Toyota to sell 900% more hydrogen cars than solid-state EVs
cleanenergyrevolution.co
cleanenergyrevolution.co
That's less of a problem for fleet operators, they could actually have a bunch of batteries at their business sites spread all over a city so a battery swap is never too far away. Fleet vehicles also do more km in a day than the average private vehicle as well, so they WOULD need to use fast chargers a lot more often.
See video here:
https://mastodon.green/@FabianLaasch/110083147601165341
Linked as well:
https://www.theautopian.com/china-is-already-doing-ev-batter...
BTW I was in a CNG taxi that had to refuel before (transferring between resort areas in Phuket), the wait was long and refueling was slow, probably because they had lots of CNG vehicles and not a lot of fueling infrastructure, and the pressure was slow for some reason. Definitely a supercharger session would have been faster.
(afaict non-solid-state EVs by toyota are also in the six-figures of volume?)
Is hydrogen catching on in other parts of the world? It seems DOA here.
The ideal would be to actually make green Hydrogen, but frankly until the grid is 100% electric anyway it doesn't actually matter what we make with the green energy as long as we build it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/13/why-ira-hydrogen-tax-credit-...
But that's in the future, I mean today. I can't buy a hydrogen vehicle if I wanted to. I can't fill it up if I wanted to, not even at the dozen Toyota dealerships around me.
Victoria's first hydrogen refuelling station is now operational. A commercial-grade facility, Toyota’s Hydrogen Centre is located in Altona in Melbourne’s West.
Realistically you'd be wating to live within 10 miles .. and hope that other stations open in the near future.
This really is something for whole country adoption such as Japan is attempting.
Hydrogen might be viable for trucks, ferries and ships with limited dedicated infrastructure. But it’s a lost cause for personal cars.
As countries/regions try to get to 100 % renewable electricity they'll likely have to massively over build, leaving them with huge seasonal surpluses.
If so, then wouldn't the conclusion be that there needs to be seasonal storage of energy to _some_ degree at least?
If so, then do you think such seasonal storage can be achieved with batteries?
I doubt that. I'd rather envision hydrogen as seasonal storage from fluctuating renewable generation.
When/if the hydrogen is available, uses will likely follow.
According to this presentation, by 2030, Toyota expects to sell 100,000 FCV mostly trucks. At the same time, Toyota expects to sell 1.7 million units out of 3.5 million overall will be provided by BEV Factory.
Hydorgen GLOBAL production is literally about 1 weeks of Tesla.
If you put Hydrogen and EV on a graph, you can literally not even see the Hydrogen cars. And they also don't have high growth.
Hydrogen cars not a niche, they are a niche of a niche of a niche. They only happen because companies and governments are willing to lose lots of money on them. Mostly because of some decades old 'government strategies' that don't adjust to changing technology.
But there's one thing that makes me believe they will be in the future. Long-haul trucking with BEV seems rather unlikely to me and the one renewables powered alternative that looks scalable (across different aspects) to me is FCEV trucks fueled with H2 or methanol or some other hydrogen carrier.
(Amogy as a company develops such tech).
As soon as there's sufficient gas stations where trucks can refill H2/Methanol/.. hydrogen powered FCEV cars may stop appearing like a non-solution.
I think for all countries that have large seasonal fluctuations in wind/PV electricity generation, hydrogen will play an important role in both seasonal storage of domestic electricity generation as well as for importing energy (in the form of ammonia) from other regions. So the energy backbones of these countries will not solely rely upon the electric grid but also on a H2 distribution system. As soon as this is available, all sorts of uses of H2 will become viable.
Electric trucks are very efficient and cheaper to operate. They can do a majority of all trucking routes just fine. Companies will primary invest in those routes for electrification. More CO2 reduction. Very long-haul style operations will stay on gas for much longer. Electric truck operation will also be much cheaper then hydrogen operation.
The country most invested in Hydrogen is Japan, and in Japan, electric trucks are clearly superior.
In Europe, a large potential market for Hydrogen trucks, the way the regulations are in terms of rest, that covers electric trucks weaknesses.
Another issue with your theory is that the truck stop that trucks would use are not really the same in form and function as what normal traveling people use for the most part.
They will not be in locations where its viable for lots of commuters to go to. Specially because all short-hall distribution will clearly go electric, not hydrogen.
And its yet to be shown that anybody is actually willing to make the massive investments in hydrogen trucking station, and that there will be hydrogen distribution available. Local generation is very unlikely for a truck stop.
So it sound cool in theory but in practice it just doesn't really line up. Hydrogen trucks maybe make sense in a few long-haul niche application.
And even if, we somehow had hydrogen fuel stations. In practice they are simply worse cars then electric cars. They are far, far more complex to build, and thus cost more to build. They have far far more failure points. For the majority of people who can charge at home, or at work, its just a far worse experience. For long distance travel, supercharging is already really good and its getting better rapidly. Most people make longer breaks then necessary for charging already.
The few people who claim they do like 10h without stopping are the extreme exception of the extreme exception.
> I think for all countries that have large seasonal fluctuations in wind/PV electricity generation, hydrogen will play an important role in both seasonal storage of domestic electricity generation as well as for importing energy (in the form of ammonia) from other regions.
I think seasonal storage makes little sense economically. If your hydrogen production relies on intermittent power availability its going to have really bad uptime and is gone be really bad economically.
At the same time batteries are getting better and more economical at storage. With different battery tech for 4h, 8-12h and 2-3d storage.
Importing energy threw high voltage DC lines makes more sense then transporting hydrogen derivatives. Its far cheaper unless you are going across an ocean.
I absolutely do not believe in the vision that hydrogen (derivatives) will be like oil where a few regions have a shit-ton of production and then we ship it all over the world.
Most nations have enough energy option to figure out their own grid and balance out with their immediate neighbour.
Agree.
Yet, currently of the daily 800,000 trucks (> 7.5 t) which are transporting goods in Germany, less than 500 are BEVs (including hybrids). BEV trucks cost ~ 3x as much as an ordinary diesel truck.
So right now, they're basically irrelevant.
> In Europe, a large potential market for Hydrogen trucks, the way the regulations are in terms of rest, that covers electric trucks weaknesses.
Agree, mandatory resting time for the drivers automatically gives much time for charging. But not all stops are hours long. According to my source, there's currently not one mega charger in Germany that allows trucks to charge enough during a 45 min break, so that they can actually drive on.
According to the same source, several companies that tried to build a charging infrastructure with such mega chargers were turned down by the power utilities because the distribution network apparently isn't capable of handling that much load. Upgrading the grid accordingly is said to take 5-10 years.
I think countries with relatively high BEV share of passenger vehicle fleet will already face a decent challenge with getting the grid to charge these cars. Charging hundreds of thousands of semis will be an even greater challenge.
This is where fuels like H2/methanol/ammonia will have their place I think, as refuelling with these scales much easier than recharging BEVs.
> Another issue with your theory is that the truck stop that trucks would use are not really the same in form and function as what normal traveling people use for the most part.
Many truck stops along highways offer both, areas for trucks as well as cars. I see no reason, why they wouldn't be combined in many cases.
A hydrogen refuelling station for trucks that just opened can also be used by cars: https://www.now-gmbh.de/en/news/pressreleases/opening-of-a-h...
> And its yet to be shown that anybody is actually willing to make the massive investments in hydrogen trucking station, and that there will be hydrogen distribution available. Local generation is very unlikely for a truck stop.
Local generation doesn't exist right now. But as renewable share of electricity grows larger and as more and more old power plants (coal/gas) go offline, they offer perfect sites to (relatively) locally produce hydrogen from excess renewable electricity.
> And even if, we somehow had hydrogen fuel stations. In practice they are simply worse cars then electric cars. They are far, far more complex to build, and thus cost more to build. They have far far more failure points. For the majority of people who can charge at home, or at work, its just a far worse experience. For long distance travel, supercharging is already really good and its getting better rapidly. Most people make longer breaks then necessary for charging already.
Again, I (partially) agree. Yes, hydrogen/derivatives add complexity compared to a BEV. Supercharging works, yes. But the question is, whether it will be practical to scale it to a vehicle fleet with a majority of BEV. I doubt it.
> I think seasonal storage makes little sense economically. If your hydrogen production relies on intermittent power availability its going to have really bad uptime and is gone be really bad economically.
Well, if there's sustained renewable electricty generation surpluses over say a week then that is already a magnitude that cannot be met with pumped hydro or batteries (EV/home). Take an average grid throughput of 70 GW in Germany. Over 7 days that's 11,760 GWh. Now let's say due to renewables generating massively, you have a surplus of just 20 %. That's 2,352 GWh. You'd need ~ 30,000,000 BEV cars with a 80 kWh battery each to store all this amount of electricity, and they'd all need to be charged 100 %. Storing all/most of that in batteries doesn't sound feasible in the near future to me.
I think the way this may develop is: when the electricity cannot be consumed otherwise locally and the grid doesn't allow for all of it to be transmitted to neighbouring countries (power lines are regularly maxed out already and more capacity is being added rather slowly), then the price of a KWh will drop to zero or negative in the price zone where it's being generated. At some point, prices will be low enough to make even intermittent electrolysis economically feasible, I think. Just a matter of time. What else are you going to do with lots of PV in summer when all cars and home batteries are charged and the home aircon is drawing its 2 kW and there's 15 kW of PV on the roof of millions of homes? Just switch off the PV?
> Importing energy threw high voltage DC lines makes more sense then transporting hydrogen derivatives. Its far cheaper unless you are going across an ocean.
It may be cheaper to transport electricity via HVDC per km per kWh, but with an additional HVDC line connecting two distant points you get additional constraints (because demand + charging always has to equal supply + discharching) and increased strain on the grid portions surrounding these points. Transporting electricity/energy between the same points by generating H2/ammonia/methanol, then shipping it over the ocean and then using it at the destination on the other hand does _not_ lead to another coupling of demand and supply. Instead it creates a buffer. And I think this buffering feature which isn't taken into account in the simple $/km*kWh is a feature that is only going to get more valuable over time, at least over the coming decades.
> I absolutely do not believe in the vision that hydrogen (derivatives) will be like oil where a few regions have a shit-ton of production and then we ship it all over the world.
There are actually many such projects being built/devoloped right now. If you search for hydrogen/electrolysis projects on the web, you'll find that many projects have ammonia generation as a component.
https://www.world-energy.org/article/14732.html ("Gigawatt-Scale: the World's 13 Largest Green-Hydrogen Projects")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Renewable_Energy_Hub
https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-ag/2022-03-18-import-of-gre...
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/abu-dhabis-kizad-a...
https://www.yara.com/corporate-releases/the-worlds-first-cle...
While obviously many companies that are tied to fossil fuel and the "legacy" non-renewable chemical industry are pushing such projects to keep their feet in the door that is in my opinion just one factor. The other being that chemical storage/transport of energy simply has its technical benefits compared to energy transport/storage via grid/batteries.
> Most nations have enough energy option to figure out their own grid and balance out with their immediate neighbour.
With lots of fossil generation that might be true now, but with increased renewable share there will be a growing need for storage/buffering, just a fact.
Mercedes has a bus with sold state batteries if I remember correctly. But it needs to be heated up to a high operating temperature so it’s not suitable for cars.
Tesla build charging station. They use the existing electricity network that is already in place. That is 100-1000x cheaper then bootstrapping a hydrogen charging network.
A single Hydrogen fuel station for 1 car is gone cost more then a whole supercharging station. Its incredibly safety critical. And that doesn't even account for the much, much higher maintenance cost. And then you have to actually have infrastructure to supply the hydrogen. And once you do all of that, you have not even solved the carbon problem either.
No company, not Toyota will do that. Toyota has no interest in doing that.
There is no "hydrogen plug" infrastructure, in any city. There are only proof of concept stations scattered around California. Source: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/...