Well H2 is a hedge. It's a green-ish fuel and has potential as a replacement to lng for japan.

but more power to toyota. can't wait to get an electric hilux. hopefully it's cheap.

> Well H2 is a hedge. It's a green-ish fuel and has potential as a replacement to lng for japan.

Is it though? Can't be a hedge if it doesn't really work well fundamentally.

Although I'll admit to being largely ignorant of the Japanese car market.

IMO, it'd be much more practical to invest in automotive LNG tech and combine that with synthesizing LNG from the atmosphere (or at least developing the tech to do so).

Practically, both H2 and LNG are both "dirty", since H2 is made though natural gas reforming these days.

H2 has the benefit of being much easier to store, transport and transfer than batteries. It’s able to be stored in small containers and large vessels of any shape. Batteries manufacturing is much more complex. Electricity needs to be transferred from a power station over wires, while hydrogen can be pumped into a vehicle from a bulk source.

Sure H2 is dangerous, but so is LNG, and petrol for that matter. 100+ years of accidents and safety controls means that even a drunk person smoking at the pump can (probably) fill their car up safely.

Japan has very poor carbon security, so LNG reforming might come with its own challenges, but they could generate it via electrolysis using nuclear or wind power, or import ammonia from future mega producers like Australia.

It’s very likely that global demand in the transport sector will tend towards H2, so they need to gear their industry towards that market.

The bait-and-switch is that while green hydrogen can be made, it very rarely is, and when it is, it's less cost-effective than a battery electric solution. It's almost always a Trojan horse for shifting carbon emissions away from the tailpipe to a refinery where you can't see them quite as obviously.

I think it’s important to frame it within the sociotechnical frameworks that nations are able to operate under.

Introducing this technology will require incremental changes across industry, infrastructure and communities. Today, green hydrogen is out of reach for many economies. Building H2 ecosystems, will almost certainly require initial investment in brown/black hydrogen by burning fossils fuels, which is currently under development in Australia and Japan.

The transition to blue (renewable>LNG>H2) and eventually towards green (renewables>H2O>H2) hydrogen will be slow and will take decades to achieve. Purple (nuclear) hydrogen may be a next logical step for Japan.

It’s simply not possible to replace everything everywhere all at once. We should have gotten onto this two decades ago, so we unfortunately have to make compromises that seem cynical and small on the outset, but are still very difficult to implement and gain consensus.

If battery material costs go high (it they're otherwise hard to come by) then it seems like hydrogen could find its niche?

That is no different than a battery car. You are just shifting pollution to whatever is making your electricity. And if anyone comes in and says "I spent tens of thousands of dollars getting green electricity!" then it should be obvious that the same level of spending could make upstream hydrogen production vastly greener.

And no, it is not "less cost effective" because batteries involve dramatically higher upfront production costs. The argument is really just a troll argument and virtually identical to the same arguments used against battery cars.

Nah.

I worked as a project engineer in a hydrogen fuel cell test lab for a few years. H2 is EXTREMELY hazardous. It can be ignited by a miniscule amount of energy (i.e. a tiny static spark will do it), and it has a very fast flame front, which creates an extremely energetic explosion. It's also the smallest molecule, so it's very difficult to prevent leakage, and it embrittles and degrades most steels over time. Additionally, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (the most common kind) are poisoned by anything NOT H2, so you can't add odorous agents to H2 to easily detect leaks, like we do with natural gas. H2's only non-dangerous characteristic is its high buoyancy, which means it dissipates quickly in outdoor environments, but in my opinion that is not sufficient to offset all of its other dangerous characteristics.

I would NEVER live in a building that had H2 stored inside (as in, inside a vehicle tank) or pumped in it, and I would definitely not trust the general public to use it safely.

It also has to be stored at either incredibly high pressures (as a gas) or incredibly cold temperatures (as a liquid), neither of which are conducive to large-scale, long-range transport.

But the worst part of H2 isn't how dangerous it is or how impractical it is; the worst part of H2 is how incredibly inefficient a hydrogen economy would be. See Paul Martin's excellent summary of H2 for a thorough debunking of the main H2 talking points.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/distilled-thoughts-hydrogen-p...

All true. The real reason Toyota is interested in hydrogen is that it would maintain its current balance sheet.

Hydrogen would allow Toyota to swap one messy, expensive, heavy power plant requiring lots of maintenance (ie fuel cell) for ICE technology.

Whereas EV technology has almost no maintenance, a motor with one moving part and regenerative braking that means even the brakes last forever. The accountants at Toyota would definitely frown at that.

All the other car companies did the same calculations and said 'NO'. Lets just say we'll do that and keep kicking the can down the road for as long as possible.

Now, thanks to Tesla, the cat is out of the bag and the entire industry knows they'll need a new financial platform to survive in the future and no, hydrogen will not save their sorry butts.

> Whereas EV technology has almost no maintenance, a motor with one moving part and regenerative braking that means even the brakes last forever. The accountants at Toyota would definitely frown at that.

That doesn't seem right.

Of all the major brands, Toyota (and Lexus) is the most reliable. They are the opposite of planned obsolescence - they work hard to make their cars last for a very long time.

I suppose in the short term, that's a downside for them, but in the long term, their reputation for being extremely reliable pays off in multiple ways - more demand, higher residual value, etc.

I have no idea why the Japanese auto makers chased hydrogen so hard, but there as to be some other reason. Otherwise we would have seen declining reliability in their gas lineup before now.

Agreed. I think Toyota embraced H2 not because they wanted to replace a complex ICE with a complex PEMFC, but because a) Japan has no oil or mineral reserves to speak of, and b) when they started down that path, battery tech was woefully inadequate. Now that we've seen that batteries can power passenger vehicles just fine, I think Toyota and the Japanese government are both stubbornly engaging in the sunk cost fallacy.

But the writing's on the wall: H2 is dead tech for passenger vehicles.

Wrong. All cars will eventually have to move to hydrogen. This is due to the unsustainability of battery cars. A lot of the anti-Japan rhetoric here is bordering on racism. They are actually planning ahead. Western carmakers are short-sighted and not thinking past the next few quarters.

Why is it so easy to spot the right winger these days?

Oh that's right, it's because you all parrot the same nonsense.

The valuable materials in EV batteries don't get used up - they're still in the battery, and can be recycled. We haven't figured out the particulars, but there's no reason why it can't be done. In fact, the biggest issue that battery recyclers are facing right now is a lack of batteries to recycle.

Stop swallowing propaganda wholesale. Start thinking for yourself.

And what is hydrogen but fuel made from water? Far less raw materials than could ever be achieved with batteries. And you'll never have to mine it even once.

Seriously, the battery people act exactly like climate change deniers. An entire argument based on denying or obfuscating the problem, and pretending nothing better could ever exist.

Seriously, your whole post is projection.

>And what is hydrogen but fuel made from water?

98% of H2 is made from fossil fuels.

You know why, right?

So is the vast majority of electricity. Take away hydropower and nuclear, and it's something like 85%. Use to be 99% at one point.

98% of H2 is made from fossil fuels because cracking water is very expensive.

H2 is already expensive when reformed from natural gas - you can expect to pay 20-30 cents per mile to travel in the most advanced, fuel efficient H2 vehicle out there.

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/exclusive-fresh-bl...

H2 made via electrolysis is a bit more than 3x that cost. Are you ready to pay $1 per mile to drive?

Of course, price generally declines with volume, so we could expect those numbers to come down if H2 were more widely adopted. But there is a thermodynamic floor on the cost of H2, which means that it will never be cost-competitive with pure electric vehicles.

https://medium.com/10x-curiosity/the-hydrogen-hopium-ea11c7a...

And then there's the complexity issue. As a former fuel cell engineer, I understand better than most how complex and finicky proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems are. They are easily poisoned, they're prone to freezing, they have long startup times, they require high-speed, expensive electric air compressors, and they have complex valving and sensors to ensure safe operation.

Purely electric vehicles simply do not have these problems. A battery and a motor is about as simple as a drivetrain can possibly be. EVs will always be fundamentally far simpler than FCEVs, which translates into a lower upfront vehicle cost.

You have no answer to these problems.

I suggest you stop furiously responding here and instead consider your biases, and reevaluate your position. Batteries are so much better than H2 for transportation on just about all fronts that the two are not even close to comparable. H2 at this point is a malicious distraction being foisted on the general public by oil companies attempting to stay relevant, and governments engaging in sunk cost fallacious thinking. The sooner fuel cells for transport (and H2 for heating) are relegated to history's dustbin, the better.

Oh, and as for your assertion that electricity sans nuclear and hydro is 85% fossil fuels... that's true... and irrelevant. 40% of electricity generated in the US today is renewable, and that number grows steadily each year. We would be absolutely foolish to use that electricity to crack water, compress the H2, transport the H2, and convert it back to electricity in fuel cells, losing 65% of the energy in the process, than simply using it directly via batteries. Come on man! Discard the propaganda, separate your emotions from your positions, and think for yourself!

And it's soon to be very cheap, just like the rest of green energy. You're basically stuck in the past and citing people who are also stuck in the past.

A fuel cell is also an electrochemical system. An FCEV is also an EV. Same electric motors and everything. They can attain the same level of efficiency as a li-ion battery and not any more complex. Less complex even, if you seriously analyze the complexity of the battery pack. And because of that, it can easily displace BEVs.

I don't know your background, but your writing is that of a bullshit artist. It completely ignores basic facts and substitute BEV propaganda.

>They can attain the same level of efficiency as a li-ion battery and not any more complex.

No, they cannot attain the same level of efficiency. It's not even close, and no one who was arguing in good faith and had done even the most cursory research on the issue would make that absurd claim.

https://tide.theimi.org.uk/industry-latest/motorpro/efficien....

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mirai-fcev-vs-model-3-bev-pau...

You're just making stuff up. We're done here.

Wrong. Both are electrochemical systems. Both have a limit of 100% efficiency in theory. The fact that you don't know this suggests you're a giant bullshitter this whole time.

What's your view on FCEV long haul trucks?

Do you see BEV becoming the dominant truck technology?

If FCEV trucks were to take off as a technology and get to a share of say 30 % of all trucks in some region, then I'd speculate that the FCEV tech in itself would ultimately displace BEV not only in the truck but also partially in the car sector.

Long-haul trucking is the one possible on-road application for fuel cell tech. But with the rate at which battery tech is advancing, and the massive head start that existing recharging infrastructure (the grid already exists) has over hydrogen infrastructure (nothing exists), I would be surprised if, in 20 years, a significant percentage of long-haul trucks use fuel cells.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...

Fuel cells are battery tech. Again, where are you getting your info? It's pure bullshit and utterly detached from reality.

One thing that makes me speculate that fuel cells will play an important role in the future is: the future electrical grids based on, say > 85 % renewables, will be a challenge to keep balanced 24/7.

In order to deliver enough electricity most of the time, without needing huge amounts of storage (which are tiny right now), renewables will have to be massively over built. I assume there'll be times when there's 5x or more the electricity available compared to actual consumption.

Let the sun shine and the wind blow in summer and there'll be huge amounts of electricity which cannot be stored or consumed by BEV or some other grid connected battery because they're not enough. Industrial processes won't easily consume sudden surges in available electricity either.

Take the UK grid with its average of ~ 31 GW. Let's say they triple their wind power capacity which is currently at ~ 18 GW and double their pv capacity which is currently at ~ 3 GW. That'd be 60 GW so roughly twice the electricity that's consumed on average.

We're in summer, heat pumps don't consume .. so 30 GW excess electricity over say 3 windy days adds up to ~ 2 TWh. That's the capacity of 26.7 million Tesla Model 3 (long range) with a 75 kWh battery each. And they'd all need to be charged from 0 to 100 %.

Batteries won't suffice, I think.

So what'll be done? Electrolysis, I think -> H2, ammonia, methane, ..

So there'll be significant amounts of these being produced and stored.

Ammonia might well become the energy carrier of the future, being shipped around the world with large tankers to transport energy from where it's produced to places where it's used.

If that were to become true, wouldn't the fuel cell be the fitting technology for heavy duty and/or long range vehicles?

And once there'd be infrastructure for trucks and heavy vehicles, roughly the same ifrastructure could be used for FCEV cars.

Hydrogen will be produced when electricity exceeds supply, but it will be used to decarbonize existing H2 demand, which is massive.

As for smoothing out the electricity supply, EVs themselves are likely to play a large role, as will home batteries. The grid of the future will be much more distributed than what we have today. Tesla recently released a report which outlines where we are, where we need to be, and what is required to get there. It's succinct yet comprehensive, and well worth a read.

https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf

This is also total bullshit. A fuel cell car is also an EV. Toyota is pursuing because it is the simply the better idea. People who repeat this bullshit are just brainwashed Tesla fans.

If you have to resort to semantics in an argument to make your point, you've already lost.

No, it's pointing out the obvious. Why are BEV fanatics so antagonistic to another EV? It is entirely about the competitive threat of them, not about any actual criticism. Which BTW is almost nonexistence because again, they're both EVs.

This is total bullshit. Hydrogen is fundamentally necessary to a green economy. You literally couldn't reach zero emissions without it for industry and energy storage. Same is true of transportation in nearly every sector. People are only sorta excusing it for personal transport but only because rich people can make do with battery cars. But in reality, it's practically necessary for personal transportation too. Not everyone can recharge at home.

Nothing I've said is bullshit, let alone the post in totality.

Feel free to point out a specific claim I've made that you believe is bullshit, and we'll proceed from there.

Millions of tons of hydrogen is used in industry. Serious incidents are rare. Not to mention there hasn't been a single hydrogen car that has exploded or whatever (something that can't be said of BEVs). So just from that your argument is just lazy fearmongering and FUD.

Industry is very good at mitigating risks with procedures and detection. Homeowners, not so much.

>Serious incidents are rare.

Even so, they're probably more common than you think. Google it.

>there hasn't been a single hydrogen car that has exploded

Uh... google "hydrogen car explosion."

>So just from that your argument is just lazy fearmongering and FUD.

So far, every point you've made has been weak or outright incorrect. Meanwhile, you have yet to seriously challenge any point I've made.

The reason for this isn't that I'm better at this than you. Your position is simply untenable.

I hope you figure out how to account for the bias that so obviously pervades your thought process. Cheers, I guess.

There literally hasn't been a single hydrogen car that has exploded. You can only cite examples of people carrying hydrogen and due to incompetence it started a fire or explosion. Meanwhile, many people have died in fires in existing cars, including BEVs.

Sorry, but you are a liar. Your attitude is just a mask for your BS.

Pretty sure at this point you're a paid propagandist.

If that's true: fuck you, die in a fire.

If not: I sincerely hope you learn how to think critically at some point. Have a nice day.

And until 15 years ago, nearly zero BEVs have sold. Meanwhile, >1 billion ICE cars have been sold.

You literally are the dumbest person on this site I've met. Not are you incredibly stupid, you act like you have actual knowledge. You clearly are in the Dunning-Kruger zone, assuming you aren't intentionally trolling.

Strikes me that H2 made from excess solar panel output, at source, might become a thing. If you have enough solar for your needs then you're over-producing when the sun is at its peak. With feed in tariffs being low it makes sense to use this -- and hydrogen vehicles are an option.

> Strikes me that H2 made from excess solar panel output, at source, might become a thing.

Why is that better than putting it back into the grid and/or putting it into a battery?

There's occasionally overproduction of renewables, which is normally just curtailed (discarded) because it exceeds grid demand.

The H2 for medium-term tank storage idea is not bad .. except for the very high capital cost of electrolysis. Without some means of making H2 that doesn't involve tying up a chunk of platinum as a capital asset this is a non starter economically.

Batteries are as yet inappropriate for long duration swings over weeks or months that cycle only a few times a year.

Better to compare it to thermal storage, PHES, simply curtailing it or even virtual storage via hydro or w2e (or hydrogen generation with no step where it is converted back to electricity or motion). All of which are more sensible than hydrogen for personal transport.

Capital cost of capacity mainly.

Isn't that a given since the invest in solid-state?

Solid-state isn't going to fix the crazy high consumption of their EVs.