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Maybe public perception is skewing my opinion, but Toyota had a massive head start on EVs with the first Gen Prius. Then they let that platform stagnate and bemoaned the advancement of EVs once Tesla had brought them to the market all in favor of hydrogen. They put all their eggs in the hydrogen fuel cell basket hoping that storage and range would be worked out despite clear disadvantages due to physics. Now they "love battery tech"? I love their reputation when it comes to ICE and reliability, but I'm challenging them to persuade my negative opinion of their EV commitment before I buy a Toyota EV.
I always thought of hydrogen as tech that didn't have a leg to stand on.
The tech is just a bunch of air
Yeah, but all these traditional car makers had all this expertise designing and making ICEs so they blindly stuck to the idea of continuing to make ICEs, by just moving to hydrogen.
They hobbled themselves since making electric cars requires a very different skill set which Tesla and many Chinese car makers were able to break into without the high entry cost that making quality ICEs has. Now they've set themselves to play catchup at the risk of being steamrolled by newcomers.
While from a technical point of view it would allow for the continuation of combustion engines, and is thus an attractive alternative for car makers, it doesn't make sense to use hydrogen on such small scales. Making hydrogen cleanly requires a lot of energy, so the idea generally is to use renewable energy to generate hydrogen from water. This works for industrial applications like steel making, but on a small scale it just doesn't make economic sense because it needs to be cooled down so much.
The main reason why hydrogen is pushed is because it is also a byproduct of natural gas exploitation, so called blue or grey hydrogen.
Toyota knew they blew it and won't be able to catch up on their own. Because of that, they have to create a partnership with Idemitsu Kosan which already have a headstart in solid state battery technology.
Even if they mothball an EV early on, at least in the US, auto manufacturers are required to produce parts and provide maintenance for 10 years of the vehicle's life. That and Toyota isn't Tesla, they want to stand behind their brand.
I can see where they're going with hydrogen. With projects like that Australian seawater hydrogen project making hydrogen generation "free", it's just a matter of time before it becomes cheaply accessible. A fuel cell/battery hybrid that could be filled up in minutes would be much more analogous to how gas cars currently work, versus the heavy flaws in current EVs like limited range, heavily degraded winter performance, and rapidly aging batteries in Nissans specifically due to lack of proper thermal management. Statistics are showing 57% of current EV owners don't even want to buy an EV for their next car.
Deploying a hydrogen storage network would also not tax the already fragile power grids as an EV charging network would. Economically, having fuel truck networks, fueling stations, etc. continue to exist, would make hydrogen likely less disruptive to the existing model of transportation economics in countries like the US. Jobs could be retained.
The 2023 Toyota Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid available now, has an estimated 402 mile range on a full tank. Tesla Model 3 estimates 333 miles of range and have also been caught lying on their range gauge so that shouldn't even be trusted.
Countries like the US are just pushing EV tech so heavily because it is available "now" and they think we can capitalism our way out of climate change. The more boring methods like finding ways to continue utilizing existing vehicles but limit driving frequency with augments like actual public transportation don't interest the shareholders.
That’s crazy:
— US gas 140,000 EV chargers and it’s nowhere near enough, even with most charging fine at home
— US had 57 places to fuel hydrogen, all in California
— we don’t even have a cost effective way to produce green hydrogen yet, most will continue to come from fossil fuels for decades
And you think it’s cheaper and easier to build entire industries across the US and worldwide, for a fuel source still dependent on fossil fuels, at a cost probably in the trillions of dollars? And it’s desirable to save large oil companies trying to hold desperately to their existing business?
The generation of Hydrogen was never the hardest problem.
Compression, storage and transportation - those are the big problems.
How is the car driver in Kansas refilling their hydrogen powered vehicle without major efficiency losses?
The barriers haven't changed much in decades, and cyclically someone pretends those are all minor.
The new play is: Maybe Ammonia?