Hydrogen has long been touted as the clean fuel for our automotive future. That reality has not yet come to pass. Nonetheless, Toyota is still pushing hard in this arena. It has now announced a third-generation fuel cell system that it hopes will bring the technology closer to commercial viability.
Toyota’s most obvious efforts towards hydrogen power have been with the Mirai sedan. However, it’s now highlighting its plans to make hydrogen work for larger commercial vehicles, too. Furthermore, the third-generation “FC System” is aiming to achieve greater durability to minimize maintenance requirements and keep running costs low.
Toyota has already been supplying hydrogen powertrains for everything from passenger vehicles to buses, trains, and even stationary generators. It’s now hoping that its third-generation effort can improve performance and reliability to the point that it becomes genuinely competitive with traditional fossil fuel engines.
Fuel efficiency has taken a significant step forward with the new generation fuel cells. Toyota notes that the new hardware achieves a 20% increase in range for a given amount of fuel. As a guide, the second-generation Toyota Mirai achieves 402 miles of range on a single tank of hydrogen. With the third-generation technology on board, you could expect a similar vehicle to hit 480 miles or more.
Toyota has netted significant savings in production costs thanks to design tweaks to the fuel cells and the manufacturing process. Toyota is understandably reserved about specifics, but it’s no surprise that increased engineering effort has found savings in this regard.
We’re also told that the third-generation FC System now has twice the durability of the previous-generation fuel cell hardware. Toyota doesn’t provide specifics in terms of mileage or service intervals, but we’re told it’s now comparable with what you might expect from a conventional diesel engine, with a largely maintenance-free design.
Previously, Toyota has demonstrated the ability to stack multiple fuel cell modules together to reach higher outputs for heavy-duty applications, and it clearly aims to do the same with its third-generation technology. To that end, the system has been designed to be as compact as possible to provide flexibility for a wide range of applications. It’s expected to be introduced to Japan, Europe, North America, and China after 2026. at the earliest.
In our current era, market forces seem to indicate that hydrogen has no real place for commuter cars. EV range has skyrocketed, while charging has grown faster in recent years—limiting the benefit of faster refueling for hydrogen-powered cars. Hydrogen infrastructure is still largely non-existent, beyond a handful of barely functional stations in California. Meanwhile, as reported in an Autopian exclusive, there is now a black market for hydrogen. That’s because the fuel is so expensive that running the average hydrogen car costs more than fueling a Dodge Viper.
For all its hard work over the last decade, Toyota has sold just 28,000 examples of the hydrogen-powered Mirai since 2014. It’s also sold 2,700 fuel cell power units to over 100 other customers since 2019. That might sound like a lot, but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the 100,000-plus EVs sold in America every month.
Hydrogen may still have a future. Fuel costs could come down, and efficiency gains could help reduce running costs further. It perhaps makes the most sense in heavy applications like buses and trucks. There is less reliance on abundant public infrastructure for vehicles running out of specific depots. It’s also more practical to refuel these larger vehicles than to quickly recharge massive batteries in electric versions. However, for the commuter market, it seems unlikely hydrogen will surge forth to overtake the EV as the personal transportation solution of the future.
Still, Toyota perseveres with its dream of a “hydrogen society.” Maybe the third time really is the charm.
Image credits: Toyota, CAF, Stephen Salazar
I think hydrogen will become viable in this heavier duty applications first, for which batteries won’t cut the mustard.
So many of the complaints about hydrogen could have been made about BEVs 20 years ago. “There’s no infrastructure”, yeah because no one uses it. “we burn fossil fuels to make it” yeah we use a lot of fossil fuels to make electricity too.
Most of the problems are just a matter of scaling up. Sure there’s other problems, but they are worth fixing because it doesn’t have the dead-end issues of BEVs: charging in apartments and handling volume on high-travel holidays.
But you can buy a BEV right now and charge it at the home you own, or switch to your other gas car. The fact that all cars using slow-ass charging is impossible is the futures problem.
The tens(hundreds?) of billions we have spent on installing EV chargers that will be obsolete in 5-10 years could have made hydrogen work.
It’s all very nice, but it’s still a technological dead end for infrastructure reasons alone.
Toyota is free to spend as much of thier money as they want. Don’t hurt me none, I hope they pull it off.
Has EV range skyrocketed? Seems to me we’re in the same ballpark as the original Model S…
I can see the advantages for larger commercial vehicles and heavy equipment. One often overlooked issue with diesel (and gasoline) in these applications is localized air pollution. City buses, large delivery vehicles, especially ones that idle constantly in urban areas or follow busy routes really make life unhealthy for people around them. The same applies to construction equipment that runs all day for extended periods on construction sites, logistics vehicles in places like ports, mines and so on. So often the emissions equipment on these is pretty sketchy too. If we can come up with a heavy duty clean alternative (sorry, I don’t see batteries as a solution, or at least not all of it) for these applications it would be a huge boost. Many of these uses are either fixed route or geographically contained to facilities or small sites, where fuelling infrastructure would be practical. An added benefit would be a quieter worksite for the workers and neighbours.
Hydrogen in TRAINS? Toyota have lost their minds. Trains are quite literally the perfect use case for electric propulsion, they only go on set routes so just pop in a third rail or catenary and done – simple, climate-friendly transport. I can see a distant future where H2 is useful in commercial trucking, but other than that it seems like a waste of time and money on Toyota’s part.
Third rails are not always possible on old legacy or remote routes. Also challenging in winter climates. But you are right, there is a huge proportion that can be electrified and it would be more practical.
A hydrogen powered train went into service recently on the Metrolink commuter rail system in Southern California. Metrolink shares that portion of track ROW with BNSF freight trains that run at night so catenary/third rail electrification isn’t likely.
It’s already being experimented in Germany and France.
https://www.alstom.com/solutions/rolling-stock/alstom-coradia-ilint-worlds-1st-hydrogen-powered-passenger-train
https://www.groupe-sncf.com/en/innovation/decarbonization-trains/hydrogen-ter
The main reason is that it cost an arm and a leg to electrify a track, so you won’t do that on lines where there’s 2 trains a day (In France I’d say electricity is for the lines with more than 5 trains an hour and even so, there’s still lines with that traffic that don’t have electricity)
(3rd rail is a big no no in most continental Europe except for very specific historical uses or for subways)
Hydrogen: Take all the infrastructure problems of EVs. Multiply by 10. At least.
Still think it’s a good idea?
Hydrogen seems like it makes a lot of sense to me for heavy equipment and long haul stuff, but Toyota needs to get serious about funding some production capabilities and especially distribution if they really want to see it happen.
It’s not a terrible idea to work the fuel cell side of this problem for when the real problem is solved (fuel side). But I don’t see a ton of progress on that front. Hydrogen just has so many problems as a fuel. What would be idea is if there was a way to generate hydrogen in-situ with some kind of volatile liquid and keep that liquid onboard and returned to the pump for reprocessing. Like cracking natural distillates and returning the base product back to the pump for other use…but there isn’t a good solution that doesn’t take more energy than its worth.
I’m not saying Toyota is going to win out with hydrogen, but I am saying that the industry spent multiple years bagging on Toyota for refusing to go wholesale EV. Every journalist (and most commentariats) out there shit on them for betting on hybrids and suddenly, we find that not only is every single manufacturer pivoting to where Toyota has been the whole time, Toyota has managed to dethrone the F150 as the best selling model in the US. F150 has been top for almost 50 years.
Basically, what I am saying is I’m willing to allow for them to have ideas that don’t the standard narrative, but could still prove highly viable. And if the Japanese gov’t is funding it anyway, all the arguments about Toyota mis spending R&D money “that should go to EVs” is nonsense.
I think where Toyota wins is their ability to offer value for money cars, or at least they used to. Previous Camry costed 80k-90k in Qatar. 2025s cost 100k+ riyals….
But their other smaller vehicles make up the bulk of their “best selling title in the world”.
But Toyota has suffered quite a few dents, such as the V35A fiasco (which even though one example hit 200k+ miles, does NOT seem to be sorted out since the 2024s too are failing.
The issues with the Tacoma are another. The issues with the LC250s melting their mirrors (and even the Lexus versions (REALLY!!!)) also doing the same. The story of an LC250 that broke down when subjected to abuse in Australia (no other Land Cruiser did that before with Australian reviewers….). Again, that is not to say they are garbage now, but they are NOT the simple iron handed SUVs they once were….
And I forgot to even mention the emissions scandal they had…..even if they apologized its NOT FINE since Toyota as someone who has perfected QDR is NOT supposed to make such lapses….
F 150s have not been the top seller. If you add the GMC Sierra and the Chevrolet Silverado, combined it trounces the F 150….
But otherwise Lexus products such as the IS hybrids are decent and good.
Toyota will literally do anything EXCEPT make a decent EV.
Toyota will pay lip service to the environment, when they believe it makes consumers happy and it will make them money (Prius), but they’re profits first and foremost, make no mistake about it. They won’t make a decent EV because the costs of batteries are still prohibitive. Priuses require about 2% of the battery capacity of a Model Y long range. The Buzzforks they made because 1) emissions requirements and 2) they could share the costs with Subaru.
Until the costs of battery packs comes way down, don’t expect Toyota to want or care to do a BEV as a priority.
I would love to agree with you about the costs of batteries being too high, but the reality is that a brand new Model 3 costs about the same as a brand new Prius. A dual motor performance Model 3 is only 6k more than a top spec Prius too. Toyota simply won’t make decent EVs and blame the bz4x as a reason for “EV bad no one buys”/
A brand new Model 3 may cost the same as a Prius, but that doesn’t mean Toyota can make a Model 3 type BEV for the same costs as Tesla. Especially since Toyota has a mission statement for quality and Tesla has a design philosophy of cutting corners to squeeze every last nickel out of materials and production that they can. Also, Tesla is vertically integrated out the wazoo in the battery production process to a level that Toyota is clearly not willing to go to for a level of battery tech that they do not feel is sufficient for BEVs (see all their interest in skipping a generation to solid-state batteries). And given the plunging profit margins that Tesla is seeing for its car business, that would be another red flag for Toyota’s leadership.
I don’t know how to say this without violating NDAs, but I can assure you that Toyota could very easily switch to making primarily EVs that are less expensive and better designed/built than Tesla. It would also result in higher profit margins for them as well, but they won’t because their management is still deadset on fossil fuels. Plus you say Tesla is seeing reduced profits. Are you sure that’s totally not because their CEO is a literal Nazi?
Hydrogen doesn’t make Toyota any money from consumers (if anything it’s losing money on every Mirai they sell), it’s making them boatloads of money from the Japanese govt.
Lobbying your govt for taxpayer money grift is not an exclusively ‘murican thing, in fact our corporations can only dream of Toyota’s sway with their govt, it’s up there with Samsung in Korea.
Eldolf scammed his Tesla venture into ‘success’ using the same technique.
I’m not even sure H2 is the solution for commercial vehicles anymore. EVs can currently handle the bulk of use cases. Long distance hauling is the big caveat there, but synthetic fuel far easier (and likely cheaper per-mile cost) than switching everything to H2. Can use the same infrastructure that’s already there, just fill the tanks with mostly CO2 neutral fuel. Both need investment on the production side anyway.
Not sure about the other pollutants though. Does synthetic fuel burn cleaner than regular gas/diesel?
I genuinely think that hydrogen will be a viable option for trucks and boats if the technology keeps advancing like it has done for the last few years. If not in fuel cell applications then at least as a fuel for ice engines like for example Cummins are doing.
From a technical standpoint it makes sense. There’s still the fuel cost issue though. Commercial operators care most about $ per mile. Cost should come down some if production ramps up, but right now it’s nowhere close.
Depending on how wide or narrow your definition of “commercial vehicle” is changes the calculus massively. The Rivian vans that deliver my amazon packages? Joe the Plumber’s van fleet? Absolutely BEVs are a great choice. Any big heavy vehicle that doesnt rely on hydraulics for propulsion is a terrible application of the current technology, while being one of the greatest needs to go green.
IF (and i truly understand that this word is doing a whole lot of work here…) minimum viable H2 infrastructure exists, which i would define as “a very large proportion of truck stops have H2 on tap, and that H2 is not sourced from cracked NG,” then BEV doesnt make any sense for those bigger vehicles. Just because BEV semis exist doesnt mean they arent an awful choice if the choice is monumentally huge resource extractive battery pack that must be charged for a long time at your depot that you had to spend bucketfuls of money to upgrade to be able to charge your fleet of short distance semis, or, a FCEV that is extremely comparable in size and weight to your current diesel setup and can refuel quickly and you dont have to pay for the refueling infrastructure, and you still get all the big electric performance benefits, and all the big electric environmental benefits.
Maybe if we figure out some solid state batteries that you can absolutely DUMP electrons into extremely quickly, then H2’s necessity is limited. But our current batteries would need to undergo Revolution not just Evolution to make strides in the “needs to be able to move big things a moderate to long distance” category. Batteries need unknown leaps to make it work, H2 needs very known, very achievable hops to make it work. We need clean generation of H2, easily accomplished right now with excess electric capacity from renewables (doesnt matter how inefficient the cracking process is if the choice is inefficiently cracked source of power from my solar panel that wouldnt have contributed to grid power anyway, or switched off solar panel) and accomplished in the future in a variety of ways. We also need distribution. Tesla proved distribution can happen if you are dedicated to it. Someone like toyota could Definitely do the same for H2 given the will to do so.
Toyota would be the ruler of the EV market if it had put half the R&D money it has spent on hydrogen research on battery drivetrain development. Hydrogen as a fuel is truly the rotary of its time. Engineers just cannot give up thinking they can solve all of the issues related to storage and range. More importantly there is no infrastructure in place to fuel such a market and cost per Btu is still too high as hydrogen requires a fair amount of energy to produce. It would take a government incentive program to move it along, something that is definitely not happening in the next four years at least.
I love hydrogen but it’s expensive to extract. If we had a lot more nuclear plants, that would be ideal but we don’t. It would just be shifting around the problem. I know there’s the worry about infrastructure but look how far along it’s come for electric vehicles. Toyota would need to license out its patents for free so other companies would adopt their tech and then it would have a chance.
And, even then, you can just use the nuclear plants to charge electric cars and skip the intermediate step of making hydrogen
Nuclear power plants can also be designed to thermally crack hydrogen from water. Doing so might increase their efficiency beyond what they could manage by generating electricity from superheated steam alone.
Interesting
Too bad building a new reactor from scratch takes like 30 years in the US
They do have it down to like 5-6 years in China
You can read more about it on the DOE’s nuclear hydrogen R&D plan:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/nuclear-hydrogen-rd-plan-0
Note that this was published in 2004 so add 20+ years to your already pessimistic nuclear timeline 🙁
That R&D money that they got from the Japanese government for a specific purpose which would have been illegal to spend on other purposes? Your suggestion is they should have spend that on other purposes. Maybe they should step it up to full fraud and tell the government they spent all of the money on fuel cell research even though they did not.
Toyota cares about hydrogen and keeps pushing hydrogen because they know oil supplies will only hold out for so long.
Toyota loves fossil fuels and loves the profits it can make from vehicles powered by fossil fuels, so what’s going to be the next super-cheap fuel for transportation?
It’s going to be coal, especially for Japan, who has easy access to coal supplies through Australia compared to the Middle East.
What’s the cheapest way to make hydrogen fuel? By converting coal.
If large battery packs for BEVs were an order of magnitude cheaper in cost, I’m sure Toyota would be up to their elbows in developing BEVs as an alternative. As it stands, they’re clearly betting in a post-peak oil world, burning coal-derived hydrogen is going to be the way of the future.
That’s a bigger number than I thought it would be. It’s comparable to how many A8’s Audi has moved in the US since 2014 (31,500 based on the data I found).
Wow! But also the key difference is that every Mirai is presumably in the same couple of 100-mile radii in CA, right? 🙂
As briefly touched on in the article, hydrogen should probably be sorted out in commercial applications where “return to base” fueling is standard.
Transit buses and short haul/local delivery (100-200 miles radius) are probably the best bets. Slap down a hydrogen generating station at home base and get to work.
The problem with that of course is competition from BEVs which can be charged overnight with cheap, off peak power. I’m pretty sure the costs of that power will beat the cost of H2 all day, every day and five times on days ending in a y.
And that’s not counting the maintenance of FVC vs BEVs.
I can tell you right now, the infrastructure cost for EV conversion alone, is staggering.
We’re in the process of converting our transit bus fleet. We’re aiming to have 320 EV units by 2027.
From cost of chargers, cost of running power, cost of structural work (the entire roof support system needs re-doing as the roof cannot support 160, 1000lb pantograph chargers hanging from it) cost of increased fire suppression, the FIVE MEGAWATT generating station we’re building as backup when the grid goes down…
Compared to Hydrogen, where other than safety considerations, we replace the current diesel fueling station with a hydrogen generating/fueling station and otherwise leave everything else the same as the diesel system.
This doesn’t even take into account the maintenance areas and training for staff. But a lot of that would be needed regardless of alternative fuel chosen.
As the saying goes YMMV.
With hydrogen you will be tethered to the hydrogen market pricing. Currently, despite decades of $1-2/kg renewable hydrogen promises the current price is about $33/kg or GGE. Is that within your budget?
How about the busses themselves? I dunno how much a FCV bus costs compared to an overhead powered EV bus but I can’t imagine the FCV will be cheaper or less complicated than the EV given it has several high pressure storage tanks and a fuel cell on top of everything else. I would look at the price of FCV busses, after all the Mirai is a $60k car and Toyota loses quite a bit of money on each and every one.
“cost of structural work (the entire roof support system needs re-doing as the roof cannot support 160, 1000lb pantograph chargers hanging from it)”
By this I infer these are BEVs for which the pantographs are for charging only and not a complete overhead network. Is this correct? If so why use pantographs instead of plugging them in with a cable like everyone else?
I directly stated EVs, I’m not sure where you need to infer.
The answer is space. Transit parking garages have about a foot laterally between lanes. Juuuust enough to walk through and duck under side mirrors.
Adding chargers to each lane would effectively kill every 3rd lane of parking. So 7 to 10 parking spaces, which you’ll then need to build elsewhere. Then there’s the massive risk of people hitting the chargers.
Add bollards, you say? Great, even more parking space lost.
Plus, to run all of those chargers in the ground instead, that would require tearing up the entire concrete floor and re-pouring once lines are ran. Which would be millions of dollars.
Last I was updated, current pricing for a 40′ EV bus is around $1.5mil CAD. That’s a 300 to 500k premium over a diesel unit (probably more now, thanks US administration). I don’t have a cost figure for hydrogen.
Batteries make commercial vehicles insanely expensive. We use a 520kwh battery pack to get over 200 miles of range, and we run one of the coolant heaters on diesel (135L onboard) just to make sure we don’t lose too much range in the winter.
The average diesel bus gets about 100L/100km of fuel consumption, or 2-3MPG. We put 500L in the bus to get the range for the day. The e-buses charge midday.
The other issue is that you need a charger for basically every bus, as they all return to base at the same time once the morning commute is done and charge at the same time. (drivers work a split shift, there’s much lower ridership during working hours).
So I don’t have the specifics of hydrogen costs, but I can tell you that EVs are expensive as hell for commercial, cause it takes a metric fuckton of electricity to replace 3MPG worth of efficiency.
“I directly stated EVs”
Yes you did. EV is broad umbrella which vs includes BEVs and batteryless trollybusses. Since pantographs are commonly associated with streetcars, trains and busses powered by overhead lines I was clarifying you were talking about BEV busses with a pantograph used primarily or exclusively for charging. That’s all.
“So I don’t have the specifics of hydrogen costs, but I can tell you that EVs are expensive as hell for commercial, cause it takes a metric fuckton of electricity to replace 3MPG worth of efficiency”
A valid complaint and a good argument for biodiesel or NGFC hybrid busses. If you’re looking for better numbers why not give your compatriots in Montpellier France a call? They canceled their order to 50 HFCV busses after realizing the running costs of hydrogen would put them in the poorhouse:
https://electrek.co/2022/01/11/city-cancels-order-50-hydrogen-buses-after-realizing-electric-buses-best/
Here’s an article claiming HFCV have higher maintain ends costs than BEVs or even diesel.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/26/hydrogen-fleets-are-much-more-expensive-to-maintain-than-battery-even-diesel/
I dunno if the FC discussed in the OT was part of this study. Worth asking.
Here’s one you might like; somebody in Canada claiming to have done an in depth review of the costs of BEV vs HFC busses and found the math skewed heavily towards BEVs:
“As often happens, another GTA contact reached out to provide me with a more detailed study that CUTRIC had done for Brampton, as well as the city’s general manager of transit’s memo supporting its conclusions that a mix of 724 electric buses to 408 hydrogen buses would be cheapest and the best alternative. I did an in-depth review of the assumptions and results, and found the non-material 0.1% difference in cost between the blended fleet and the battery-only fleet would be well over $350 million in favor of a battery-only fleet if appropriate assumptions were used. (All figures in Canadian dollars unless explicitly stated otherwise.) The costs of hydrogen, hydrogen refueling systems, and hydrogen bus maintenance were lowballed, and the costs of electric bus maintenance were overstated. Further, carbon pricing on the gray hydrogen that would dominate energy supplies for the hydrogen buses were ignored.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/10/23/cutrics-hydrogen-bus-study-dodges-1-5bn-in-costs-to-justify-higher-emissions/
Montpellier covers an area of 57km squared. We cover 413km squared, and need to eventually expand to cover a larger portion of the 2700km squared under our greater amalgamated area.
Their math will be a bit different.
The GTA also doesn’t have a density problem. BEV is probably our best bet long term, but boy howdy, the infrastructure costs to get us there will be significant (We literally don’t have enough electricity flowing to the city) and require re-thinking of our current distribution model.
It’s pretty clear that the CleanTechnica author has a pretty aggressive anti-hydrogen stance, and he makes some pretty big assumptions on direct comparisons to mass production cars when it comes to cost.
All transit buses are bespoke, hand-built affairs and the parts are an order of magnitude more expensive than they are in other industries, as their application is limited. That applies to the entire vehicle, not just drivetrain parts.
They also claim that fuel cells aren’t making advancements, despite this very article we’re commenting on claiming otherwise.
That being said, despite the numbers being closer than the author spins, the cost is apparently still in BEV’s court for the time being and may very well stay there. Only time and advancements will tell.
It’s important to innovate on all fronts, as putting all the proverbial eggs in one basket historically has caused issues. Prime example being how we abandoned EVs over 100 years ago for ICE, instead of keeping both in development.
My final 2 cents is that buses should be the last vehicle on the decarbonization list, as the emissions per person is WAY in their favour. IMO, refine the tech in other industries and build out the infrastructure, THEN change the buses to join everyone else.
“It’s important to innovate on all fronts, as putting all the proverbial eggs in one basket historically has caused issues. Prime example being how we abandoned EVs over 100 years ago for ICE, instead of keeping both in development.”
The problem with that is the money and time wasted on rabbit holes. There was some continuous development of large diesel electric hybrids and EVs though as submarines. For submariners range, reliability, weight, NVH, HVAC, serviceability and longevity aren’t just important, they can be the difference between life and death.
“They also claim that fuel cells aren’t making advancements, despite this very article we’re commenting on claiming otherwise.”
Is that so? Perhaps I missed that part. I only read the author had doubts on the assumptions that FCVs maintenace costs would be on par with BEVs by 2030.
“One of the things I criticized the International Council on Clean Transportation’s deeply flawed trucking study about last year was that they had significant maintenance cost improvements for hydrogen drive train trucks and none for battery electric trucks. In fact, they assumed that heavy duty, long-range trucks — the only segment where some organizations still hold out hope for fuel cells — would have very similar maintenance costs to battery electric after 2030, and equivalent maintenance costs to diesel trucks immediately.”
From the OT:
“Toyota doesn’t provide specifics in terms of mileage or service intervals, but we’re told it’s now comparable with what you might expect from a conventional diesel engine, with a largely maintenance-free design.”
Which is exactly what table 5 in the article shows.
Fuel costs WILL have to come down by a whole lot. Unless hydrogen is as widely available and as cheap as the FF its trying to displace it’s a no go.
Kudos to Toyota for bringing the tech this far though.
Not at all. They’ve been steadfastly and actively avoiding the writing on the wall. It has been billions in wasted dollars and time. They have effectively ceded the BEV segment to China, Europe, and Tesla. Their only offering is a co-engineered, phoned-in waste.
To choose to spend that much money and time on a farcically non-viable technology resulting in being caught with the proverbial pants down is the sort of thing that should get C-suite types fired in a more rational world.
Not only did they avoid the EV market, they actively lobbied against the Biden EV plan since they knew it would kill them. They absolutely missed a dodge ball to the head with the election of the Fourth Riech.
I agree with all of this. I’m just expressing my admiration for how well Toyota has managed to shine this ball of poop.
Until BEVs reach cost parity on purchase price with no subsidies, they are the farcical non-viable technology. Toyota hybrids do not depend on spending other people’s money to be viable.
Well would you look at that! The world spent 7 TRILLION (7.1% of global GDP) in 2023 on fossil fuel subsidies:
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2023/08/22/IMF-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Data-2023-Update-537281
I wonder how much of that was US military spending to protect foreign oil fields and shipping lines to bring oil to market.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:
Hydrogen is fetch.
In that it’s not going to happen.
If Toyota wants to make
fetchhydrogen happen, they need to take the Tesla approach and tackle the fuel production and distribution problem with the same energy they’re putting into the commuter and heavy vehicle problems. Hydrogen fuel cells sound awesome on paper but finding H2 just hanging out in nature doesn’t happen that often on this planet.This. Tesla was right to identify infrastructure as a key problem to solve. Toyota really needed to do the same…but I haven’t seen any willingness by traditional automakers to solve the infrastructure problem in the same way.
It’s like they don’t understand the problem they’re trying to solve. It’s not “create a car with a hydrogen fuel cell.” It’s “provide a method of zero emission transportation.”
That is the issue as I see it. Tesla seems to have been the only one able to identify a blindingly obvious problem and attempt to come up with a solution.
The next problem coming down the turnpike is grid capacity which is currently guaranteed to take 20-50 years to build out.
Eldolf may be directly attempting to solve this one by deconstructing the federal systems that stand in the way of the build out. The problem with this approach as I see it is State interference and law.
His concern for the environment is laudable, but I suspect that is not what is motivating him.
H2 does just hang out in some places though. I’ve been reading recently about growing interest in geologic hydrogen. If it becomes a thing, maybe it could scale up pretty quickly, like a cleaner version of how fracking scaled up in the 2000s.
Toyota keeps on dumping money into R&D when they need to dump money into building out hydrogen infrastructure a la Tesla’s supercharger network. I’m no Tesla fanboy, but their commitment to building out the infrastructure before selling a crap ton of cars was a great idea.
I’d love to buy a car powered by hydrogen, but I wouldn’t be able to fill up anywhere other than an AirGas shop, which I’m not even sure they’d allow me to do anyway.
I think the reasons they don’t do that is simple. Pumps are a LOT more expensive, finicky and maintenance hungry than chargers. They also need everything upstream developed too, pipelines, distribution, refineries/electrolyzers, etc. I imagine the rollout of such a network would make EV America fiasco look as smooth, reliable and efficient as a Jatco Xtronic CVT.
The easiest way to do this of course would be to just power the refueling station with electricity and electrolyse water on site. But with all the inefficiencies of that process a station would need up to twice as much power to run a fleet of H2 vehicles as BEVs. So right there your cost to charge would still be 2x that of a BEV even before trying to recoup the added costs of your infrastructure.
By my calculations, between 4x and 5x as much electricity per vehicle mile.
I’m interested to see your numbers. The rule of thumb I’ve always heard was 40% RT efficiency (on a very good day) for FCV vs 90-95% for BEVs and that FCs have a theoretical max efficiency of about 83% vs the 63% efficiency of the previous gen of Toyota FCs.
That all comes out to an estimate of 73kWh of electricity per kg of H2, or about 4.35kWh of energy to produce and deliver 1kWh of energy to the inverters and motors.
A few caveats:
So yeah, bottom line, H2 costs roughly between 4-5 times as much electricity per mile.
Is this electrolysis of water, methane, or something else? What I’m wondering is, what becomes of the O2 or C left over, and does it hold a commercial value that would better the overall financial efficiency numbers?
This is assuming the only two options are BEV or H2 from water electrolysis. Easiest to go with the 3rd option that Toyota has already implemented at Toyota Logistics services Long Beach. “The Tri-gen system, owned and operated by FuelCell Energy, produces renewable electricity, renewable hydrogen, and water from directed biogas.” Methane goes in and BOTH hydrogen and electricity come out.
There is at least one other way – batteries based on Nickel-Iron chemistry (like the ones in Jay Leno’s 1909 Baker electric car) off-gas H2 when charging. There are 2 pilot plants in Europe that combine grid storage with H2 production.
With a regular lithium battery you tend to get 95% or so of the electricity you put into it back. How much electricity do you get back from a battery that generates hydrogen?
Answer: Less. And burning the hydrogen is going to be a pretty lossy way to get that energy back. You’re doing better by the environment to harness any such by product hydrogen as feedstock for industry rather than as energy storage or transport.
Not sure about that, my understanding is that NiFe batteries start to generate H2 when they are fully charged.
So according to this nickel iron batteries have historically been rather inefficient at energy storage. Their strength is number of useful cycles:
“Nickel-Iron batteries, also known as Edison batteries, have been around since 1901, invented by Thomas Edison himself. Their construction consists of nickel oxide hydroxide plates, iron plates, and potassium hydroxide electrolytes. They are known for their durability and longevity, with a cycle life of 2000-3000 cycles and the ability to withstand overcharging and deep discharges.
The efficiency of nickel-iron batteries is around 65-70%. However, they are known for their slow charge and discharge rates, which can be a drawback for some off-grid energy systems.”
Granted there may have been advances in the tech but I haven’t found any numbers to back that optimism up. The wiki article on the tech is even more pessimistic at < 65%:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery
As for its efficiency at generating hydrogen:
"The company claims that its device has an efficiency of 85 percent and can produce pressurized hydrogen at lower costs than similar technology."
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/green-hydrogen-battery-battolyser
Not bad but its still a lossy way to store energy compared to a good lithium ion at 95% RT efficiency:
"Lithium-ion batteries generally have a round trip efficiency of around 85-95%, depending on their specific chemistry and design. For example, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries typically have efficiencies closer to the 95% range, while lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) batteries might be slightly lower due to higher internal resistance."
https://powerefficiency.com/round-trip-efficiency-of-lithium-ion-batteries/#google_vignette
A lovely idea but it would be far more efficient to just burn biogas in a gas turbine or fuel cell.
Funny that the tri gen system turns biogas, which is primarily a mix of methane and CO2 into (1) electricity, (2) hydrogen and (3) water. I wonder where the carbon goes….
Besides any hydrogen made from renewable energy or biogas is better used to displace gray hydrogen made from fossil fuels for industry rather than transport.
I believe this demonstration project buys biogas that has been purified enough to be put on the natural gas pipeline (called renewable natural gas). So the carbon dioxide in the mix is removed off site for this particular case. If it was really biogas with the CO2 in the mix can be captured at the end along with the generated CO2.
This is a fuel cell that still puts out 1.2 MW of electricity. The dual gen it is based on makes 1.4 MW electricity and the combined efficiency is over 90% when using the heat. The electrical output is lower with hydrogen production, but that does not necessarily mean overall efficiency is lower.
Heat is the third thing the tri gen makes. While it technically also produces water, extra water has to be added for how much steam could be produced. The Toyota port facility uses the heat for truck washing, with the produced water reducing the water bill by something like 10%.
I think it would be great for a truck stop that had showers and a car wash.
You’re going to turn just as much methane into CO2 with this system as burning the biogas in an ICE, turbine or regular fuel cell and it makes capturing that gas no easier. Unless of course it turns that carbon into coal dust ala turquoise hydrogen but I think if that were the case they’d have mentioned that. If anything perhaps a bit harder since the CO2 needs to be separated from the hydrogen.
As far as efficiency goes you’ll lose more energy as wasted heat by using hydrogen as an energy carrier rather than charging batteries in cars and forklifts.
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I knew FuelCellEnergy has a relationship with Exxon for carbon capture. Now they have an virtual walk through for the beverage quality CO2 unit they are selling as a fuel cell add-on. Pretty neat but does not say much in the way of details. How it makes capturing gas easier is actually pretty tough science.
“how does a carbonate fuel cell work” is a good google question thanks to AI. I think I can explain how carbon capture is easier now. The fuel goes into the anode side where water and CO2 come out. Oxygen goes into the cathode side along with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is actually a required reactant for a carbonate fuel cell (because the electrolyte is CO3. Now this makes sense), and some have a recycle loop to take CO2 from the anode side exhaust back to the cathode side input. If air is used as an oxygen source, nitrogen gas stays on the cathode side and comes out the cathode side exhaust. Dinitrogen does not pass over to the anode side because it does not react into a carbonate salt.
This is what makes the purifying of the captured gas easier. The anode exhaust is mostly CO2 and water, with only trace amounts of fuel and H2 to remove. The H2 removed from the exhaust can be recycled back into the anode side feed with the fuel to maximize electricity production. CO2 removal is as easy as diverting some from the recycle loop bringing it back to the air side, because you already have to have a way to separate hydrogen and carbon dioxide because it needs enough carbon dioxide in the feed in order to work.
My guess is pressure swing adsorption is used to remove the hydrogen, and then the almost pure CO2 is compressed and cooled into a liquid that is now beverage grade purity.
Seems like a lot of trouble to clean up something you’re just going to inject into the ground. If you use it in beverages as the purification grade implies you’re not really capturing it in any meaningful way as it will be fizzed and burped into the atmosphere in very little time.
No need to purify to such a level if it is just getting injected into the ground.
The shortage of beverage grade CO2 is so bad that natural gas is being burned to make it, so carbon capture and utilization reduces those emissions even when it is quickly consumed.
“Pretty neat but does not say much in the way of details.”
Its all right here:
“Fuel cells use an electrochemical process to convert hydrogen-rich fuels into electrical power and heat. Inside the fuel cell, methane is steam-reformed at 600 degrees Celsius and converted into hydrogen and CO2. The fuel cell produces electricity, heat, water, and CO2, which can be exhausted or captured to be recycled into a valuable end-product. The unique chemistry of the carbonate fuel cell platform can also be used to concentrate CO2 from external sources for capture and use or sequestration.
Fossil fuel emissions from industrial plants contain concentrations of CO2. When delivering those exhaust streams into the fuel cell’s air intake (cathode), the CO2 is electrochemically pumped to the fuel electrodes (anode). This increases the concentration of CO2 available to be recycled for industrial use.”
https://www.fuelcellenergy.com/blog/basics-of-fuelcell-energy-carbon-capture-platform/
They claim their system is better because it produces power vs consuming it. Sounds good but look closer the system injects additional methane into the stream. THAT is where your additional energy is coming from. This is just a steam reformer which is how 95% of the world’s hydrogen is already made.