There are good reasons for hydrogen over batteries, like better range and short refuelling times. I'm not sure why there's a need for some nefarious motive.
https://www.autoblog.com/2021/09/21/toyota-toyoda-questions-...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/how-the-world-s-most-va...
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims...
https://www.hotcars.com/why-toyota-is-investing-383-million-...
There simply isn't yet the battery production capability to ban ICE yet. Their hybrids and hydrogen are part of the all-in approach.
Considering that, he claims, cars have cut CO2 by 24% in 20 years, the onus belongs on other industries to catch up, lest you hurt more people for less gain.
There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines.
In commenting in another spot - https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck goes through many of the engineering and practicality reasons behind that.
Someone has to build that infrastructure, and do it on a national scale, for hydrogen to have even a chance at beating EVs/Hybrid/Gasoline cars. Say what you will about EVs, at least we already have an electric grid.
Synthetic methane produced by electricity is likely still superior to hydrogen with both suffering terrible inefficiencies, at least methane is easy to transport.
A vehicle running on hydrogen isn't an ICE. These are fuel cells.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai
This is an electric vehicle which generates power through hydrogen fuel cells rather than storing it as electrical energy in a battery (though it has a battery too).
> Toyota's latest generation hybrid components were used extensively in the fuel cell powertrain, including the electric motor, power control and main battery. The electric traction motor delivers 113 kilowatts (152 hp; 154 PS) and 335 N⋅m (247 lbf⋅ft) of torque. The Mirai has a 245V (1.6 kWh) sealed nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) traction rechargeable battery pack, similar to the one used in the Camry hybrid.
A question for Japan is "how do you store and refuel a car?" With a hydrogen station, it's a lot like a regular gas station in terms of space, process and time spent. They don't quite have the space for making large charging stations ( e.g. https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-lar... ) which take longer and in turn require more land per car.
There's also the "charging at home isn't as viable". https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,3... or https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1913767,138.6480478,3a,75y,3... or https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1888588,138.697268,14z
On the backdrop of the first thing - the part that caught my eye was "Liquid H2 Tank" which... well... yea.
That's a different approach than a hydrogen fuel cell.
I'll also note that is a German car company and not Toyota (or other Japanese car company).
New productions of existing ICE models therefore can be converted into a Hydrogen variant much easier, without redesigning the platform, or having to burn bridges with ICE and transmission factories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydrogen_internal_comb...
I wouldn't completely discount the idea of them pivoting from the fuel-cell in the face of ever-stronger competition from other types electrical generation components.
) With the usual caveat that of the hydrogen product itself is currently not green, but as always, putting all the pollution in one spot, at scale, means far less pollution per car than if every car's running its own fossil furnace
Is it an internal combustion engine? https://youtu.be/qWMqZgiFhQY
This isn't a one off "hey we can do it" as a proof of concept for a race but an actual production car that you can buy.
> You just can't go as far on hydrogen mostly because the amount of dead weight required for hydrogen is so much higher than for fossil or electric.
To which https://www.toyota.com/mirai/2023/mirai-features/performance...
> Up to 402-Mile Range
> When fully fueled with hydrogen, the 2023 Mirai XLE has an impressive manufacturer-estimated 402-mile driving range rating * and the 2023 Mirai Limited has a 357-mile driving range rating.
The more likely explanation is they sought alternative fuels and settled on Hydrogen and so, now, despite evidence and viability of battery electrics, they keep on pushing "their" solution probably with lots of influence from the sunk cost fallacy.
[1] Recall "peak oil", before Fracking became viable, was a serious concern since the '70s and people thought fossil fuels would eventually become unaffordable to everyday consumers.
Sorry? Pure EVs are still below 15% of new sales in almost all major markets. Sure it's growing quickly but it's far from certain it won't peak at around 25%.
A lot of people will probably re-evaluate their options in the next few years, where it looks like prices for charging stations will go up (no more credit-financed hypergrowth) and in some markets home electricity prices will stay high.
I mean, how nice an EV would that new Insight of theirs just released have been? The design is gorgeous. Instead we get yet another hybrid, which makes sense in a good few use cases I guess - primarily related to charger availability - but just puts them further behind on the EV development experience curve.
Edit: And their investments in Hydrogen, doubling down on it along with the Hybrid tech is indeed a great sunk cost fallacy example. Check Toyota's market share in Norway over the past few years for a fun example of consequences.
Of course I believe this is a moot question because we could save way more by focusing on public transit, and simply have fewer cars. After all: battery electric are more efficient than hydrogen, which are more efficient then hybrids, which are more efficient than ICE but transporting 20 people in 15 battery electric cars comes nowhere close to the efficiency of transporting these same 20 people in a single ICE bus.
This article talks about the filler jobs and how the economy is stuck in the past.
https://news.yahoo.com/japan-future-stuck-past-220130554.htm...
Annoyingly I can't find the source that went into why they are pushing EVs.
Edit: To be clear that was the hypothesis of the source and they presented evidence that the government that backed it, like stressing job creation and the importance of the automotive industry, but there wasn't a smoking gun.
> Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work
You have conflated Toyota with Japan there. Even in a society dominated by it's megacorps, they are not necessarily the same thing. After all, Nissan brought us the first mass market EV (and yes, they promptly punted on their first mover advantage).
> Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce themselves, literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency,
Any domestic production of hydrogen in Japan would have to be via water electrolysis with electricity, since they have basically no natural gas production. Since that's the case, why not just use the electricity directly and not pay the 40-50% penalty of electrolysis?
> The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there.
> Hydrogen, despite this article's claim, is actually perfect for Japan.
The first statement contradicts the second, because one of the benefits of hydrogen over batteries is that range isn't much of an issue and refueling is fast. That's why the only place it might be viable in ground transport is in long haul trucking in the US.
In Japan, a 200 mile EV would probably be more than sufficient, even for longer trips, for exactly the reason you state.
The other thing about hydrogen is that you can refuel quickly. Otherwise, you're going to need a ridiculous number of charging stations to have the same amount of transportation just to deal with charging time alone. Can you imagine how long it would take to refuel a long-haul container ship and/or what kind of electricity infrastructure would be needed for that?
because EV battery disposal can be a huge environmental problem. electrolysis is zero waste.
"But very little recycling goes on today. In Australia, for example, only 2–3% of Li-ion batteries are collected and sent offshore for recycling, according to Naomi J. Boxall, an environmental scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The recycling rates in the European Union and the US—less than 5%—aren’t much higher."
Until and unless this recycling rate is provably 50% or higher at the time of an EV sale, you should not diss on a 50% loss of efficiency in electrolysis for an FCEV.
> Until and unless this recycling rate is provably 50% or higher at the time of an EV sale, you should not diss on a 50% loss of efficiency in electrolysis for an FCEV
Most lithium ion batteries are still not used in car batteries but rather in phones, computers, cameras, power tools, and other personal electronics. Should we be running those on hydrogen instead?
Turning electricity into hydrogen and then into motive power for a car is dramatically less efficient than using a battery, and car commutes in Japan are on the short side, so huge batteries wouldn’t be as necessary. I don’t think petroleum-derived hydrogen is much more efficient, if at all, than just burning the petroleum in an ICE.
So the only way this seems like a win for Japan is if electricity were cheap, battery EVs were not economical, and the loss associated with electrically synthesized hydrogen didn’t matter.
This is true —- but the total quantity of battery storage potential is utterly dwarfed by the storage potential for gas, in subsurface storage reservoirs and salt caverns. You can store days worth of energy in batteries; you can store a winter’s worth of energy in gas.
It’s not a matter of efficiency, it’s a matter of quantity. We do not, and will not, for decades, have the kind of battery storage required to support the grid.
Hydrogen's atoms are so small they try to pass through the crystalline lattice of metals, making the hydrogen-enriched layer which is more fragile [1]. Your regular polymer hoses are much more permeable to hydrogen.
Hydrogen gas burns with entirely infrared flame, not visible to human eyes [2].
Hydrogen, even highly compressed, is still very lightweight, so storing significant amounts requires either very high pressures, or liquefaction. Liquid hydrogen requires an uncomfortably low temperature of 20K, but starts to freeze into solid state at 14K.
Hydrogen is the most efficient rocket fuel, there's no denying. For all other fuel applications, it's pretty problematic.
Less storage problems, more options (higly compressable gas, or pure liquid, or "liquor" (dissolved)), and no mucking about with fuel cells.
Just straight up movement of energy (with losses to be sure) from places with an excess of sunlight to those that are short.
Fun observation: If some of the hydrocarbons created this way make it into plastics that isn't passed back into incineration (or a better form of recycling) you'll have true carbon-capture for the fraction of the carbon that came from biomass. Without we trying.
Also, there are ways of storing hydrogen in metal hydrides at room temperature and pressure. This makes a LOT of sense for people who may want to have an option of buying stored energy - such as those who live in apartments without access to the terraces where solar panels can be deployed.
If these metal hydride storage is used similar to how changeable batteries are used, it is conceivable that you could drive up to a place like a fuel station just to change out your metal hydride storage in a matter of a couple of minutes and perhaps even get additional supplementary units packed at the back of the vehicle if they intend to go on a long journey.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2021.6161...
In terms of cost, it is also now possible to use Boron Nitride for storing hydrogen - very cheaply and very safely.
https://www.geelongmanufacturingcouncil.com.au/2022/07/innov...
True, because transporting hydrogen is obviously much worse than transporting LNG or oil. Hydrogen is an impossibly huge pain in the ass, and should be avoided if at all possible, because
Hydrogen
leaks through the smallest gaps.
burns in concentrations ranging from 4 to 74 percent.
burns clear in daylight.
reduces the ductility of metals exposed to it (embrittlement).
has shit energy density to boot.
Nuclear is unpopular since Fukushima, and Japan doesn't have great renewable resources. The country is extremely land constrained -- and although the "renewables require too much land" argument is silly on the American Great Plains, it does hinder Japan.
Additionally, the solar irradiance is mediocre, and their offshore wind would have to be truly floating wind turbines (which are more expensive) because the continental shelf drops away so quickly.
People are talking a lot about batteries in this HN discussion, but there are industries that are so much simpler to run on burning gas/coal (steel, petro-chemical, etc.). Japan has massive heavy industry, similar to Germany, that 100% depends upon imported methane. Someone also told me (not sure if true) that the infra required for hydrogen is much more expensive than methane because it is "more leaky". Thus, equipment tolerances are way higher for pure H2 vs CH4.
Last: The "we don't like nuclear" view will only last until the next energy crisis. The current PM (Kishida) is already talking about re-activation. Yes, there will be billions to spend to upgrade existing reactors, but Japan never shies away from infra spending! It doesn't get much attention in the media, but plenty of infra (bridges, tunnels, etc.) was upgraded after the 2014 earthquake.
And, FWIW, Japan plans to use high-temperature nuclear reactors to produce hydrogen with very high efficiency.
See: https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
Abu Dhabi already sells solar electricity for 1.35 cents/kWh. That price will drop by at 3-5x as solar reaches maturity. Natural gas plants sell power for ~6cents/kWh. Green hydrogen will have at least 5.5cents/kWh ($1.80/kg) of wiggle room to generate returns.
Many people consider batteries to be superior to hydrogen for all business cases. This isn't true for applications that need more than ~10 hours or so of capacity. Sub 10 hours is a huge market and encompasses almost all transportation, but there is a vast market for storage beyond 10 hours.
The Achilles heel of batteries is that the power of the battery and the energy stored by the battery are linked. An Li battery can easily discharge itself in one hour. If you want 10 hours of storage you need to buy a battery that could deliver 10x the power you're asking it to. This dramatically increases the cost and sheer tonnage of materials required to make the required system. Green hydrogen systems only require equipment that can deliver power at 1x the requirement with a storage tank that holds 10 hours of fuel. This means that there is always a crossover point where hydrogen becomes cheaper than batteries. My projection for the future is that this number will be around 10-20 hours.
This makes hydrogen the best choice for many applications and is the reason why lots of governments are into the idea. Transportation is only around ~20% of the energy we use, much of the rest might come from renewable hydrogen in the future.
See: https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur–iodine_cycle
50% thermal efficiency from nuclear to hydrogen sounds very good.
"Under baseline conditions, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are around one-quarter that of the currently dominant process for hydrogen production, steam methane reforming (SMR). However, sensitivity analysis shows that GHG emissions may be comparable to SMR under reasonably anticipated conditions. "
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d1ee0...
Green hydrogen decouples H2 generation from hydrocarbons, and industrial uses of H2 will be critical in decoupling more processes and industries from fossil fuels. That's the whole point.
The other part of the abstract suggests that grid energy will be required to buffer intermittent renewables. This argument assumes that it is not possible to design H2 electrolyzers that can rapidly adapt to a change in electrical input, which is simply a relatively straightforward engineering challenge.
I find it hard to believe that the authors of this paper didn't already know all of this.
Which is why Japan is favoring high-temperature hydrolysis here using high-temperature nuclear reactors.
See: https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
Hydrogen is often compared against batteries. Those aren't an energy source either. I haven't seen anyone seriously propose hydrogen based powerplants. I have seen plenty talk about hydrogen fuel cells as a potential alternative to BEVs and a potential way to get around the multiple short comings of lithium batteries. Fuel cells of course have their own problems. But we've yet to come up with an alternative to gas engines that are as long ranged, quick to fuel, reliable, cost effective, safe and performant while also being net zero or negative carbon.
>So the only way this seems like a win for Japan is if electricity were cheap, battery EVs were not economical, and the loss associated with electrically synthesized hydrogen didn’t matter.
I feel like you are handwaving the issues with BEVs while focusing on the issues with hydrogen. I'm not sure which at the end of the day will turn out to be better. But right now BEVs are incapable of becoming the defacto solution for the simple fact that the battery packs wear out and replacing them will total the car. You can't develop a working used market this way. And lower income individuals simply can never afford to use them. The fact that car markers are going out of their way to design platforms with batteries that are difficult to replace exacerbates the problem. But even if they were easily swapped, their high cost and the fact they are tied to the vehicle means a large chunk of the market can't afford them. And nobody is talking about this.
Well, Japan has. You may have read about it recently in the article linked at the top of this comment page. Here's another source from Japan itself: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/energy_environment/glo...
> Accelerating the commercialization of hydrogen power generation turbines in Japan by supporting the early demonstration with actual equipment, with a view to capturing the global market in the future
> Assuming that the price of the 100% hydrogen-derived electricity retail menu and the price of the 100% natural gas-derived electricity retail menu are the same, and assuming that only the latter retail menu has a price hike of about 1.8 yen/kWh (based on the time when the cost of LNG-fired power generation was at its highest), a standard household would be able to save about 8,600 yen/year.
huh? what did i miss?
Citation needed. No, you don't need to go 300 miles on one charge/tank if you live in a big Japanese city, in fact you don't even need a car in that case. However, if you live in rural areas or need to travel long distances, 300 mi is not a lot to ask for: the main island of Honshu is >800 mi long and 300 won't even get you from Tokyo to Osaka.
Japan has huge deposits of methan hydrate on sea floors it wants to mine.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanhydrat
And this is why hydrogen is on the shit list, all the roads lead to ever more mined carbs, blown into the atmosphere in one way or another. The roads to green hydrogen are riddled with conversions that make it economically unviable.
Its the equivalent of a addict switching from heroin injection to a fetanyl patch. Yes, the process is cleaner, less dangerous, but the longterm bad effects are still there.
Also, pretending that emission reduction isn't worth the effort because it's not zero-emission is a perfect example of advocating for the worst possible solution by denying the merit of a transitional solution just because it's not the ultimate solution. The world's not going to improve with that attitude.
Exactly. Freedom isn't free. It's always mind boggling that HN doesn't get this despite this being a community in which paying more for energy sources we like is highly popular.
Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work. They have no domestic oil production, and so few coal mines as to basically be irrelevant: all their fossil fuel is imported. Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce themselves, literally freeing them from fossil fuel dependency, which is a big part of why they keep trying to make it work.
And yeah, the math says it's physically impossible to make it work without constant refueling, but again: it's Japan. The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there.
Hydrogen, despite this article's claim, is actually perfect for Japan. Any tanker of import fuel saved is CO2 saved both on the tanker's transit, and on that fuel getting burned, but at the same time: it's also perfect much perfect only for Japan.