Toyota trials hydrogen-powered vehicle on public roads in Australia
Toyota trials hydrogen-powered vehicle on public roads in Australia
Toyota Motor Corp said Saturday it is conducting trials of a vehicle powered by a hydrogen engine in Australia, making it the Japanese automaker's first such test of the environmentally friendly car on public roads toward its commercial use. In the trial from late October through January, a speciall...
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Why hydrogen? Why not electric at this point?
Because Toyota invested a lot into hydrogen instead of EV, and they need to recuperate at least some of it.
Honestly I'm glad that somebody is exploring other environmentally friendly alternatives too, nothing wrong with having options.
Kind of? Hydrogen can be environmentally friendly, but EVs have big advantages:
- Creating and burning hydrogen is way less efficient than EVs (almost an order of magnitude)
- Hydrogen is much cheaper to create in environmentally unfriendly ways (using natural gas etc.)
- Unless we have massive overproduction of power, the additional energy can be better used to de-carbonify other processes with larger impact
That's why generating hydrogen during off-peak hours from a nuclear power plant will be very beneficial. It may be less efficient but way better for the environment then lithium
You still have all the transport and storage costs associated with hydrogen. I'd need to see a study that actually determines the environmental impact of lithium to believe you.
They've invested heavily into a partnership with Panasonic to build solid state batteries too . They hand just spread their risk
While most car companies initially believed liion batteries isnt ready for the market, and wanted to wait for a more safe and dense battery tech to hit market (solid state battery), toyota invested in hydrogen. Then Tesla took the bullet and sort of went against thr grain and created the liion based evs, and the rest of the companies are scrambling to catch up due to the demand for them.
Any push for hydrogen is because toyota invested into it and doesnt want for it to go to waste.
It's not just Toyota that invested in the tech, a bunch of other big names did as well. Hydrogen makes sense for everyone who doesn't live in cities.
How do you figure? Everyone who doesn't live in big cities has the ability to charge an EV overnight, or in half an hour when road tripping. Absolutely none of them live within hundreds of miles of hydrogen refueling station.
Unless you have a quick charge at your house, or live in an area with one, you're not getting 30min quick charge at all. I'm 50 miles from the capital city in my state and we don't have any quick charge stations here. Anywhere. You really seem to be underestimating the size of the USA.
Because some companies just can't get rid of the idea of ICEs. And they don't like that their expertise in making high-quality ICEs doesn't give them much benefit in making electric cars. So they prefer hydrogen to win over electric otherwise they'll have a very hard time competing against newcomers.
In my opinion, it's dinosaurs clinging to their old ways while the asteroid looms large in the sky.
If there is an asteroid in the sky then everyone dies. Not just the "dinosaurs". This is not a good analogy
Us mammals did pretty well all things considered.
there are seroius longevity concerns with Lithium batteries. if you just fill the car up with combustible gas, there's no battery that is expensive to replace every 10-20 years. australia could very well be one of the best countries tp deploy this technology.
The Hydrogen tank for the Toyota Mirai literally has a replacement date of 10 years. And that's not a maybe, it has to be replaced for safety reasons.
Modern Batteries last 10 years easy. Even the abused leaf ones with no thermal management last fine. It will not be any issue
Could be, but I bet that hydrogen tanks is much cheaper, easier to produce and recycle. Also doesn't require rare earth materials.
They're not comparable at all, I just said it as a reaction. The battery is more comparable to how often an engine completely dies. It doesn't, really. Especially the newer ones with proper thermal management.
The tank is cheaper, sure. But the hydrogen itself and infrastructure isn't, and hydrogen isn't even really green 95% of the time. But that's a whole different topic.
How is solar hydrogen collection stations that pull hydrogen out of the atmosphere not green?
It's wasting solar that could be used for better things.
Like powering EVs?
But without the loss of solar to hydrogen convertion.
I imagine the next Mad Max movie with hydrogen cars. Invisible fires and awesome explosions sounds like a match made in heaven...
Heh. A match.
These concers exist for Hydrogen too. While the Hydrogen tanks can last a longe time, the catalyst in the Fuel cell degrades, like the electrodes of batteries do. That means that the fuel cell needs to be replaced as well after some time. In addtition to that, fuel cell vehicles need batteries as well, since the fuel cell is slow to respond to load changes. These smaller batteries are stressed heavily in stop and go traffic and will need to be replaced a lot more often than Ev batteries.
I think they are talking about using hydrogen as the fuel for an internal combustion engine, not fuel cells
This isn't a fuel cell. It's an ICE motor.
This is why Toyota and other manufacturers are still working on hydrogen. The ICE motor to run these is pretty much the same as current petroleum based ICE motors. Until batteries can charge in 5mins and travel more than 100 miles under load, then hydrogen is the way.