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This has to be Toyota’s biggest and weirdest hang up. The insistence that hydrogen cars are a viable future, and the lobbying against full BEV just feels like

by dagmx 2y ago

This has to be Toyota’s biggest and weirdest hang up. The insistence that hydrogen cars are a viable future, and the lobbying against full BEV just feels like they’re constantly digging their heels in on something that they can’t actually prove in the market in any meaningful way. The state of hydrogen refueling alone is awful. Transporting it, storing it and maintaining the stations is awful. Convenience versus electric for home charging is awful. Toyota really haven’t provided a meaningful argument for why this is the best route beyond just the cost of making the BEVs

nicce 2y ago
> Toyota really haven’t provided a meaningful argument for why this is the best route beyond just the cost of making the BEVs Does it really need one? It is not possible in theory to replace all traditional cars with electric cars with the current battery technology. There isn't enough materials on the planet. Currently it is just luxury for the wealthiest, if we look the global level.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > it is not possible in theory to replace all traditional cars with electric cars with the current battery technology. There isn't enough materials on the planet This is not true [1]. And that estimate assumes battery chemistries don't change (or vary), which is also obviously nonsense. [1] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-v...
- danans 2y ago
  > Currently it is just luxury for the wealthiest, if we look the global level. Today, in the developing world, traditional and highly polluting 2-stroke engine powered tuk tuks, driven by quite poor people, are being replaced by electric versions. I asked one such driver recently why he went electric. He said it was cheaper to operate.
  - djtango 2y ago
    The image of London being overrun with tuk tuks made me chuckle
- dagmx 2y ago
  Can you back up your assertion? I can go out and buy a BEV at most common price points compared to ICE vehicles, so it’s definitely not a luxury for the wealthiest. Even in very low income countries, there are now EV autorikshaws / tuktuks etc and EV mopeds. Ignoring the used market of course since that’s a factor of time. Also what makes you believe that we can’t actually manufacture enough? Would you have credible links to that effect? Finally, even if BEV was unsustainable, why would hydrogen be the answer? Do you know how difficult it is to produce, transport and store Hydrogen sufficiently to be a worthwhile alternative? Toyota has been trying WITH massive government funding going back to when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California and still couldn’t make it happen.
  - nicce 2y ago
    There isn't enough cobalt available. [1] Currently Tesla's, for example still uses around 5% cobalt for their batteries, while they have tried to get rid of it. Even then, if we manage to replace that completely for every manufacturer, we have lithium only for around 2,8 billion batteries. Average lifetime for lithium battery is 10 years. We need to be able to perfectly recycle the batteris in order to sustain them, which is not currently happening [2]. But I have to correct my initial statement, practically lithium can be there, but it assumes that we mine it from the bottom of the oceans or the environmental impact is reasonable when mining it. > I can go out and buy a BEV at most common price points compared to ICE vehicles, so it’s definitely not a luxury for the wealthiest. That is likely from the U.S. or European perspective. We need to note Africa and Asia as well. In Southern Europe the cost of the EV vehicle is already out of reach for most of the people. [1]: https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf [2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032114002457 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... Some summaries about the second paper (which is quite new and thorough) (it estimates current reserves, production rate and the possible battery size): To put this range in context estimates of available lithium resources range from 4 to 22 million tonnes, with the USGS estimating 13 million tonnes of lithium reserves. However, significantly more lithium may be available if lithium prices increase. Yaksic and Tilton [9] estimate that, at a cost of between $1.40 and $2 per lb of lithium carbonate, 22 million tonnes of lithium is available. However, they also estimate that at a cost of between $7 and $10 per lb of lithium carbonate, lithium can be extracted from seawater, more than doubling their estimate of available lithium. Given the conservative nature of common reserve estimates, and the resulting behaviour that these estimates typically increase over time, it is practical to assume the latest reserve estimate as a lower bound for estimates of future lithium availability. Given the current USGS lithium reserve estimate of 13 Mt, and the conservative nature of these types of estimate it is reasonable to discount those estimates in Fig. 4.5 that are lower than 13 Mt. This leaves the upper estimate provided by Rade and Andersson [20], the Gruber et al. [18] estimate, and the Yaksic and Tilton [9] estimate. This gives a range of 13 Mt to 22 Mt.17 for future availability of lithium. ---- The estimated range of future demand is many times greater than current supply. While this is challenging there is no evidence that future production cannot increase at a sufficient pace. Though long term exponential growth in lithium production would be unsustainable, if growth could be sustained over the next two decades, meeting future demand may be possible. Supporting this optimism are the significant resource estimates for lithium seen in Fig. 5.1, though these estimates make no assessment of how easy these resources are to access, and over what timescales they can be produced. --- The paper assumed that EVs have 16–35 kW batteries on average. If you can access it, it is highly detailed. It also assumes that getting lithium from the bottom of the oceans is uncertain. Also: The recovery of lithium from spent batteries remains a niche market [44], and the battery industry does not currently produce batteries using recycled material [48].
- rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
  > There isn't enough materials on the planet There is more than enough lithium on the planet for it. Additionally, there's growing recycling technology and significant advances in battery technology and engineering the vehicle itself to be more efficient with the battery it's tied to. Structural and management systems for example. There's also growing research and use cases for second-life applications for batteries no longer useful for an automotive application such as additional grid storage. Some key applications for this include grid balancing and lesson length of outages.
  - hedora 2y ago
    I worked this out a while back, based on the percentage of the earth’s crust that is lithium and the percentage of a car that is lithium. I worked out that you could cover > 10% of the planet with EVs if Lithium was the only bottleneck resource. The bigger problem is the environmental impact of extracting the lithium. My guess is that desalination plants would be a big part of my plan to cover the planet with EVs. (We’ll probably need desalination anyway because we keep electing politicians that are intentionally causing increasingly severe droughts).
    - rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
      They often mention the environmental implicat of lithium mining. I wonder how that compares to the environmental impact of green house gasses though.
austin-cheney 2y ago
I suspect the answer is maintenance. Maintenance is the primary reason I am not buying an electric. God forbid something trivial break and I have to spend half the remaining value of the car to make it run again. My ridiculously cheap KIA won the top award for maintainability by JD Power the year it came out beating out the high dollar brands. I never have to replace anything on it except tires, the battery, and windshield wipers. If I did have to replace something critical, though, I know it would be cheap. The car is 8 years old too. I know hydrogen has a far lower energy compression compared to gasoline, but the idea that its always clean, even cleaner than electric, is appealing. Its also appealing that it refuels quickly, like gasoline, which is another big turn off for electric.
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  I'm curious why you think maintenance of a hydrogen car will be like a gasoline car instead of an electric car.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  EV maintenance is far easier and cheaper than ICE vehicle maintenance.
  - jekkeyjoke 2y ago
    They are equivalent. ICE have more parts but they are cheaper; EVs have fewer but vastly more expensive parts. Also, EVs are luxury vehicles so you get walloped with the rich person rates from the dealers. Give it another 20 years then EVs will be overall cheaper.
- tuvang 2y ago
  I get what you mean by EVs having high cost components but low maintenance is usually used as an argument for EVs. As long as nothing breaks they are very cheap to run in terms of both maintenance and fuel.
rainsford 2y ago
I agree the concept doesn't seem to be proving out in the real world, but there's an obvious use case for car owners who can't charge an EV at home. If you don't have home charging for whatever reason, doing from a gasoline car to an EV is a nontrivial convenience downgrade when it comes to "refueling". Fast charging has helped somewhat, but it's still considerably slower than refueling a gas car and still not great for the battery to do it all the time. Hydrogen in theory solves that problem by replicating the gas car experience for those drivers. At this point though it does seem more likely that the home charging problem will be solved for more people before hydrogen cars become practical for the same user base. What's interesting to me is thinking about why this is the case, and it I think it comes down to relatively low pressure for drivers to switch away from gas cars. For drivers who can charge an EV at home, that's actually a big convenience upgrade and so drives EV sales. But for drivers who can't charge an EV at home, there's very little practical reason to switch away from a gas car. I'm sure some of them care about the environmental benefits of doing so, but that's probably not a sufficient motivator to switch on its own given how big of a purchase a car is.
- dagmx 2y ago
  Faster refueling is definitely a big one but the refueling state for hydrogen is abysmal. That’s after significant government and corporate funding.Toyota would need to be like Tesla and really bootstrap their refueling infrastructure for those people converting from gas but not going to EV, like you said. I suspect most hydrogen drivers are more interested in the cost savings on gas/vehicle than the environmental impact. The verge did a special on hydrogen cars recently and every owner they talked to basically credited cost over any other factor.
- atmavatar 2y ago
  The EV refueling problem seems like an easy one to solve: create industry standard, modular, and replaceable battery cells. Refueling is done by swapping-out low charge battery cells for fully-charged battery cells. If designed properly, the swapping could be done quickly and easily, making the overall refueling of an EV vehicle at least as fast as filling a gas tank. The cost of refueling would include the price of the charge itself plus some moderate fee to amortize the cost of replacing cells that go bad, which likely would still be cheaper than the cost of gasoline. The refueling station itself could either constantly charge the battery cells on hand or choose to keep a larger number of backup cells and charge exclusively during periods of cheaper electricity - whichever ends up being more cost effective.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I have observed the reverse - lobbying by the BEV industry (and pro BEV activists online) against hydrogen. Personally, I think hybrids, PHEVs, and hydrogen are better because they can be refilled quickly. I also think battery electric cars are way too expensive to repair in accidents. And having had to deal with a battery replacement out of warranty, I wasn’t happy with the experience of battling the company to not pay enormous amounts. Also hydrogen refueling might be better if it received the same investment, subsidies, etc. It doesn’t seem fair to critique the current state of things when it could be different.

by dagmx 2y ago

nicce 2y ago

> Toyota really haven’t provided a meaningful argument for why this is the best route beyond just the cost of making the BEVs Does it really need one? It is not possible in theory to replace all traditional cars with electric cars with the current battery technology. There isn't enough materials on the planet. Currently it is just luxury for the wealthiest, if we look the global level.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> it is not possible in theory to replace all traditional cars with electric cars with the current battery technology. There isn't enough materials on the planet This is not true [1]. And that estimate assumes battery chemistries don't change (or vary), which is also obviously nonsense. [1] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-v...
danans 2y ago
> Currently it is just luxury for the wealthiest, if we look the global level. Today, in the developing world, traditional and highly polluting 2-stroke engine powered tuk tuks, driven by quite poor people, are being replaced by electric versions. I asked one such driver recently why he went electric. He said it was cheaper to operate.
- djtango 2y ago
  The image of London being overrun with tuk tuks made me chuckle
dagmx 2y ago
Can you back up your assertion? I can go out and buy a BEV at most common price points compared to ICE vehicles, so it’s definitely not a luxury for the wealthiest. Even in very low income countries, there are now EV autorikshaws / tuktuks etc and EV mopeds. Ignoring the used market of course since that’s a factor of time. Also what makes you believe that we can’t actually manufacture enough? Would you have credible links to that effect? Finally, even if BEV was unsustainable, why would hydrogen be the answer? Do you know how difficult it is to produce, transport and store Hydrogen sufficiently to be a worthwhile alternative? Toyota has been trying WITH massive government funding going back to when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California and still couldn’t make it happen.
- nicce 2y ago
  There isn't enough cobalt available. [1] Currently Tesla's, for example still uses around 5% cobalt for their batteries, while they have tried to get rid of it. Even then, if we manage to replace that completely for every manufacturer, we have lithium only for around 2,8 billion batteries. Average lifetime for lithium battery is 10 years. We need to be able to perfectly recycle the batteris in order to sustain them, which is not currently happening [2]. But I have to correct my initial statement, practically lithium can be there, but it assumes that we mine it from the bottom of the oceans or the environmental impact is reasonable when mining it. > I can go out and buy a BEV at most common price points compared to ICE vehicles, so it’s definitely not a luxury for the wealthiest. That is likely from the U.S. or European perspective. We need to note Africa and Asia as well. In Southern Europe the cost of the EV vehicle is already out of reach for most of the people. [1]: https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf [2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032114002457 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... Some summaries about the second paper (which is quite new and thorough) (it estimates current reserves, production rate and the possible battery size): To put this range in context estimates of available lithium resources range from 4 to 22 million tonnes, with the USGS estimating 13 million tonnes of lithium reserves. However, significantly more lithium may be available if lithium prices increase. Yaksic and Tilton [9] estimate that, at a cost of between $1.40 and $2 per lb of lithium carbonate, 22 million tonnes of lithium is available. However, they also estimate that at a cost of between $7 and $10 per lb of lithium carbonate, lithium can be extracted from seawater, more than doubling their estimate of available lithium. Given the conservative nature of common reserve estimates, and the resulting behaviour that these estimates typically increase over time, it is practical to assume the latest reserve estimate as a lower bound for estimates of future lithium availability. Given the current USGS lithium reserve estimate of 13 Mt, and the conservative nature of these types of estimate it is reasonable to discount those estimates in Fig. 4.5 that are lower than 13 Mt. This leaves the upper estimate provided by Rade and Andersson [20], the Gruber et al. [18] estimate, and the Yaksic and Tilton [9] estimate. This gives a range of 13 Mt to 22 Mt.17 for future availability of lithium. ---- The estimated range of future demand is many times greater than current supply. While this is challenging there is no evidence that future production cannot increase at a sufficient pace. Though long term exponential growth in lithium production would be unsustainable, if growth could be sustained over the next two decades, meeting future demand may be possible. Supporting this optimism are the significant resource estimates for lithium seen in Fig. 5.1, though these estimates make no assessment of how easy these resources are to access, and over what timescales they can be produced. --- The paper assumed that EVs have 16–35 kW batteries on average. If you can access it, it is highly detailed. It also assumes that getting lithium from the bottom of the oceans is uncertain. Also: The recovery of lithium from spent batteries remains a niche market [44], and the battery industry does not currently produce batteries using recycled material [48].
rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
> There isn't enough materials on the planet There is more than enough lithium on the planet for it. Additionally, there's growing recycling technology and significant advances in battery technology and engineering the vehicle itself to be more efficient with the battery it's tied to. Structural and management systems for example. There's also growing research and use cases for second-life applications for batteries no longer useful for an automotive application such as additional grid storage. Some key applications for this include grid balancing and lesson length of outages.
- hedora 2y ago
  I worked this out a while back, based on the percentage of the earth’s crust that is lithium and the percentage of a car that is lithium. I worked out that you could cover > 10% of the planet with EVs if Lithium was the only bottleneck resource. The bigger problem is the environmental impact of extracting the lithium. My guess is that desalination plants would be a big part of my plan to cover the planet with EVs. (We’ll probably need desalination anyway because we keep electing politicians that are intentionally causing increasingly severe droughts).
  - rUsHeYaFuBu 2y ago
    They often mention the environmental implicat of lithium mining. I wonder how that compares to the environmental impact of green house gasses though.

austin-cheney 2y ago

I suspect the answer is maintenance. Maintenance is the primary reason I am not buying an electric. God forbid something trivial break and I have to spend half the remaining value of the car to make it run again. My ridiculously cheap KIA won the top award for maintainability by JD Power the year it came out beating out the high dollar brands. I never have to replace anything on it except tires, the battery, and windshield wipers. If I did have to replace something critical, though, I know it would be cheap. The car is 8 years old too. I know hydrogen has a far lower energy compression compared to gasoline, but the idea that its always clean, even cleaner than electric, is appealing. Its also appealing that it refuels quickly, like gasoline, which is another big turn off for electric.

philipwhiuk 2y ago
I'm curious why you think maintenance of a hydrogen car will be like a gasoline car instead of an electric car.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
HDThoreaun 2y ago
EV maintenance is far easier and cheaper than ICE vehicle maintenance.
- jekkeyjoke 2y ago
  They are equivalent. ICE have more parts but they are cheaper; EVs have fewer but vastly more expensive parts. Also, EVs are luxury vehicles so you get walloped with the rich person rates from the dealers. Give it another 20 years then EVs will be overall cheaper.
tuvang 2y ago
I get what you mean by EVs having high cost components but low maintenance is usually used as an argument for EVs. As long as nothing breaks they are very cheap to run in terms of both maintenance and fuel.

rainsford 2y ago

I agree the concept doesn't seem to be proving out in the real world, but there's an obvious use case for car owners who can't charge an EV at home. If you don't have home charging for whatever reason, doing from a gasoline car to an EV is a nontrivial convenience downgrade when it comes to "refueling". Fast charging has helped somewhat, but it's still considerably slower than refueling a gas car and still not great for the battery to do it all the time. Hydrogen in theory solves that problem by replicating the gas car experience for those drivers. At this point though it does seem more likely that the home charging problem will be solved for more people before hydrogen cars become practical for the same user base. What's interesting to me is thinking about why this is the case, and it I think it comes down to relatively low pressure for drivers to switch away from gas cars. For drivers who can charge an EV at home, that's actually a big convenience upgrade and so drives EV sales. But for drivers who can't charge an EV at home, there's very little practical reason to switch away from a gas car. I'm sure some of them care about the environmental benefits of doing so, but that's probably not a sufficient motivator to switch on its own given how big of a purchase a car is.

dagmx 2y ago
Faster refueling is definitely a big one but the refueling state for hydrogen is abysmal. That’s after significant government and corporate funding.Toyota would need to be like Tesla and really bootstrap their refueling infrastructure for those people converting from gas but not going to EV, like you said. I suspect most hydrogen drivers are more interested in the cost savings on gas/vehicle than the environmental impact. The verge did a special on hydrogen cars recently and every owner they talked to basically credited cost over any other factor.
atmavatar 2y ago
The EV refueling problem seems like an easy one to solve: create industry standard, modular, and replaceable battery cells. Refueling is done by swapping-out low charge battery cells for fully-charged battery cells. If designed properly, the swapping could be done quickly and easily, making the overall refueling of an EV vehicle at least as fast as filling a gas tank. The cost of refueling would include the price of the charge itself plus some moderate fee to amortize the cost of replacing cells that go bad, which likely would still be cheaper than the cost of gasoline. The refueling station itself could either constantly charge the battery cells on hand or choose to keep a larger number of backup cells and charge exclusively during periods of cheaper electricity - whichever ends up being more cost effective.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

I have observed the reverse - lobbying by the BEV industry (and pro BEV activists online) against hydrogen. Personally, I think hybrids, PHEVs, and hydrogen are better because they can be refilled quickly. I also think battery electric cars are way too expensive to repair in accidents. And having had to deal with a battery replacement out of warranty, I wasn’t happy with the experience of battling the company to not pay enormous amounts. Also hydrogen refueling might be better if it received the same investment, subsidies, etc. It doesn’t seem fair to critique the current state of things when it could be different.