Hydrogen follow up: Toyota's future

I suspect it has to do with the culture of not showing off. Most of the tech multimillionaires probably do not care as much about such vanities as their reputation and/or impact on the world and therefore has better use for their money.

Anyone with actual knowledge of the matter please chime in. ;)

I was asking myself the same question since some years, too. I just googled for some minutes and the only realistic reasons why they prefer hydrogen over elctric I found were: more range than electric and quicker refueling than electric. And both points are highly questionable in my opinion. So unfortunately I didn't found any rational explanation why they prefer hydrogen.

With the assumption that hydrogen is indeed "Fool cells", some possibilities for why Toyota may still be pursuing it (not necessarily in any order. Largely listing for discussion and for thinking about later in more depth). 1) Japanese govt. incentives are sufficient to push Toyota and other Japanese companies to try and make Hydrogen work. 2) It's a conspiracy between car companies and oil companies (I don't see how this can work because I don't see how car companies benefit.) 3) Car companies don't like the fact that EVs have lower maintenance, because a large chunk of their profits comes from maintenance and repairs. 4) Car companies are basically behaving like Blackberry after the iPhone. Their current model works, and being incumbents, they find it hard to imagine a world that does not work like the current one. 5) EVs would be too much of a revolution and they would essentially lose all their incumbent advantages. FCV basically follow the same model and so they allow incumbent car companies to better fend off new entrants than if EVs became popular (I find it interesting that all the new entrants are EV manufacturers or rumored to be making EVs (Apple)).

Any other ideas?

Personally, I think #s 4 and 5 (both of which are basically blindness caused by incumbency) are the biggest factors. This is bolstered by this Toyota quote in the article:

    “You may think 35 years is a long time,” Senior Managing Officer Kiyotaka Ise told reporters. “But for an automaker to envision all combustion engines as gone is pretty extraordinary.”

The way Japanese manufacturers seem to be the only ones who are so uniquely focused on hydrogen, however, seems to indicate that Japanese policy is also playing a large role.

But this is more of a comparison of next-generation fuels. Gasoline is only included in the post to provide a baseline comparison that people can easily understand.

Its not fanboyism at all. How many Model S vehicles are in the wild? They can charge almost anywhere, have range above 250 miles per charge, and have a Supercharger network that's fully operational. (And that's only the Model S, I neglect the Leaf for the moment even though there are for more in the wild, regardless of their range)

How many fuel cell vehicles are in consumer hands? Can they charge at home? Do they have a nationwide refueling network?

It may be in general case, but Musk earned the trust for being precise and honest - so it's more like listening to the opinion of a proven specialist in the field (with a staff full of experts behind him to call him on his mistakes).

I appreciate the polite response! Let's assume weight isn't an issue, as it drastically contributes to vehicle stability due to having such a low center of gravity (From what I've heard from Model X engineers, its damn near impossible to roll).

* Distribution network: Hydrogen filling stations are expensive. Very expensive. There are very few of them. Electric vehicles can be charged from any 120V outlet, although 220V+ is preferable (Model S owners in a pinch can charge at RV campsites for a few bucks when there are no superchargers around). Tesla's Supercharge network covers almost the entire US (they will complete their buildout in 2016).

* Conversion efficiency: Hydrogen, unless produced from methane/natural gas, will never be as efficient as straight charging an electric vehicle. You can charge your electric car with solar panels on your roof, or an electrical grid that gets cleaner by the day as coal is phased out (and natural gas will phase out as wind and solar begin to dominate generation).

* Range: Batteries are getting cheaper stupid fast. We're already ~5 years ahead of the curve. The failure scenarios are very safe (I'm using Tesla's titanium plate armored pack as the example) compared to a Hydrogen storage failure. Could charging happen faster? Sure. But needing a ~5-10 minute turnaround on your vehicle's fueling is an edge case; the vast majority of owners are going to charge at home overnight, at their workplace, or at Superchargers (or other non-Tesla high current charging stations).

Hydrogen is dead on arrival for mobility.

Water is used to produce hydrogen, so it'd get cancelled out.

Not really. Let me check... according to Wikipedia, hydrogen has energy density of 142 MJ/kg.

In 2014, about 136.78 billion gallons of gasoline was consumed in the US, which is about 518 billion liters. Gasoline has energy density of 32.4 MJ/L, so this amounts to 1.68 x 10^19 J = 16.8 EJ.

If all this gasoline converts to hydrogen economy, we get 118 billion kilograms of hydrogen (per year), which will produce 1.06 trillion kilograms (or 1.06 billion tons) of water.

An estimate for the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere says 12,900 cubic kilometers, or 12.9 trillion tons.

So, not exactly a drop in the bucket, but more like a teaspoon in the bucket, I guess.

I'm imagining a plane this big and it's awesome. I can already see the Michael Bay film. A little impractical right now though I think we can all agree. I think by the time hydrogen becomes feasible for planes, the landscape will likely be wildly different.