Featured Toyota Technical Chief says People are Finally Seeing the Reality about Hydrogen EVs

Oddly enough, I got a notes today in a Triangle Business News email that:
Toyota was adding a few more billions and thousands of jobs to its NC battery plant. Toyota doubles down on EV investment at North Carolina plant as rivals pull back - Autoblog
A Ford supplier was adding 100 more jobs in my small town.
And a NC coastal battery plant of a company in India is also adding investment and planning 500 more jobs.

A lot of companies still seem to be taking the EV route and betting with their money.

 

Duplicate- sorry

 

Looks like Toyota was right again:
GM and Honda join forces to make hydrogen fuel cells for ‘various products’ - The Verge

GM-Honda Begin Commercial Production at Industry’s First Hydrogen Fuel Cell System Manufacturing Joint Venture (hondanews.com)

Incidentally Toyota began this awhile ago and is actually already in production

Toyota to Assemble Fuel Cell Modules at Kentucky Plant in 2023 - Toyota USA Newsroom

Toyota's bold U.S. plans for next-gen hydrogen fuel cell systems | Automotive News (autonews.com)

FuelCell Energy and Toyota Announce Completion of World's First "Tri-gen" Production System - Toyota USA Newsroom

 

not right about fuel cells for passenger vehicles, that's obvious.
right about ev's? 'they will never exceed 30% of worldwide vehicle sales' - akio toyoda

or: 'we are all in on ev's' - akio toyodas successor

will they be right about commercial fuel cells? i wouldn't point to gm or honda as successful alternative fuel leaders in any transportation sector

 

More I help people with Toyotas, the more I realize that Toyota's future ended long ago when they aggressively prevented people at race tracks from modifying their vehicles with piggyback ECU's. Honda & Subaru went along with it... The innovations that unlocked a couple decades back made Subaru & Honda wildly popular... But for Toyota it was the beginning of the end.

These days with EVs they still think they're going to control the car market, as well as continue to control what modifications can be done with their cars and it's the beginning of the end for them.

Meanwhile over at Insightcentral.net they've built a battery management computer for Gen1 Honda Insight that allows you to do a DIY conversion to a plugin system that gets 140mpg and some have done full electric conversions. None of those innovations can work with Toyota because Toyota's close-minded leadership says so.

 

GM is only doing commercial trucks in partnerships as hydrogen FCEVs. Honda's next FCEV car will have a plug.

Making fuel cells does nothing to address the big hurdles of renewable production and distribution of hydrogen. A third of hydrogen in California is mandated to be renewable. The price per kg across the largest retailer is $36. A Mirai can go 67 miles on that, but the least efficient Camry hybrid can go 44 miles on a gallon of $4.50 gas.
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/analysis-it-is-now-almost-14-times-more-expensive-to-drive-a-toyota-hydrogen-car-in-california-than-a-comparable-tesla-ev/2-1-1519315

 

FuelCell Energy and Toyota Announce Completion of World's First "Tri-gen" Production System - Toyota USA Newsroom

DOE Selects Consortium to Bridge Early Demand for Clean Hydrogen, Providing Market Certainty and Unlocking Private Sector Investment | Department of Energy
"The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) today announced the selection of a consortium to help accelerate commercial liftoff of the clean hydrogen economy and support the launch of the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs), funded through President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda."

 

True to Toyota's belligerence, there's no mention as to what type of energy (color) is being used to create hydrogen which defines if it's a transition away from fossil fuels, or just a way to sell planet destroying fossil fuels in a different package.

Is it Blue hydrogen? Green Hydrogen? Black Hydrogen? Tourqouise Hydrogen? Brown Hydrogen? Grey Hydrogen? Each one of these has a different energy source...

One thing that's certain is that Toyota is the most irresponsible auto manufacturer when it comes to addressing climate change.

 

Toyota Plant to Generate Electricity from Landfill Gas (reliableplant.com)
"Toyota's manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, recently announced that it will begin generating electricity from methane, a byproduct of trash decomposition at a nearby landfill."

"We will generate 1 megawatt (1 million watts) per hour at the site," said Dave Absher, Toyota's environmental strategies manager.

Toyota to enter renewable energy business with new power venture | Recharge (rechargenews.com)
"Toyota – one of the world’s largest auto manufacturers and a pioneer of electric vehicles (EVs) with its Prius hybrid model – said the new company will run wind and solar plants in Japan to help the group meet its 2050 environmental ambitions.

The auto-maker will own 50% of Toyota Green Energy, with power utility partner Chubu Electric holding 40%."

Plano-Based Toyota Partners with the DOE on a $6.5M Megawatt-Scale Fuel Cell Project » Dallas Innovates

2023NAER_Final.pdf (toyota.com)

 

Tri-gen is a solid oxide fuel cell that runs on methane, and can capture some of the hydrogen produced from the reaction.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/tri-generation-success-story-worlds-first-tri-gen-energy-station-fountain

It's green on biogas, but that isn't exactly a plentiful source for powering the grid. This system could be a more efficient and cleaner way of using natural gas that also gives us hydrogen for fertilizer. That's an issue I have with hydrogen for transportation. We already make a lot of hydrogen from natural gas for ammonia with the carbon being sent into the atmosphere. We should focus more on replacing that hydrogen with green. Solve the issues there, and then we might get enough excess hydrogen that building out infrastructure for transportation is affordable.

Hydrogen and fuel cells might also work for grid storage in some regions better than batteries.

 

Not in this country they ain't - or so I've heard and will probably hear below, Again!

cost - slow - vaporware - dumb - ring any bells?

 

Maybe in, "just 10 (more) years!"

 

Current fuel cell efforts but without the false claim it is for retail cars:
Can We Convince You Fuel Cells Have a Future? - AAH 679 - YouTube
Best played at a higher than normal speed, 1.5-1.75.

Mostly a manufacturing review of current approaches. At least this time, the end use cases are for depot based fleets, locomotives, fork lifts, mining, cement and utility trucks, and aircraft APU. The speaker was dismissive of private cars and recognized fuel cell stations are a dead end. Some of the hosts tried to repeat these old claims but the guest avoided those traps.

Bob Wilson

 

Hydrogen | Invest in Canada (investcanada.ca)

Hydrogen is only one phase of this research Ammonia a derivative of Hydrogen also holds promise

GE Vernova And IHI Announce Next Phase Of The Technology Roadmap Aiming To Develop A 100% Ammonia Capable Gas Turbine Combustion System By 2030 - FuelCellsWorks

DOE Announces Nearly $48 Million To Advance Clean Hydrogen Technologies | Department of Energy

Pretty neat how these Energy Pioneers are advancing technology for cleaner energy - you get the feeling that as boundaries are approached someone is going to make a very big breakthrough in one of the many facets of energy production.

Exciting times- I hope I am fortunate to live long enough to see the next energy breakthrough.

I was thinking the other day only we as humans need "energy breakthroughs"- for nature and the earth itself maybe removal of humans is the dream.

 

Sounds like you are seeing the reality of hydrogen EVs.

 

Ammonia was always made from hydrogen. Mostly from a black source like natural gas. The interest in ammonia as a fuel is because it is a lot easier to ship than hydrogen itself, and the global supply lines are well established. NOx emissions could be an issue, but could be addressed with ammonia SCR.

 

Generating a megawatt is a good thing. Do this for an hour and you have 1 megawatt-hour.
But generating 1 megawatt per hour is a nonsensical unit of measure.

Mike

 

Hmmmm .... good point. a megawatt hour ... same as a thousand kWh's if i haven't misplaced a few zeros?
That'd refuel nearly 95 tesla 100-D's subtracting for losses.

.... or ....

it'd refuel maybe 25 hydrogen cars - via electrolysis after subtracting for losses (never mind serious compressor maintenance)
LOL

we're gona need a bigger boat - of sewer gasses. pass the broccoli cabage & beans.
.

 

This system doesn't use electrolysis. It's a solid oxide fuel cell. An organic compound like methane goes in, and the high heat breaks it apart through reformation. The hydrogen will then do its thing it does in the fuel cell for electricity. This Tri-gen system is just 'siphoning off' some of that hydrogen before it enters the cell.

Whether it is better or not than electrolysis doesn't matter with FCEVs, as much of the energy used there is going into compressing and chilling the gas.

 

Fair enough .... the primary thought really tho was how far comparatively each mode of transportation might travel - battery vs hydrogen. Seems it wasn't too long ago Toyota was advertising about how trash generated methane could work for hydrogen fuel. Although true, it's going to take a whole lot of garbage.
.