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I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work. They have no domestic oil production, an

I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work. They have no domestic oil production, and so few coal mines as to basically be irrelevant: all their fossil fuel is imported. Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce themselves, literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency, which is a big part of why they keep trying to make it work. And yeah, the math says it's physically impossible to make it work without constant refueling, but again: it's Japan. The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there. Hydrogen, despite this article's claim, is actually perfect for Japan. Any tanker of import fuel saved is CO2 saved both on the tanker's transit, and on that fuel getting burned, but at the same time: it's also perfect much perfect only for Japan.

jfengel 4y ago
They're a car company committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. They are market leaders in hybrid cars, but have been surpassed in all electric. So they're not a fossil fuel company but their interests are aligned.
- jojobas 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with internal combustion per se, if electrolysis+ICE works out cheaper than battery in terms of lithium/rare earths/whatever there is no fundamental objection to it.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Wouldn’t ICEs be worse for local pollution?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryao 4y ago
      There is a hypothetical internal combustion engine that burns hydrogen directly. I think that the other poster was talking about that. Unfortunately, it is not just inefficient, but also has a major rust problem. It also would still generate NOx.
    - gruez 4y ago
      What pollution would hydrogen/oxygen combustion produce?
      - stephen_g 4y ago
        NOx is formed from combustion in air, from the nitrogen that makes up much of the air. If you could feed it pure oxygen then you'd avoid that but nobody's going to want a car with an oxidiser tank onboard.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    That seems completely implausible though based on the losses. An ICE tops out at 25% efficient or so. A hydrogen fuel cell is 40-60% and efficient and that's likely to rise. If you're bothering with fueling cars with hydrogen gas, you might as well make them electric and get a huge range boost for free (and way more torque, less maintenance etc.) There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines.
    - shagie 4y ago
      > There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines. In commenting in another spot - https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck goes through many of the engineering and practicality reasons behind that.
  - scottLobster 4y ago
    The fundamental objection is quite real: Distribution. Hydrogen, due to the small size of the atoms, requires perfect seals and even then can slowly penetrate even metal containers. Cooling it enough to liquify it requires extreme temperatures and pressures as to destroy any efficiency gains. Someone has to build that infrastructure, and do it on a national scale, for hydrogen to have even a chance at beating EVs/Hybrid/Gasoline cars. Say what you will about EVs, at least we already have an electric grid.
    - xxs 4y ago
      Worse, hydrogen permeates most metals and embrittles[0] them, too. Synthetic methane produced by electricity is likely still superior to hydrogen with both suffering terrible inefficiencies, at least methane is easy to transport. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  It was my understanding that they were surpassed in all-electric because they weren't trying to compete in all-electric. Moreover, truck manufacturers like Volvo and Mercedes are aiming for hydrogen, their reasoning being that batteries aren't feasible for commercial trucks. Be honest: your "%100" figure was just made up.
- PakG1 4y ago
  Their various significant investments don't strike me as being committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. Rather, they're simply evolving and the internal combustion engine influences their evolution. But I see no evidence that they're committed to it because they like it in particular. It's just what they've been good at already, and hydrogen interfacing with it may make sense.
  - gumby 4y ago
    Toyoda himself has publicly stated he's an internal combusion fan and is not interested in all-electric vehicles: https://www.autoblog.com/2021/09/21/toyota-toyoda-questions-combustion-engine-bans/ https://www.autoblog.com/2021/09/21/toyota-toyoda-questions-... https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/how-the-world-s-most-valuable-carmaker-fell-perilously-behind-on-electric-vehicles/ar-AA16wANy https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/how-the-world-s-most-va... https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims-to-save-internal-combustion-engine-from-extinction/ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims... https://www.hotcars.com/why-toyota-is-investing-383-million-into-combustion-engines/ https://www.hotcars.com/why-toyota-is-investing-383-million-...
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      If you read the articles, his point is that the industry cannot completely switch over to EV production and bans aren't the right solution, considering how rapidly japanese cars have reduced their CO2 emissions. There simply isn't yet the battery production capability to ban ICE yet. Their hybrids and hydrogen are part of the all-in approach. Considering that, he claims, cars have cut CO2 by 24% in 20 years, the onus belongs on other industries to catch up, lest you hurt more people for less gain.
      - glandium 4y ago
        There also enough power production. To give an example, the Tokyo governor invited people to lower their heating devices and wear turtle necks to avoid exceeding the current capacity.
- kodachrome64 4y ago
  A hydrogen fuel cell engine relies on completely different principles than an ICE and would still require complete retooling of their powertrain manufacturing. If anything, their hybrid powertrains are closer in design to BEVs than FCEVs There are good reasons for hydrogen over batteries, like better range and short refuelling times. I'm not sure why there's a need for some nefarious motive.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    Fuel cell (and tank) is a different tech but car industry believe that it can be still manufactured at competitive cost and quality in Japan. It's hard to compete with Chinese massive amount of cheap batteries in Japan.
    - starfallg 4y ago
      Japan together with South Korea was a leader in NiMH and Lithium based battery chemistry during this period. So that wasn't the reason.
      - fomine3 4y ago
        Make it massively and cheaper is different to developing better one. So they now try to developing solid state battery but who knows will it success.
- shagie 4y ago
  > They're a car company committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. A vehicle running on hydrogen isn't an ICE. These are fuel cells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai This is an electric vehicle which generates power through hydrogen fuel cells rather than storing it as electrical energy in a battery (though it has a battery too). > Toyota's latest generation hybrid components were used extensively in the fuel cell powertrain, including the electric motor, power control and main battery. The electric traction motor delivers 113 kilowatts (152 hp; 154 PS) and 335 N⋅m (247 lbf⋅ft) of torque. The Mirai has a 245V (1.6 kWh) sealed nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) traction rechargeable battery pack, similar to the one used in the Camry hybrid. A question for Japan is "how do you store and refuel a car?" With a hydrogen station, it's a lot like a regular gas station in terms of space, process and time spent. They don't quite have the space for making large charging stations ( e.g. https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-largest-supercharger-station-mojave-desert/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-lar... ) which take longer and in turn require more land per car. There's also the "charging at home isn't as viable". https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,356.33h,86.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sypSo5_q8q471bP_HkTwBDA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,3... or https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,356.33h,86.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sypSo5_q8q471bP_HkTwBDA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,3... or https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1888588,138.697268,14z https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1888588,138.697268,14z
  - cameldrv 4y ago
    You can make a Hydrogen ICE. BMW even leased 100 of them about 15 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7
    - gruez 4y ago
      Right, but if they're essentially incompatible with fossil fuel ICEs, what relevance is there to this conversation? The only thing that binds them is that they combust, but there's no clear reason why fossil fuel companies would favor one technology just because it involves combustion.
- mc32 4y ago
  Unless they had insight into the future, Toyota has been exploring this technology a long time[1]. They started a developing fuel cell propulsion in 1992 --way before there was mainstream antipathy for fossil fuels. The more likely explanation is they sought alternative fuels and settled on Hydrogen and so, now, despite evidence and viability of battery electrics, they keep on pushing "their" solution probably with lots of influence from the sunk cost fallacy. [1] Recall "peak oil", before Fracking became viable, was a serious concern since the '70s and people thought fossil fuels would eventually become unaffordable to everyday consumers.
- danaris 4y ago
  It's less that they're committed to keeping the ICE, and more that they've seen that the market has passed them by with the push toward full-electric (I suspect they thought we'd be doing hybrid ICE-electric for much longer, which they're very good at). Hydrogen is their bet on being in on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing.
  - thworp 4y ago
    > the market has passed them by Sorry? Pure EVs are still below 15% of new sales in almost all major markets. Sure it's growing quickly but it's far from certain it won't peak at around 25%. A lot of people will probably re-evaluate their options in the next few years, where it looks like prices for charging stations will go up (no more credit-financed hypergrowth) and in some markets home electricity prices will stay high.
- sundvor 4y ago
  This. They've been fighting the EV transition tooth and nails, it really needs to be called out. I mean, how nice an EV would that new Insight of theirs just released have been? The design is gorgeous. Instead we get yet another hybrid, which makes sense in a good few use cases I guess - primarily related to charger availability - but just puts them further behind on the EV development experience curve. Edit: And their investments in Hydrogen, doubling down on it along with the Hybrid tech is indeed a great sunk cost fallacy example. Check Toyota's market share in Norway over the past few years for a fun example of consequences.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I’m curious how the calculations work here. I know that any individual battery electric car is better in terms of GHG emissions than any individual hybrid car. However, given the limited number of battery electric cars, and the limited production, battery electric cars will remain the minority of all cars at least until the end of this decade (probably even longer). Now my question is, en masse, since the production of hybrid cars are a lot more capable then battery electric, are we not better off (in terms of total GHG emissions) with as many hybrid cars as we could get? That is, don’t hybrid cars shave more GHG emissions just by the shear number of them? Of course I believe this is a moot question because we could save way more by focusing on public transit, and simply have fewer cars. After all: battery electric are more efficient than hydrogen, which are more efficient then hybrids, which are more efficient than ICE but transporting 20 people in 15 battery electric cars comes nowhere close to the efficiency of transporting these same 20 people in a single ICE bus.
    - dev_daftly 4y ago
      I can't find it right now, but a toyota engineer has actually discussed this. Toyota looks at it this way, especially since you are wasting significant battery capacity on BEV's that don't get utilized daily if the battery supports significantly longer range than daily commute.
      - runarberg 4y ago
roneythomas6 4y ago
The key here is Toyota is biggest employer in Japan and when you add its suppliers it's even bigger. Toyota very much wants an Hydrogen future so that they can retain those jobs.
- ryao 4y ago
  I imagine that Japanese labor laws are a major motivator for Toyota. From what I have heard of Japanese labor laws, salaried employees in Japan appear to be guaranteed employment for life. The result is that Toyota will not be able to fire its employees even if their jobs become obsolete, so finding a solution that keeps those jobs from being made obsolete is extremely important for Toyota.
- themitigating 4y ago
  I read this analysis last year about why Japan is so behind with EVs. The number of parts required is less then combustion and Japan's government is concerned about maintaining employment levels This article talks about the filler jobs and how the economy is stuck in the past. https://news.yahoo.com/japan-future-stuck-past-220130554.html https://news.yahoo.com/japan-future-stuck-past-220130554.htm... Annoyingly I can't find the source that went into why they are pushing EVs. Edit: To be clear that was the hypothesis of the source and they presented evidence that the government that backed it, like stressing job creation and the importance of the automotive industry, but there wasn't a smoking gun.
  - roneythomas6 4y ago
    Yup that is correct. I know what you are talking about. Japanese govt(MITI) is very much involved in Totyota’s future goals.
danans 4y ago
> I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? > Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work You have conflated Toyota with Japan there. Even in a society dominated by it's megacorps, they are not necessarily the same thing. After all, Nissan brought us the first mass market EV (and yes, they promptly punted on their first mover advantage). > Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce themselves, literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency, Any domestic production of hydrogen in Japan would have to be via water electrolysis with electricity, since they have basically no natural gas production. Since that's the case, why not just use the electricity directly and not pay the 40-50% penalty of electrolysis? > The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there. > Hydrogen, despite this article's claim, is actually perfect for Japan. The first statement contradicts the second, because one of the benefits of hydrogen over batteries is that range isn't much of an issue and refueling is fast. That's why the only place it might be viable in ground transport is in long haul trucking in the US. In Japan, a 200 mile EV would probably be more than sufficient, even for longer trips, for exactly the reason you state.
- narrator 4y ago
  Hydrogen will be the only thing that will work for long-haul aviation and large scale container shipping, in the form of ammonia (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokke/2021/10/05/ammonia-a-sustainable-fuel-option-for-shipping/?sh=7eb3c1357c00 https://www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokke/2021/10/05/ammonia-a-... ). that isn't synthetic fuel which is ridiculously inefficient to produce from electricity, even more so than hydrogen. Japan being an island, this might be important to them. Zero Avia (http://www.zeroavia.com http://www.zeroavia.com) is the leader in the hydrogen aviation space currently. The other thing about hydrogen is that you can refuel quickly. Otherwise, you're going to need a ridiculous number of charging stations to have the same amount of transportation just to deal with charging time alone. Can you imagine how long it would take to refuel a long-haul container ship and/or what kind of electricity infrastructure would be needed for that?
  - 4y ago
amluto 4y ago
This doesn’t make sense to me. Hydrogen is not an energy source — it’s a way to store energy and make it portable. So Japan could import hydrogen (which is not obviously any better than importing LNG or oil), or Japan could make it from domestic or imported energy sources (nuclear, solar, wind, imported oil, imported LNG, etc). Turning electricity into hydrogen and then into motive power for a car is dramatically less efficient than using a battery, and car commutes in Japan are on the short side, so huge batteries wouldn’t be as necessary. I don’t think petroleum-derived hydrogen is much more efficient, if at all, than just burning the petroleum in an ICE. So the only way this seems like a win for Japan is if electricity were cheap, battery EVs were not economical, and the loss associated with electrically synthesized hydrogen didn’t matter.
- mordymoop 4y ago
  > Turning electricity into hydrogen and then into motive power for a car is dramatically less efficient than using a battery This is true —- but the total quantity of battery storage potential is utterly dwarfed by the storage potential for gas, in subsurface storage reservoirs and salt caverns. You can store days worth of energy in batteries; you can store a winter’s worth of energy in gas. It’s not a matter of efficiency, it’s a matter of quantity. We do not, and will not, for decades, have the kind of battery storage required to support the grid.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    Storing hydrogen is substantially harder than storing stuff like methane, or CO2, or even O2. Hydrogen's atoms are so small they try to pass through the crystalline lattice of metals, making the hydrogen-enriched layer which is more fragile [1]. Your regular polymer hoses are much more permeable to hydrogen. Hydrogen gas burns with entirely infrared flame, not visible to human eyes [2]. Hydrogen, even highly compressed, is still very lightweight, so storing significant amounts requires either very high pressures, or liquefaction. Liquid hydrogen requires an uncomfortably low temperature of 20K, but starts to freeze into solid state at 14K. Hydrogen is the most efficient rocket fuel, there's no denying. For all other fuel applications, it's pretty problematic. [1]: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1727338 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1727338 [2]: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1997/ps1.html https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1997/ps1.html
readonthegoapp 4y ago
> I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? huh? what did i miss?
rippercushions 4y ago
> The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there. Citation needed. No, you don't need to go 300 miles on one charge/tank if you live in a big Japanese city, in fact you don't even need a car in that case. However, if you live in rural areas or need to travel long distances, 300 mi is not a lot to ask for: the main island of Honshu is >800 mi long and 300 won't even get you from Tokyo to Osaka.
- pezezin 4y ago
  People seem to forget that Japan is not only Kanto and Kansai. I live in Aomori and here everybody needs a car. I have to drive around 500 km per week, and I would really appreciate if my car would have better mileage.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    On your use case, you just need to plug in everyday, instead of go to gas station every week. Who often drive above 100km per day is rare in Japan even in rural area.
    - pezezin 4y ago
      Well, the only problem is that I don't have where to plug it, but sure, it is feasible. My neighbor drives a Nissan Leaf, and we had a co-worker with a Tesla, so I know it is possible.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
More lies and more deception: Japan has huge deposits of methan hydrate on sea floors it wants to mine.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanhydrat https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanhydrat And this is why hydrogen is on the shit list, all the roads lead to ever more mined carbs, blown into the atmosphere in one way or another. The roads to green hydrogen are riddled with conversions that make it economically unviable. Its the equivalent of a addict switching from heroin injection to a fetanyl patch. Yes, the process is cleaner, less dangerous, but the longterm bad effects are still there.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  No, it's more like a nation that was rolled into having a fuel dependency on other countries as suppliers trying to come up with ways to no longer be (as) dependent on countries like China or the US to keep the lights on and the cars going vroom. Also, pretending that emission reduction isn't worth the effort because it's not zero-emission is a perfect example of advocating for the worst possible solution by denying the merit of a transitional solution just because it's not the ultimate solution. The world's not going to improve with that attitude.
hbarka 4y ago
Not uniquely Japan. China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, in that order, lead the world in hydrogen fueling stations.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  That's not what I said, though. China and Germany have massive coal supplies, and oil pipelines at their disposal. They don't have to literally ship (with actual ships from other countries) anything in just to keep the cars going vroom. They'd benefit way more from real batteries rather than using hydrogen as the battery of choice.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency, which is a big part of why they keep trying to make it work. Exactly. Freedom isn't free. It's always mind boggling that HN doesn't get this despite this being a community in which paying more for energy sources we like is highly popular.

jfengel 4y ago

They're a car company committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. They are market leaders in hybrid cars, but have been surpassed in all electric. So they're not a fossil fuel company but their interests are aligned.

jojobas 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with internal combustion per se, if electrolysis+ICE works out cheaper than battery in terms of lithium/rare earths/whatever there is no fundamental objection to it.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Wouldn’t ICEs be worse for local pollution?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryao 4y ago
    There is a hypothetical internal combustion engine that burns hydrogen directly. I think that the other poster was talking about that. Unfortunately, it is not just inefficient, but also has a major rust problem. It also would still generate NOx.
  - gruez 4y ago
    What pollution would hydrogen/oxygen combustion produce?
    - stephen_g 4y ago
      NOx is formed from combustion in air, from the nitrogen that makes up much of the air. If you could feed it pure oxygen then you'd avoid that but nobody's going to want a car with an oxidiser tank onboard.
- XorNot 4y ago
  That seems completely implausible though based on the losses. An ICE tops out at 25% efficient or so. A hydrogen fuel cell is 40-60% and efficient and that's likely to rise. If you're bothering with fueling cars with hydrogen gas, you might as well make them electric and get a huge range boost for free (and way more torque, less maintenance etc.) There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines.
  - shagie 4y ago
    > There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines. In commenting in another spot - https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck goes through many of the engineering and practicality reasons behind that.
- scottLobster 4y ago
  The fundamental objection is quite real: Distribution. Hydrogen, due to the small size of the atoms, requires perfect seals and even then can slowly penetrate even metal containers. Cooling it enough to liquify it requires extreme temperatures and pressures as to destroy any efficiency gains. Someone has to build that infrastructure, and do it on a national scale, for hydrogen to have even a chance at beating EVs/Hybrid/Gasoline cars. Say what you will about EVs, at least we already have an electric grid.
  - xxs 4y ago
    Worse, hydrogen permeates most metals and embrittles[0] them, too. Synthetic methane produced by electricity is likely still superior to hydrogen with both suffering terrible inefficiencies, at least methane is easy to transport. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
SantalBlush 4y ago
It was my understanding that they were surpassed in all-electric because they weren't trying to compete in all-electric. Moreover, truck manufacturers like Volvo and Mercedes are aiming for hydrogen, their reasoning being that batteries aren't feasible for commercial trucks. Be honest: your "%100" figure was just made up.
PakG1 4y ago
Their various significant investments don't strike me as being committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. Rather, they're simply evolving and the internal combustion engine influences their evolution. But I see no evidence that they're committed to it because they like it in particular. It's just what they've been good at already, and hydrogen interfacing with it may make sense.
- gumby 4y ago
  Toyoda himself has publicly stated he's an internal combusion fan and is not interested in all-electric vehicles: https://www.autoblog.com/2021/09/21/toyota-toyoda-questions-combustion-engine-bans/ https://www.autoblog.com/2021/09/21/toyota-toyoda-questions-... https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/how-the-world-s-most-valuable-carmaker-fell-perilously-behind-on-electric-vehicles/ar-AA16wANy https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/how-the-world-s-most-va... https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims-to-save-internal-combustion-engine-from-extinction/ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims... https://www.hotcars.com/why-toyota-is-investing-383-million-into-combustion-engines/ https://www.hotcars.com/why-toyota-is-investing-383-million-...
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    If you read the articles, his point is that the industry cannot completely switch over to EV production and bans aren't the right solution, considering how rapidly japanese cars have reduced their CO2 emissions. There simply isn't yet the battery production capability to ban ICE yet. Their hybrids and hydrogen are part of the all-in approach. Considering that, he claims, cars have cut CO2 by 24% in 20 years, the onus belongs on other industries to catch up, lest you hurt more people for less gain.
    - glandium 4y ago
      There also enough power production. To give an example, the Tokyo governor invited people to lower their heating devices and wear turtle necks to avoid exceeding the current capacity.
kodachrome64 4y ago
A hydrogen fuel cell engine relies on completely different principles than an ICE and would still require complete retooling of their powertrain manufacturing. If anything, their hybrid powertrains are closer in design to BEVs than FCEVs There are good reasons for hydrogen over batteries, like better range and short refuelling times. I'm not sure why there's a need for some nefarious motive.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Fuel cell (and tank) is a different tech but car industry believe that it can be still manufactured at competitive cost and quality in Japan. It's hard to compete with Chinese massive amount of cheap batteries in Japan.
  - starfallg 4y ago
    Japan together with South Korea was a leader in NiMH and Lithium based battery chemistry during this period. So that wasn't the reason.
    - fomine3 4y ago
      Make it massively and cheaper is different to developing better one. So they now try to developing solid state battery but who knows will it success.
shagie 4y ago
> They're a car company committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. A vehicle running on hydrogen isn't an ICE. These are fuel cells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai This is an electric vehicle which generates power through hydrogen fuel cells rather than storing it as electrical energy in a battery (though it has a battery too). > Toyota's latest generation hybrid components were used extensively in the fuel cell powertrain, including the electric motor, power control and main battery. The electric traction motor delivers 113 kilowatts (152 hp; 154 PS) and 335 N⋅m (247 lbf⋅ft) of torque. The Mirai has a 245V (1.6 kWh) sealed nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) traction rechargeable battery pack, similar to the one used in the Camry hybrid. A question for Japan is "how do you store and refuel a car?" With a hydrogen station, it's a lot like a regular gas station in terms of space, process and time spent. They don't quite have the space for making large charging stations ( e.g. https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-largest-supercharger-station-mojave-desert/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-lar... ) which take longer and in turn require more land per car. There's also the "charging at home isn't as viable". https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,356.33h,86.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sypSo5_q8q471bP_HkTwBDA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,3... or https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,356.33h,86.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sypSo5_q8q471bP_HkTwBDA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,3... or https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1888588,138.697268,14z https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1888588,138.697268,14z
- cameldrv 4y ago
  You can make a Hydrogen ICE. BMW even leased 100 of them about 15 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7
  - gruez 4y ago
    Right, but if they're essentially incompatible with fossil fuel ICEs, what relevance is there to this conversation? The only thing that binds them is that they combust, but there's no clear reason why fossil fuel companies would favor one technology just because it involves combustion.
mc32 4y ago
Unless they had insight into the future, Toyota has been exploring this technology a long time[1]. They started a developing fuel cell propulsion in 1992 --way before there was mainstream antipathy for fossil fuels. The more likely explanation is they sought alternative fuels and settled on Hydrogen and so, now, despite evidence and viability of battery electrics, they keep on pushing "their" solution probably with lots of influence from the sunk cost fallacy. [1] Recall "peak oil", before Fracking became viable, was a serious concern since the '70s and people thought fossil fuels would eventually become unaffordable to everyday consumers.
danaris 4y ago
It's less that they're committed to keeping the ICE, and more that they've seen that the market has passed them by with the push toward full-electric (I suspect they thought we'd be doing hybrid ICE-electric for much longer, which they're very good at). Hydrogen is their bet on being in on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing.
- thworp 4y ago
  > the market has passed them by Sorry? Pure EVs are still below 15% of new sales in almost all major markets. Sure it's growing quickly but it's far from certain it won't peak at around 25%. A lot of people will probably re-evaluate their options in the next few years, where it looks like prices for charging stations will go up (no more credit-financed hypergrowth) and in some markets home electricity prices will stay high.
sundvor 4y ago
This. They've been fighting the EV transition tooth and nails, it really needs to be called out. I mean, how nice an EV would that new Insight of theirs just released have been? The design is gorgeous. Instead we get yet another hybrid, which makes sense in a good few use cases I guess - primarily related to charger availability - but just puts them further behind on the EV development experience curve. Edit: And their investments in Hydrogen, doubling down on it along with the Hybrid tech is indeed a great sunk cost fallacy example. Check Toyota's market share in Norway over the past few years for a fun example of consequences.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I’m curious how the calculations work here. I know that any individual battery electric car is better in terms of GHG emissions than any individual hybrid car. However, given the limited number of battery electric cars, and the limited production, battery electric cars will remain the minority of all cars at least until the end of this decade (probably even longer). Now my question is, en masse, since the production of hybrid cars are a lot more capable then battery electric, are we not better off (in terms of total GHG emissions) with as many hybrid cars as we could get? That is, don’t hybrid cars shave more GHG emissions just by the shear number of them? Of course I believe this is a moot question because we could save way more by focusing on public transit, and simply have fewer cars. After all: battery electric are more efficient than hydrogen, which are more efficient then hybrids, which are more efficient than ICE but transporting 20 people in 15 battery electric cars comes nowhere close to the efficiency of transporting these same 20 people in a single ICE bus.
  - dev_daftly 4y ago
    I can't find it right now, but a toyota engineer has actually discussed this. Toyota looks at it this way, especially since you are wasting significant battery capacity on BEV's that don't get utilized daily if the battery supports significantly longer range than daily commute.
    - runarberg 4y ago

roneythomas6 4y ago

The key here is Toyota is biggest employer in Japan and when you add its suppliers it's even bigger. Toyota very much wants an Hydrogen future so that they can retain those jobs.

ryao 4y ago
I imagine that Japanese labor laws are a major motivator for Toyota. From what I have heard of Japanese labor laws, salaried employees in Japan appear to be guaranteed employment for life. The result is that Toyota will not be able to fire its employees even if their jobs become obsolete, so finding a solution that keeps those jobs from being made obsolete is extremely important for Toyota.
themitigating 4y ago
I read this analysis last year about why Japan is so behind with EVs. The number of parts required is less then combustion and Japan's government is concerned about maintaining employment levels This article talks about the filler jobs and how the economy is stuck in the past. https://news.yahoo.com/japan-future-stuck-past-220130554.html https://news.yahoo.com/japan-future-stuck-past-220130554.htm... Annoyingly I can't find the source that went into why they are pushing EVs. Edit: To be clear that was the hypothesis of the source and they presented evidence that the government that backed it, like stressing job creation and the importance of the automotive industry, but there wasn't a smoking gun.
- roneythomas6 4y ago
  Yup that is correct. I know what you are talking about. Japanese govt(MITI) is very much involved in Totyota’s future goals.

danans 4y ago

> I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? > Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work You have conflated Toyota with Japan there. Even in a society dominated by it's megacorps, they are not necessarily the same thing. After all, Nissan brought us the first mass market EV (and yes, they promptly punted on their first mover advantage). > Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce themselves, literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency, Any domestic production of hydrogen in Japan would have to be via water electrolysis with electricity, since they have basically no natural gas production. Since that's the case, why not just use the electricity directly and not pay the 40-50% penalty of electrolysis? > The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there. > Hydrogen, despite this article's claim, is actually perfect for Japan. The first statement contradicts the second, because one of the benefits of hydrogen over batteries is that range isn't much of an issue and refueling is fast. That's why the only place it might be viable in ground transport is in long haul trucking in the US. In Japan, a 200 mile EV would probably be more than sufficient, even for longer trips, for exactly the reason you state.

narrator 4y ago
Hydrogen will be the only thing that will work for long-haul aviation and large scale container shipping, in the form of ammonia (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokke/2021/10/05/ammonia-a-sustainable-fuel-option-for-shipping/?sh=7eb3c1357c00 https://www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokke/2021/10/05/ammonia-a-... ). that isn't synthetic fuel which is ridiculously inefficient to produce from electricity, even more so than hydrogen. Japan being an island, this might be important to them. Zero Avia (http://www.zeroavia.com http://www.zeroavia.com) is the leader in the hydrogen aviation space currently. The other thing about hydrogen is that you can refuel quickly. Otherwise, you're going to need a ridiculous number of charging stations to have the same amount of transportation just to deal with charging time alone. Can you imagine how long it would take to refuel a long-haul container ship and/or what kind of electricity infrastructure would be needed for that?
- 4y ago

amluto 4y ago

This doesn’t make sense to me. Hydrogen is not an energy source — it’s a way to store energy and make it portable. So Japan could import hydrogen (which is not obviously any better than importing LNG or oil), or Japan could make it from domestic or imported energy sources (nuclear, solar, wind, imported oil, imported LNG, etc). Turning electricity into hydrogen and then into motive power for a car is dramatically less efficient than using a battery, and car commutes in Japan are on the short side, so huge batteries wouldn’t be as necessary. I don’t think petroleum-derived hydrogen is much more efficient, if at all, than just burning the petroleum in an ICE. So the only way this seems like a win for Japan is if electricity were cheap, battery EVs were not economical, and the loss associated with electrically synthesized hydrogen didn’t matter.

mordymoop 4y ago
> Turning electricity into hydrogen and then into motive power for a car is dramatically less efficient than using a battery This is true —- but the total quantity of battery storage potential is utterly dwarfed by the storage potential for gas, in subsurface storage reservoirs and salt caverns. You can store days worth of energy in batteries; you can store a winter’s worth of energy in gas. It’s not a matter of efficiency, it’s a matter of quantity. We do not, and will not, for decades, have the kind of battery storage required to support the grid.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Storing hydrogen is substantially harder than storing stuff like methane, or CO2, or even O2. Hydrogen's atoms are so small they try to pass through the crystalline lattice of metals, making the hydrogen-enriched layer which is more fragile [1]. Your regular polymer hoses are much more permeable to hydrogen. Hydrogen gas burns with entirely infrared flame, not visible to human eyes [2]. Hydrogen, even highly compressed, is still very lightweight, so storing significant amounts requires either very high pressures, or liquefaction. Liquid hydrogen requires an uncomfortably low temperature of 20K, but starts to freeze into solid state at 14K. Hydrogen is the most efficient rocket fuel, there's no denying. For all other fuel applications, it's pretty problematic. [1]: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1727338 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1727338 [2]: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1997/ps1.html https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1997/ps1.html

readonthegoapp 4y ago

> I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? huh? what did i miss?

rippercushions 4y ago

> The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there. Citation needed. No, you don't need to go 300 miles on one charge/tank if you live in a big Japanese city, in fact you don't even need a car in that case. However, if you live in rural areas or need to travel long distances, 300 mi is not a lot to ask for: the main island of Honshu is >800 mi long and 300 won't even get you from Tokyo to Osaka.

pezezin 4y ago
People seem to forget that Japan is not only Kanto and Kansai. I live in Aomori and here everybody needs a car. I have to drive around 500 km per week, and I would really appreciate if my car would have better mileage.
- fomine3 4y ago
  On your use case, you just need to plug in everyday, instead of go to gas station every week. Who often drive above 100km per day is rare in Japan even in rural area.
  - pezezin 4y ago
    Well, the only problem is that I don't have where to plug it, but sure, it is feasible. My neighbor drives a Nissan Leaf, and we had a co-worker with a Tesla, so I know it is possible.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

More lies and more deception: Japan has huge deposits of methan hydrate on sea floors it wants to mine.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanhydrat https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanhydrat And this is why hydrogen is on the shit list, all the roads lead to ever more mined carbs, blown into the atmosphere in one way or another. The roads to green hydrogen are riddled with conversions that make it economically unviable. Its the equivalent of a addict switching from heroin injection to a fetanyl patch. Yes, the process is cleaner, less dangerous, but the longterm bad effects are still there.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
No, it's more like a nation that was rolled into having a fuel dependency on other countries as suppliers trying to come up with ways to no longer be (as) dependent on countries like China or the US to keep the lights on and the cars going vroom. Also, pretending that emission reduction isn't worth the effort because it's not zero-emission is a perfect example of advocating for the worst possible solution by denying the merit of a transitional solution just because it's not the ultimate solution. The world's not going to improve with that attitude.

hbarka 4y ago

Not uniquely Japan. China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, in that order, lead the world in hydrogen fueling stations.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
That's not what I said, though. China and Germany have massive coal supplies, and oil pipelines at their disposal. They don't have to literally ship (with actual ships from other countries) anything in just to keep the cars going vroom. They'd benefit way more from real batteries rather than using hydrogen as the battery of choice.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

>literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency, which is a big part of why they keep trying to make it work. Exactly. Freedom isn't free. It's always mind boggling that HN doesn't get this despite this being a community in which paying more for energy sources we like is highly popular.