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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

What’s the thinking behind it? What is the real advantage to Toyota pushing petrol? Do they think they’ll be raking in money when they’re the last petrol engine cars you can get?

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They bet on hydrogen vs electric cars, and that didn't pay off. They're already good at making ICE vehicles, so rather make up for a huge amount of lost time and effort, it's a bid to keep the current business going.

Lets see in 10 years. Id bet hydrogen is one fundamental discovery away from winning

Transported in/as ammonia. Minimises leaks compared to hydrogen gas, utilises existing liquid storage and pump delivery model. Doesnt require long charging times. Commercial production being funded in a number of places, including Australia to produce it as a scalable fuel source.

I'd say its just about there.

Sure, but to be fair, they've probably thought the same thing for years as well.

The overall efficiency of using electricity to create H2, ship it somewhere, then convert it back into electricity with a fuel cell will never make sense for passenger vehicles. I'm sure we'll find new catalysts and methods to improve electrolysis, but there is a hard upper limit on how good it can get. We're not going to cut the energy requirements in half. Battery prices have cratered over the last decade and continue to drop. The overall efficiency of a BEV is something around 85-90%, whereas FCEV is around 40%. That's a lot of wasted energy for H2 and that will have a big impact on TCO (plus fuel cells remain very expensive after decades of work).

I do see H2 fuel cells having a part to play in industries like shipping, forestry, and agriculture where grid connections are either tricky or impossible, but fuel cell passenger vehicles won't ever make sense financially.

There is no hard limit except 100% efficiency (sorta*). As fuel cells are a type of battery they can eventually match li-ion batteries on efficiency. Combined with their ability to capture curtail power on a very large scale and the economics of hydrogen could easily surpass that of the EV.

* There is a soft limit at 85%, but that is mainly due to the need to turn liquid water into steam over the entire process. This can be ignored if electrolysis is done on steam instead of liquid water. Also, 85% is close enough to li-ion batteries that very few people will care about it.

It looks like you've created this account to argue only about one thing on HN. Agenda-driven accounts and single-purpose accounts are not allowed here, regardless of the agenda/purpose, because it's not in keeping with the values of this site—i.e. intellectual curiosity doesn't work that way. So would you please stop?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hydrogen has already found those fundamental discoveries, and much of it is the rapid reduction in green hydrogen cost. It's really a matter of time before economics shifts the entire industry towards hydrogen over resource-intensive batteries.

It works. Show me an EV truck that comes anywhere close to what a Tacoma, Tundra or 4runner can do.

Maybe they'll get there but there's gonna need to be some massive advances in batteries to be able to go off-road and pull loads like any of those current trucks can.

> Show me an EV truck that comes anywhere close to what a Tacoma, Tundra or 4runner can do.

Weird examples - isn't EV actually uniquely well-suited to off-road and towing? Maximum torque at zero-revs?

I can't wait to swap my Defender for a full electric variant when Land Rover manage to ship it - partly for the better capability.

Aside from the weight of batteries in a long distance EV setup, having 4+ wheels with their own independent motors allow EV offroaders an extreme advantage if someone made a purpose built EV 4x4 / 6x6.

That's an interesting question: 1st gear at idle in low range (4-Low) in a typical ICE vehicle is about a slow walking speed. I wonder how smooth the electric motor would be at that speed without additional gearing.

Anyway, there's off road and there's off road. If you're a few hours from a road, EV can be useful at the low speeds you'll typically be driving at: If you are days from a charging source, not so much.

Going on a long trip with an ICE vehicle, it's not a problem to carry a few cans of gas/diesel.

> I wonder how smooth the electric motor would be at that speed without additional gearing.

Have you seen the Bollinger trials?

https://youtu.be/W7TK6WhU_l4?t=379

Militaries are also looking very keenly towards EV because it lets you crawl silently over ground, where in a diesel you need to rev it up and get some momentum going.

> Anyway, there's off road and there's off road.

Saying as someone who professionally operates genuinely off-road - I can't wait.

As someone who was a professionally employed explorer for 10 years until a couple of years back, who drove very capable off road vehicles then and now, I cannot wait for a little bit of maturity in that market. Id love to be able to roll through some of those areas without having to roar a diesel. A motor on each wheel means no lockers. I'm mainly just concerned about undercarriage submersion at this point - I can put my current vehicle through 1m+ of still water comfortably. Can I do that with the new electric stuff? Also, range anxiety.

> concerned about undercarriage submersion

Portal axles, baby :-)

No it's not uniquely suited because the battery life is abysmal. The new Ford Lightning can only make it like 100 miles while towing before it needs to be recharged.

Multiple tests with Teslas are the same. When they're loaded down their range is very bad.

There's pluses and minus. For actual off-road capability it's mostly plus. If you're driving long-distance on a highway then yeah it's a minus... but that's not what trucks are for.

How are they a plus for off-road? No offense but I don't think you understand what makes a good off-road vehicle.

Trucks are absolutely used for long distance. Probably more so since they're the top choice for towing recreational vehicles cross country.

> How are they a plus for off-road?

Huge torque. Quiet operation. Independent and precise wheel control. Don't need to rev them up to get up a slope.

> No offense but I don't think you understand what makes a good off-road vehicle.

I'm a serving cavalry officer. I do this professionally. What's your qualification?

None of that matters if you don't have power.

What a cop-out. You were beaten and you know it.

Beaten? Do you think we're having some sort of pissing contest here? Go to Facebook if that's your goal. I stated from the beginning this issue is that the batteries cannot provide power long enough to sustain off-road trips or long distance towing. You'd know that if you actually read the comments instead of worrying about besting me.

Why aren't you replacing all of the ICE vehicles right now? What happened is I pointed out the obvious EV flaw and you completed avoided it by discussing other irrelevant issues, like high torque. Try some hubris. Being in the military certainly doesn't negate ineptness these days.

Not the person you originally replied to.

The F-150 Lightning, R1T, and Cybertruck all offer a minimum towing capacity of 10,000 pounds. The price is higher and the range is lower than their petrol equivalents, but it is false to say these EV trucks are less capable in going off-road and pulling heavy loads.

I'm specifically referring to the range. Stopping under 100 miles to recharge your vehicle isn't feasible for most people. Unless you're planning on forcing them to buy a $60k+ vehicle that's worse than what they currently have good luck.

EVs will take over this role among the first things. Instant torque, no transmission, torque vectoring, no switching gears, no differential.

I see them going to the store and back 99% of the time so a Leaf would do probably.

That's not your decision to make. Maybe they only go out once a year and actually tow or go off road. It doesn't matter. If I'm going to spend $40k on a vehicle I get what I want. What I and a lot of people want is a vehicle that can do more than grocery store trips in some big urban center.

If you're talking about a secondary vehicle I'm all in but a lot of people aren't able to afford a $40k+ secondary EV.

> What is the real advantage to Toyota pushing petrol?

They've absolutely perfected their vehicles as-is, comparatively speaking.

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