Toyota rethinks its bet on hydrogen

For many years there was a hydrogen fuel station in Hamburg and I think many BMW images showcase it. Last time I heard it was decommissioned.

Why?

Hydrogen is dangerous and difficult to store, dangerous and difficult to transport, and has egregious specific energy density--all of them are deal-killers for any widespread fuel.

The only two benefits of hydrogen over other fuels are:

1. The cleanest and most efficient combustion 2. Ease of synthesis on a distributed scale

Ammonia beats hydrogen on every front aside from:

1. Less efficient/clean combustion (which we can handle with extant NoX scrubbing technologies) 2. Currently, it's only efficient to manufacture it in large-scale non-distributed industrial plants.

The great thing about ammonia is we've been manufacturing and storing it at-scale for about a century so we're really good at it. Ammonia is the best current candidate for replacing bunker oil and diesel in shipping.

I’d say that Tesla did a lot more than just make BEVs sexy, they made them practical. You don’t see Toyota out there making a nationwide network of Hydrogen fueling stations like Tesla did with Superchargers. Someone had to get the ball rolling, and Toyota didn’t do it.

Hydrocarbons are already good at that. Its the fact that the carbon comes out of the ground instead of the air that is a huge, pressing problem. Use the excess electricity to split water, and bond it with carbon in the air.

I agree that is a better use for excess power than just dumping it into a resistor, but why go through all the extra effort? Batteries are getting better and better and better, and choosing to use excess generated power to generate hydrogen seems like one step backward. Why waste so much power on a doubly inefficient process (losses from hydrogen production and then again during use) when you could just, you know....store the actual pure energy you need for everything else?

Even barring a great battery, there are dozens of other great ways to store energy. Pumped hydro is 80%+ efficient, and all you need is a pump and a hill, vs hydrogen electrolysis, which maxes at 80% efficency, and then hydrogen combustion, which is like 40%, on top of all the exotic equipment required for manufacturing.

By all appearances, it just seems like an absolute no brainer....I really dont get it

Sadly, aviation is looking like only hydrocarbon combustion will work for anything aside from very short-haul flights.

No battery breakthrough will get around the fact that medium and long-haul planes get the bulk of their range from the fact that they get substantially lighter as they burn fuel. Short-haul routes and trainers can be all electric ( https://byeaerospace.com/ ).

We'll probably end up with something like "green" hydrocarbon synthesis--at substantial cost increases. The vast bulk of aviation will never be de-carbonized in any foreseeable future short of something akin to "Mr. Fusion" from Back to the Future.

There's good hope for ammonia in maritime. Man in Germany has had working ammonia fueled gas turbines on a variety of vessels and routes for years with forthcoming retro-fits available this year. https://www.man-es.com/discover/two-stroke-ammonia-engine

Ammonia won't work well in aviation due, primarily, to its very short/slow combustion wave-fronts and low combustion temperatures, but also due to its lack of specific energy density with storage infrastructure that's light enough to be airworthy. It's "do-able", but a very distant "2nd fiddle" to even lite/green Jet-A (kerosene) synthesis.

> We still have to solve aviation and maritime don’t we?

Hydrogen for aviation is turbocharged stupidity. Particularly when we're making solid progress on synthetic (and biomass) aviation fuels [1]. (Which wouldn't require a global aircraft and airport infrastructure overhaul.)

[1] https://www.catf.us/resource/decarbonizing-aviation-challeng...

if you want to fuel an airliner with hydrogen, it might be possible, but you'd have to kick most passengers off to make place for the hydrogen

Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it is a carrier. You have to create hydrogen gas from water (or as is done today, from fossil gas). This takes energy. This energy can just as well be used to power the thing directly. Which is significantly more efficient.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0MuwO9V4AEGbUo.jpg

Hydrogen is brought up as a potential storage method which may work, but it makes metals it touches brittle. It is not like storing fossil gas. There are ways to limit it, but it has costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

Hydrogen in cars also uses expensive metals, platinum in the fuel cell.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03603...

Because "rare earth minerals" aren't that rare, are pretty easy to recycle (making them renewable), and batteries have end to end efficiency of ~80% compared to ~20% for hydrogen.

The difficulty with getting LPG fueled vehicles off the ground should have demonstrated the foolishness of pursuing a fuel even more difficult to handle and with no large scale delivery mechanism already in place.

I wonder if that depends on the pressure of the car? I vaguely recall they sold at two pressures when I looked long ago. Could stepping down from the stored pressure to much lower car pressure cause the icing?

oh, and I remember one other thing. Even though the mirai drivers were getting free fuel (at the beginning), I think H2 was like the equivalent of $17/gallon marked on the pump.

I'm not an expert, but from what I can find it looks to me like hydrogen has a higher specific energy (energy/mass) than gasoline, but a lower volumetric energy density (energy/volume).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Table_of_materi...

This is precisely the approach that Terraform is taking with their fuels: https://www.terraformindustries.com/

The issue the top level comment was pointing out was the use of hydrogen in its form as an elemental gas (H2). Not the use of hydrogen in chemical compounds. Already chemical production plants that use elemental hydrogen as part of their processes have to take into account its issues with causing metal embrittlement and that it can escape pressure containers through diffusion.

If you have a hydrogen energy supply chain and are storing hydrogen in vehicles, service stations and a lot of other infrastructure, escaped hydrogen may start causing structural issues in structures that were never designed with hydrogen storage in mind. If we transition to hydrogen powered cars, parking garages may have to be redesigned to handle metal embrittlement caused by accumulated hydrogen leaks from vehicles.

Depends on the freight type. Trains are already electric, planes probably need hydrogen, boats are really tough either way (but hydrogen is probably better) and trucks probably prefer batteries.

Not clear yet. Battery powered heavy trucks lose much payload to battery weight. Still, Scania and Volvo have been shipping electric heavy trucks for several years now.

It seems like Toyota is going big on hybrids lately using the powertrains they developed through the Prius line. Every new Camry, Crown, and Sienna is a hybrid. The Corolla can be upgraded to a hybrid for only $1,500. Both of Toyota's trucks can be a hybrid and all of Toyota's Crossover/SUVs has a hybrid version, with the Crown Signia, Land Cruiser, Sequoia, and Venza only coming as a hybrid. Toyota even offers plug-in hybrids of its popular RAV4 SUV and Prius, offering 42 or 44 mile all-electric range respectively.

Basically every major vehicle Toyota makes comes as a hybrid. The GR86, GR Supra, and GR Corolla (Gazoo Racing) don't come as a hybrid, but they're niche performance-tuned gas vehicles. Oh, and the hydrogen Mirai and battery-electric bZ4X aren't hybrid. But Toyota is nearly all-in on Hybrids now.

And they're also pushing hybrids through other brands. Subaru is integrating Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive into upcoming Crosstrek, Forester, and Legacy models. The Mazda CX-50 hybrid doesn't just borrow Toyota's hybrid system, but even Toyota's engine.

Oh, and like Toyota, their Lexus division has hybrids for most of their models. 5 of their 6 SUV lines and 2 of their 3 sedan lines.

Plus, the Prius line itself is finally a car that gets accolades for more than just its fuel economy with Car and Driver saying, "Long the butt of jokes about tree huggers and science projects gone awry, the Prius has become swan-like in appearance and unexpectedly enjoyable to drive." They even ranked the Prius #2 in compact cars, ahead of the enthusiast-liked Mazda 3.

It can always be argued that companies could do more, but at least recently Toyota seems to be making a huge push for hybrid vehicles and even making some of their biggest vehicle lines (like the Camry) hybrid-only.

They make a bunch of good hybrids but, like hydrogen fuel cells, that isn’t a viable long-term strategy for getting off burning hydrocarbons.