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Toyota believes hydrogen fuel cells are the future

88 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

spenrose 7y ago
Toyota is ready to make BEVs at scale: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki-and-mazda-throw-their-combined-16-million-might-behind-bevs https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki-and... And is investing in making solid-state batteries affordable at scale: https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state-battery-roundtable https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state-ba...
- amluto 7y ago
  Many companies are “ready” to make BEVs. Where are all the BEVs, then?
  - ianai 7y ago
    They’re coming. Mini announced all of their models would be electric in 3-5 years, I think. Most or all have some plan for BEVs in coming car generations.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      Your exact comment could have been posted three years ago, and three years before that, with Chevrolet, or Audi, or Volkswagen named. And yet, here we are, and only one company in the world is actually building the factories you’d need to sell a half million EVs in a year. There’s too much money in not making EVs for any of these companies to start making them a day before the market forces them too.
      - spenrose 7y ago
        After 10 seconds of Googling, here are the new (BEV: 11 models / PHEV: 9 models) models shipping in the US next year: https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles-in-2020/ https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles-in-2... I will leave as an exercise for the two of you to Google: 1. How many new EVs arrived in 2019, in the US and worldwide? 2. How many are committed for 2021, in the US and worldwide? You might start with VW committing to 27 models in 2022: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw-plans-27-electric-cars-by-2022-on-new-platform https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw-plans-27-ele...
        erikpukinskis 7y ago
        None of those models are planned to sell 100k let alone 500k. They are compliance cars—a tax break, basically, so they can keep selling internal combustion engines without paying penalties.
  - clouddrover 7y ago
    I think the answer is to time travel to the year 2020 (it should take you about two weeks) and to also be in Europe. Here's just Volkswagen's EV models for the next year or so: - VW e-Up!: https://www.carscoops.com/2019/09/vws-updated-e-up-offers-161-mile-range-costs-less-than-its-predecessor/ https://www.carscoops.com/2019/09/vws-updated-e-up-offers-16... - VW e-Golf (sold over 100,000 but will be replaced by the ID.3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah4lrqWx8E0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah4lrqWx8E0 - VW ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op4HO6GHC8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op4HO6GHC8Q - VW ID.4: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-frankfurt-motor-show/volkswagen-id-4-electric-suv-winter-tests-curious-disguise https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-frankfurt-mot... - SEAT Mii: https://www.electrive.com/2019/09/11/seat-mii-available-to-order-soon-for-20650e/ https://www.electrive.com/2019/09/11/seat-mii-available-to-o... - SEAT el-Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZI7WFtwc8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZI7WFtwc8g - Cupra Tavascan (maybe, not confirmed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNYHRKp4n1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNYHRKp4n1w - Skoda Citigo iV: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-skoda-citigo-e-iv-cost-%C2%A316955-uk https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-skoda-citigo... - Skoda Vision iV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1g9xl6W_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1g9xl6W_E - Audi e-tron (and also the new "sportsback" variant): https://www.audiusa.com/models/audi-e-tron https://www.audiusa.com/models/audi-e-tron - Audi e-tron Q4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU - Audi e-tron GT (maybe 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMEdiq2xTbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMEdiq2xTbQ - Porsche Taycan (and the Sports Turismo wagon variant in future): https://www.porsche.com/usa/models/taycan/ https://www.porsche.com/usa/models/taycan/ And other manufacturers are delivering more EVs in 2020.
    - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
      Lots of models, but where will the batteries come from? Only Tesla seems to have the proper vertical integration although I've heard VW group is investing in battery factories.
      - clouddrover 7y ago
        Sweden, Korea, and China: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-batteries-idUSKCN1U30I8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-batte...
RickJWagner 7y ago
I own 3 Toyota products and a Honda. I have great confidence in Toyota's vision and engineering excellence. (This coming from a long-time motoring enthusiast.) If they see hydrogen as the future, I take it seriously.
- vwcx 7y ago
  Me too (Toyota owner all my life), although I can’t figure out/don’t understand the emissions fight they’re currently in regarding CA standards.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  How do you explain that Toyota supports the Trump administration when they fight California for cleaner energy?
- scottLobster 7y ago
  Because Toyota never makes mistakes? As a fellow Toyota fan and owner I'll take them seriously when they start building industrial scale hydrogen refineries and transportation systems on par with Tesla's supercharger network or better. Until then these are all compliance cars at best. Doesn't matter how well engineered the implementation is if the design is impractical or of negligible benefit. The only argument that moves the needle for me on Hydrogen at all is that we have tons of it via seawater, whereas we're not sure if we have enough lithium to produce electric cars for everyone in perpetuity.
  - darksaints 7y ago
    Why do they need to be industrial scale? Hydrogen electrolysis is fast, efficient, and can be done on any scale. Centralized production is likely never going to be as efficient as distributed production, simply because there are more losses in distribution than there are in electrolysis.
    - tigershark 7y ago
      Hydrogen electrolysys can't be done efficiently at home. And the efficiency even in industrial plants is pretty bad, about 50% to produce hydrogen compressed for car use, and that doesn't include the fuel cell efficiency that brings the total efficiency to about 30%. Batteries have much better efficiency.
voodooranger 7y ago
i don’t think hydrogen powered cars are the future but the next mirai looks much better than the current one https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel-cell/ https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel-ce...
- trimbo 7y ago
  This does look a lot better. I often wonder if carmakers purposefully make non-IC cars ugly so too many people don't order them. And if that's true, it's probably main thing that Tesla changed: make those cars look awesome.
  - UIZealot 7y ago
    I still like my Model S quite a bit, but Tesla cars have always looked a little dorky to me, models S, 3, or X (I'm not sure how I feel about the Cybertruck just yet). I certainly didn't get mine for the look. They sure look much better than the i3 or Mirai though.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    I always assumed they made their experimental cars ugly so people would notice them and talk about them.
hanniabu 7y ago
Makes much more sense to keep striving for electric solutions so our whole infrastructure can be uniform.
- the8472 7y ago
  As long as you don't get your hydrogen from natural gas it's just energy storage like batteries. You can make it from electricity or directly via solar-powered reactions.
  - i_am_proteus 7y ago
    How efficient is hydrogen as an energy storage medium compared to e.g. Li-Ion batteries?
    - barrkel 7y ago
      Hydrogen is 3x more energy dense than diesel, and diesel is about 5 to 10x more energy dense than lithium ion batteries.
      - murkle 7y ago
        By mass or volume?
    - Avshalom 7y ago
      trying to split the difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3 I mean different shaped/sized cars and all but probably a bit worse? range vs weight seems about on par with the S but worse HP? but also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Theoretical_maximum_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Theoretical_maximum_... so ?
    - peteradio 7y ago
      Efficiency as in energy/kg? Tesla batteries: 207 watt-hours per kilogram (per google search) Hydrogen: 120-142 MJ per kilogram (per google search) Conversion from MJ to watt-hours: 277.778 watt-hours per MJ 120*277.778/207 ~ 161 more compact. Assuming energy conversion losses are equal.
bransonf 7y ago
> the most cost-efficient method (of making hydrogen) has been using natural gas to reclaim the hydrogen. So this wasn’t clean energy to begin with, but now they’re improving: > solar energy and wind power and wind-generated energy, to make hydrogen using electrolysis And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly. Maybe hydrogen cells will have the density advantage, but at what cost to overall efficiency?
- barrkel 7y ago
  Efficiency only has meaning when applied to a metric. Hydrogen is more efficient for speed of refuel and for energy density, important for things like flying and other long distance work.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- chaboud 7y ago
  If it's a completely closed-loop process, efficiency doesn't matter nearly as much as scalability. Let's say the solar cells are 20% efficient, and electrolysis is 50% efficient... So 10% of the solar energy makes it into the tank, and some subset of that makes it through the fuel cell... But we started with water and photons and end up with evaporated water and heat. That's where we were going to be, anyway... If it scales, we're okay. If that electricity is generated from some non-renewable resource, efficiency is of huge importance. If it's something like wind or solar, it can take a back seat.
- darksaints 7y ago
  If electricity costs $.15/kWh, efficiency might matter. If it costs $.03/kWh, there are way more factors that might matter a lot more.
- tomp 7y ago
  > And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly. Not necessarily. (1) There are losses transporting in storing electricity. If hydrogen was made on the spot, and if the losses storing and transporting hydrogen were smaller (unlikely), that would be a gain. (2) Hydrogen can be produced at solar peaks, when energy prices turn negative, and stored... huge (net) efficiency gain!
barrkel 7y ago
There's a real prospect of a worse is better outcome. Hydrogen is way more energy dense than oil-based fuel, never mind battery tech, and can be refilled just as fast. But it's a bigger technical leap, and people won't be able to refuel at home. If most vehicles are used for commutes, I can see battery tech winning the war, except perhaps for trucks, which today may take LPG and can more easily live with bigger distances between refuels. Hydrogen fuel cells may be the solution to aviation though.
- ISL 7y ago
  Water and electricity flow to many homes. It isn't certain that people can't refuel at home.
- darksaints 7y ago
  Hydrogen can be refueled at home. Electrolysis is pretty damn easy.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    Currently the best electrolysis can do is 50kWh/kg of hydrogen, which is about equivalent to a gallon of gas. That's 7c/kWh to match a $3.6 gallon (as found in CA or HI). And that's before the storage issue is even considered.
    - darksaints 7y ago
      That's the best that PEM electrolysis can do. Solid oxide cells have been >93% efficient for over a decade now, and some research cells are 99% efficient. If you are willing to supply heat to run in endothermic mode, they are >100% efficient on an electricity basis (meaning they take less than 39kwh of electricity to make a kg of hydrogen, with the rest made up via heat). I personally have made hydrogen with SOECs for $2.72/kg using industrial rates for electricity. After a 60% efficient conversion back to electricity, that comes out to $0.116/kWh, which is better than the residential rates for nearly any state.
  - wcoenen 7y ago
d2161 7y ago
Is there still concern with explosions with hydrogen cells?
- darksaints 7y ago
  Was there ever?
- philwelch 7y ago
  Is there with lithium batteries? Storing large amounts of energy is inherently dangerous.
- smileysteve 7y ago
  Generally less than with gasoline. Both require oxygen but hydrogen being stored in a high pressure tank, in year 2000 design concepts with a burst disc going up
taneq 7y ago
Someone high up at Toyota bet on fuel cells 20 years ago and can't back down now without losing too much face. That's the only explanation. Hydrogen just doesn't make sense from any engineering viewpoint other than "make sure there are still gas stations and a fuel distribution network no matter the cost."
- ianai 7y ago
  I think they see the writing on the wall for their services business with solid state tech and wanting to fight the trend. Or, building engines are just such a core part of their company that they’re essentially petrol heads looking for a replacement as near as possible. But I’m low information on that and just speculating. Fuel cells are neat tech though. I also understand the argument they made with respect to using nickel hydride batteries over lithium. See their CFOs recent remarks.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    Hydrogen Fuel Cells are electric.
    - ianai 7y ago
      Yes, and they wear out and must be replaced. The drive train is powering an electric motor. Toyota might be expecting to get more service work out of fuel cells than batteries. Just throwing things at the wall for their motives though.
      - darksaints 7y ago
        > Yes, and they wear out and must be replaced. Doesn't everything? Some production fuel cells have a service life of >50000 hrs. That's way more than you can expect out of batteries.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  They should have been well placed to adopt EV's with their experience making the Prius. It's mind boggling to me that they didn't take advantage of that.
tambourine_man 7y ago
Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. It's easy to criticize Musk, but I'm a big admirer of his pragmatism. If I were a billionaire I'd pour money on super capacitors, for instance. Much more exciting and the payoff is potentially huge. Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it. We have a problem that needs to be solved now. From a risk assessment point of view, it's the best call.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. That's not even the biggest issue for "the future": the "hydrogen economy" is based on cracking fossil fuels, producing CO2, so it's not exactly green. Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive, it's used for a small fraction of the production (2%) and mostly for uses which need very pure hydrogen (cracking fossil fuels yields pretty "dirty" hydrogen which is unsuitable for some applications). I guess at capacity that would make it suitable as a sink to dump excess electricity from renewables in, but then you hit the storage issues you mentioned.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    It’s perfectly feasible to capture carbon from a natural gas refinery producing liquid H2 and sequester it safely. Doing that safely and consistently is going to be an engineering challenge, but so are the advances in battery technology and the need to scale lithium production in clean, safe ways that batteries would require. If anyone’s done the work on which approach is better, I’d be interested to see it.
    - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
      Perhaps, but the refining companies would much rather lobby the US Senate to ignore Global Warming treaties, it's their modus operandi. If you want to get off of carbon, you have to get away from the people making trillions off of carbon.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
There was nothing in the interview about how to keep a hydrogen-fueled car from becoming a miniature Hindenburg disaster in a collision. Is that considered a solved problem?
- philwelch 7y ago
  It might surprise you to learn that gasoline-fueled cars do not usually explode in collisions despite gasoline being far more volatile than hydrogen.
  - Zhenya 7y ago
    Gasoline is not under pressure and does not burn. Only gasoline vapors burn.
- _ph_ 7y ago
  It is certainly not a solved problem. At 300+ bars, just the rupture of a filled tank could cause a significant explosion, even without the hydrogen igniting. If the hydrogen stored in a car ever catches fire, there will be a very quick reaction. In Norway, they closed down all Hydrogen fuel stations after a minor explosion this year (fortunately the main tanks did not explode).
blaisio 7y ago
I could believe it is better for the environment to make hydrogen powered cars over cars with batteries filled with toxic chemicals.
darksaints 7y ago
Hydrogen definitely is the future, it just may not be the future for cars. Much more likely to be used for transportation modes that have long running and consistent speeds. Long distance trucks, cargo ships, planes, etc.. The problem with cars is that they're so intermittently used and the loads are so variable. The only fuel cells that are really up to that task in particular are PEM fuel cells, which are expensive and inefficient compared to solid oxide and alkaline cells. Solid oxide cells might have a chance if used in a more plugin-hybrid form, where the fuel cell is used as a range extender.
hamhand 7y ago
Producing hydrogen using electricity and then convert it back.
- tigershark 7y ago
  For a total efficiency of 22%...
unchocked 7y ago
Tanaka explains their strategy pretty clearly here, and it’s about functioning in an entirely renewable energy context. Hydrogen is better than batteries for longer term energy storage. To run a battery powered system twice as long, you need twice as much battery. To run a fuel cell twice as long, you need a bigger tank. Japan is an energy insecure nation. Post Fukushima, Japanese companies are dealing with figuring out how to store energy from intermittent or interruptible supplies: not for hours but for weeks or months. Hydrogen does that. It is a synthetic fuel that can be made from electricity and water. Fuel tanks scale well, and a large tank with thick walls can store a lot of hydrogen for quite a while. So the strategy is anchored in a hydrogen energy architecture on a grid level. Mirai is a technology demonstrator for that. Critiques based on the current lack of hydrogen infrastructure are missing the point.
- ianai 7y ago
  As a desert dweller, I prefer a drive train that outputs water just in principle. We need water out here, it’s only getting more dry, and there will be no big project coming to pipe water inland. Buuuut, batteries and electricity are here today.
  - unchocked 7y ago
    The principle is cute, but on a regional environmental level the water emitted won’t make a difference. And batteries are here already. Buy a Tesla.
    - ianai 7y ago
      People have been saying the same about carbon emissions for a long time.
      - unchocked 7y ago
        Yes, and if we were talking about releasing fossil water into the atmosphere there might be something to the comparison. But water emissions from a hydrogen car are just moving existing water around and don't compound over time. It's minuscule compared to the hydrologic cycle even over desert regions.
unlinked_dll 7y ago
Just browsed google maps. By my count there are more public EV chargers in a mile radius of my house (east bay) than hydrogen fuel stations in San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties combined. It appears that even among early adopters of new energy sources, the market has spoken.
- dev_tty01 7y ago
  Hmmm. We could use this same reasoning to prove that the market has spoken in favor of gasoline instead of electricity... Not really a relevant measure when technologies are in transition.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    Every house on my block can supply my car with electricity, and I don’t think our neighborhood is unusual. Knocking on someone’s door to borrow a cup of hydrogen would probably be less productive. Borrowing a gallon of gas might be possible, assuming my neighbor hasn’t purchased an electric mower.
gok 7y ago
I have to imagine that a large part of the interest in fuel cells comes from its defense applications (particularly for submarines). It's been clear for years that for cars it's a total dead end.
tobyhinloopen 7y ago
They’re wrong
syntaxing 7y ago
I'm not entirely sure if they're wrong. A lot of science for hydrogen fuel cell has not really been studied. I'm curious if we put equal funding into fuel cells instead of battery, today's footing of fuel cell will be much more different. Some cool technology development is the nickel based catalyst (compared to Platinum) but the development is slow since the industrial application is small. Also, there are ways to use fossil fuels directly (with huge caveats) instead of the standard hydrogen gas fuel cells.
- Reason077 7y ago
  The problem with fuel cell vehicles isn’t really the fuel cells. It’s physics. And economics.
  - syntaxing 7y ago
    Which part of the physics though? I am not entirely convinced that a standard hydrogen PEM fuel cell is the only way to generate energy for a car.
    - Reason077 7y ago
      Current fuel cells are said to be in the 40-60% efficiency range. That’s actually not bad, especially if you can do something with the waste heat. But when you look at the overall round-trip efficiency of the hydrogen lifecycle (production, compression/liquefaction, distribution, storage/leakage, compression again), it’s pretty woeful. Many estimates come in well below 20%. If we came up with a more efficient fuel cell, it wouldn’t improve the overall efficiency much.
      - Rury 7y ago
        I don't see efficiency as nearly problematic as most seem to make it out to be (as far as the physics goes). Estimates online roughly estimate that the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth in an hour is more than the entire world consumes in an year. Capturing just 0.0001% of that power would cover our needs. And I don't the worse efficiency of hydrogen being problematic in that regards.. but I can understand arguments regarding the economics.
epicureanideal 7y ago
I've heard people say that battery storage technology improves at 3% per year. What's the rate of improvement in high-pressure gas or liquefied gas storage? Is the weight of the container decreasing at 3%+ per year?
dboreham 7y ago
I thought the Hydrogen thing was a ruse to kill battery electric vehicles, years ago, invented by fossil fuel lobbyists. It works like this: Hydrogen seems plausibly usable, but nobody is sure. It allows continued use of internal combustion engines so you can carry on as normal for now. Then in 10 years when nobody has figured out how to make Hydrogen work it's too bad we didn't focus on battery electric. And of course you can repeat and rinse because perhaps in another 10 years Hydrogen may be made to work. We're two cycles in at this point.
- mcot2 7y ago
  It also serves to preserve the current refueling experience from fuel delivery to point of sale. Electric cars are mostly charged at home and at work/parking areas which flips everything on its head. There are a lot of industries threatened by this.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    One consideration is the current world political order is built around supplies of oil. Battery powered transport dramatically changes that.
- taneq 7y ago
  That was definitely part of it. There was an industry-wide push to work on a "hydrogen economy" as a stall to stave off the CARB regulation which was going to force a certain percentage of vehicle sales to be electric. It did make more sense in the late 90s when the predominant battery tech was NiMH. Fuel cells were actually competitive on price and performance, but can't really hold a candle to modern LiPoly or LiIon batteries. U.S. car manufacturers dropped fuel cells like a hot potato as soon as the CARB mandate was repealed, and crushed their BEVs to destroy any evidence.
- woodandsteel 7y ago
  But the strategy failed because enough companies went ahead with battery electrics.
  - 7y ago
Animats 7y ago
Toyota is still pushing that? Despite the terrible sales figures?[1] The Toyota Mirai has been on sale in the US for over three years now, and the sales are dropping. Even though they throw in three years of hydrogen. [1] http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-mirai/ http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-mira...
legohead 7y ago
And what do you use to make Hydrogen? Do fuel cell cars have instant torque like EVs? We recently got an EV, and whenever I drive my gas car, the delay from the gas pedal is extremely annoying now.
- dingo_bat 7y ago
  Fuel cell cars are basically EVs with small batteries, that are charged by the fuel cell. I guess the driving characteristics will match other EVs.
noipv4 7y ago
Excellent belief Toyota! now start experimenting with some Lithium Ion batteries and a motor. Your neighbor Mitsubishi might help you with those.
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
... don't all fuel cells currently known become unusable after 100k miles or less?
dingo_bat 7y ago
Even if hydrogen is the future, Toyota must realize that the present is battery electric. They can continue research on future tech while they rise to the market demands in the present.
known 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car has more details
nickik 7y ago
If anything methanol would be a sensible replacement for cars. Much clearer transition path and same end result. But in personal transportation both of those will be a tiny part of the market. Alternative fuels transition should have started 30ish years ago.

88 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

Toyota is ready to make BEVs at scale: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki-and-mazda-throw-their-combined-16-million-might-behind-bevs https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki-and... And is investing in making solid-state batteries affordable at scale: https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state-battery-roundtable https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state-ba...

amluto 7y ago
Many companies are “ready” to make BEVs. Where are all the BEVs, then?
- ianai 7y ago
  They’re coming. Mini announced all of their models would be electric in 3-5 years, I think. Most or all have some plan for BEVs in coming car generations.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    Your exact comment could have been posted three years ago, and three years before that, with Chevrolet, or Audi, or Volkswagen named. And yet, here we are, and only one company in the world is actually building the factories you’d need to sell a half million EVs in a year. There’s too much money in not making EVs for any of these companies to start making them a day before the market forces them too.
    - spenrose 7y ago
      After 10 seconds of Googling, here are the new (BEV: 11 models / PHEV: 9 models) models shipping in the US next year: https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles-in-2020/ https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles-in-2... I will leave as an exercise for the two of you to Google: 1. How many new EVs arrived in 2019, in the US and worldwide? 2. How many are committed for 2021, in the US and worldwide? You might start with VW committing to 27 models in 2022: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw-plans-27-electric-cars-by-2022-on-new-platform https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw-plans-27-ele...
      - erikpukinskis 7y ago
        None of those models are planned to sell 100k let alone 500k. They are compliance cars—a tax break, basically, so they can keep selling internal combustion engines without paying penalties.
- clouddrover 7y ago
  I think the answer is to time travel to the year 2020 (it should take you about two weeks) and to also be in Europe. Here's just Volkswagen's EV models for the next year or so: - VW e-Up!: https://www.carscoops.com/2019/09/vws-updated-e-up-offers-161-mile-range-costs-less-than-its-predecessor/ https://www.carscoops.com/2019/09/vws-updated-e-up-offers-16... - VW e-Golf (sold over 100,000 but will be replaced by the ID.3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah4lrqWx8E0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah4lrqWx8E0 - VW ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op4HO6GHC8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op4HO6GHC8Q - VW ID.4: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-frankfurt-motor-show/volkswagen-id-4-electric-suv-winter-tests-curious-disguise https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-frankfurt-mot... - SEAT Mii: https://www.electrive.com/2019/09/11/seat-mii-available-to-order-soon-for-20650e/ https://www.electrive.com/2019/09/11/seat-mii-available-to-o... - SEAT el-Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZI7WFtwc8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZI7WFtwc8g - Cupra Tavascan (maybe, not confirmed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNYHRKp4n1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNYHRKp4n1w - Skoda Citigo iV: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-skoda-citigo-e-iv-cost-%C2%A316955-uk https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-skoda-citigo... - Skoda Vision iV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1g9xl6W_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1g9xl6W_E - Audi e-tron (and also the new "sportsback" variant): https://www.audiusa.com/models/audi-e-tron https://www.audiusa.com/models/audi-e-tron - Audi e-tron Q4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU - Audi e-tron GT (maybe 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMEdiq2xTbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMEdiq2xTbQ - Porsche Taycan (and the Sports Turismo wagon variant in future): https://www.porsche.com/usa/models/taycan/ https://www.porsche.com/usa/models/taycan/ And other manufacturers are delivering more EVs in 2020.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    Lots of models, but where will the batteries come from? Only Tesla seems to have the proper vertical integration although I've heard VW group is investing in battery factories.
    - clouddrover 7y ago
      Sweden, Korea, and China: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-batteries-idUSKCN1U30I8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-batte...

RickJWagner 7y ago

I own 3 Toyota products and a Honda. I have great confidence in Toyota's vision and engineering excellence. (This coming from a long-time motoring enthusiast.) If they see hydrogen as the future, I take it seriously.

vwcx 7y ago
Me too (Toyota owner all my life), although I can’t figure out/don’t understand the emissions fight they’re currently in regarding CA standards.
rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
How do you explain that Toyota supports the Trump administration when they fight California for cleaner energy?
scottLobster 7y ago
Because Toyota never makes mistakes? As a fellow Toyota fan and owner I'll take them seriously when they start building industrial scale hydrogen refineries and transportation systems on par with Tesla's supercharger network or better. Until then these are all compliance cars at best. Doesn't matter how well engineered the implementation is if the design is impractical or of negligible benefit. The only argument that moves the needle for me on Hydrogen at all is that we have tons of it via seawater, whereas we're not sure if we have enough lithium to produce electric cars for everyone in perpetuity.
- darksaints 7y ago
  Why do they need to be industrial scale? Hydrogen electrolysis is fast, efficient, and can be done on any scale. Centralized production is likely never going to be as efficient as distributed production, simply because there are more losses in distribution than there are in electrolysis.
  - tigershark 7y ago
    Hydrogen electrolysys can't be done efficiently at home. And the efficiency even in industrial plants is pretty bad, about 50% to produce hydrogen compressed for car use, and that doesn't include the fuel cell efficiency that brings the total efficiency to about 30%. Batteries have much better efficiency.

voodooranger 7y ago

i don’t think hydrogen powered cars are the future but the next mirai looks much better than the current one https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel-cell/ https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel-ce...

trimbo 7y ago
This does look a lot better. I often wonder if carmakers purposefully make non-IC cars ugly so too many people don't order them. And if that's true, it's probably main thing that Tesla changed: make those cars look awesome.
- UIZealot 7y ago
  I still like my Model S quite a bit, but Tesla cars have always looked a little dorky to me, models S, 3, or X (I'm not sure how I feel about the Cybertruck just yet). I certainly didn't get mine for the look. They sure look much better than the i3 or Mirai though.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I always assumed they made their experimental cars ugly so people would notice them and talk about them.

hanniabu 7y ago

Makes much more sense to keep striving for electric solutions so our whole infrastructure can be uniform.

the8472 7y ago
As long as you don't get your hydrogen from natural gas it's just energy storage like batteries. You can make it from electricity or directly via solar-powered reactions.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  How efficient is hydrogen as an energy storage medium compared to e.g. Li-Ion batteries?
  - barrkel 7y ago
    Hydrogen is 3x more energy dense than diesel, and diesel is about 5 to 10x more energy dense than lithium ion batteries.
    - murkle 7y ago
      By mass or volume?
  - Avshalom 7y ago
    trying to split the difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3 I mean different shaped/sized cars and all but probably a bit worse? range vs weight seems about on par with the S but worse HP? but also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Theoretical_maximum_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell#Theoretical_maximum_... so ?
  - peteradio 7y ago
    Efficiency as in energy/kg? Tesla batteries: 207 watt-hours per kilogram (per google search) Hydrogen: 120-142 MJ per kilogram (per google search) Conversion from MJ to watt-hours: 277.778 watt-hours per MJ 120*277.778/207 ~ 161 more compact. Assuming energy conversion losses are equal.

bransonf 7y ago

> the most cost-efficient method (of making hydrogen) has been using natural gas to reclaim the hydrogen. So this wasn’t clean energy to begin with, but now they’re improving: > solar energy and wind power and wind-generated energy, to make hydrogen using electrolysis And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly. Maybe hydrogen cells will have the density advantage, but at what cost to overall efficiency?

barrkel 7y ago
Efficiency only has meaning when applied to a metric. Hydrogen is more efficient for speed of refuel and for energy density, important for things like flying and other long distance work.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
chaboud 7y ago
If it's a completely closed-loop process, efficiency doesn't matter nearly as much as scalability. Let's say the solar cells are 20% efficient, and electrolysis is 50% efficient... So 10% of the solar energy makes it into the tank, and some subset of that makes it through the fuel cell... But we started with water and photons and end up with evaporated water and heat. That's where we were going to be, anyway... If it scales, we're okay. If that electricity is generated from some non-renewable resource, efficiency is of huge importance. If it's something like wind or solar, it can take a back seat.
darksaints 7y ago
If electricity costs $.15/kWh, efficiency might matter. If it costs $.03/kWh, there are way more factors that might matter a lot more.
tomp 7y ago
> And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly. Not necessarily. (1) There are losses transporting in storing electricity. If hydrogen was made on the spot, and if the losses storing and transporting hydrogen were smaller (unlikely), that would be a gain. (2) Hydrogen can be produced at solar peaks, when energy prices turn negative, and stored... huge (net) efficiency gain!

barrkel 7y ago

There's a real prospect of a worse is better outcome. Hydrogen is way more energy dense than oil-based fuel, never mind battery tech, and can be refilled just as fast. But it's a bigger technical leap, and people won't be able to refuel at home. If most vehicles are used for commutes, I can see battery tech winning the war, except perhaps for trucks, which today may take LPG and can more easily live with bigger distances between refuels. Hydrogen fuel cells may be the solution to aviation though.

ISL 7y ago
Water and electricity flow to many homes. It isn't certain that people can't refuel at home.
darksaints 7y ago
Hydrogen can be refueled at home. Electrolysis is pretty damn easy.
- masklinn 7y ago
  Currently the best electrolysis can do is 50kWh/kg of hydrogen, which is about equivalent to a gallon of gas. That's 7c/kWh to match a $3.6 gallon (as found in CA or HI). And that's before the storage issue is even considered.
  - darksaints 7y ago
    That's the best that PEM electrolysis can do. Solid oxide cells have been >93% efficient for over a decade now, and some research cells are 99% efficient. If you are willing to supply heat to run in endothermic mode, they are >100% efficient on an electricity basis (meaning they take less than 39kwh of electricity to make a kg of hydrogen, with the rest made up via heat). I personally have made hydrogen with SOECs for $2.72/kg using industrial rates for electricity. After a 60% efficient conversion back to electricity, that comes out to $0.116/kWh, which is better than the residential rates for nearly any state.
- wcoenen 7y ago

d2161 7y ago

Is there still concern with explosions with hydrogen cells?

darksaints 7y ago
Was there ever?
philwelch 7y ago
Is there with lithium batteries? Storing large amounts of energy is inherently dangerous.
smileysteve 7y ago
Generally less than with gasoline. Both require oxygen but hydrogen being stored in a high pressure tank, in year 2000 design concepts with a burst disc going up

taneq 7y ago

Someone high up at Toyota bet on fuel cells 20 years ago and can't back down now without losing too much face. That's the only explanation. Hydrogen just doesn't make sense from any engineering viewpoint other than "make sure there are still gas stations and a fuel distribution network no matter the cost."

ianai 7y ago
I think they see the writing on the wall for their services business with solid state tech and wanting to fight the trend. Or, building engines are just such a core part of their company that they’re essentially petrol heads looking for a replacement as near as possible. But I’m low information on that and just speculating. Fuel cells are neat tech though. I also understand the argument they made with respect to using nickel hydride batteries over lithium. See their CFOs recent remarks.
- Aloha 7y ago
  Hydrogen Fuel Cells are electric.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Yes, and they wear out and must be replaced. The drive train is powering an electric motor. Toyota might be expecting to get more service work out of fuel cells than batteries. Just throwing things at the wall for their motives though.
    - darksaints 7y ago
      > Yes, and they wear out and must be replaced. Doesn't everything? Some production fuel cells have a service life of >50000 hrs. That's way more than you can expect out of batteries.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
They should have been well placed to adopt EV's with their experience making the Prius. It's mind boggling to me that they didn't take advantage of that.

tambourine_man 7y ago

Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. It's easy to criticize Musk, but I'm a big admirer of his pragmatism. If I were a billionaire I'd pour money on super capacitors, for instance. Much more exciting and the payoff is potentially huge. Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it. We have a problem that needs to be solved now. From a risk assessment point of view, it's the best call.

masklinn 7y ago
> Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it. That's not even the biggest issue for "the future": the "hydrogen economy" is based on cracking fossil fuels, producing CO2, so it's not exactly green. Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive, it's used for a small fraction of the production (2%) and mostly for uses which need very pure hydrogen (cracking fossil fuels yields pretty "dirty" hydrogen which is unsuitable for some applications). I guess at capacity that would make it suitable as a sink to dump excess electricity from renewables in, but then you hit the storage issues you mentioned.
- philwelch 7y ago
  It’s perfectly feasible to capture carbon from a natural gas refinery producing liquid H2 and sequester it safely. Doing that safely and consistently is going to be an engineering challenge, but so are the advances in battery technology and the need to scale lithium production in clean, safe ways that batteries would require. If anyone’s done the work on which approach is better, I’d be interested to see it.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    Perhaps, but the refining companies would much rather lobby the US Senate to ignore Global Warming treaties, it's their modus operandi. If you want to get off of carbon, you have to get away from the people making trillions off of carbon.

AlexCoventry 7y ago

There was nothing in the interview about how to keep a hydrogen-fueled car from becoming a miniature Hindenburg disaster in a collision. Is that considered a solved problem?

philwelch 7y ago
It might surprise you to learn that gasoline-fueled cars do not usually explode in collisions despite gasoline being far more volatile than hydrogen.
- Zhenya 7y ago
  Gasoline is not under pressure and does not burn. Only gasoline vapors burn.
_ph_ 7y ago
It is certainly not a solved problem. At 300+ bars, just the rupture of a filled tank could cause a significant explosion, even without the hydrogen igniting. If the hydrogen stored in a car ever catches fire, there will be a very quick reaction. In Norway, they closed down all Hydrogen fuel stations after a minor explosion this year (fortunately the main tanks did not explode).

blaisio 7y ago

I could believe it is better for the environment to make hydrogen powered cars over cars with batteries filled with toxic chemicals.

darksaints 7y ago

Hydrogen definitely is the future, it just may not be the future for cars. Much more likely to be used for transportation modes that have long running and consistent speeds. Long distance trucks, cargo ships, planes, etc.. The problem with cars is that they're so intermittently used and the loads are so variable. The only fuel cells that are really up to that task in particular are PEM fuel cells, which are expensive and inefficient compared to solid oxide and alkaline cells. Solid oxide cells might have a chance if used in a more plugin-hybrid form, where the fuel cell is used as a range extender.

hamhand 7y ago

Producing hydrogen using electricity and then convert it back.

tigershark 7y ago
For a total efficiency of 22%...

unchocked 7y ago

Tanaka explains their strategy pretty clearly here, and it’s about functioning in an entirely renewable energy context. Hydrogen is better than batteries for longer term energy storage. To run a battery powered system twice as long, you need twice as much battery. To run a fuel cell twice as long, you need a bigger tank. Japan is an energy insecure nation. Post Fukushima, Japanese companies are dealing with figuring out how to store energy from intermittent or interruptible supplies: not for hours but for weeks or months. Hydrogen does that. It is a synthetic fuel that can be made from electricity and water. Fuel tanks scale well, and a large tank with thick walls can store a lot of hydrogen for quite a while. So the strategy is anchored in a hydrogen energy architecture on a grid level. Mirai is a technology demonstrator for that. Critiques based on the current lack of hydrogen infrastructure are missing the point.

ianai 7y ago
As a desert dweller, I prefer a drive train that outputs water just in principle. We need water out here, it’s only getting more dry, and there will be no big project coming to pipe water inland. Buuuut, batteries and electricity are here today.
- unchocked 7y ago
  The principle is cute, but on a regional environmental level the water emitted won’t make a difference. And batteries are here already. Buy a Tesla.
  - ianai 7y ago
    People have been saying the same about carbon emissions for a long time.
    - unchocked 7y ago
      Yes, and if we were talking about releasing fossil water into the atmosphere there might be something to the comparison. But water emissions from a hydrogen car are just moving existing water around and don't compound over time. It's minuscule compared to the hydrologic cycle even over desert regions.

unlinked_dll 7y ago

Just browsed google maps. By my count there are more public EV chargers in a mile radius of my house (east bay) than hydrogen fuel stations in San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties combined. It appears that even among early adopters of new energy sources, the market has spoken.

dev_tty01 7y ago
Hmmm. We could use this same reasoning to prove that the market has spoken in favor of gasoline instead of electricity... Not really a relevant measure when technologies are in transition.
- mikestew 7y ago
  Every house on my block can supply my car with electricity, and I don’t think our neighborhood is unusual. Knocking on someone’s door to borrow a cup of hydrogen would probably be less productive. Borrowing a gallon of gas might be possible, assuming my neighbor hasn’t purchased an electric mower.

gok 7y ago

I have to imagine that a large part of the interest in fuel cells comes from its defense applications (particularly for submarines). It's been clear for years that for cars it's a total dead end.

tobyhinloopen 7y ago

They’re wrong

syntaxing 7y ago

I'm not entirely sure if they're wrong. A lot of science for hydrogen fuel cell has not really been studied. I'm curious if we put equal funding into fuel cells instead of battery, today's footing of fuel cell will be much more different. Some cool technology development is the nickel based catalyst (compared to Platinum) but the development is slow since the industrial application is small. Also, there are ways to use fossil fuels directly (with huge caveats) instead of the standard hydrogen gas fuel cells.

Reason077 7y ago
The problem with fuel cell vehicles isn’t really the fuel cells. It’s physics. And economics.
- syntaxing 7y ago
  Which part of the physics though? I am not entirely convinced that a standard hydrogen PEM fuel cell is the only way to generate energy for a car.
  - Reason077 7y ago
    Current fuel cells are said to be in the 40-60% efficiency range. That’s actually not bad, especially if you can do something with the waste heat. But when you look at the overall round-trip efficiency of the hydrogen lifecycle (production, compression/liquefaction, distribution, storage/leakage, compression again), it’s pretty woeful. Many estimates come in well below 20%. If we came up with a more efficient fuel cell, it wouldn’t improve the overall efficiency much.
    - Rury 7y ago
      I don't see efficiency as nearly problematic as most seem to make it out to be (as far as the physics goes). Estimates online roughly estimate that the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth in an hour is more than the entire world consumes in an year. Capturing just 0.0001% of that power would cover our needs. And I don't the worse efficiency of hydrogen being problematic in that regards.. but I can understand arguments regarding the economics.

epicureanideal 7y ago

I've heard people say that battery storage technology improves at 3% per year. What's the rate of improvement in high-pressure gas or liquefied gas storage? Is the weight of the container decreasing at 3%+ per year?

dboreham 7y ago

I thought the Hydrogen thing was a ruse to kill battery electric vehicles, years ago, invented by fossil fuel lobbyists. It works like this: Hydrogen seems plausibly usable, but nobody is sure. It allows continued use of internal combustion engines so you can carry on as normal for now. Then in 10 years when nobody has figured out how to make Hydrogen work it's too bad we didn't focus on battery electric. And of course you can repeat and rinse because perhaps in another 10 years Hydrogen may be made to work. We're two cycles in at this point.

mcot2 7y ago
It also serves to preserve the current refueling experience from fuel delivery to point of sale. Electric cars are mostly charged at home and at work/parking areas which flips everything on its head. There are a lot of industries threatened by this.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  One consideration is the current world political order is built around supplies of oil. Battery powered transport dramatically changes that.
taneq 7y ago
That was definitely part of it. There was an industry-wide push to work on a "hydrogen economy" as a stall to stave off the CARB regulation which was going to force a certain percentage of vehicle sales to be electric. It did make more sense in the late 90s when the predominant battery tech was NiMH. Fuel cells were actually competitive on price and performance, but can't really hold a candle to modern LiPoly or LiIon batteries. U.S. car manufacturers dropped fuel cells like a hot potato as soon as the CARB mandate was repealed, and crushed their BEVs to destroy any evidence.
woodandsteel 7y ago
But the strategy failed because enough companies went ahead with battery electrics.
- 7y ago

Animats 7y ago

Toyota is still pushing that? Despite the terrible sales figures?[1] The Toyota Mirai has been on sale in the US for over three years now, and the sales are dropping. Even though they throw in three years of hydrogen. [1] http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-mirai/ http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-mira...

legohead 7y ago

And what do you use to make Hydrogen? Do fuel cell cars have instant torque like EVs? We recently got an EV, and whenever I drive my gas car, the delay from the gas pedal is extremely annoying now.

dingo_bat 7y ago
Fuel cell cars are basically EVs with small batteries, that are charged by the fuel cell. I guess the driving characteristics will match other EVs.

noipv4 7y ago

Excellent belief Toyota! now start experimenting with some Lithium Ion batteries and a motor. Your neighbor Mitsubishi might help you with those.

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

... don't all fuel cells currently known become unusable after 100k miles or less?

dingo_bat 7y ago

Even if hydrogen is the future, Toyota must realize that the present is battery electric. They can continue research on future tech while they rise to the market demands in the present.

known 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car has more details

nickik 7y ago

If anything methanol would be a sensible replacement for cars. Much clearer transition path and same end result. But in personal transportation both of those will be a tiny part of the market. Alternative fuels transition should have started 30ish years ago.