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I own a Corolla Hybrid which gives 57 MPG combined and am pretty happy with it considering I got it under $25K. Now Toyota knew that their Hybrid electric syste

I own a Corolla Hybrid which gives 57 MPG combined and am pretty happy with it considering I got it under $25K. Now Toyota knew that their Hybrid electric systems are working great as they are a leader in it and selling millions of such vehicles over the years and still they have not trusted the electric batteries enough and went on Hydrogen fuel cell side. Very perplexing to me!

addicted 5y ago
My, possibly mistaken, understanding has been that the deep dive into hydrogen was a broader National level push in Japan. If I’m not mistaken, the idea I believe was that if they settled on and developed hydrogen infrastructure, that would power not just cars, but also heavy machinery, etc that other parts of the Honda/Toyota/Mitsubishi/etc conglomerates could use.
- slownews45 5y ago
  This might be it, but it bled over into their internal efforts and they got too focused on the political side and less on what would work for customers. Politicians like hydrogen because if you ignore all the crap to get their (drilling for fossil fuels, separation, energy use in compression, transport, capital costs of building networks etc) you get that picture of water out of a tailpipe. The physics of it remain very poor.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    There’s a gas field in disputed area in East China Sea, which some says could produce hydrogen at scale, and energy self sufficiency had been an ambition of the country for … some time. There’s no equivalent oil field or Uranium deposit.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      Most of the clean hydrogen production schemes I've seen are pipe dreams or scams, but happy to be shown something here. As a point of ref we have relatively clean electricity generation already (hydro, solar, wind, nuclear) depending on what you count. Any indication how close to production this east china sea resource is? How willing China is to let Japan develop it or is it already well developed? Again - these are often pipe dream type ideas.
      - numpad0 5y ago
        It’s not happening, and there’s zero reason China is willing to give in, but sort of remains as an ambition. Yeah pipe dream is probably spot on. I think it has more to do with external independence/isolationism, than about environments theme, carrying over from the century before. I don’t understand why the government just go double down on nuclear fuel cycle concept but maybe there are too much political complications in it.
    - Cieplak 5y ago
      @numpad0 Is it the Chunxiao gas field [1] that you’re thinking of? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunxiao_gas_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunxiao_gas_field
- parserfly 5y ago
  Same understanding. Is there any credible report about this? It seems like a nation-level scanadal. Singlehandedly may have created a trillion dollar market cap for Tesla.
slownews45 5y ago
Exactly this. The prius was AMAZING. Their other hybrids also great. They had aero down, ev engines down, power management down. It's so weird to see them fight EV's so hard for so long.
- varjag 5y ago
  It's a safe bet some top brass in the company was playing a visionary with hydrogen.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    It was apparently a push by the Japanese government.
    - varjag 5y ago
      One may wonder where the Japanese government got this idea from..
- sjburt 5y ago
  One of the arguments is that if battery production is limited it's better to spread the batteries out over a larger number of vehicles. For example, the RAV4 Hybrid has a 1.6KWH battery (and NiMH to boot), the RAV4 Prime (plug-in with 42 miles of EV range) has a 16KWH battery, a similar Model Y has an 75 KWH battery.
pryelluw 5y ago
My next car is a hybrid Corolla (current is a regular one). I live the damn things. Hopefully the hybrid is offered as a hatchback as well.
yobbo 5y ago
> considering I got it under $25K Doesn't this answer the question? Batteries were and are still too expensive.
- gordon_freeman 5y ago
  First Prius with Hybrid system and electric batteries launched in 1997. So if Toyota would have followed its Kaizen/Continuous Improvement philosophy to improve electric batteries for last 24 years, they would have been way ahead in electrification especially battery tech and efficiency. That's the point.

addicted 5y ago

My, possibly mistaken, understanding has been that the deep dive into hydrogen was a broader National level push in Japan. If I’m not mistaken, the idea I believe was that if they settled on and developed hydrogen infrastructure, that would power not just cars, but also heavy machinery, etc that other parts of the Honda/Toyota/Mitsubishi/etc conglomerates could use.

slownews45 5y ago
This might be it, but it bled over into their internal efforts and they got too focused on the political side and less on what would work for customers. Politicians like hydrogen because if you ignore all the crap to get their (drilling for fossil fuels, separation, energy use in compression, transport, capital costs of building networks etc) you get that picture of water out of a tailpipe. The physics of it remain very poor.
- numpad0 5y ago
  There’s a gas field in disputed area in East China Sea, which some says could produce hydrogen at scale, and energy self sufficiency had been an ambition of the country for … some time. There’s no equivalent oil field or Uranium deposit.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    Most of the clean hydrogen production schemes I've seen are pipe dreams or scams, but happy to be shown something here. As a point of ref we have relatively clean electricity generation already (hydro, solar, wind, nuclear) depending on what you count. Any indication how close to production this east china sea resource is? How willing China is to let Japan develop it or is it already well developed? Again - these are often pipe dream type ideas.
    - numpad0 5y ago
      It’s not happening, and there’s zero reason China is willing to give in, but sort of remains as an ambition. Yeah pipe dream is probably spot on. I think it has more to do with external independence/isolationism, than about environments theme, carrying over from the century before. I don’t understand why the government just go double down on nuclear fuel cycle concept but maybe there are too much political complications in it.
  - Cieplak 5y ago
    @numpad0 Is it the Chunxiao gas field [1] that you’re thinking of? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunxiao_gas_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunxiao_gas_field
parserfly 5y ago
Same understanding. Is there any credible report about this? It seems like a nation-level scanadal. Singlehandedly may have created a trillion dollar market cap for Tesla.

slownews45 5y ago

Exactly this. The prius was AMAZING. Their other hybrids also great. They had aero down, ev engines down, power management down. It's so weird to see them fight EV's so hard for so long.

varjag 5y ago
It's a safe bet some top brass in the company was playing a visionary with hydrogen.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  It was apparently a push by the Japanese government.
  - varjag 5y ago
    One may wonder where the Japanese government got this idea from..
sjburt 5y ago
One of the arguments is that if battery production is limited it's better to spread the batteries out over a larger number of vehicles. For example, the RAV4 Hybrid has a 1.6KWH battery (and NiMH to boot), the RAV4 Prime (plug-in with 42 miles of EV range) has a 16KWH battery, a similar Model Y has an 75 KWH battery.

pryelluw 5y ago

My next car is a hybrid Corolla (current is a regular one). I live the damn things. Hopefully the hybrid is offered as a hatchback as well.

yobbo 5y ago

> considering I got it under $25K Doesn't this answer the question? Batteries were and are still too expensive.

gordon_freeman 5y ago
First Prius with Hybrid system and electric batteries launched in 1997. So if Toyota would have followed its Kaizen/Continuous Improvement philosophy to improve electric batteries for last 24 years, they would have been way ahead in electrification especially battery tech and efficiency. That's the point.