Toyota rethinks its bet on hydrogen

[zonkerdonker]

Seems about a decade late. Did anyone other than toyota execs really believe hydrogen everstood a chance? Maybe if the push had started in 1984 they would have been able to effectively insert themselves into the market and properly compete with EVs before battery tech has grown to be able to be viable.

I'm genuinely baffled at the money and time that was poured into this when it seemed dead on arrival to almost everyone (as far as I know). Am I missing something? Is this some quirk of Japanese techno-optimism and simply a failed moonshot?

[weinzierl]

"Did anyone other than toyota execs really believe hydrogen everstood a chance?"

I think BMW did. They had a good prototype in the early 2000s and really went to town with it. They marketed it heavily as a finished and usable product and I guess the thinking was that no one would notice the difference because the infrastructure wasn't there.

Now, the story goes that a sheik tried to test them and actually ordered a whole fleet, which BMW could not deliver. This dealt a heavy blow to BMW's hydrogen ambitions and the program only continued at a much much smaller scale.

Of course this is all anecdotal, and I do not know how much is really true, but it is the story I heard on multiple accounts when working close to these projects.

[DriftRegion]

Hydrogen electrolyzers perhaps makes sense as a backup load: something that can be turned on when there's too much electricity production (as is increasingly the case in renewable-heavy grids). But then what to do with the hydrogen?

Fertilizer? sure. Heating? maybe.

Cars? the infrastructure still has a long way to go. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Mirai/ for the deets.

[vrighter]

hydrogen was never in the running in the first place. Toyota were just kidding themselves. Billion dollar projects still can't get handling hydrogen right. A hydrogen infrastructure is pure sci-fi

[kylebenzle]

The idea endures because produce fuel from nothing but water and sun light and left with no emissions is incredibly promising.

I would ask why nearly everyone has contentedly continued using rare earth mineral, cobalt and fossil fuel to power out vehicles when a clean renewalabl source is right here.

[jppope]

Hydrogen is actually a really good solution for shipping and long haul trucking. Conceptually, it really could have worked for cars but Tesla did a really good job of making BEVs sexy, when consumers looked at the market they decided to head towards BEVs.

Personally, I think they could have done some quick cocktail napkin math and figured out their strategy without too much effort, but large mega corps tend to frown upon that sort of thing. I remember the Honda clarity (a retro-fitted civic) was going for $350K and saying to myself: no one thought to use a spreadsheet before building?

[2muchcoffeeman]

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

I can see why you’d want a single fuel source for all vehicles.

But I know nothing about fuel production.

[woleium]

Its not that it had a big chance, its that because everyone (other auto manufacturers) was doing it and you have to keep up to make the shareholders happy

[rich_sasha]

All revolutionary technologies that end up successful surely look hopeless and too expensive at some point. Just look at the price of solar panels on 1970s.

SpaceX looked insane to me. For a very long time I was incredibly sceptical Starship will ever fly. Well...

[FriedPickles]

Drive a Toyota Mirai while you can–this might be the only time in history to experience the hilarious quirks of a hydrogen car. Including the "dump h2o" button, which causes the car to, um, eject its h2o waste on command. Oh and if you're in San Francisco, take a ride on the free hydrogen powered ferry "Sea Change" (its waste comes out of the drinking fountain).

[bagels]

Another fun quirk: The hydrogen dispenser frosts up pretty fiercely during fueling. There's a station near SFO that I stumbled across where the dispenser was too cold to dare touch.

[tasty_freeze]

A good friend had one (leased) and loved it ... until lessor broke the lease and said she had to give it back.

[AngryData]

I think hydrogen does still have potential, just not for regular consumer vehicles. In cases where weight matters like flight, batteries just aren't near good enough now or anytime in the near future due to weight. In cases where you need monstrous amounts of energy between fueling/charging like ocean going cargo ships, batteries are again not anywhere near now or in the near future even close to sufficient. And in scenarios where there aren't safety concerns because consumers simply have no access to it and crashes/accidents are extremely rare, like with trains or large energy storage, hydrogen doesn't really have any real downsides compared to batteries but has plenty of upsides.

I still have hope for hydrogen fuel usage, but to me it has never made sense to try and push for consumer level hydrogen powered devices and cars. You can't just ignore an old hydrogen fuel tank in like an old junker car even if it is 99% empty, eventually that tank will pop and is a safety hazard. Where someone might accidentally damage or crash a vehicle with a hydrogen storage tank, it won't be just a localized fire, it is just a straight up massive bomb. And the extremely high pressures and/or cryogenic temperatures are not and never will be fool-proof enough for just the regular joe blow to have control over or easy access to it for refueling.

[sandworm101]

In such high-energy situations, the green alternative is most likely air-to-diesel, fuels derived from captured CO2 recombined with H into hydrocarbons. Compressed/liquified H2 can theoretically power an airliner, but for all that effort they could just use "green" manufactured hydrocarbons running though normal turbofan engines.

[calmbonsai]

The deal-killer with hydrogen in flight is specific energy storage.

At the moment, we have no hydrogen fuel storage technology that can even get a single-digit-percentage of a hydrocarbon fuel storage specific energy density.

Additionally, none of the current hydrogen storage tech is flight-worthy from an aviation systems management (weight, balance, on-boarding, jettisoning) and safety perspective.

[vanviegen]

> [...] hydrogen doesn't really have any real downsides compared to batteries but has plenty of upsides.

How about inefficiency? Conversion from electricity to hydrogen and back will get you only about 35% of the original energy. When using a hydrogen combustion engine instead of a fuel cell, comparison gets a little trickier, but at least the hydrogen generation will cost you about 35%.

[andrewmcwatters]

https://archive.is/Fv1yU

[pama]

I think it is a good idea to slow down on hydrogen as a fuel for cars for a while, because, unfortunately, it does not work well within our modern civilization. Even tiny amounts of elemental hydrogen can cause serious corrosion on certain alloys and induce steel based buildings to become brittle and possibly fall into pieces. Because of hydrogen’s near quantum nature, it is mostly a matter of when, rather than if such a gas would ever escape and create troubles. So if the tech ever took off we’d need to rebuild huge chunks of our major cities in the world very quickly; certainly doable, but much more complicated than simply adding the missing fuel stations.

[pfdietz]

Hydrogen is absolutely essential for our modern civilization. The world could not feed 8 billion people without artificial nitrogen fertilizer, which is produced with hydrogen (currently derived from fossil fuels). If the world annual hydrogen production were collected as a gas at atmospheric pressure and room temperature, it would occupy a volume of about 700 cubic kilometers. About 6% of world natural gas consumption is for making hydrogen.

[threatripper]

The basic question for the next years is if hydrogen from fossil fuels makes sense. There's no other way to make enough hydrogen in the short term. In the long term I think that batteries will be better suited to use renewable electricity until we have a really huge surplus of it for most of the year to produce hydrogen. And then chemical processes that require hydrogen will be better consumers than transportation. Then gas turbines to stabilize the power grid. And if we still have lots of hydrogen left over we can think about using it for transportation. Not sure if we even reach that point.

[barbazoo]

What about hydrogen for freight transportation? Or will battery tech eventually make sense here as well?

[giorgosts]

Hydrogen as done by Toyota was a sales an lobbying tactic. By setting an undoable target (or a target too far in the future), they could push for more gasoline cars and less strict emission regulations in the meantime.

Now this tactic has run its course and they are considering of what to do next.

[sumedh]

> they could push for more gasoline cars

Didnt Prius start the whole hybrid revolution, the logical next step would have been to go full electric.

[loeg]

Seems like Toyota is still mired in sunk cost fallacy and isn't even considering switching to BEVs. Not very much rethinking actually going on in the article after the headline.

> Despite the setbacks, Toyota insiders said they had not given up on hydrogen for passenger cars, with Toyoda discussing a partnership last October with his counterpart at traditional rival Hyundai to advance fuel cell vehicles.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

They've been sitting on the Prius line for over twenty years and feels like not done much with it

It astounds me that people ask about gas vs BEV when great hybrids have been possible for years. And completely decent ones have been sold for decades

[xyzzy_plugh]

In hindsight Toyota still made the right move. The Japanese government has heavily pushed hydrogen for a while now, and Toyota was wise to follow suit.

Was it the right move for Japan? Probably not.

[reducesuffering]

Ya, the hydrogen attempt was a Japanese government geopolitical push. It's not a coincidence that both Toyota and Honda were the only co's to come out with almost an identical model hydrogen car. Raw inputs, fossil fuels and the metals needed for batteries, are weak points of Japan's position. They wanted an automotive solution that was purely technology-based so they weren't at the mercy of who holds metals for batteries. Unfortunately, as practically everyone on HN knew for a decade, this was never going to be viable and it's a shame so much resources were wasted in the attempt.

[ein0p]

I saw quite a few hydrogen buses when I was in China. Idk what the Chinese think of their longer term viability, but they're there, and they work, at least in China. Maybe Japan (and the rest of the world) simply lacks the infrastructure needed to support them?

[Symbiote]

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

London has had small numbers of hydrogen buses since 2004, although it's remained a small number since then. Currently 20 vs over 1400 BEVs.

[bookofjoe]

https://archive.ph/9e4Tq

[rurban]

Their is still the Hindenburg. Fear and loathing

[more_corn]

Hydrogen has always been a fake green fuel. It’s oil with extra steps. Anyone who says it “could” be green is being deliberately deceptive. It’s a way to prop up petroleum.