Hydrogen and Hybrids: Toyota CEO Defends Combustion Engines, Saying 'The Enemy Is Carbon' (bloombergquint.com) 265
This weekend Toyota's president drove a specially-equipped Corolla powered by an in-house hydrogen engine, reports Bloomberg. "Along with Mazda Motor Corp., Toyota showcased vehicles running on carbon-neutral propellants in a three-hour road race this weekend in Okayama."
Toyota's hydrogen-powered car underscores the automaker's belief that a wide variety of vehicle types — including hybrids and hydrogen-powered cars, in addition to electric vehicles — will play a role in decarbonizing its fleet over the coming decades. That puts the company in contrast to others, such as General Motors Co., Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo Car AB, which say they'll sell only EVs two decades from now. "The enemy is carbon, not internal combustion engines," Toyoda said at a briefing Saturday. "We need diverse solutions, that's the path toward challenging carbon neutrality."
Toyota says that that different emissions-reducing car technologies are needed for different regions of the world. EVs are a good option for places like Europe, where batteries can be charged with electricity derived largely from renewable sources, the automaker says. Other options, such as hydrogen or hybrids, may be a better fit in other regions.
The technology is separate from the company's other big bet on hydrogen — hydrogen fuel cells such as those that power the Mirai passenger car. While fuel cells use the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, which in turn runs a motor, the hydrogen engine burns the element just like gasoline. Traditional engines only need to be tweaked in minor ways, such as changing out the fuel supply and injection systems, to make them capable of running on hydrogen, Toyota Chief Engineer Naoyuki Sakamoto said in a briefing last month. That also makes the technology a way to save some of the hundreds of thousands of jobs making parts related to combustion engines that are predicted to disappear in Japan if the automotive sector makes a full shift to EVs, according to Toyoda.
Toyota says that that different emissions-reducing car technologies are needed for different regions of the world. EVs are a good option for places like Europe, where batteries can be charged with electricity derived largely from renewable sources, the automaker says. Other options, such as hydrogen or hybrids, may be a better fit in other regions.
The technology is separate from the company's other big bet on hydrogen — hydrogen fuel cells such as those that power the Mirai passenger car. While fuel cells use the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, which in turn runs a motor, the hydrogen engine burns the element just like gasoline. Traditional engines only need to be tweaked in minor ways, such as changing out the fuel supply and injection systems, to make them capable of running on hydrogen, Toyota Chief Engineer Naoyuki Sakamoto said in a briefing last month. That also makes the technology a way to save some of the hundreds of thousands of jobs making parts related to combustion engines that are predicted to disappear in Japan if the automotive sector makes a full shift to EVs, according to Toyoda.
Interesting stance (Score:3, Informative)
This is definitely an interesting stance and probably the most sane. I mean if everything on Earth runs off electricity that is a huge and risky single point of failure.
With that said, I think this approach will ultimately fail because just look at the history of technological progress. The technically superior ideas usually fail due to a wide range of reasons.
Re:Interesting stance (Score:4, Insightful)
This is definitely an interesting stance and probably the most sane. I mean if everything on Earth runs off electricity that is a huge and risky single point of failure.
With that said, I think this approach will ultimately fail because just look at the history of technological progress. The technically superior ideas usually fail due to a wide range of reasons.
Dude, everything currently runs on oil and oil derived products and that isn't a huge and risky single point of failure [wikipedia.org]? With electricity at least you can run entire fleets of stuff, cars for example, on electricity and change the way that energy is produced without it having any effect on your fleet or requiring any upgrades to the cars. (i.e. you get electricity/energy generation technology independence)
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Dude, everything currently runs on oil and oil derived products and that isn't a huge and risky single point of failure [wikipedia.org]? With electricity at least you can run entire fleets of stuff, cars for example, on electricity and change the way that energy is produced without it having any effect on your fleet or requiring any upgrades to the cars. (i.e. you get electricity/energy generation technology independence)
More than 99% of hydrogen is currently generated from oil too. It's part of the same single point of failure and, whilst green hydrogen might be useful in future, the aim should be to reduce its use right now until at least 50% of hydrogen is green. Even when they talk about "environmental" / "blue" hydrogen, it's generating CO2 but just burying it. Some carbon capture might be reasonable, but why use that limited resource for something where better alternatives like electricity exist.
Re: Interesting stance (Score:3)
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Re:Interesting stance (Score:5, Insightful)
Zero loss? Oil/Gasoline incurs a lot of loss. For example, that tanker truck that brings you petroleum uses petroleum to move. The pipelines take energy to pump it around. The ocean tankers use huge amounts of fuel. Just because it's kept in a discrete tank for the vehicle versus payload, it's still energy to move it around.
Fossil fuels are actually a logistical nightmare all around. We can only find them in abundance in special places, requiring us to move them long distances. They have a lot of safety requirements, requiring us to build dedicated stations set apart from other things (you don't see stores putting in random pumps for customers). The pollution is bad and the focus with fossil fuels, but the logistical challenges that we continually overcome are what stands in hydrogen fuel's way.
Imagine we had the current level of power grid and battery technology but hadn't somehow cracked small combustion engines until just now. There's no way we would invest in the requisite infrastructure to make combustion engine cars a reality. This is pretty much the position hydrogen finds itself currently, it needs a great deal of new infrastructure, and it's competing with the electricity grid.
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It can utilize the existing distribution infrastructure which is why the energy companies want to go that route.
To some extent, but there would have to be reworks and *particularly* in the gas station part of the equation, a gas station equipped for handling gasoline has very little that would apply to dispensing hydrogen.
The only thing that changes is production which is via... electrolysis aka using electric to split water.
Actually, 95% of hydrogen is from... fossil fuels. Electrolysis extraction from water is impractical compared to extracting from fossil fuels and water together.
it is explosive and dangerous (batteries and the various fossil fuels share the same problem)
Hydrogen being a pain to manage (like fossil fuels) is probably more of it, but hydrogen is more easily explosive compared to the gasoline
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"and zero loss"
Just ask about Exxon Valdez.
However, according to Google's first result:
"1 gallon of fuel moves one ton of oil 6,842 miles via tanker"
You should also add the fuel efficiency of oil refineries (in costs for separating one liter of gasoline/diesel/jetfuel from the crude oil), the cost of oil storage (before and after refinery), other transport costs (train, intermediate deposits, fuel truck into the gas station, pumping losses from one container to another). For example, a fuel truck could carr
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Re:Interesting stance (Score:4, Interesting)
Electric vehicles trash the roadways
EVs are only around 25% heavier than ICEVs, and not always even that much heavier. It's the heavy trucks that do virtually all of the pavement damage not done by weather.
https://truecostblog.com/2009/... [truecostblog.com]
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/201... [urbanmilwaukee.com]
https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/20143... [lrrb.org]
(etc.)
and their high relative weights make them extremely dangerous to infrastructure and others
Their relative weights are not much higher, which means they're not much more dangerous. And given their far greater ability to brake without loss of traction (because they can adjust the strength of regenerative braking far more times per second than an ICEV can adjust its braking through ABS) they are much less likely to be in an accident to begin with, and also more likely to be able to decelerate meaningfully before a collision.
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Zero loss? Have you ever opened the hood of a car? All that heat is excess heat that is not being used for anything productive. .3*.8= 24% efficient .45*.9 = 40% efficient
An internal combustion engine has an efficiency of only about 20%.
An electric engine on the other hand typical has an efficiency of 80-90%.
Even if it gets that electricity from a coal plant which is 30-45% efficient, it still manages to beat out an ICE engine
even on the low end:
and does much much better on the high end:
Re:Interesting stance (Score:4, Interesting)
A hydrogen based vehicle won't have all that additional weight that EV's have and won't require massive powerwalls and charging stations in everyone's homes.
If that's an example of the science you're teaching your daughter, you're filling her head up with bullshit and setting her up for failure.
A hydrogen-based vehicle needs either an inefficient ICEV or it needs both a fuel cell and a battery bank, because fuel cells are only efficient in a narrow output range defined in part by temperature. Either way it's got substantial mass. The EV doesn't need a powerwall to charge from, and in fact you wouldn't want to do that anyway if you could avoid it, because there is an efficiency penalty for charging and minimizing the number of charging steps maximizes the efficiency. Instead you charge the EV at night (as people do already, around 80% of EV charging occurs then) when there is spare capacity of both grid and generation. And the only charger you need is the size of a breadbox, because you have all night to charge. It may even be built into the vehicle already.
It can make use of existing distribution infrastructure
The only existing distribution infrastructure hydrogen can use is the road and the tractors but not the trailers. The pipelines can't carry hydrogen because they weren't built for that, the pumping stations are all wrong, you can use the trucks but not the tankers... you are fundamentally wrong about this.
and be produced at independent central locations generating their own renewable power to do the job with adequate safeguards
You know what can do the same thing with more efficiency? Not using hydrogen, and just charging EVs directly.
Those locations can be well away from people because hydrogen is easy and cheap to transport... again with existing infrastructure.
Again, that is complete horseshit. Hydrogen is expensive and dangerous to transport, just like petroleum products, the transportation of which regularly causes environmental damage and occasionally kills people despite our centuries of experience.
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... and if nobody has solar panels.
I live in one of the cloudiest places in the US (central New York) and there are folks who are producing all their own power with a modest solar array on their house.
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Earth runs off electricity that is a huge and risky single point of failure.
In the last year, we had about a week long period where a single petroleum pipeline shutdown made it so most people on most of the US east coast could not get fuel. There has never been such a widespread power grid outage.
Plus, if the grid went down, at least some houses would still be able to charge off of their solar. Granted, they couldn't travel as much per day as they could availing themselves of the power plants, but they would have more than the pipeline shutdown enabled.
Re:Interesting stance (Score:4, Insightful)
No not really.
Electricity isn't a source of energy, but a means of distributing it. It is saying transportation biggest source of failure, is the fact that we rely too much on wheels.
Most of our electricity is from boiling water (Hydrocarbon Fuels, Nuclear), and spinning magnets. We get other energy from still spinning magnets, but from other forces (Wind, Hydroelectric). Or we get energy from a chemical reaction (Solar, Batteries).
It isn't like the earth has one power generating facility, but we have them spread out, often with layers of redundancies, and now we are getting affordable options where we can generate power on our own properties.
Fossil fuels actually are a bigger risk of failures than relying in electricity as it requires mining and burning a limited resource. Where a lot of the stock pile of this source, is often in politically unstable areas, and even the stable areas, history has shown us, can change their alliances and allegiances in a short period of time. Toyota is a Japanese Company, We have rather good relations with Japan, and do a lot of trade with them, however 80 years ago, Japan was our greatest enemy. We can rather quickly piss off a nation that makes Fossil fuel running equipment, or provides fossil fuel, or processes fossil fuel, or buys fossil fuel from us. And fairly quickly make it an extremely expensive energy source. While for the electric grid, if one source becomes too much to deal with, we switch to a new source.
While our power grid, is at risk, it isn't the end all be all for energy.
Re:Interesting stance (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen IS electric. Or rather produced with electric which splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. The combustion byproduct then is water.
Less than 1% of hydrogen is produced that way. Most hydrogen is produced from methane with vast amounts of CO2 as a byproduct. However, if you scroll down a bit to the discussion about Japan you'll find that the hydrogen Toyota likely intends to use [newatlas.com] is produced from coal and is even dirtier than that.
Myself. I could give two shits about either. I'm a little more focused on the human race surviving.
Except you talk about capitalism but spread the talking points of the kleptocrat fossil fuel industry which survives on massive subsidy from the rest of us. That's not looking for the survival of humanity, that's naivete.
you can centralize production
More than electricity? I mean, basically, you can centralise it where electricity is produced because not only would you need to produce it from electricity, you'd be losing energy (look up "thermodynamics") and so you really really need to minimise transmission losses.
utilize existing infrastructure to distribute it.
This is literally crazy. Nothing that is currently used to carry hydrocarbons, mostly done at room temperature, will work for transporting hydrogen which is only economic in cryogenic liquid form. Even in last mile applications, where you could reasonably use compressed hydrogen gas, the fact it's such a small molecule means it would leak easily from any existing infrastructure. In fact, hydrogen can actually directly destroy steel containers [wikipedia.org].
Even once you managed to upgrade all your existing system, you'd suddenly find that liquid hydrogen has about 1/5 of the volumetric energy density (1/10 in the case of complressed gas) and so you need five times as many truck drivers, five times as much storage and so on and so forth. Sure in specialist applications maybe. Hydrogen might work great for aviation where weight is more important than space [airbus.com] but you still need serious development before anything might be real and that's the reason these aircraft look nothing like what we have already.
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Nothing that is currently used to carry hydrocarbons, mostly done at room temperature, will work for transporting hydrogen which is only economic in cryogenic liquid form.
The portable hydrogen applications I know of are not cryogenic, but use extremely high pressure storage at normal ambient, in order to achieve a usable energy density. My former boss tells me that the gas pipeline infrastructure in the UK is quite capable of handling hydrogen, as the old "town gas" or "coal gas" actually had a significant hydrogen content. These pipelines were built before the discovery of North Sea gas.
... you'd suddenly find that liquid hydrogen has about 1/5 of the volumetric energy density (1/10 in the case of compressed gas) and so you need five times as many truck drivers, five times as much storage and so on and so forth.
I don't see how you work out that you need many more trucks and drivers. If you look at
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No, the reason your "anti-capitalists" hate hydrogen is because it is mostly produced by refining oil.
If we could get some kind of fusion baseline to generate enough electricity to produce enough hydrogen for current needs, much less using it as a fuel, we would probably have cheap enough electrolysis desalination process to fix our looming drinking water problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Interesting stance (Score:3)
Put your 5G phone in your pocket and stop posting.
idiocy (Score:4, Insightful)
What a moron.
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Batteries already have sufficient energy density for passenger cars. More would be better for packaging reasons but most cars with higher capacity options already have over 3 hours of highway range. Not as much as an ICE certainly, but perfectly reasonable to to take a 20 minute break to pee and get some snacks.
Cost is still the biggest challenge, especially for smaller car. And charging infrastructure. Plug-in hybrids might be a good temporary solution since they'd cover 90% of your normal driving in purel
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Batteries might be small enough, but their energy per weight could be improved.
Tesla Model S has a 85 kWh, 540kg battery for 400+ km of range (or 625 kg for 500+ km). For reference, a Smart Fortwo (first edition) weighs 730 kg.
Basically, the batteries in the Tesla Model S weigh the same as a small car.
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Welcome to the Japanese economy, which has a whole shitload of make-work built into it because they are even more allergic to social programs than we are. If you don't work then you're worthless, and they are apparently married to that opinion, so they make sure that there's as many jobs as possible even when they make less than no sense.
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Toyota are heavily involved into hybrids and plug-in hybrids (you might recognize the word "Prius").
They bet on the wrong horses for the long-term future though (hydrogen fuel cell and hybrids) and are late to the race for full electrics. They are making noises until they can "turn ship". They're in the great position for the present though, as a hybrid offers some advantages compared to electrics _right now_ - i.e. full refuel in minutes (it also has some disadvantages).
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Well being that anyone who had taken some Economics knows, efficiencies create jobs in the long run. There may be a short term loss of jobs, if the transition is mishandled. But that isn't really case, Toyota, basically backed the wrong emerging technology. Fuel Cells, back a decade ago, seemed like the best option, however battery technology improved faster than fuel cell tech did. The same thing with Hybrid Technology, where it is now more of an over complication vs a major fuel saver, compared to ne
Not all enviroments are good for batteries (Score:5, Insightful)
There will still be environmental conditions where you will want an ICE engine. It's stupid to let the engineering knowledge fall to the way side.
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Incorrect: the flame temperature of hydrogen in air is ~2000 C, on par with that of gasoline. Source [sciencenotes.org]. As the source notes, those temperatures are for adiabatic processes at constant pressure (i.e., in open air). When it is a constant volume process, as it would be in an ICE, the flame temperature ends up a bit higher still.
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If you massively over-provision renewabables to make up for winter and wind variability, there will be a ton of excess clean power.
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And those very esoteric and extreme conditions where you want an ICE can purchase expensive niche products. They aren't Toyota's customer base. Nobody living in Prudhoe bay Alaska is like "I really need a brand new Toyota Camry."
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Nope. The EV I have on order will be essentially free. The cost saving from not buying petrol pays for both the car and the cost of charging it.
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I was about to say that's impossible, but it kinda sorta is -- if you take the highest possible gas price of $4.682 [aaa.com] and a very low gas mileage (20mpg) and the car lasts 200,000 miles that's $4.682/gallon / 20 miles/gallon x 200,000 miles = $46,820. So a cheap EV might get you that. That's neglecting the cost of the electricity, but then maintenance is also cheaper so yeah, that's feasible.
Normally the calculation goes more like $3/gallon / 35 miles/gallon x 150,000 miles = $12,857 which is unlikely to get
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Yep, replacing a 15 yr old car and getting cheap overnight electricity rates to charge it. Petrol is also more expensive in the UK. Loan payments over 4 years are cheaper than the current fuel costs to run it.
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I somehow doubt we will forget about it.
In the future many situations requiring a ICE will probably use electric motors and a battery for propulsion, with the ICE just acting as a generator. It's a relatively simple setup and already in use in many vehicles. The technology is mature, it doesn't need R&D, just an engineer to implement it.
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If you're not making liquid fuel from petroleum, and you've already got a vehicle with battery in it, then you're better off making a simpler synfuel than a diesel or gasoline substitute – one which is better suited to use in a fuel cell. The fuel cell is just so much more efficient that the ICE is simply senseless. The benefits of the ICE are that you can build them with industrial revolution level technology (steel and machining being the only required technologies) and that it can run on a variety
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Re: Not all enviroments are good for batteries (Score:2)
I agree that ICE will be necessary in lots of applications, and not just because of environmental drivers - it'll be a long time before things like bulldozers and cranes are able to be electrically powered. However, I'm not sure about a business strategy that points to those small markets, when you have the Tesla's of the world making bank on the larger consumer market.
This feels to me like Toyota yet again trying to downplay electric because they're so far behind in the EV game.
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But we created a situation where we are using ICE engines for all conditions, even tough for many cases it isn't ideal as well. However most of the vehicles that we are talking about are meant to drive on paved, or at least well packed roads, along a managed infrastructure, with most daily travel under 100 miles every day. Why should I have to drive an ICE engine car, where I need to make sure my garage door is open before I start the engine, having to stop a gas station and pay a good portion of my budge
Betting on the wrong horse (Score:5, Informative)
Toyota stuck with hybrids, perfected the technology and sales boomed as they had the best technology. In the short term it was a shrewd decision. But other auto companies decided to go straight to EVs and that seems to be the long term solution that will win for most consumers as governments push hard to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
But as attractive hydrogen is as a fuel (clean burning and water vapor as exhaust) it is really difficult to transport and store a fuel with molecules that can diffuse through and weaken/embrittle metals and plastics. Existing infrastructure isn't going to work for transporting and supplying hydrogen...it would all need to be replaced. So in the race to the replace hydrocarbon fuels Toyota's bet on hydrogen will likely turn out to be a bet on the wrong horse.
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Re:Betting on the wrong horse (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case the better technology is winning... As far as I am aware, Betamax was better quality than VHS. Minidisk had serious advantages over CD as a portable medium (especially considering MP3s limitations before the iPod came out) and so on and so forth.
Hydrogen has nothing going for it IMO. NOTHING. The technology that enables its clean production just doesn't exist / we can't even supply our OTHER energy needs through renewable yet much less the hydrogen needs for private and public transportation.
Storage and transportation has been mentioned...
And on top of it all the overall efficiency of hydrogen as an intermittent energy transport is god awful.
EVs sure as hell aren't all green but the technology has gained traction and it looks like it will be the winner.
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This feels like Betamax vs VCR, HD DVD vs Blu-ray all over again.
No, this is CD vs. vinyl. CD is superior, and though it's often used in an inferior fashion (I'm comparing typical CD mastering techniques to the creation of all these jillion-MPH EVs rather than simple efficient commuter vehicles) it is clearly superior to the baroque bullshit but some people want to keep the creaky old version going forever for nostalgia reasons.
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CDs are superior if your goal is accurate reproduction of sound.
There's a certain peaceful low tech fun you get with records which I don't get with CDs. I like the large cover art, being pushed to listen to whole albums rather than cherry picking my favorite tracks, the anticipation just after the click and crackle of the needle landing. The lamp on my record player even has that delightful flicker that says "real neon" to the discerning eye.
Now don't get me wrong, I like a good VFD as much as the next nerd
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CDs are superior if your goal is accurate reproduction of sound.
Or reduction of resources used, or convenience.
There's a certain peaceful low tech fun you get with records which I don't get with CDs.
I am quite sure that I mentioned nostalgia in my comment.
I like the large cover art
My monitor is bigger.
being pushed to listen to whole albums rather than cherry picking my favorite tracks
You can pick tracks on vinyl. You can literally see the separations.
the anticipation just after the click and crackle of the needle landing
Nostalgia again.
It's not really nostalgia though
It's really nostalgia, though.
my parents weren't really into music and I got myself a CD player as soon as I started listening really.
Not sure what either thing has to do with anything. At some point you got hooked on the baroque experience of playing a record, and I have no personal stake in what you like but let's not pretend it makes any real sense. You just like it because you like it, somewhere in y
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Or reduction of resources used, or convenience.
Fair.
I am quite sure that I mentioned nostalgia in my comment.
Nostalgia is usually used in the context of one's own lived experience. There is no real yearning for past experience in my case. I was alive during the ascendance of CDs, but not old enough to be particularly interested in music and by the time I was I got a CD player.
My monitor is bigger.
I don't really want a big-ass monitor dominating my living room. Or even a small one.
Nostalgia again.
No. It's an
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And yet, vinyl sales were higher than CD sales :)
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The real issue is that Hydrogen is one of the easiest ways for Japan to meet its low carbon goals. For one reason or another all of its options for reducing its energy carbon footprint are risky.
Either they bring in relatively new high voltage DC thousands of miles and modernize their grid in a massive total makeover of their power system.
Or they start building offshore wind like no country in history.
Or they forget about their recent Nuclear history.
Or they pave over their national parks for geo thermal.
J
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Umm... somehow you think that building an entirely new production and distribution system for a commodity that has never been produced on the necessary scale with the necessary technique (electrolysis) is way simpler and cheaper than upgrading their existing electricity grid,
Please show your work.
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The real issue is that Hydrogen is one of the easiest ways for Japan to meet its low carbon goals. For one reason or another all of its options for reducing its energy carbon footprint are risky.
You don't mention Solar in Japan [wikipedia.org] yet it seems they are one of the leaders here and it would really make sense to make a nationwide drive for this. Especially since I'd guess they'd be a society where ensuring that smart charging was available at work, during the day, when it would match with solar output would be quite reasonable.
Either they bring in relatively new high voltage DC thousands of miles and modernize their grid in a massive total makeover of their power system.
Or they start building offshore wind like no country in history.
Sounds like both of those are things that they just have to do anyway. They already started building wind and seem to have a reasonable route to success despite some specific dif [mckinsey.com]
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Toyota stuck with hybrids because many of the companies supplying them also wanted to stick with the technology they had invested in. Like many Japanese companies, Toyota buys in parts from other Japanese manufacturers who do a lot of the R&D in partnership with them. Much of the hybrid drivetrain was developed that way.
Now they are in a situation where most of the drivetrain is going to go away. EVs don't need anything related to combustion like spark plugs, pistons, fuel injection and management, an e
Re: Betting on the wrong horse (Score:2)
I see what youre saying, and even though I really dont know a lot about hydroden feasibility, I wonder if the point is that EVs may not be the sole solution.
For example, hisorically, batteries have struggled in particulaly colder climates.
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Hydrogen will doubtless have some uses, although there are other synthetic fuels. The main issue is that right now it's the wrong technology. We don't have the hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure, and while our electricity generation is still quite dirty we want to use the most efficient cycle.
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The issue is that Toyota simply doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to produce big batteries so they're trying to spin hydrogen as a viable alternative when it isn't.
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Toyota never made their own batteries, it was always Panasonic (and Sanyo before they were merged). Panasonic is now making large battery packs, and has been for years since Tesla partnered with them for their packs. The Tesla batteries use Panasonic tech and the gigafactory was built by Panasonic with a mixture of their and Tesla's money.
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Now they are in a situation where most of the drivetrain is going to go away. EVs don't need anything related to combustion like spark plugs, pistons, fuel injection and management, an exhaust system, even engine oil. No radiator, the alternator is replaced by a solid state DC-DC converter, and the ECU is greatly simplified.
There is a middle ground that would leverage Toyota's existing capabilities. Series hybrids instead of parallel hybrids Yes, the drive train goes away, but their plug-in hybrids already have highway ready electric motor drives. Ditch the ICE drive train and just use the ICE to charge the batteries. Make the battery pack even larger. Then they can transition to an all EV model, dropping the ICE charging unit at some point.
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It's been tried, e.g. the BMW i3. It's not without issues though. You end up with an ICE that needs maintenance, emissions checks, fluids and so forth. Many people will rarely use it so it either sits idle for long periods or gets spun up just to prevent it from deteriorating. You also have to fit it into the car in a way that makes it maintainable, taking up valuable space in the engine compartment.
It's really just not worth it for most people. Just get a bigger battery, although even on those the benefits
Re:Betting on the wrong horse (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with hydrogen is the most efficient way to store it is well, attached to a carbon (hence, hydrocarbons).
It's also inefficient to use an ICE to burn hydrogen - you suffer the same inefficiencies burning hydrogen as you do with a hydrocarbon - really big inefficiencies. It's actually far more efficient to use a fuel cell to convert it to electricity and then use it to power an electric motor. Toyota already has this, even, with the Mirai.
Of course, the problem with hydrogen is getting it. It's way less efficient to make hydrogen from water, and making it from hydrocarbons leads to the same problems of emissions. That, and the cryogenic storage means gas stations will still be a thing, resulting in it being more of a side-grade than anything. And the end result is hydrogen costs more than gas. All the downside of a gas car, none of the upsides of an EV
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I wouldn't say that.
A lot of the arguments against hydrogen are similar to those that were used against EVs.
How do you generate hydrogen? It's reminiscent of the arguments against EVs, where people will say... well your electricity comes from coal or natural gas anyways. Maybe it does, but it's much easier to control emissions from a large emitter or change it to another source than it is to deal with millions of cars.
I personally don't think hydrogen will win out. Tesla has shown it's supercharger network
Re: Betting on the wrong horse (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd feel inclined to agree, were it not Toyota we're talking about. But this being Toyota, two things make me reluctant.
First, I know that when Toyota speaks of "long term vision", internally, they refer to 5 decades and more. That's 2-3 generations of managers even at the highest levels. There really is no other company I know that does this. So in my book, that gives them some street cred with regards to long-term planning. So I just can't reconcile "shortsighted idiots" and "Toyota" inside my head.
Second, I like their argument. A lot. Even if 70, 80, 90, heck even 95% of the world will drive EVs 20 years from now, there will always be those 5-10% who don't fit. For instance: it's easy to load an extra 300 liters of Diesel or hydrogen to cross a desert, or the Taiga in the dark season; but not so much to carry an extra 200 kWh of batteries around.
So fast-forward 20 years from now: every major car producer has gone down, or went all-in on EVs. Except Totota, who, next to their EV division, still has the "old world" know-how to not only build internal combustion engines, but to actually do it on a level that was world-leading when everybody was still doing it. And they know everything there is to know about hybrids and on-board power generation, having been the best at it, and having never stopped. All this while Volkswagen, BMW, Ford - all the 2nd in line at EV technology - will have lost even th basic ability to even sell you a spark plug.
Now I'm not a native speaker, but to me, this translates to: "That's a guaranteed 5% slice of the world-wide market, meeting a fairly inelastic demand at that, on top of anything they can compete with on the EV front." ;-)
I don't know about you, but if I'd be in the stock market game, I'd hodl to my Tesla stock like everyone else; but what I'd buy right now, that would definitely be Toyota.
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So I just can't reconcile "shortsighted idiots" and "Toyota" inside my head.
Remember that Toyota is also a Corporation. Profit is more important to it than the continuance of the biosphere. Toyota does have an environmental "charter" but it is not their corporate charter. And nowhere on their environmental charter [global.toyota] do they make any commitments, which makes it meaningless.
Second, I like their argument. A lot. Even if 70, 80, 90, heck even 95% of the world will drive EVs 20 years from now, there will always be those 5-10% who don't fit.
Be careful of using words like "always".
For instance: it's easy to load an extra 300 liters of Diesel or hydrogen to cross a desert, or the Taiga in the dark season; but not so much to carry an extra 200 kWh of batteries around.
So you put chargers way out in the middle of bumfuck to accommodate those people. It's not worth it to do it right away, but it might be worth it eventually. An exploration te
Re:Betting on the wrong horse (Score:4, Insightful)
So in the race to the replace hydrocarbon fuels Toyota's bet on hydrogen will likely turn out to be a bet on the wrong horse.
Your post is right on the money, but Toyota's bet is even worse than what you describe.
Electricity is already everywhere, has vast economies of scale and infrastructure in place and broad technological advance is pushing for greater energy efficiency is pushing toward greater use of electricity, even for space heating (heat pumps). Electricity is the future.
Hydrogen infrastructure is hardly anywhere and the green hydrogen production needed for this scarcely exists yet.
But here is the kicker. Only Toyota is betting on hydrogen vehicles at this point. No one is going to build vast industrial infrastructure to support the products of one manufacturer. It simply will never happen. Toyota's bet could only make sense if, oddly enough, everyone else was jumping in and they had lots of competition.
Toyota better not be believing their hype on this or they are sunk. They need to have a Plan B in place right now that gets them into the EV game.
They have a real opportunity here leveraging their hybrid dominance. Evolve the hybrid into an EV. The plug-in hybrids they now sell are short range EVs that are also long range hybrids. They have the highway ready electric motor now. Increase the EV component - bigger batteries - and switch from parallel hybrid to series hybrid and simplify everything. Then the ICE motor simply becomes the charging system when away from the plug. It can still operate as an EV all the time, if the owner chooses, but long trips become no problem because you can gas up quickly along the way. Being smart about the balance between battery size and fuel tank size is key to really making this shine
If they don't do this they are going to be toast.
Hydrogen may have a future, but not for cars - for airliners. Decarbonizing these means making zero carbon emission chemical fuel - methane from atmospheric carbon, or hydrogen. If hydrogen, then they could make turn-key plants that are installed at major airports to produce it with electrolysis on-site. But this is no help to Toyota.
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Hydrogen fuel cell has no range loss in winter weather, as there's plenty of heat as a byproduct. That's one plus though (but "overprovisioning" the battery by 25% would cover that, and heat pumps for in-car heating add to the cost but help with range too).
Also, sufficiently sized batteries are heavy - but for some reason a Tesla Model S is only 100 to 200kg heavier than a Toyota Mirai at similar exterior dimensions.
So close, and yet so far (Score:2, Insightful)
The enemy is not even carbon. The enemy is taking carbon out of the ground and stuffing it in the air where it causes greenhouse effects that it doesn't cause when down in the ground or under the sea.
Take the carbon out of the air and turn it into liquid fuel, then burn the fuel, is a fine closed loop that does not harm*, at least as far as the carbon goes. To fix the current excess of carbon in the air thanks to several hundred years of taking it out of the ground and throwing it up in the air, you'd have
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Take the carbon out of the air and turn it into liquid fuel, then burn the fuel, is a fine closed loop that does not harm*, at least as far as the carbon goes. To fix the current excess of carbon in the air thanks to several hundred years of taking it out of the ground and throwing it up in the air, you'd have to take a lot more out of the air than you put in for a good while. But that doesn't change the principle. Why is this concept so hard?
It's not the concept that is hard...
It's the implementation.
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In the very best case ICEVs are still going to be more polluting and less efficient than EVs because they depend on combustion. It just makes no sense to try to preserve ICEVs. ICEs will not completely go away any time soon, nor in fact ICEVs, but they can, should, and will mostly vanish because they are inefficient and unreliable.
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Inefficient, unreliable, messy, noisy, smelly.
Also you have to drive somewhere weekly to recharge it? That's amazingly inconvenient.
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That is classic tunnel vision, buzzwordery notwithstanding.
Blather, blather, blah blah blah. That's all you've got to open with? Might as well concede defeat now.
Building a completely new infrastructure is neither cheap nor environmentally friendly.
Nobody is building a completely new infrastructure for EVs. Most of it is already there. It's hydrogen that would need a completely new infrastructure. But besides that, you're employing the sunk cost fallacy. Because we spent a bunch of money on this technology that's destroying all of our civilizations, we'd better spend more on it! That's seriously fucking stupid.
What we'll do long term, why, maybe we'll figure out how to make electric cars that don't need oodles of polluting rare earths
Rare earths aren't inherently polluting,
yeah right. (Score:2)
And all the oil that's still needed to lubricate the ICE. EV's also have much less maintenance as a regular ICE version. We certainly shouldn't care about saving jobs if the product negatively impacts the environment. It's something we have to be aware of anyway, as those jobs will be replaced by robots anyway. Hydrogen based vehicles should only be used for certain situations where an EV isn't practical, which leaves out about 99.9% of consumer cars, and even most utility vehicles and trucks. Hydrogen can
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The lubrication oil consumption at 5 liters for 10-15,000 km compares quite well to the 1,200 liters of fuel.
Combustion engines result from wanting to use oil (Score:5, Interesting)
Energy density, storability and low price make gasoline and diesel attractive fuels. That's why we went to great lengths to be able to use them. There is no point in complicated internal combustion engines when the fuel has low energy density, is difficult to store and expensive to make. He's right that CO2 concerns do not preclude internal combustion engines. The problem isn't ecology, it's economics. At this point, if you want to keep burning something to move cars around, you are IMHO rightfully suspected of secretly wanting to keep burning gas.
Sad (Score:3)
Toyota just does not get it. And it will not, until it is too late.
Hydrogen SUCKS as an ICE fuel. (Score:3)
35 minutes long but lots of useful info about Hydrogen that nobody advocating Hydrogen bothers to mention.
https://youtu.be/gu1v7d7-Wh0?t... [youtu.be]
Enjoy.
Hydrogen has a place but not for cars (Score:5, Interesting)
With Toyota looking like the only manufacturer backing hydrogen we are unlikely to see the infrastructure of filling stations. However for some uses like ships and aircraft it could be useful, ships because of the large journey time and large amount of power needed, and aircraft as energy density is important.
The risk with hydrogen is that it could be rolled out before sufficient green hydrogen is available. Most hydrogen at the moment is manufactured from fossil fuels, using a process that I have heard an engineer describe as "using a lot of fossil fuel energy to transform one fossil fuel into another". That's why so many petro-chemical companies back hydrogen. We must avoid putting the cart before the horse and rolling out hydrogen powered engines before green hydrogen is available.
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Powering ICEs with hydrogen will never, ever make sense. If you have gone to all the trouble of storing hydrogen why would you want to waste it in an ICE? The efficiency is garbage. You want to put it into a fuel cell.
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Japan could get independence from oil imports by using hydrogen.
Considering that Japan is unlike almost any other country you know, that could be an important point in the decision.
Until the cars go boom (Score:2)
Flame speed is 5 times that of air+methane
Explosive limits are 5% to 75% air + H2 whereas methane is 8% to 18%
It is very corrosive in steel and needs very expensive materials for tanks that will last, with steel a new fuel tank every year for domestic safety would be needed.
Low specific calorific value, it takes more kgs of fuel for a standard distance
Fuel tanks will need to be pressure vessels which are heavy
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Low specific calorific value, it takes more kgs of fuel for a standard distance
You are mostly correct in the points you make but this one is bizarrely wrong. The one thing hydrogen has going for it that leaves all other fuels in the dust is its extremely high energy content by unit weight,
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The energy density of hydrogen itself isn't the problem, it's the total system mass, i.e. fuel plus containment. You can either store very little in a reasonably priced and reasonable-mass container, though still more expensive and heavier than a gasoline tank, or you can store a fair amount in a very expensive and fairly heavy container. Getting the maximum energy density out of hydrogen requires the maximum fuel density, which in turn requires cryogenics. Then you have boil-off, and/or continual energy co
Toyota just blew it (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen has uses if there is a surplus of electricity (e.g. the Orkney islands has a surplus of wind power and insufficient interconnectors to push it to Scotland) so as wasteful as it is, hydrogen can be produced from that energy. But it takes 3-4x the energy to turn water into hydrogen, and then from hydrogen back to electricity than it does to store energy in a battery so it's simply not a viable way to power most vehicles.
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Huh? Carbon isn't the enemy (Score:2)
Carbon by itself doesn't do anything bad. It just sits there, in oil, in coal, in gas. It is *combustion* which turns carbon from something which doesn't cause global warming, into something which does.
CxHy + (x+y/4)O2 -> xCO2 + (y/2)O2
The things on the left of that equation aren't the problem, it's your shitty engine turning it into the things on the right.
10 years (Score:3)
Shorter Toyota CEO: "We're 10 years behind Tesla, 5 years behind GM, VW, Rivian, Lucid, and Porsche, and we're staring to think we really screwed up"
Re:10 years (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not. They make electric cars. They know how it's done. And they have enough capital to buy their way out of this when the time comes.
(They have $87B cash on hand right now, which is $25B more than VW.)
By waiting, they get to analyze what went wrong for VW and other companies in their conversion process. Toyota is very, very good at process analysis.
And they don't think they screwed up. They KNOW they're doing fine now. They want to make excuses and keep people from buying EVs.
They're very profitable right now, and they don't want to boat rocking. https://www.macrotrends.net/st... [macrotrends.net]
The Elephant In The Room (Score:3)
Toyota didn't believe in electric cars (Score:2)
And now they're fucked!
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No, Toyota's doing just FINE.
https://www.macrotrends.net/st... [macrotrends.net]
That's why they're fighting moving to EVs so hard. They're thinking short-term and are very happy with the status quo.
In a few years when we get serious and ICE cars experience carbon and pollution taxes, Toyota will have to play catch-up. But until then, they'll happily slow things down as much as possible and sell as many gas cars as they can. That's their plan. Everything they do other than sell gas cars
Hydrogen is inefficient (Score:2)
Using electrolysis to create hydrogen takes a large amount of energy: the theoretical minimum is 56 kWh/kg. You need an additional 10 kWh to compress it to 700 bar.
- charge an EV with 65 kWh, and you get 300 km of range
- charge a fuel cell hydrogen vehicle with 1 kg of H2, you get 100 km of range.
- a BMW H7 with hydrogen ICE gets 25 km of range. (the H7 is large and heavy and has a V12, but the other two are also 2-ton vehicles)
"The enemy is not carbon" (Score:3)
"The enemy is anything which keeps us from being able to milk our previous investments in factories that make ICE cars."
He's right (Score:2)
Gasoline is 87% carbon, that's why it has to go.
Their loss, then. (Score:2)
In 2008 I wanted to buy an efficient small car that ran on gas. I bought it from Toyota because they sold good ones.
Soon I will want to buy an efficient small car that runs on batteries. If Toyota won't sell me one then I will buy it from someone else.
Not everyone has reliable Electricity (Score:2)
They kind of think in a more global setting you might say.
Now producing hydrogen, that is still the challenge.