Toyota, Honda, Nissan and other Japanese automakers are serious about rolling out battery electric vehicles to catch up with the world’s frontrunners like Tesla and BYD
“We love battery EVs.”
Takero Kato, the executive in charge of electric vehicles at Toyota, said that not once, but twice, to emphasize what he considers the message at this year’s Tokyo auto show.
It’s a message ringing clear at the Tokyo Mobility Show, which will run through Nov. 5 at Tokyo Big Sight hall and where battery-powered electric vehicles are the star at practically every booth.
Maybe public perception is skewing my opinion, but Toyota had a massive head start on EVs with the first Gen Prius. Then they let that platform stagnate and bemoaned the advancement of EVs once Tesla had brought them to the market all in favor of hydrogen. They put all their eggs in the hydrogen fuel cell basket hoping that storage and range would be worked out despite clear disadvantages due to physics. Now they “love battery tech”? I love their reputation when it comes to ICE and reliability, but I’m challenging them to persuade my negative opinion of their EV commitment before I buy a Toyota EV.
I always thought of hydrogen as tech that didn’t have a leg to stand on.
The tech is just a bunch of air
While from a technical point of view it would allow for the continuation of combustion engines, and is thus an attractive alternative for car makers, it doesn’t make sense to use hydrogen on such small scales. Making hydrogen cleanly requires a lot of energy, so the idea generally is to use renewable energy to generate hydrogen from water. This works for industrial applications like steel making, but on a small scale it just doesn’t make economic sense because it needs to be cooled down so much.
The main reason why hydrogen is pushed is because it is also a byproduct of natural gas exploitation, so called blue or grey hydrogen.
Yeah, but all these traditional car makers had all this expertise designing and making ICEs so they blindly stuck to the idea of continuing to make ICEs, by just moving to hydrogen.
They hobbled themselves since making electric cars requires a very different skill set which Tesla and many Chinese car makers were able to break into without the high entry cost that making quality ICEs has. Now they’ve set themselves to play catchup at the risk of being steamrolled by newcomers.
Toyota knew they blew it and won’t be able to catch up on their own. Because of that, they have to create a partnership with Idemitsu Kosan which already have a headstart in solid state battery technology.
Even if they mothball an EV early on, at least in the US, auto manufacturers are required to produce parts and provide maintenance for 10 years of the vehicle’s life. That and Toyota isn’t Tesla, they want to stand behind their brand.
I can see where they’re going with hydrogen. With projects like that Australian seawater hydrogen project making hydrogen generation “free”, it’s just a matter of time before it becomes cheaply accessible. A fuel cell/battery hybrid that could be filled up in minutes would be much more analogous to how gas cars currently work, versus the heavy flaws in current EVs like limited range, heavily degraded winter performance, and rapidly aging batteries in Nissans specifically due to lack of proper thermal management. Statistics are showing 57% of current EV owners don’t even want to buy an EV for their next car.
Deploying a hydrogen storage network would also not tax the already fragile power grids as an EV charging network would. Economically, having fuel truck networks, fueling stations, etc. continue to exist, would make hydrogen likely less disruptive to the existing model of transportation economics in countries like the US. Jobs could be retained.
The 2023 Toyota Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid available now, has an estimated 402 mile range on a full tank. Tesla Model 3 estimates 333 miles of range and have also been caught lying on their range gauge so that shouldn’t even be trusted.
Countries like the US are just pushing EV tech so heavily because it is available “now” and they think we can capitalism our way out of climate change. The more boring methods like finding ways to continue utilizing existing vehicles but limit driving frequency with augments like actual public transportation don’t interest the shareholders.
That’s crazy:
— US gas 140,000 EV chargers and it’s nowhere near enough, even with most charging fine at home
— US had 57 places to fuel hydrogen, all in California
— we don’t even have a cost effective way to produce green hydrogen yet, most will continue to come from fossil fuels for decades
And you think it’s cheaper and easier to build entire industries across the US and worldwide, for a fuel source still dependent on fossil fuels, at a cost probably in the trillions of dollars? And it’s desirable to save large oil companies trying to hold desperately to their existing business?
Millions of people will never have the option to charge at home. The problem with BEVs is that you need tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of charging stations. That is really expensive and likely unfeasible.
Hydrogen stations will basically replace gas stations, sometimes on the very same piece of property. That makes a replacement infrastructure very straightforward to deploy. It makes more sense than having charging stations everywhere. People are just angry that their favored idea isn’t working out, so they attack this idea.
At home charging will replace entire toxic polluting industries, including tens of thousands of gas stations, distributors, storage , transportation, refining, etc, beyond all the mining related activities. I will be very happy to never have to visit a local gas station again: just like my phone, plug it in at night and it lasts me a normal days activities. Just like my phone, I’ll occasionally need to top off during a road trip
There’s no reason people in apartments and condos can’t do the same, it’s just more complex to align competing interests on who pays vs who benefits
Its only people who park on the street who don’t yet have a good answer, and there are several possibilities we need to develop, but level 1 or 2 chargers are cheap, so no big deal if we need millions of destination chargers
FYI - I guess mine is a level 2 charger and uses similar power to my stove or air conditioner. It can be configured as a set of up to 6 to intelligently share limited power plus can be configured to bill whoever uses it, to pay for my electricity, although I’ll probably just whitelist only my vehicle so no one else can run up my power bill. It is on order for about $500 and wiring costs. It may be expensive but this is not the huge deal you’re making it out to be
While we do need hydrogen for things batteries can’t scale to, the many fewer, more industrial uses mean we don’t have to recreate those entire industries. Good riddance
Then how do you travel long distances? You still need some kind of public charging station, which basically recreates the gas station experience.
The solution just to power everything with hydrogen. It solves all use cases with a single solution. And it also replaces the need to have giant mining and manufacturing industries for the batteries. It is the fundamentally better solution.
Of course we’ll need superchargers at rest areas along major roads, just like we’re already building out. It is not your neighborhood gas station. Just park and plugin, stretch your legs, use the restroom, grab some fast food, and you’re back on the road
Here’s a map of Tesla’s superchargers. You can see they already cover major highways and population centers enough to make most trips with confidence. They’re also continuing to expand faster than all other charger networks combined (in the US)
https://www.finder.com/tesla-superchargers-map
A hydrogen station is not a gas station either. The only difference is that you don’t need an entire separate set of charging points in parking lots, garages, etc. In reality, this is the cheaper and more practical solution. It solves the problem for everyone and not just a minority of drivers.
To anyone out there reading these comments: in spite of other people laying out clear evidence to the contrary, this person still insists on bigging up hydrogen.
When you buy or lease a Mirai from Toyota, they include 5 free rentals so that you can leave my state of California. Don’t forget: hydrogen gas escapes a lot more easily than gasoline fumes or electrons. Consider how expensive doing something like that safely and reliably actually must be, vs plugging your car right into a wall outlet (for admittedly slow charging).
Hydrogen is inefficient. Meaning, it’ll cost more to fill up a car. It isn’t the cheaper solution by any means.
Dude, really? Yes, batteries add mining costs to the environment and human rights … to the tune of tens of pounds per vehicle to last the life of the car, and already 90%+ recyclable into the next car. Compared to the continuous flow of hydrogen needed to power a car throughout its lifetime? You’ll find it just the opposite
Green hydrogen is made from water. The resources needed are tiny compared to the battery equivalent. You’ve pretty much inverted reality here.
The generation of Hydrogen was never the hardest problem.
Compression, storage and transportation - those are the big problems.
How is the car driver in Kansas refilling their hydrogen powered vehicle without major efficiency losses?
The barriers haven’t changed much in decades, and cyclically someone pretends those are all minor.
The new play is: Maybe Ammonia?
Hydrogen works basically the same as natural gas. The problems of handling it are readily solvable.
This is hilarious.
It’s the smallest gas molecule and will pass straight through the walls of containers meant to contain LNG.
The amount of compression required to yield liquid Hydrogen is vastly different.
Nothing at all is the same.
Propane? Sure. Woodgas? Yes. Hydrogen? Totally different set of physical challenges that are very expensive to work around.
A hydrogen molecule is larger than helium, mainly since helium is a noble gas and hydrogen is diatomic.
A lot of the criticism of hydrogen is just pseudo-scientific BS, mostly coming from BEV fans. It’s basically a form of Gish Gallop. People need to realize that hydrogen is a totally ordinary gas with solvable problems.
No, the energy required to compress methane is far, far lower.
LNG is shipped at 246psi at the high end. Hydrogen at around 10,000 psi.
I’m eager for you to set me straight with facts.
Roughly it’s 9% of energy content to compress Hydrogen. And 2.5% to compress methane.
I really wish this was as solved as you seem to think.
Energy lost in production of the hydrogen is currently extremely high. They cheat with methane just getting it out of the ground or, rarely, from biological decomposition capture.
Then you have significantly different physical specifications for the tanks. And the compression. And the storage. And the transfer.
If the production was free, the rest is pricey. Some day it may all be solved, but it simply hasn’t been.
Come at me with facts. I will direct you to the energy department.
Currently 95% of hydrogen production is from natural gas.
You’re comparing liquid methane with compressed hydrogen. Not the same thing.
Like I just said, you’re using Gish Gallop. It’s just a pile of BS or half-truths. It’s not really an argument.
In reality, the problem of dealing with hydrogen is basically solved. It is similar to where solar power was a decade ago. The goal right now is to scale it all up. There are no other real issues left.
It’s basically solved. Is argument taken right out of the Musk play book.
This guy’s just trolling and y’all should stop feeding.