
Toyota believes hydrogen fuel cells are the future - lawrenceyan
https://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/toyota-really-believes-hydrogen-fuel-cells-are-future-heres-why
======
taneq
Someone high up at Toyota bet on fuel cells 20 years ago and can't back down
now without losing too much face. That's the only explanation. Hydrogen just
doesn't make sense from any engineering viewpoint other than "make sure there
are still gas stations and a fuel distribution network no matter the cost."

~~~
theluketaylor
I think there is a future in hydrogen fuel cells, but not for personal
transportation.

Heavy machinery operated in remote areas like farming equipment have pretty
intense energy needs and downtime for charging could ruin a harvest. Batteries
are also very heavy and soil compaction is a real issue for modern farming.

I think we're approaching a time where the marginal cost of energy will be 0,
but there will still be costs associated with using energy at a specific time
or place. I would like to see a lot more dollars being spent on technology and
facilities that can ramp their energy consumption up and down extremly quickly
to absorb extra power on the grid. Hydrolysis seems like a fantastic candidate
since the process is highly interruptible and the result is portable.

~~~
api
I've always wondered why you couldn't just string a wire from a tower down to
a combine, tractor, or other piece of farm equipment and run it right off the
grid. Using very high voltage could allow the wire to not be that heavy.

~~~
ethbro
Because farms are huge, and any given unit of area needs to be touched
relatively infrequently.

~~~
api
Cables can be thin and long. Look at high tension wires which carry vastly
more power. It stands to reason that a much thinner lighter cord could run a
combine.

~~~
mikestew
I won’t even use a corded lawn mower. I highly doubt I’d put up with dragging
a wire behind a combine through a 400 acre field.

~~~
api
Not dragging but way overhead from something about the height of a radio
tower. There could be one about every square mile in a grid. It could have a
smaller battery too to permit driving between them. Drive up, hook on, unhook,
go to next.

~~~
mikestew
It occurs to me that because I’ve operated farm equipment, maybe one should
ignore my poo-pooing. Seriously, sure, I can tell you eight ways to Sunday
this won’t work, and some smarty-pants can show me how I’m wrong. But right
now I’m just stuck in a mode of “that’s more hassle than filling it with
diesel and being done with it”. I might be right, but that’s not where
innovation comes from, so I’ll be quiet.

~~~
api
It probably is more of a hassle but it would also be cheaper and lower
emission. Of course I dont know if fuel is a significant cost to farmers.

There may be ways to make it less of a hassle by automating it somehow. I'm
thinking of some standard hook on/off system. It's a tough problem though.

Maybe batteries will just keep getting better and lighter and cheaper and we
can just go that way.

~~~
ethbro
You're suggesting a large capital investment, with dubious utility, in a
leveraged, low margin business with little access to technologically
aggressive capital funding.

Furthermore, it's predicated on the supplier developing and marketing a class
of equipment for which little demand currently exists.

Against that, the price of diesel seems relatively small.

------
dboreham
I thought the Hydrogen thing was a ruse to kill battery electric vehicles,
years ago, invented by fossil fuel lobbyists.

It works like this: Hydrogen seems plausibly usable, but nobody is sure. It
allows continued use of internal combustion engines so you can carry on as
normal for now. Then in 10 years when nobody has figured out how to make
Hydrogen work it's too bad we didn't focus on battery electric. And of course
you can repeat and rinse because perhaps in another 10 years Hydrogen may be
made to work.

We're two cycles in at this point.

~~~
mcot2
It also serves to preserve the current refueling experience from fuel delivery
to point of sale.

Electric cars are mostly charged at home and at work/parking areas which flips
everything on its head.

There are a lot of industries threatened by this.

~~~
Gibbon1
One consideration is the current world political order is built around
supplies of oil. Battery powered transport dramatically changes that.

------
tambourine_man
Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it.

It's easy to criticize Musk, but I'm a big admirer of his pragmatism. If I
were a billionaire I'd pour money on super capacitors, for instance. Much more
exciting and the payoff is potentially huge.

Instead, he goes for 20th century tech and infrastructure that's proven to
work and tries to squeeze every efficiency drop out of it. We have a problem
that needs to be solved now. From a risk assessment point of view, it's the
best call.

~~~
masklinn
> Storing H2 is really hard, I wouldn't bet on it.

That's not even the biggest issue for "the future": the "hydrogen economy" is
based on cracking fossil fuels, producing CO2, so it's not exactly green.

Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive, it's used for
a small fraction of the production (2%) and mostly for uses which _need_ very
pure hydrogen (cracking fossil fuels yields pretty "dirty" hydrogen which is
unsuitable for some applications).

I guess at capacity that would make it suitable as a sink to dump excess
electricity from renewables in, but then you hit the storage issues you
mentioned.

~~~
darksaints
> Electrolysis is energy-intensive (50kWh/kg) and quite expensive

Solid oxide electrolysis cells have been producing hydrogen at >93% efficiency
(LHV) for over a decade now. Some research cells have reached 99%. It is still
considered expensive but only because hydrogen derived from natural gas is
cheaper. I personally have produced hydrogen via electrolysis at a cost of
$2.72/kg. After a 60% efficient conversion back to electricity, that's
$0.116/kWh.

~~~
philipkglass
You might know: why do large electrolytic hydrogen projects being built or
planned today still use alkaline or PEM electrolyzers? I haven't seen any
announcements where projects are using solid oxide cells. I assumed that the
technology wasn't commercially available yet.

~~~
darksaints
I'm not aware of any large electrolysis projects using PEMs, unless the
purpose is for research and development. I know of a few using alkaline cells,
but those are quite efficient. At least as efficient as solid oxide cells,
just a bit harder to work with. Most of the research and development for solid
oxide cells is for fuel cell usage, with a focus on usage of liquid or gaseous
hydrocarbon fuels, due to the easier technological transition (I'm working on
a project like this).

Without subsidies or carbon taxes, electrolysis is likely to be done only on a
small scale. At large scales, hydrogen from methane is still cheaper, and
there is no penalty for carbon emissions, and consumers typically buy in large
quantities at limited endpoints.

However, if fuel cell vehicles (more likely to be commercial vehicles than
personal vehicles at this point, as the economics are more in their favor)
become more common, there will be growing benefits to electrolysis because the
logistics are so much simpler for a large amount of end points.

~~~
philipkglass
As in this recent story:

"World's largest green-hydrogen plant begins operation in Austria"

[https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-
green...](https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-green-
hydrogen-plant-begins-operation-in-austria/2-1-708381)

It's using PEM technology from Siemens. It reports that an even larger PEM
project should finish construction next year. It mentions one other project,
even larger but further out, using alkaline electrolyzers. They are all part
of decarbonization research projects, but operating at megawatts to tens of
megawatts scales.

------
unchocked
Tanaka explains their strategy pretty clearly here, and it’s about functioning
in an entirely renewable energy context.

Hydrogen is better than batteries for longer term energy storage. To run a
battery powered system twice as long, you need twice as much battery. To run a
fuel cell twice as long, you need a bigger tank.

Japan is an energy insecure nation. Post Fukushima, Japanese companies are
dealing with figuring out how to store energy from intermittent or
interruptible supplies: not for hours but for weeks or months.

Hydrogen does that. It is a synthetic fuel that can be made from electricity
and water. Fuel tanks scale well, and a large tank with thick walls can store
a lot of hydrogen for quite a while.

So the strategy is anchored in a hydrogen energy architecture on a grid level.
Mirai is a technology demonstrator for that. Critiques based on the current
lack of hydrogen infrastructure are missing the point.

~~~
ianai
As a desert dweller, I prefer a drive train that outputs water just in
principle. We need water out here, it’s only getting more dry, and there will
be no big project coming to pipe water inland. Buuuut, batteries and
electricity are here today.

~~~
unchocked
The principle is cute, but on a regional environmental level the water emitted
won’t make a difference.

And batteries are here already. Buy a Tesla.

~~~
ianai
People have been saying the same about carbon emissions for a long time.

~~~
unchocked
Yes, and if we were talking about releasing fossil water into the atmosphere
there might be something to the comparison. But water emissions from a
hydrogen car are just moving existing water around and don't compound over
time. It's minuscule compared to the hydrologic cycle even over desert
regions.

------
spenrose
Toyota is ready to make BEVs at scale:
[https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki-
and...](https://www.thedrive.com/tech/28424/toyota-subaru-suzuki-and-mazda-
throw-their-combined-16-million-might-behind-bevs)

And is investing in making solid-state batteries affordable at scale:
[https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state-
ba...](https://www.sae.org/news/2019/09/battery-show-solid-state-battery-
roundtable)

~~~
amluto
Many companies are “ready” to make BEVs. Where are all the BEVs, then?

~~~
ianai
They’re coming. Mini announced all of their models would be electric in 3-5
years, I think. Most or all have some plan for BEVs in coming car generations.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Your exact comment could have been posted three years ago, and three years
before that, with Chevrolet, or Audi, or Volkswagen named.

And yet, here we are, and only one company in the world is actually building
the factories you’d need to sell a half million EVs in a year.

There’s too much money in _not making EVs_ for any of these companies to start
making them a day before the market forces them too.

~~~
spenrose
After 10 seconds of Googling, here are the new (BEV: 11 models / PHEV: 9
models) models shipping _in the US next year_ :
[https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles-
in-2...](https://evadoption.com/future-evs/new-electric-vehicles-in-2020/)

I will leave as an exercise for the two of you to Google:

1\. How many new EVs arrived in 2019, in the US and worldwide? 2\. How many
are committed for 2021, in the US and worldwide?

You might start with VW committing to 27 models in 2022:
[https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw-
plans-27-ele...](https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1118857_vw-
plans-27-electric-cars-by-2022-on-new-platform)

~~~
erikpukinskis
None of those models are planned to sell 100k let alone 500k. They are
compliance cars—a tax break, basically, so they can keep selling internal
combustion engines without paying penalties.

------
darksaints
Hydrogen definitely is the future, it just may not be the future for cars.
Much more likely to be used for transportation modes that have long running
and consistent speeds. Long distance trucks, cargo ships, planes, etc..

The problem with cars is that they're so intermittently used and the loads are
so variable. The only fuel cells that are really up to that task in particular
are PEM fuel cells, which are expensive and inefficient compared to solid
oxide and alkaline cells. Solid oxide cells might have a chance if used in a
more plugin-hybrid form, where the fuel cell is used as a range extender.

------
barrkel
There's a real prospect of a worse is better outcome. Hydrogen is way more
energy dense than oil-based fuel, never mind battery tech, and can be refilled
just as fast. But it's a bigger technical leap, and people won't be able to
refuel at home. If most vehicles are used for commutes, I can see battery tech
winning the war, except perhaps for trucks, which today may take LPG and can
more easily live with bigger distances between refuels.

Hydrogen fuel cells may be the solution to aviation though.

~~~
unchocked
Depends on how you view density. Energy per unit mass - better than
hydrocarbons. Energy per unit volume - worse.

~~~
masklinn
They're technically wrong as energy density is per volume, "specific energy"
or "massic energy" is per mass.

Also while the specific energy of hydrogen is good, you have to account for
the weight of the container. You can store fuel in a bucket, not so hydrogen.

~~~
darksaints
Compressed hydrogen containers are pretty heavy and that's a bummer, but
they're still better than lithium ion by an order of magnitude.

------
bransonf
> the most cost-efficient method (of making hydrogen) has been using natural
> gas to reclaim the hydrogen.

So this wasn’t clean energy to begin with, but now they’re improving:

> solar energy and wind power and wind-generated energy, to make hydrogen
> using electrolysis

And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly.

Maybe hydrogen cells will have the density advantage, but at what cost to
overall efficiency?

~~~
tomp
_> And this sounds definitely less efficient than using electricity directly._

Not necessarily. (1) There are losses transporting in storing electricity. If
hydrogen was made on the spot, and if the losses storing and transporting
hydrogen were smaller (unlikely), that would be a gain. (2) Hydrogen can be
produced at solar peaks, when energy prices turn negative, and stored... huge
(net) efficiency gain!

~~~
_ph_
Why not charge 2-3x as many cars during the solar peaks? Hydrogen might be in
the far future for long-term storage of electricity, but then it will get used
to power the grid in times of lacking sun/wind, rather then propelling cars.

------
unlinked_dll
Just browsed google maps. By my count there are more public EV chargers in a
mile radius of my house (east bay) than hydrogen fuel stations in San
Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties combined.

It appears that even among early adopters of new energy sources, the market
has spoken.

~~~
dev_tty01
Hmmm. We could use this same reasoning to prove that the market has spoken in
favor of gasoline instead of electricity... Not really a relevant measure when
technologies are in transition.

~~~
mikestew
Every house on my block can supply my car with electricity, and I don’t think
our neighborhood is unusual. Knocking on someone’s door to borrow a cup of
hydrogen would probably be less productive. Borrowing a gallon of gas might be
possible, assuming my neighbor hasn’t purchased an electric mower.

------
hanniabu
Makes much more sense to keep striving for electric solutions so our whole
infrastructure can be uniform.

~~~
the8472
As long as you don't get your hydrogen from natural gas it's just energy
storage like batteries. You can make it from electricity or directly via
solar-powered reactions.

~~~
i_am_proteus
How efficient is hydrogen as an energy storage medium compared to e.g. Li-Ion
batteries?

~~~
peteradio
Efficiency as in energy/kg?

Tesla batteries: 207 watt-hours per kilogram (per google search)

Hydrogen: 120-142 MJ per kilogram (per google search)

Conversion from MJ to watt-hours: 277.778 watt-hours per MJ

120*277.778/207 ~ 161 more compact. Assuming energy conversion losses are
equal.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Efficiency in terms of watts out from the medium divided by watts into the
medium over a normal duty cycle.

~~~
tigershark
As I said in another comment with some napkin calculations is about 30%.
Another user gave a 22% number compared to 73% for batteries. The difference
is _hugely_ in favour of batteries.

------
epicureanideal
I've heard people say that battery storage technology improves at 3% per year.

What's the rate of improvement in high-pressure gas or liquefied gas storage?
Is the weight of the container decreasing at 3%+ per year?

------
Animats
Toyota is still pushing that? Despite the terrible sales figures?[1] The
Toyota Mirai has been on sale in the US for over three years now, and the
sales are dropping. Even though they throw in three years of hydrogen.

[1] [http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-
mira...](http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-mirai/)

------
nickik
If anything methanol would be a sensible replacement for cars. Much clearer
transition path and same end result. But in personal transportation both of
those will be a tiny part of the market. Alternative fuels transition should
have started 30ish years ago.

------
gok
I have to imagine that a large part of the interest in fuel cells comes from
its defense applications (particularly for submarines). It's been clear for
years that for cars it's a total dead end.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car)
has more details

------
legohead
And what do you use to make Hydrogen?

Do fuel cell cars have instant torque like EVs? We recently got an EV, and
whenever I drive my gas car, the delay from the gas pedal is extremely
annoying now.

------
AlexCoventry
There was nothing in the interview about how to keep a hydrogen-fueled car
from becoming a miniature Hindenburg disaster in a collision. Is that
considered a solved problem?

~~~
philwelch
It might surprise you to learn that gasoline-fueled cars do not usually
explode in collisions despite gasoline being far more volatile than hydrogen.

~~~
Zhenya
Gasoline is not under pressure and does not burn. Only gasoline vapors burn.

------
hamhand
Producing hydrogen using electricity and then convert it back.

~~~
tigershark
For a total efficiency of 22%...

------
d2161
Is there still concern with explosions with hydrogen cells?

~~~
smileysteve
Generally less than with gasoline. Both require oxygen but hydrogen being
stored in a high pressure tank, in year 2000 design concepts with a burst disc
going up

------
noipv4
Excellent belief Toyota! now start experimenting with some Lithium Ion
batteries and a motor. Your neighbor Mitsubishi might help you with those.

------
syntaxing
I'm not entirely sure if they're wrong. A lot of science for hydrogen fuel
cell has not really been studied. I'm curious if we put equal funding into
fuel cells instead of battery, today's footing of fuel cell will be much more
different. Some cool technology development is the nickel based catalyst
(compared to Platinum) but the development is slow since the industrial
application is small. Also, there are ways to use fossil fuels directly (with
huge caveats) instead of the standard hydrogen gas fuel cells.

~~~
Reason077
The problem with fuel cell vehicles isn’t really the fuel cells. It’s physics.
And economics.

~~~
syntaxing
Which part of the physics though? I am not entirely convinced that a standard
hydrogen PEM fuel cell is the only way to generate energy for a car.

~~~
Reason077
Current fuel cells are said to be in the 40-60% efficiency range. That’s
actually not bad, especially if you can do something with the waste heat.

But when you look at the overall round-trip efficiency of the hydrogen
lifecycle (production, compression/liquefaction, distribution,
storage/leakage, compression again), it’s pretty woeful. Many estimates come
in well below 20%.

If we came up with a more efficient fuel cell, it wouldn’t improve the overall
efficiency much.

~~~
Rury
I don't see efficiency as nearly problematic as most seem to make it out to be
(as far as the physics goes).

Estimates online roughly estimate that the amount of power from the sun that
strikes the Earth in an hour is more than the entire world consumes in an
year. Capturing just 0.0001% of that power would cover our needs. And I don't
the worse efficiency of hydrogen being problematic in that regards.. but I can
understand arguments regarding the economics.

------
blaisio
I could believe it is better for the environment to make hydrogen powered cars
over cars with batteries filled with toxic chemicals.

------
voodooranger
i don’t think hydrogen powered cars are the future but the next mirai looks
much better than the current one
[https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel-
ce...](https://www.motor1.com/news/375766/2021-toyota-mirai-fuel-cell/)

~~~
trimbo
This does look a lot better.

I often wonder if carmakers purposefully make non-IC cars ugly so too many
people don't order them. And if that's true, it's probably main thing that
Tesla changed: make those cars look awesome.

~~~
UIZealot
I still like my Model S quite a bit, but Tesla cars have always looked a
little dorky to me, models S, 3, or X (I'm not sure how I feel about the
Cybertruck just yet). I certainly didn't get mine for the look. They sure look
much better than the i3 or Mirai though.

------
AtlasBarfed
... don't all fuel cells currently known become unusable after 100k miles or
less?

------
dingo_bat
Even if hydrogen is the future, Toyota must realize that the present is
battery electric. They can continue research on future tech while they rise to
the market demands in the present.

------
tobyhinloopen
They’re wrong

------
RickJWagner
I own 3 Toyota products and a Honda.

I have great confidence in Toyota's vision and engineering excellence. (This
coming from a long-time motoring enthusiast.) If they see hydrogen as the
future, I take it seriously.

~~~
scottLobster
Because Toyota never makes mistakes?

As a fellow Toyota fan and owner I'll take them seriously when they start
building industrial scale hydrogen refineries and transportation systems on
par with Tesla's supercharger network or better.

Until then these are all compliance cars at best. Doesn't matter how well
engineered the implementation is if the design is impractical or of negligible
benefit.

The only argument that moves the needle for me on Hydrogen at all is that we
have tons of it via seawater, whereas we're not sure if we have enough lithium
to produce electric cars for everyone in perpetuity.

~~~
darksaints
Why do they need to be industrial scale? Hydrogen electrolysis is fast,
efficient, and can be done on any scale. Centralized production is likely
never going to be as efficient as distributed production, simply because there
are more losses in distribution than there are in electrolysis.

~~~
tigershark
Hydrogen electrolysys can't be done efficiently at home. And the efficiency
even in industrial plants is pretty bad, about 50% to produce hydrogen
compressed for car use, and that doesn't include the fuel cell efficiency that
brings the total efficiency to about 30%. Batteries have _much_ better
efficiency.

~~~
darksaints
I have efficiently done it at an industrial lab with commonly available
industrial electricity rates ($.065/kWh). 93% efficiency using a solid oxide
cell that was made in 2008. I don't know where you're getting your information
but it's wrong. $0.116/kWh after conversion back into electricity.

If I were doing it at home with residential rates, I would be paying
$0.125/kWh, which is still feasible, but more expensive than gasoline at the
moment. With the way solar prices are dropping, that won't last long.

~~~
tigershark
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficien...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficiency)
"Efficiency of modern hydrogen generators is measured by energy consumed per
standard volume of hydrogen (MJ/m3), assuming standard temperature and
pressure of the H2. The lower the energy used by a generator, the higher its
efficiency would be; a 100%-efficient electrolyser would consume 39.4
kilowatt-hours per kilogram (142 MJ/kg) of hydrogen,[23] 12,749 joules per
litre (12.75 MJ/m3). Practical electrolysis (using a rotating electrolyser at
15 bar pressure) may consume 50 kW⋅h/kg (180 MJ/kg), and a further 15 kW⋅h (54
MJ) if the hydrogen is compressed for use in hydrogen cars."

What about your sources for 93% efficiency?

~~~
darksaints
93% is what I got in my own experiments with an used cell I bought that was
made in 2008. My cell is a slight materials variant of the NASA BSC cell which
was also tested at 93% efficiency.

[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20090013708](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20090013708)

Here is a commercially available cell stack that is getting 88% efficiency,
despite being a reversible cell (ie not optimized for electrolysis).

[http://www.helmeth.eu/index.php/technologies/high-
temperatur...](http://www.helmeth.eu/index.php/technologies/high-temperature-
electrolysis-cell-soec)

This research system has already demonstrated 75% efficiency _round-trip_.
That is electricity-to-hydrogen-to-electricity. 97% efficient in electrolysis
alone.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0333-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-019-0333-2)

~~~
tigershark
Even with a 93% efficiency adding the energy needed to compress the hydrogen
and the fuel cell efficiency you arrive at an efficiency of 48%, pretty much
half as the batteries.

~~~
darksaints
I can dispute those numbers too but that is beside the point. Batteries are
probably good enough in energy density for most car users, and they do have an
efficiency advantage (not as great as you're trying to portray but still
better). For 99% of car buyers, that's a better option.

But fuel cells still have a place where energy density is a major concern.
That's likely to be the case for commercial vehicles, where long recharge
times and low ranges are unacceptable.

