Featured Toyota committed to hydrogen cars despite solid state battery

Japan is pushing hydrogen and FCEVs, and hopes to showcase how far they've come at the 2020 Olympics. The major car makers there are going publicly support hydrogen for at least until then.

Nissan's FCEV though, won't use hydrogen but ethanol for fuel.

 

I thought hydrogen fuel was going to be good as one of the alternatives to gas and electric. But now I have been told that hydrogen will always be too expensive/pollution making to manufacture and that it tends to corrode tubing. What is the concensus here in Priuschat? I just want to know everyone's thoughts. As a young teen, I always thought either hydrogen or steam would revolutionize the automotive industry.

 

Steam has already been tried.
Stanley Motor Carriage Company - Wikipedia

 

The first problem is high pressure, hydrogen gas 'leaks' through just about everything, low energy density, and metals under go a chemical change that makes them fragile. The hydrogen pressures are so high that a leak becomes an invisible knife. Low energy density leads to large tanks that take up a lot of volume.

I'm OK with using a hydrogen-rich chemical, say ammonia, NH{3} fed to a converter that separates the hydrogen from the carrier, nitrogen, and feeds hydrogen to the fuel cell. There are other chemical carriers (debatable) but I prefer KISS and ammonia has benign properties compared to high pressure hydrogen.

When I see laptops power by hydrogen fuel cells, I'll be more interested. But the last effort I read about failed on the hydrogen storage problem. This suggests it doesn't scale well at least on the small size. It may work for larger, fleet vehicles but a 'demo' is like the old "Beta" wars. Interesting but too often hobbled by economic and technical issues.

Bob Wilson

 

Because of hydrogen's physical and chemical properties, the infrastructure to distribute and fuel cars with it mean that the cost for materials and safety measures will always cost more than using natural gas/methane to fuel cars.

Since hydrogen doesn't exist in a pure state on Earth, we have to make it. The cheapest way, and thus the way it will be made without government intrusion, is to free it from natural gas, coal, or petroleum. That means you still have to deal with the emissions and other negatives of fossil fuel. It can be made renewably, but this costs more, so the government has to step in to get the market to do so.

Perhaps a cheap, renewable way of making it will be discovered, but we could also get cheap, renewable gasoline, diesel, or alcohols.

Fuel cells themselves could be a good replacement to the ICE in cars, and we can make them to run on other fuels besides pure hydrogen.

 

if toyota is coming out with a solid state battery (doubt it) why do we need hydrogen?
recently, it seems toyota has hired the pr firm that provides hype for a certain other not to be named large car manufacturer.

 

no doubt. and many other technologies.

 

nothing recently?

 

Here is a link to Toyota's presentation today at the Tokyo Motor Show that includes future ideas including solid state battery:

 

I assumed tried & failed.

This is more recent. Inspiration (car) - Wikipedia

 

Talk about power.............holy moly

 

This video inspires me. It also shows us what "good people" are doing around the world. The future is now!

 

They need the battery for markets in which they can't get the government to build hydrogen infrastructure.

We were using steam locomotives up into the 1960's. Diesel-electric ones won out because of maintenance and running costs. A modern consumer steam car would lose out for the same reasons.

Steam still needs to burn a fuel. People think plugging in is a hassle, they aren't going to go for rewatering on top of refueling.
The original steam cars lost to ICE ones because it takes time for steam engines to heat up and come on line. You can't just jump into the car and leave on a whim. This can be solved by making the car a hybrid, but that adds cost and more complexity to an already complex system.
Looking at power plants, it will likely be more efficient to just burn whatever fuel in the turbine than use steam as an intermediary to spin it.

 

We have a couple of things going on here. The first is the fixed cost fallacy. The second is plain old politics.

Compressed or liquid hydrogen is an excellent fuel to power electronics on space flights, and fork lifts in warehouses.

The argument in favor of hydrogen for ground transportation was that batteries were too expensive, bulky, and heavy to power larger vehicles to distances people wanted to drive. Those that argued that said that it was impossible to make a zero emissions (kind of a strange definition since hydrogen and electricity do have emissions when generated) in the tailpipe vehicle that could go far enough (California's Air Resources Board - CARB defined that as 300 miles on the old epa test) at a price people would buy. The tesla model S in 2012 proved you could do that, and the bolt and tesla model 3 show that the costs do not need to be all that high.

We now have 4 cars that can realistically look at. The clarity fuel cell, mirai, clarity phev, tesla model 3 (310 mile battery), pacifica phev, tesla model X.
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Unlike the time when Toyota did bulk of its investment in the mirai we can see some things. All things are EPA but would move proportionally on nedc or japanese tests.

Tesla model 3 (bigger battery) - 124 mpge, 310 mile range, charge 170 miles/30 minutes (on super charger (900 stations in us and growing)), price $45,200 (including destination) before $7500 federal tax credit.
mirai - 66 mile/kg, 312 mile range, in California and hawaii only government and toyota subsidized fueling in 5 minutes (32 stations and growing). Can't refuel in garage or other networks. $58,365 before $13,000 federal and state incentives on top of free fuel for 3 years.
clarity - 67 mile/kg, 366 mile range. $59,365 before $13,000 federal and state incentives on top of free fuel for 3 years.

The tesla goes 0-60 in 5.2 seconds and handles extremely well compared to reviews. The mirai and clarity don't handle as well as a camry or accord, the first goes 0-60 in 8.9 seconds, the second in 8.1 seconds. It should be fairly clear to see what there is a wait for a year on the model 3, and the mirai and clarity are pushing cheap lease rates to just sell a few thousand units in 2 years.

The one trick the mirai and clarity have up their sleeves versus long range bevs, is not longer range, but the ability to refuel faster than a bev if you build a very large number of hydrogen stations requiring government money, and don't allow battery swap stations. Of which we can say, that is not going to happen anytime fast. The fastest it may happen is 10 years in Japan, and Toyota is lobbying that government hard. The big problem with saddling the plug-in technology with all the restrictions, is phev can be built that travel most miles electrically but provide fast refueling. Hydrogen doesn't provide fast refueling until you build the very expensive infrastructure.

Japan to speed growth of hydrogen refueling stations- Nikkei Asian Review

If you do the math the cost will be at least $1.1 B for that network in Japan with $110M per year for maintenance even if they dispense little fuel. To date the hydrogen highways in california, Japan, and Europe are over budget with fewer stations built, as prices have not come down anywhere close to the estimates.

I would not say never. Breakthroughs are possible with fuel cells. But plug-ins have advanced much faster than toyota estimated, while fuel cell vehicles continue to fail to meet promises.

 

Unfortunately, the government (our) money is still pushing fuel cells. Otherwise the EV would have the $13000 rebate and the fuel cell would have $7500.

 

You all have been awesome in your answers and research that you have done. I have to admit, I only recently have been interested in these "alternative" vehicles and I am a little behind in reading about them all. I appreciate your information. By the way, while I was walking to my car in my parking lot at work, a "20 something" young lady who had parked near me actually said, ."I love your car!" That being said, there defintely is hope for the Prius!!

 

One of my 20 something co-workers calls it my spaceship.

 

In fairness, the plug in cash incentives are higher in California.
But PHEVs are the red headed step child when it comes to ZEV credits.