A hydrogen fuel cell engine relies on completely different principles than an ICE and would still require complete retooling of their powertrain manufacturing. If anything, their hybrid powertrains are closer in design to BEVs than FCEVs

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.

Fuel cell (and tank) is a different tech but car industry believe that it can be still manufactured at competitive cost and quality in Japan. It's hard to compete with Chinese massive amount of cheap batteries in Japan.

Japan together with South Korea was a leader in NiMH and Lithium based battery chemistry during this period. So that wasn't the reason.

Make it massively and cheaper is different to developing better one. So they now try to developing solid state battery but who knows will it success.

Their various significant investments don't strike me as being committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. Rather, they're simply evolving and the internal combustion engine influences their evolution. But I see no evidence that they're committed to it because they like it in particular. It's just what they've been good at already, and hydrogen interfacing with it may make sense.

Toyoda himself has publicly stated he's an internal combusion fan and is not interested in all-electric vehicles:

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-...

If you read the articles, his point is that the industry cannot completely switch over to EV production and bans aren't the right solution, considering how rapidly japanese cars have reduced their CO2 emissions.

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 also enough power production. To give an example, the Tokyo governor invited people to lower their heating devices and wear turtle necks to avoid exceeding the current capacity.

It was my understanding that they were surpassed in all-electric because they weren't trying to compete in all-electric. Moreover, truck manufacturers like Volvo and Mercedes are aiming for hydrogen, their reasoning being that batteries aren't feasible for commercial trucks. Be honest: your "%100" figure was just made up.

There's nothing wrong with internal combustion per se, if electrolysis+ICE works out cheaper than battery in terms of lithium/rare earths/whatever there is no fundamental objection to it.

That seems completely implausible though based on the losses. An ICE tops out at 25% efficient or so. A hydrogen fuel cell is 40-60% and efficient and that's likely to rise. If you're bothering with fueling cars with hydrogen gas, you might as well make them electric and get a huge range boost for free (and way more torque, less maintenance etc.)

There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines.

> 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.

Wouldn’t ICEs be worse for local pollution?

There is a hypothetical internal combustion engine that burns hydrogen directly. I think that the other poster was talking about that. Unfortunately, it is not just inefficient, but also has a major rust problem. It also would still generate NOx.

What pollution would hydrogen/oxygen combustion produce?

NOx is formed from combustion in air, from the nitrogen that makes up much of the air. If you could feed it pure oxygen then you'd avoid that but nobody's going to want a car with an oxidiser tank onboard.

The fundamental objection is quite real: Distribution. Hydrogen, due to the small size of the atoms, requires perfect seals and even then can slowly penetrate even metal containers. Cooling it enough to liquify it requires extreme temperatures and pressures as to destroy any efficiency gains.

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.

Worse, hydrogen permeates most metals and embrittles[0] them, too.

Synthetic methane produced by electricity is likely still superior to hydrogen with both suffering terrible inefficiencies, at least methane is easy to transport.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

> They're a car company committed to keeping the internal combustion engine.

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

You can make a Hydrogen ICE. BMW even leased 100 of them about 15 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7

There are a few issues with that car. https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck

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).

Right, but if they're essentially incompatible with fossil fuel ICEs, what relevance is there to this conversation? The only thing that binds them is that they combust, but there's no clear reason why fossil fuel companies would favor one technology just because it involves combustion.

They are compatible and relevant, GH2 can be fed to a gasoline ICE through a carburetor with minimal changes.

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.

... while storing a tank of atmospheric pressure liquid H2 such that you can't store it in an enclosed space and will be nearly empty if you don't run it for 17 hours and has a range of 120 miles.

Their main approach to Hydrogen might be fuel-cell, but they have had one-off sports cars with ICE using Hydrogen.

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.

On a technical note, it's still an ICE. And Toyota's absolutely trying to show that it can actually be pretty much the same ICE but reinforced to deal with the much higher pressures from having to work with compressed hydrogen. But, while there is still internal combustion happening the major difference is that a hydrogen ICE produces heat and mostly water, rather than heat and mostly CO2 (). 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.

) 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

For Toyota Mirai - the https://www.toyota.com/mirai/

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.

Unless they had insight into the future, Toyota has been exploring this technology a long time[1]. They started a developing fuel cell propulsion in 1992 --way before there was mainstream antipathy for fossil fuels.

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.

It's less that they're committed to keeping the ICE, and more that they've seen that the market has passed them by with the push toward full-electric (I suspect they thought we'd be doing hybrid ICE-electric for much longer, which they're very good at). Hydrogen is their bet on being in on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing.

> the market has passed them by

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.

This. They've been fighting the EV transition tooth and nails, it really needs to be called out.

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.

I’m curious how the calculations work here. I know that any individual battery electric car is better in terms of GHG emissions than any individual hybrid car. However, given the limited number of battery electric cars, and the limited production, battery electric cars will remain the minority of all cars at least until the end of this decade (probably even longer). Now my question is, en masse, since the production of hybrid cars are a lot more capable then battery electric, are we not better off (in terms of total GHG emissions) with as many hybrid cars as we could get? That is, don’t hybrid cars shave more GHG emissions just by the shear number of them?

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.

I can't find it right now, but a toyota engineer has actually discussed this. Toyota looks at it this way, especially since you are wasting significant battery capacity on BEV's that don't get utilized daily if the battery supports significantly longer range than daily commute.

I often wonder, since we are in a climate emergency, and we are still increasing our GHG emissions, and we need to electrify so much as quickly as possible. And we have these lithium ion batteries which work pretty well for that, but the production capabilities are limited, so you would think we would put them where we’d get the most use our of them, but alas, most we get is a bunch of Tesla SUVs and maybe a Hummer EV.