Akio Toyoda, Toyota Motor’s chairman, has never been a huge fan of battery electric vehicles. Last October, as global sales of EVs started to slow down amid macroeconomic uncertainty, Toyoda crowed that people are “finally seeing reality” on EVs. Now, the auto executive is doubling down on his bearish forecast, boldly predicting that just three in 10 cars on the road will be powered by a battery.
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“The enemy is CO2,” Toyoda said, proposing a “multi-pathway approach” that doesn’t rely on any one type of vehicle. “Customers, not regulations or politics” should make the decision on what path to rely on, he said.
The auto executive estimated that around a billion people still live in areas without electricity, which limits the appeal of a battery electric vehicle. Toyoda estimated that fully electric cars will only capture 30% of the market, with the remainder taken up by hybrids or vehicles that use hydrogen technology.
At this point the dude is just grasping for anything that will to justify the stupid business decisions that he’s made. 30% is a shit load, and something a sane business person would be excited about trying to capture.
Before nepotism appointed him to CEO, the company launched the Prius. That thing was exciting and innovative when it came out.
Under his leadership the Prius brand became a synonym for boredom, he relinquished Toyota’s electric powertrain lead to other manufacturers, and the brand produced a lot of uninspired vehicles in general.
This guy was at the helm during the years of Toyota’s decline. Forgive me if I don’t pay any attention to him.
IDK why hydrogen just hasn’t captured any mind share. Seems like a great technology.
Someone will be along in a moment to tell me all about embrittlement and blue hydrogen, yet conglomerates are pouring many billions into water cracking infrastructure right now.
Someone will be along in a moment to tell me all about embrittlement and blue hydrogen
Why ask the question if you already know the answer?
The reason it hasn’t taken off is because it’s a fundamentally very difficult technology to safely build. Embrittlement is a fact of physics, and it’s extremely difficult to design around, especially at scale.
And the fact that there is almost zero global capacity to manufacture green hydrogen means that there is little point in subsidising it from an environmentalist point of view.
Hydrogen will have its uses, maybe in niches like aviation fuel where requirements are very specific and it’s possible to exercise much tighter control of the infrastructure chain. But it’s just not a competitive technology for replacing petrol and diesel in general purpose road vehicles.
Why ask the question if you already know the answer?
Because these problems are not prohibitive. Any tech has challenges.
A brief perusal of anything about embrittlement suggests that it’s very manageable. There are hydrogen powered vehicles driving around right now. How is it that their tanks to not crumble or shatter?
And the fact that there is almost zero global capacity to manufacture green hydrogen means that there is little point in subsidising it from an environmentalist point of view
Imagine saying “There’s not a lot of computers around, therefore this internet isn’t going to be viable”. In Western Australia there are three large scale hydrogen production facilities under construction. The one nearest me will cover 15,000 km^2 and produce 3.5 million tonnes of hydrogen per annum. Do you really want to bet against mining consortiums contributing many billions of dollars to hydrogen production?
There are hydrogen powered vehicles driving around right now. How is it that their tanks to not crumble or shatter?
The short answer is that they do. They have a relatively short lifespan (around 10 years) with regular inspections.
Replacing car tanks is not really the tricky bit though- it’s everything else. Pipelines, filling station infrastructure, transport trucks, and so on. All of which ends up having a similarly short lifespan. The ongoing cost (both in cash terms and in terms of environmental impact) of continually replacing huge amounts of the associated infrastructure at a much higher rate than you need to for petrol is a factor in why the technology isn’t competitive.
Do you really want to bet against mining consortiums contributing many billions of dollars to hydrogen production?
Green hydrogen makes up a tiny fraction of the global hydrogen supply because so-called blue hydrogen (produced from fossil fuels) is so abundant. Green hydrogen amounts to only 1% of global production, and blue hydrogen isn’t going away. Individual electrolysis plants might manage to turn a profit, but for the foreseeable future anyone filling up their car with hydrogen will almost certainly be filling up with fossil fuels, not renewable fuels.
Maybe at some point in the distant future when all the natural gas wells have been capped then the arithmetic will be different. But as of 2024, subsiding hydrogen vehicles is not a viable way of decarbonising.
That’s just BS. The longevity of everything is comparable to that of natural gas related equipment. It will be much cheaper than massively expanding the grid and build batteries for everything. Not to mention that you can reuse much of the natural gas infrastructure.
Green hydrogen is growing exponentially in the same way wind and solar grew. The upside of something that isn’t dependent on finite fossil fuels. It will eventually be available in vast quantities and at a very low price.
Critics of hydrogen cars are repeating the same criticisms of EVs just before they took off. Same can be said of wind power or solar power. In reality, it’s just the same anti-green and anti-progress BS you hear about any new green technology. It’s all the same story.
Take it easy, it’s a bit more complex than that. Slow as it might be, everyone understands you can charge an EV even with just a regular 15A 120V plug. Stuck at your father in laws out in the country? They’ve still got a plug.
Generally, people are uncomfortable with high pressure explosive gases. I think overall, hydrogen gas a better shot in industrial/heavy trucking markets than consumer transport.
No it isn’t. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s much harder to wire up millions of charging stations with the necessary amount of power, than to deal with high pressure gas. We’ve just normalized the danger of high-voltage electricity. In reality, this is just as safe if not more so, and a lot easier to pull off.
You can plug an EV into an outlet in your garage. No way could hydrogen be easier than that.
You have to have a garage to begin with. People have created a distorted grasp of what infrastructure even is.
Two thirds of Americans have a garage. Roughly zero can refuel hydrogen cells at home.
2/3 is still not 100%. And you can refuel at home if you really wanted. In fact, you can even refuel a gasoline car at home. But in reality this was never a major selling point. It’s just the crutch BEV fans are relying on. The refueling infrastructure is the only thing that really matters.
Meanwhile EVs have taken up a significant share of the market while hydrogen is still niche.
BEVs were a niche for about 100 years.
BEVs were around early on, but petrol vehicles overtook them. Battery technology is finally practical for automobiles and it’s mainly a matter of increasing energy density/range. Hydrogen, on the other hand, has a lot more obstacles to clear if it wants to get anywhere near the adoption level of even current BEVs.
Also, last I checked, hydrogen vehicles end up using a battery anyway which is charged by the hydrogen, then the battery is what powers the motor. You might as well just use a petrol plug-in hybrid, especially since more energy-dense batteries will mean more and more trips can be covered by the battery alone. In fact, that’s my situation right now. I have a plug-in hybrid petrol vehicle and it covers the vast majority of my trips on battery alone.
The only reason why we see BEVs today is the obsession to be green. If that wasn’t there, BEVs would still be dead. It has not come close to solving the fundamental limitations of batteries. One of which is that you need a huge charge infrastructure, something that will be more expensive than its backers think.
Hydrogen cars do not necessary need a battery, and only use it for regen power. This is the equivalent of a hybrid car. A hydrogen car is also 100% zero emissions unlike a petrol car. The main point is that a hydrogen car fully replicates the experience of an ICE car. For millions of people, that is an absolute necessity.
BEVs have their advantages beyond being green. I wake up with a full “tank” every morning, I can use the heater or air conditioner without emitting carbon monoxide so I can do this in my enclosed garage, the electricity is cheaper than gasoline (plus I can get free charging at work), and if you have a BEV then the vehicle is a lot simpler to implement which means more companies can make vehicles since the barrier to entry is lower and thus increased competition should drive down prices (look out for China, provided governments don’t make tariffs too high).
Not everyone can recharge at home. Hydrogen have all of the same advantages except recharging at home (and even this is a “kinda”, because home refueling is possible, and plug-in cars exist).
The problem is that we are hitting the limits of the BEV, and no amount of handwaving is going to make the problems go away. This mirrors the push for ethanol powered cars, and sudden realization that we cannot grow enough corn to make it happen. And fantasies about how China or whatever solving the problems is just a repeat of cellulosic ethanol, which was suppose to magically solve the problems of ethanol production.
What data is being used to make this statement?
