The point I think the article was trying to make is that while everyone is focused on lithium ion, Toyota was biding it’s time and getting ready to one-up everyone with solid state batteries and vehicles with double the range.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-ba...
but more power to toyota. can't wait to get an electric hilux. hopefully it's cheap.
Is it though? Can't be a hedge if it doesn't really work well fundamentally.
Although I'll admit to being largely ignorant of the Japanese car market.
IMO, it'd be much more practical to invest in automotive LNG tech and combine that with synthesizing LNG from the atmosphere (or at least developing the tech to do so).
Practically, both H2 and LNG are both "dirty", since H2 is made though natural gas reforming these days.
Sure H2 is dangerous, but so is LNG, and petrol for that matter. 100+ years of accidents and safety controls means that even a drunk person smoking at the pump can (probably) fill their car up safely.
Japan has very poor carbon security, so LNG reforming might come with its own challenges, but they could generate it via electrolysis using nuclear or wind power, or import ammonia from future mega producers like Australia.
It’s very likely that global demand in the transport sector will tend towards H2, so they need to gear their industry towards that market.
Introducing this technology will require incremental changes across industry, infrastructure and communities. Today, green hydrogen is out of reach for many economies. Building H2 ecosystems, will almost certainly require initial investment in brown/black hydrogen by burning fossils fuels, which is currently under development in Australia and Japan.
The transition to blue (renewable>LNG>H2) and eventually towards green (renewables>H2O>H2) hydrogen will be slow and will take decades to achieve. Purple (nuclear) hydrogen may be a next logical step for Japan.
It’s simply not possible to replace everything everywhere all at once. We should have gotten onto this two decades ago, so we unfortunately have to make compromises that seem cynical and small on the outset, but are still very difficult to implement and gain consensus.
And no, it is not "less cost effective" because batteries involve dramatically higher upfront production costs. The argument is really just a troll argument and virtually identical to the same arguments used against battery cars.
I worked as a project engineer in a hydrogen fuel cell test lab for a few years. H2 is EXTREMELY hazardous. It can be ignited by a miniscule amount of energy (i.e. a tiny static spark will do it), and it has a very fast flame front, which creates an extremely energetic explosion. It's also the smallest molecule, so it's very difficult to prevent leakage, and it embrittles and degrades most steels over time. Additionally, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (the most common kind) are poisoned by anything NOT H2, so you can't add odorous agents to H2 to easily detect leaks, like we do with natural gas. H2's only non-dangerous characteristic is its high buoyancy, which means it dissipates quickly in outdoor environments, but in my opinion that is not sufficient to offset all of its other dangerous characteristics.
I would NEVER live in a building that had H2 stored inside (as in, inside a vehicle tank) or pumped in it, and I would definitely not trust the general public to use it safely.
It also has to be stored at either incredibly high pressures (as a gas) or incredibly cold temperatures (as a liquid), neither of which are conducive to large-scale, long-range transport.
But the worst part of H2 isn't how dangerous it is or how impractical it is; the worst part of H2 is how incredibly inefficient a hydrogen economy would be. See Paul Martin's excellent summary of H2 for a thorough debunking of the main H2 talking points.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/distilled-thoughts-hydrogen-p...
Hydrogen would allow Toyota to swap one messy, expensive, heavy power plant requiring lots of maintenance (ie fuel cell) for ICE technology.
Whereas EV technology has almost no maintenance, a motor with one moving part and regenerative braking that means even the brakes last forever. The accountants at Toyota would definitely frown at that.
All the other car companies did the same calculations and said 'NO'. Lets just say we'll do that and keep kicking the can down the road for as long as possible.
Now, thanks to Tesla, the cat is out of the bag and the entire industry knows they'll need a new financial platform to survive in the future and no, hydrogen will not save their sorry butts.
That doesn't seem right.
Of all the major brands, Toyota (and Lexus) is the most reliable. They are the opposite of planned obsolescence - they work hard to make their cars last for a very long time.
I suppose in the short term, that's a downside for them, but in the long term, their reputation for being extremely reliable pays off in multiple ways - more demand, higher residual value, etc.
I have no idea why the Japanese auto makers chased hydrogen so hard, but there as to be some other reason. Otherwise we would have seen declining reliability in their gas lineup before now.
But the writing's on the wall: H2 is dead tech for passenger vehicles.
Oh that's right, it's because you all parrot the same nonsense.
The valuable materials in EV batteries don't get used up - they're still in the battery, and can be recycled. We haven't figured out the particulars, but there's no reason why it can't be done. In fact, the biggest issue that battery recyclers are facing right now is a lack of batteries to recycle.
Stop swallowing propaganda wholesale. Start thinking for yourself.
Seriously, the battery people act exactly like climate change deniers. An entire argument based on denying or obfuscating the problem, and pretending nothing better could ever exist.
Seriously, your whole post is projection.
98% of H2 is made from fossil fuels.
You know why, right?
H2 is already expensive when reformed from natural gas - you can expect to pay 20-30 cents per mile to travel in the most advanced, fuel efficient H2 vehicle out there.
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/exclusive-fresh-bl...
H2 made via electrolysis is a bit more than 3x that cost. Are you ready to pay $1 per mile to drive?
Of course, price generally declines with volume, so we could expect those numbers to come down if H2 were more widely adopted. But there is a thermodynamic floor on the cost of H2, which means that it will never be cost-competitive with pure electric vehicles.
https://medium.com/10x-curiosity/the-hydrogen-hopium-ea11c7a...
And then there's the complexity issue. As a former fuel cell engineer, I understand better than most how complex and finicky proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems are. They are easily poisoned, they're prone to freezing, they have long startup times, they require high-speed, expensive electric air compressors, and they have complex valving and sensors to ensure safe operation.
Purely electric vehicles simply do not have these problems. A battery and a motor is about as simple as a drivetrain can possibly be. EVs will always be fundamentally far simpler than FCEVs, which translates into a lower upfront vehicle cost.
You have no answer to these problems.
I suggest you stop furiously responding here and instead consider your biases, and reevaluate your position. Batteries are so much better than H2 for transportation on just about all fronts that the two are not even close to comparable. H2 at this point is a malicious distraction being foisted on the general public by oil companies attempting to stay relevant, and governments engaging in sunk cost fallacious thinking. The sooner fuel cells for transport (and H2 for heating) are relegated to history's dustbin, the better.
Oh, and as for your assertion that electricity sans nuclear and hydro is 85% fossil fuels... that's true... and irrelevant. 40% of electricity generated in the US today is renewable, and that number grows steadily each year. We would be absolutely foolish to use that electricity to crack water, compress the H2, transport the H2, and convert it back to electricity in fuel cells, losing 65% of the energy in the process, than simply using it directly via batteries. Come on man! Discard the propaganda, separate your emotions from your positions, and think for yourself!
A fuel cell is also an electrochemical system. An FCEV is also an EV. Same electric motors and everything. They can attain the same level of efficiency as a li-ion battery and not any more complex. Less complex even, if you seriously analyze the complexity of the battery pack. And because of that, it can easily displace BEVs.
I don't know your background, but your writing is that of a bullshit artist. It completely ignores basic facts and substitute BEV propaganda.
No, they cannot attain the same level of efficiency. It's not even close, and no one who was arguing in good faith and had done even the most cursory research on the issue would make that absurd claim.
https://tide.theimi.org.uk/industry-latest/motorpro/efficien....
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mirai-fcev-vs-model-3-bev-pau...
You're just making stuff up. We're done here.
Do you see BEV becoming the dominant truck technology?
If FCEV trucks were to take off as a technology and get to a share of say 30 % of all trucks in some region, then I'd speculate that the FCEV tech in itself would ultimately displace BEV not only in the truck but also partially in the car sector.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
In order to deliver enough electricity most of the time, without needing huge amounts of storage (which are tiny right now), renewables will have to be massively over built. I assume there'll be times when there's 5x or more the electricity available compared to actual consumption.
Let the sun shine and the wind blow in summer and there'll be huge amounts of electricity which cannot be stored or consumed by BEV or some other grid connected battery because they're not enough. Industrial processes won't easily consume sudden surges in available electricity either.
Take the UK grid with its average of ~ 31 GW. Let's say they triple their wind power capacity which is currently at ~ 18 GW and double their pv capacity which is currently at ~ 3 GW. That'd be 60 GW so roughly twice the electricity that's consumed on average.
We're in summer, heat pumps don't consume .. so 30 GW excess electricity over say 3 windy days adds up to ~ 2 TWh. That's the capacity of 26.7 million Tesla Model 3 (long range) with a 75 kWh battery each. And they'd all need to be charged from 0 to 100 %.
Batteries won't suffice, I think.
So what'll be done? Electrolysis, I think -> H2, ammonia, methane, ..
So there'll be significant amounts of these being produced and stored.
Ammonia might well become the energy carrier of the future, being shipped around the world with large tankers to transport energy from where it's produced to places where it's used.
If that were to become true, wouldn't the fuel cell be the fitting technology for heavy duty and/or long range vehicles?
And once there'd be infrastructure for trucks and heavy vehicles, roughly the same ifrastructure could be used for FCEV cars.
As for smoothing out the electricity supply, EVs themselves are likely to play a large role, as will home batteries. The grid of the future will be much more distributed than what we have today. Tesla recently released a report which outlines where we are, where we need to be, and what is required to get there. It's succinct yet comprehensive, and well worth a read.
https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf
Feel free to point out a specific claim I've made that you believe is bullshit, and we'll proceed from there.
>Serious incidents are rare.
Even so, they're probably more common than you think. Google it.
>there hasn't been a single hydrogen car that has exploded
Uh... google "hydrogen car explosion."
>So just from that your argument is just lazy fearmongering and FUD.
So far, every point you've made has been weak or outright incorrect. Meanwhile, you have yet to seriously challenge any point I've made.
The reason for this isn't that I'm better at this than you. Your position is simply untenable.
I hope you figure out how to account for the bias that so obviously pervades your thought process. Cheers, I guess.
Sorry, but you are a liar. Your attitude is just a mask for your BS.
Pretty sure at this point you're a paid propagandist.
If that's true: fuck you, die in a fire.
If not: I sincerely hope you learn how to think critically at some point. Have a nice day.
You literally are the dumbest person on this site I've met. Not are you incredibly stupid, you act like you have actual knowledge. You clearly are in the Dunning-Kruger zone, assuming you aren't intentionally trolling.
Why is that better than putting it back into the grid and/or putting it into a battery?
The H2 for medium-term tank storage idea is not bad .. except for the very high capital cost of electrolysis. Without some means of making H2 that doesn't involve tying up a chunk of platinum as a capital asset this is a non starter economically.
Better to compare it to thermal storage, PHES, simply curtailing it or even virtual storage via hydro or w2e (or hydrogen generation with no step where it is converted back to electricity or motion). All of which are more sensible than hydrogen for personal transport.
I honestly don't get the criticism Toyota has been getting recently. I think their decision to not go all in on just electric vehicles makes sense, especially for countries where it is highly unlikely that full EV will be a reality in the next decade.
Because for a while it seemed they were going all-in on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, a technology that makes little technological (and even less practical) sense.
I assume it's this one:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Toyota-secures-h...
It seems to behind a soft paywall, so here's the archive.ph edition:
> while everyone is focused on lithium ion
Please remember that 'solid state' is just a marketing term. The actual meaning when talking in terms of automotive battery is 'lithium metal anodes'. So these are still lithium ion batteries.
And lots of people are working on lithium metal anodes, and have been for 50 years.
> Toyota was biding it’s time and getting ready to one-up everyone with solid state batteries and vehicles with double the range.
That is certainty what Toyota marketing has been telling people. But in reality scaling a new battery technology is incredibly difficult and if these claims were actually true we would see massive Toyota battery factory being build. When in reality its incredibly low volume production stuff that might show up in a few hybrids.
Also, 'solid state' isn't magically better then everything else. You can hit the same density with silicon. There are 100s of companies working on silicon and lithium metal anodes.
Toyota has announced some EVs but no actual product with these magical batteries that they have. The reality is, nobody, not Toyota best battery engineers know how difficult it will be to scale production of these things to a massive gigafactory. And if its not a massive gigafactory then its practically irrelevant in the EV market.
So unless we actually see a massive gigafactory somewhere that is dedicated to this type of battery, this is just marketing.