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Yea, and I think what's a bit surprising is how long Toyota and other Japanese automakers (but essentially pushed by Toyota) kept pursuing this for consumer vehicles.
Even the start for electrolysis requires having some highly, highly purified water which by itself is an energy intensive process.
I think there are a lot of good uses for hydrogen even in some transportation settings, but consumer vehicles is a bizarre one to put it in. Toyota does have commercial vehicle divisions/subsidiaries and has traditional cross-linked ownership with some aerospace, so some part of this research and development might pay off in those other sectors in one day, but there's essentially zero chance it pays off in consumer vehicles. This key point seems to have finally hit home for Toyota as after how the second gen Mirai landed, it seems like they've stopped routinely talking about new hydrogen fuel cell products for mass production (only random concept vehicles and very few of them at that), but have with each year announced increases in BEV investments and new vehicles intended for production. This did seem to be obviously the trajectory they're taking now, but somehow you've still got people like MKTwet who are talking about hydrogen as a pragmatic approach
Yes, you can't really rule out future developments, but do hydrogen fuel cells look promising for mass implementation in automobiles? Not presently. That's why everyone else is zigging, while Japan is zagging.
There might be a combination of battery, hydrogen and electric motor that might work. Without some major breakthroughs, hydrogen has too many hurdles to become mainstream.
Japanese are more pragmatic in their approach than Westerners. Hydrogen has been around forever and the main problem it solves is that it can be refueled much quicker than charging chemical fuel cells.
Used to work for Japanese OEM company H as an R&D engineer and I can assure you that they have 10 year, 20 year and beyond plans for the future. Hydrogen has been a focus of their R&D for almost 30 years.
Even though the development effort for hydrogen is an enormous challenge, there are other advantages which will make it worth the effort - a big one is environmental. Battery manufacturing and disposal is an incredibly dirty business.
We will likely not see it in our lifetimes but the future is hydrogen. And nuclear fusion. They are coming. Battery powered electric vehicles are just a step along the way.
Used to work for Japanese OEM company H as an R&D engineer and I can assure you that they have 10 year, 20 year and beyond plans for the future. Hydrogen has been a focus of their R&D for almost 30 years.
Even though the development effort for hydrogen is an enormous challenge, there are other advantages which will make it worth the effort - a big one is environmental. Battery manufacturing and disposal is an incredibly dirty business.
We will likely not see it in our lifetimes but the future is hydrogen. And nuclear fusion. They are coming. Battery powered electric vehicles are just a step along the way.
It doesn't seem like even in 30 years from now this will be reasonable for consumer road vehicles. Battery manufacturing and disposal can be incredibly dirty business, but it is improving especially in regards to recycling and all that's more than offset by the operational life of road vehicles where battery electric vehicles are much more energy efficient overall than any green hydrogen can be. Moreover, in regards to consumer adoption, it's a lot more common to have an electrical hookup for your home or business than it is to have a hydrogen gas hookup. In that case then, it means having to constantly refill tanks of hydrogen at different points which is also inefficient and wasteful in various ways.
Successful nuclear fusion as power plants would for the most part successfully tip things even more in favor of battery electric or potentially a successor storage technology like supercapacitors rather than hydrogen gas.
It doesn't seem like even in 30 years from now this will be reasonable for consumer road vehicles. Battery manufacturing and disposal can be incredibly dirty business, but it is improving especially in regards to recycling and all that's more than offset by the operational life of road vehicles where battery electric vehicles are much more energy efficient overall than any green hydrogen can be. Moreover, in regards to consumer adoption, it's a lot more common to have an electrical hookup for your home or business than it is to have a hydrogen gas hookup. In that case then, it means having to constantly refill tanks of hydrogen at different points which is also inefficient and wasteful in various ways.
Successful nuclear fusion as power plants would for the most part successfully tip things even more in favor of battery electric or potentially a successor storage technology like supercapacitors rather than hydrogen gas.
Yes, to expand on this a little bit, it's true that there hasn't been much capacity for recycling EV batteries until recently, but there hasn't been much need until recently - the modern EV with lithium batteries is only about 12 years old, and in the early going, of course not many were being sold, plus, the batteries last a long time. So it's not like mountains of EV batteries have been going into landfills - the amount available to be processed from EVs has been small, and I have not heard of any significant numbers of battery packs going into landfills from e.g. Nissan Leafs or Tesla Model S - the earliest models.
Meanwhile, people do know that such capacity will be needed, and a number of companies are getting their processes developed and their recycling processing centers built out. One of the largest and most sophisticated is Redwood Materials. Founded by one of Tesla's founders, JB Straubel, they are still pre-IPO, but they have raised over $2 Billion dollars from private investors and have recently received a $2 Billion dollar loan from the federal government. One of the interesting things about Redwood, is that they are not content just to do the first level of recycling, to so-called "black mass". They will be making battery electrodes because those are higher on the value chain. Redwood has struck deals with Ford, Volkswagen, Volvo, Panasonic and Toyota. They are building LARGE recycling facilities in Nevada and South Carolina. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohn...h=1066aa7b1b42
It doesn't seem like even in 30 years from now this will be reasonable for consumer road vehicles. Battery manufacturing and disposal can be incredibly dirty business, but it is improving especially in regards to recycling and all that's more than offset by the operational life of road vehicles where battery electric vehicles are much more energy efficient overall than any green hydrogen can be. Moreover, in regards to consumer adoption, it's a lot more common to have an electrical hookup for your home or business than it is to have a hydrogen gas hookup. In that case then, it means having to constantly refill tanks of hydrogen at different points which is also inefficient and wasteful in various ways.
Successful nuclear fusion as power plants would for the most part successfully tip things even more in favor of battery electric or potentially a successor storage technology like supercapacitors rather than hydrogen gas.
One of the big thrusts in recent years is on-board hydrogen generation through hydrolysis of aluminum. Lots of research in this area for obvious reasons because if hydrogen can be produced on-board a vehicle even as a supplement, it would greatly reduce or obviate the need for the hydrogen supply infrastructure that you mention.
Lots of papers out there on this topic, here's one from summer 2023, where they are using graphene as an activator. "Activation of Al by adding carbon-based materials such as graphite, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene, etc., can instantaneously generate hydrogen at room temperature."
One of the big thrusts in recent years is on-board hydrogen generation through hydrolysis of aluminum. Lots of research in this area for obvious reasons because if hydrogen can be produced on-board a vehicle even as a supplement, it would greatly reduce or obviate the need for the hydrogen supply infrastructure that you mention.
Lots of papers out there on this topic, here's one from summer 2023, where they are using graphene as an activator. "Activation of Al by adding carbon-based materials such as graphite, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene, etc., can instantaneously generate hydrogen at room temperature."
Hydrogen is not going to replace battery powered EVs tomorrow but it is the future.
It's impossible to predict the mid and long term future with any certainty, so sure, I don't think we should rule out their use for consumer private road vehicles at some point though it also doesn't make sense to believe it will happen with any degree of certainty. On-board generation is interesting though it means having two consumables here with having both the treated Aluminum and (highly purified) water. With that there's the question of initial costs, operating costs, and effective energy density for the setup including the consumables.
For at least the very near term of the next couple of decades though and possibly longer, I think consumer road vehicles are going to go towards storing charge whether that's chemical batteries like we have now or potentially ultracapacitors suitable for vehicles later. Electricity can come from a fairly large variety of sources and the transmission and distribution infrastructure is already ubiquitous and continues to expand, so the ability to recharge and the ability to expand public charging is also already ubiquitous. The ability to store charge is also really useful in the context of consumer road vehicles since there is a lot slowing down and braking happening in this context where the bonus of regenerative braking especially at higher power levels is helpful when you have a device that can store that charge. There's also a fun corollary to that one where the continued BEV efficiency improvements in effective miles per kWh and continued solar panel efficiency in terms of conversion to electricity probably intersect at some point within the decade where it provides at least a helpful additional bump of power in usage. That last one though is also potentially helpful for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles since for the most part those also function as battery electric hybrids as pretty much all hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in mass production have had at least a kWh capacity battery.
Japan has tried to push better choices and lost out due to lack of support worldwide for various formats. They pushed for Betamax when VHS was clearly inferior. US has always been about supporting the market leader vs the better choice.
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