Polestar 2 rather than the more common 'skateboard' battery pack. Not that it would be an easy project!

You can also just burn the hydrogen in an engine. The Mazda R8 could run on hydrogen thanks to its rotary engine. Still need the huge tank though :)

I believe fuel cell vehicles convert hydrogen to electricity and then have electric drive trains.

You can do that without having to make any changes to the fuel lines / injectors?

Buy it. Store it in an arctic tundra desert protected from the elements. In some decades, some country will roll out mass nuclear and dirt cheap H2 and you'll export it there as a $$$ vintage H2 car and make bank.

Isn't this an interesting opportunity for Japanese buyers to import back?

And use their plentiful hydrogen stations?

Yes. Wikipedia says there are 167-181 stations in Japan, while USA had 58.

By way of comparison, there are just under 30,000 gas stations in Japan, which itself represents a 50% dropoff from previous peaks and leaves some people needing to drive long distances for gas (c.f. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01830/#:~:text=As%20th....). That's still pathetic.

wrong side of road?

Probably shares enough parts with another Toyota to not be too difficult to swap it back.

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