The insistence that hydrogen cars are a viable future, and the lobbying against full BEV just feels like they’re constantly digging their heels in on something that they can’t actually prove in the market in any meaningful way.

The state of hydrogen refueling alone is awful. Transporting it, storing it and maintaining the stations is awful. Convenience versus electric for home charging is awful.

Toyota really haven’t provided a meaningful argument for why this is the best route beyond just the cost of making the BEVs

What's interesting to me is thinking about why this is the case, and it I think it comes down to relatively low pressure for drivers to switch away from gas cars. For drivers who can charge an EV at home, that's actually a big convenience upgrade and so drives EV sales. But for drivers who can't charge an EV at home, there's very little practical reason to switch away from a gas car. I'm sure some of them care about the environmental benefits of doing so, but that's probably not a sufficient motivator to switch on its own given how big of a purchase a car is.

Refueling is done by swapping-out low charge battery cells for fully-charged battery cells. If designed properly, the swapping could be done quickly and easily, making the overall refueling of an EV vehicle at least as fast as filling a gas tank.

The cost of refueling would include the price of the charge itself plus some moderate fee to amortize the cost of replacing cells that go bad, which likely would still be cheaper than the cost of gasoline.

The refueling station itself could either constantly charge the battery cells on hand or choose to keep a larger number of backup cells and charge exclusively during periods of cheaper electricity - whichever ends up being more cost effective.

You’d also need to store these fairly large objects in unused but high enough numbers for the subset of people who would opt for that instead of just waiting a little bit longer for a charge.

Say you make cells that a less than average person could pick them up, say 1kg, The number required to change, 500, would makes it clear it's not a trivial problem at all.

That’s after significant government and corporate funding.Toyota would need to be like Tesla and really bootstrap their refueling infrastructure for those people converting from gas but not going to EV, like you said.

I suspect most hydrogen drivers are more interested in the cost savings on gas/vehicle than the environmental impact. The verge did a special on hydrogen cars recently and every owner they talked to basically credited cost over any other factor.

My ridiculously cheap KIA won the top award for maintainability by JD Power the year it came out beating out the high dollar brands. I never have to replace anything on it except tires, the battery, and windshield wipers. If I did have to replace something critical, though, I know it would be cheap. The car is 8 years old too.

I know hydrogen has a far lower energy compression compared to gasoline, but the idea that its always clean, even cleaner than electric, is appealing. Its also appealing that it refuels quickly, like gasoline, which is another big turn off for electric.

But hydrogen fuel cells are also expensive to maintain and have been a huge maintenance burden, as they're quick to fail with contamination (and lots of other factors), leading to hydrogen trains being replaced by diesel trains.

Hydrogen can be clean, but it isn't and won't be for the forseeable future for the simple fact that it would be way to expensive. Almost all hydrogen today is made from natural gas and much less efficient than powering an electric car from a gas plant. But even if hydrogen was produced with electricity, due to the low efficiency it would be much dirtier than an electric car (And we're entirely discounting hydrogen leakage, which is much more potent at heating up the planet than CO2).

Hydrogen can also be fast to refuel, but it takes much longer than gas and often requires a long "time-out" after the last refueling. Hydrogen fuel stations are also very unreliable. With current EVs, 20%-80% charging in 20 minutes is state of the art, which should make charging times mostly a non-issue when this is also available in most "cheap" EVs.

We have CH4 cars today, and an infrastructure in place. It should be expanded and tbh it's a great fuel. The leakages are a problem but I think much of them can be fixed.

I had a Honda Civic Gx, (natural gas) and it was comfortable and very convenient while in Los Angeles. Road trips and camping sometimes sucked so we just rented for those. But there are already "natural gas" highways because so many trucks use it.

Sadly I think it's era is over, oh well.

I don't know if things are better at Hyundai/Kia now that their EV business is growing but I would hope so since traditional auto repairs/dealer and parts networks should be one of their core competencies

I didn’t have maintenance issues other than minor ones, but I do have friends who had their EVs in the shop for several months at a time. Tesla was nice enough to provide replacement cars but I’ve not heard of months long issues for typical gas vehicles (outside of pandemic supply chain problems).

The catalysts for hydrogen->electricity are the same rare earths that people complain are harmful in EVs. Electricity->hydrogen->electricity is also far more lossy than the over 80% efficiency of the lithium cycle. Hydrogen has a round trip efficiency of 40%.

You may hear ‘it turns into water’ but that’s just obfuscating the origin of it (which may be electricity or more likely cracking fossil fuels).

All up I don’t see how you could claim it’s better than current electric cars from an environmental point of view.

This is actually the MAIN reason to buy EVs. I have a 2014 Tesla S, total cost of “maintenance” since purchase - exactly $0.00 (got free supercharging too of course). the only “maintenace” I had was replacing modem for 5G switch and replacing internal battery - $400 total. The car has 90k miles and it is still on original brakes as with regenerative breaking I hardly ever use the brake.

The two options for a hydrogen car are: (1) ordinary internal combustion engine and (2) fuel cell.

(1) is an off the shelf technology but is not very fuel efficient and not perfectly clean. You don't get CO2 or CO or hydrocarbons but you still get oxides of nitrogen; hydrocarbons + nitrogen oxides + sunlight = photochemical smog, you can never get hydrocarbons to zero because there are natural sources (Reagan used to say "trees pollute") so lowering NO is important.

(2) gets better fuel efficiency which improves range by countering the low density of every form of hydrogen storage; it's not a mature technology, it combines some of the difficult aspects of the ICE (from an Ashby [1] perspective it has all the functions of an ICE including fuel supply, air supply, cooling [2], exhaust removal [3][4]) plus it has the electrochemical problems a battery has.

[1] https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27150

[2] actually harder because the fuel cell operates a lower temperature!

[3] it's probably not running hot enough to remove water as vapor, if you can't remove the liquid fast enough the fuel cell it will clog up

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics was introduced to make it possible to maintain the complex emissions controls system; an ICE could be simpler if it didn't run under a strict pollution control regime, but a fuel cell needs a control system like that just to run reliably

Your point about ICE being lower maintenance also has some issues. BEV have way fewer moving parts and therefore require significantly less maintenance.

The parts that are likely to break on an EV are largely mechanically similar to an ICE (anything in the wheel well assemblies) or in terms of body construction, physically similar to the same generation of ICE.

A lot of people look at the cost of new EVs and their repair parts but compare against older ICE vehicles that haven’t moved to the same construction methods. Newer ICE vehicles are mostly the same cost to replace parts.

Beyond that, Hydrogen fuelled cars are mechanically more complex than BEV, while still being harder to repair than your age of ICE

1) You have to pay a lot to swap the main battery (but if this is amortized over the lifetime of the battery the argument falls apart.)

2) Tires, because most EV’s have supercar-level zero-to-sixty times.

Fuel cell cars probably accelerate worse (it’s not fundamental, but the fuel cell is sized for wattage, so better zero to sixty is expensive), and, I think the fuel cell components would be cheaper than a battery.

Having said that, all the high pressure storage tanks I own have limited lifespans, and I’m not sure how much it costs to replace that part of a fuel cell car.

Imagine a Prius minus most of the bits that need maintenance and wear out. That car would last forever and should sell like hotcakes. But Toyota would rather sell you a hydrogen lemon than an EV.

This is a real problem that will hopefully soften with scale. EVs should be fundamentally cheaper to maintain than ICE or hydrogen cars.

I think people in the comments are missing that maintenance is cheap, repairs are expensive. Saying EVs have less maintenance is like saying you get free drink refills at a fine dining restaurant.

Personally, I think hybrids, PHEVs, and hydrogen are better because they can be refilled quickly. I also think battery electric cars are way too expensive to repair in accidents. And having had to deal with a battery replacement out of warranty, I wasn’t happy with the experience of battling the company to not pay enormous amounts.

Also hydrogen refueling might be better if it received the same investment, subsidies, etc. It doesn’t seem fair to critique the current state of things when it could be different.

Today, in the developing world, traditional and highly polluting 2-stroke engine powered tuk tuks, driven by quite poor people, are being replaced by electric versions. I asked one such driver recently why he went electric. He said it was cheaper to operate.

I can go out and buy a BEV at most common price points compared to ICE vehicles, so it’s definitely not a luxury for the wealthiest. Even in very low income countries, there are now EV autorikshaws / tuktuks etc and EV mopeds.

Ignoring the used market of course since that’s a factor of time.

Also what makes you believe that we can’t actually manufacture enough? Would you have credible links to that effect?

Finally, even if BEV was unsustainable, why would hydrogen be the answer? Do you know how difficult it is to produce, transport and store Hydrogen sufficiently to be a worthwhile alternative?

Toyota has been trying WITH massive government funding going back to when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California and still couldn’t make it happen.

But I have to correct my initial statement, practically lithium can be there, but it assumes that we mine it from the bottom of the oceans or the environmental impact is reasonable when mining it.

> I can go out and buy a BEV at most common price points compared to ICE vehicles, so it’s definitely not a luxury for the wealthiest.

That is likely from the U.S. or European perspective. We need to note Africa and Asia as well. In Southern Europe the cost of the EV vehicle is already out of reach for most of the people.

[1]: https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf

[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...

Some summaries about the second paper (which is quite new and thorough) (it estimates current reserves, production rate and the possible battery size):

To put this range in context estimates of available lithium resources range from 4 to 22 million tonnes, with the USGS estimating 13 million tonnes of lithium reserves. However, significantly more lithium may be available if lithium prices increase. Yaksic and Tilton [9] estimate that, at a cost of between $1.40 and $2 per lb of lithium carbonate, 22 million tonnes of lithium is available. However, they also estimate that at a cost of between $7 and $10 per lb of lithium carbonate, lithium can be extracted from seawater, more than doubling their estimate of available lithium. Given the conservative nature of common reserve estimates, and the resulting behaviour that these estimates typically increase over time, it is practical to assume the latest reserve estimate as a lower bound for estimates of future lithium availability. Given the current USGS lithium reserve estimate of 13 Mt, and the conservative nature of these types of estimate it is reasonable to discount those estimates in Fig. 4.5 that are lower than 13 Mt. This leaves the upper estimate provided by Rade and Andersson [20], the Gruber et al. [18] estimate, and the Yaksic and Tilton [9] estimate.

This gives a range of 13 Mt to 22 Mt.17 for future availability of lithium.

----

The estimated range of future demand is many times greater than current supply. While this is challenging there is no evidence that future production cannot increase at a sufficient pace. Though long term exponential growth in lithium production would be unsustainable, if growth could be sustained over the next two decades, meeting future demand may be possible. Supporting this optimism are the significant resource estimates for lithium seen in Fig. 5.1, though these estimates make no assessment of how easy these resources are to access, and over what timescales they can be produced.

---

The paper assumed that EVs have 16–35 kW batteries on average. If you can access it, it is highly detailed. It also assumes that getting lithium from the bottom of the oceans is uncertain.

Also:

The recovery of lithium from spent batteries remains a niche market [44], and the battery industry does not currently produce batteries using recycled material [48].

There’s a lot of promising results in the field of battery chemistry https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240319-the-most-sustain...

And capacities and longevity have already had major advancements in the last year. Including a significantly reduced reliance on cobalt.

You’re also ignoring how cheap Chinese BEVs are. The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV is ~4k usd. Which is 60% of the cost of the average vehicle price in South Africa (~7k usd)

Plenty of battery chemistries don't use cobalt, e.g. LFP.

> we have lithium only for around 2,8 billion batteries

Again, assuming current chemistries. Materials are not a cliff for EVs. Assuming zero progress on LFP or e.g. sodium chemistries, we have decades of throwing away batteries to go through.

> recovery of lithium from spent batteries remains a niche market

Of course. Lithium is cheap. Why would you bother with expensive recovery when there is still cheap lithium all around?

No, because with hydrogen we don't have working prototypes nor a track record improvement. Maybe there is a lighter tank and fuel cell combo. Maybe there isn't. You can't argue maybe there isn't a better battery chemistry than what we have on the roads because we have better chemistries in the lab, in production and in some cases on roads in China.

This feels like a chicken and egg situation. There isn’t sufficient research or funding yet to write off hydrogen. If there were similar amounts of money spent in hydrogen compared to batteries, we could have a better sense of what’s possible and make a choice towards one or the other. But today, this comes off to me like saying nothing better is possible than what we already know, which to me feels unimaginative.

This is not true [1]. And that estimate assumes battery chemistries don't change (or vary), which is also obviously nonsense.

[1] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-v...

There is more than enough lithium on the planet for it.

Additionally, there's growing recycling technology and significant advances in battery technology and engineering the vehicle itself to be more efficient with the battery it's tied to. Structural and management systems for example.

There's also growing research and use cases for second-life applications for batteries no longer useful for an automotive application such as additional grid storage. Some key applications for this include grid balancing and lesson length of outages.

I worked out that you could cover > 10% of the planet with EVs if Lithium was the only bottleneck resource.

The bigger problem is the environmental impact of extracting the lithium. My guess is that desalination plants would be a big part of my plan to cover the planet with EVs.

(We’ll probably need desalination anyway because we keep electing politicians that are intentionally causing increasingly severe droughts).

It's clear they don't want to give up the dominance in mechanical engineering that is manifest in their internal combustion engines.

I just wonder why they haven't more significantly emphasized plug-in hybrids. Just multiplying the battery capacity of a Prius, and letting it plug in would be a huge entry into low cost electrification that would still leverage their mechanical dominance in the industry (read as: greatest longevity by far).

What up Mr. Toyoda?

Even ignoring the dangers of embrittlement of metal pipes that carry the hydrogen enriched gas, what is the cost of this methane/hydrogen filter, and what is it's safety for home use given that it's dealing with 2 highly flammable gases mixed together. I can't find anything online about household methane/hydrogen separators.

Whereas an EVSE is basically just a big electrical switch.

For papers on hydrogen/methane separation, see: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=blen...

From a quick reading above it looks like it came from cracking fossil fuels rather than electrolysis which is understandable but I think that should be made clear to everyone. It’s really just another way to ship fossil fuels in that sense. Burns slightly cleaner on your stove is the only real advantage here.

Does it matter if you reduce CO2 it at the household point of combustion if the fuel is ultimately C02 emissions heavy? Accounting for the inefficiencies of cracking natural gas into H2, it may actually increase the GHG emissions, not to mention being more expensive (due to energy loss during the gas cracking process).

Furthermore, the primary local issue with combustion appliances is air quality, and mixing in a little H2 not going to do much to improve that.

So piping fossil derived hydrogen into gas pipes doesn't solve either GHG emissions or local air quality issues.

You're better off continuing with piped methane gas and phasing in electric heat pumps over time.

Assuming you don't let out the carbon (or use electrolysis) then maybe there is a case for it.

Which should just add to how stupid hydrogen is. It’s a synthetic fuel that has huge storage and transport costs, is no more green or easier to produce than synthetic methane which we already have. We could just make synthetic methane today if that was the path we were likely to take but honestly it’s cheaper to pump methane out of the ground so that’s what we do (barring any incentives to mix in synthetic methane).

A real hilarity is that hydrogen fuel right now is often made the opposite way. Take methane, heat in absence of oxygen and the carbon and hydrogen seperate. All this talk of hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels is nonsense. It’s a synthetic fuel, one of many possible synthetic fuels that’s extremely inconvenient for storage (absolutely can’t be stored in liquid form without cryogenics or ‘bleed off’ to keep it cool), it corrodes fucking everything and best of all it’s no easier to produce synthetically than the fuels we already use day to day, eg methane.

Absolute stupidity and scientific illiteracy that hydrogen was even on the cards.

Could you outline which vehicles these are? I've never seen a case where hydrogen makes sense for any reason other than trying to make hydrogen make sense.

Hydrogen fuel cells make more sense for aircraft (weight) and larger vehicles like trucks because of scaling (larger tanks are more efficient, etc.) and fleet advantages (depot refueling). It is amazing to me that Toyota has gotten hydrogen to work in cars, but it can't compete with batteries.

1. Fueling Stations.

2. A more complex concern.

From what I understand its "exhaust" is water, which is great. But where I live, winters could be a big issue. These vehicles could coat the roads with thin black ice.

So, if true, would that mean this product would only be useful in warm climates ?

If cold enough, doesn't that just freeze and fall to the ground anyways? Considering some places have between like -30/-20C in the winters.

I never even considered this as a problem. Is the exhaust liquid water though? Because my understanding of the process is such that is still creates an appreciable amount of heat, causing the exhaust to leave as a vapour (much in the same way water vapour is already expelled from catalyzed ICE exhaust, or people breathing).

https://h2-ca.com/

Out of 65 stations in the state, only 33 currently have fuel and are known "online".

Good luck!

Hydrogen cars are the worst of all worlds. You still have to overhaul your production and distribution infrastructure. But you keep the complicated power train and time suck of tank-filling from ICE vehicles.

If it made sense they’d do it already. Electrolysis->methane and use the existing network makes no sense. Hydrogen with its custom network is an even larger step from making sense.

The "drive train" is electric motors from a lithium ion battery... you know, like a "regular" EV.

> time suck of tank-filling from ICE vehicles.

The Toyota spec page says it can fill the tank in 5 minutes. How many EVs can go from nothing or practically nothing to a full charge in 5 minutes?

It's an EV + a fuel cell and tank assembly. Same drivetrain. Complicated powertrain [1].

> Toyota spec page says it can fill the tank in 5 minutes. How many EVs can go from nothing or practically nothing to a full charge in 5 minutes?

5 minutes to fill, call it ten minutes round trip to get there and back, plus scheduling friction: that's 20 to 30 minutes out of the day. If you don't own a car, you don't have to do this.

I don't own an EV. But the people I know who do spend close to zero minutes a year actually charging their EV. It happens silently while parked at home or at work or, on road trips, while they lunch. The normalisation of the fill-up routine is mind-bogglingly taxing in a way that's obvious to anyone who's spent any amount of time as an adult not driving a car (for Americans, living in New York).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powertrain

I've owned and driven ICE vehicles since the late 90s. I've owned cars in the country and the city, in 3 states of one country and in a second country. I've driven cars significant distances in two further countries.

The trip you describe where you're going out of your way specially to get fuel and then return, is an exceedingly rare occurrence IME. It's generally just something I (or my wife) will do on the way as the tank gets to somewhere below half or a third full.

Obviously if we're on a long distance trip we'll be more specific about it, but the expectation you have about making a special trip just to get fuel in a car is, as you put it "mind boggling".

Okay, you're still adding a minimum of 10 minutes to your day? A couple times a month? The convenience of not having to do that should be undeniable.

Maybe that would be the case with a fuel cell due to lower energy density, I don't know.

It's certainly not the case with an efficient ICE car. My Mazda gets up to 1,200 km from a tank of diesel. The VW I had ~15 years ago got about 950km from a tank of unleaded.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that recharging a battery vehicle at home is convenient for day to day short journeys due to it's convenience via passiveness - but but a stop to get fuel is hardly comparable to the sort of delays you have with charging battery vehicles in the same scenario.

I don't the average mileage or a hydrogen vehicle nor tank size, so I'll take your word on that. Using your numbers and the map I plotted a route that does get you from San Diego to the Oregon border. But you will need a tow truck to meet you at the end, because there would not be enough fuel to get you back to Sacramento.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/p5tgvAkErktL7LTF6

This is because from the perspective of just the drivetrain, it is an electric vehicle, battery and all (albeit a smaller one).

As for safe, I would say just as safe if not safer than the vehicles fitted to run on LPG or natural gas due to what I would presume would be an overkill of engineering and materials used, ensuing the lines don't leak even if the vehicle was involved in a minor fencer bender.

I have worked with hydrogen on and off over a few years (mostly as gas to run a welding torch) and despite tales how it might just explode or catch fire if one looked at it the wrong way, it's actually pretty uneventful most of the time - it's just hard to see the flame ... and yes, being curious I've done things like igniting a big plastic bag filled with it to see what it does - meh.

[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1145539_this-new-toyota...

Basically, physical safety is a nonissue if the purchase makes no sense anyway.

I'm increasingly convinced this is a generational thing. I typically run my car until close to empty unless I'm planning on leaving town. I've had houseguests, on the other hand, who start literally flipping out if the tank goes below a quarter full. (There is no practically conceivable case where running out of gas in town would constitute an emergency.)

You are taking about gas cars, though. Nobody, of any generation, has "range anxiety" in a gas car. People might be afraid they will hit empty, or not trust their fuel gauge, but that's not "range anxiety" that's "running out of gas is a PITA". Those things are different, one is a commonplace that has always been true and the other is new and EV-specific for good reason.

An EV is much harder to recover from an empty battery than an ICE car is from an empty tank. There is no red jerry can you can fill that will give an EV the 10-30 miles you get from a gallon of gas, and there is no guarantee that a refueling station is close by and conveniently located. And ofc if your EV is empty, it will take hours to refill. Hence range anxiety.

I have an EV, I love it and have done 7 hour road trips with it no problem, but planning the battery charge level is something you have to think about in a way that is qualitatively different than with gas cars.

Quarter tank is easily 50-100 miles depending on the car. I swear, I'd have to go out of my way to travel that far without accidentally passing a gas station.

Begs the question, what generation are you part of then?

I'm millennial I guess (born early 90s), and I also try to keep my tank somewhat topped up in case I have to go somewhere quickly were I wouldn't have time to hunt down a gas-station to refill at on the way.

I wouldn't flip out if it wasn't though, and plenty of times my tank been close to empty before taking my ass to a gas-station, just the general idea to keep the tank somewhat non-empty.

Millenial, too. The generations I observed this in are X to Boomer. What I'm getting at is the anxiety part of tank/range anxiety more than the behaviour. Like, if we're going to the supermarket (2 miles away), are on a time budget, the car has 50+ miles of gas in it, and there are multiple stations a mile away, filling up isn't a priority.

Cold weather can freeze condensation in the tank. A dirty tank can clog up the gas filter.

I didn't think of this. These undoubtedly plague older cars, and cars that were parked outside overnight, both of which someone older will have experienced more.

First, there would be the copper needed in the actual cars. A BEV uses about 80 kg of copper (compared to around 20 for an ICE). At 15.5 million cars and light trucks sold per year in the US that's 1.2 million metric tons of copper per year. World copper production is 22 million metric tons per year, so 5% of world copper production.

Then there would be any copper needed for any upgrades to the electrical distribution system.

Working out from the home, level 2 EV charging draws about the same amount of power as an electric clothes dryer. Most home electrical systems are already designed to handle the load of a clothes dryer running during the day when households are also using their other electrical appliances. They should have no trouble with someone charging their EV overnight (which electric companies will encourage with lower overnight rates).

The key here is that in most cases EV charging at home won't increase the peak load. It will just raise the average load. So no need for new wiring.

The same should be true of most of the electrical distribution infrastructure in cities.

Maybe we'll need to build more transmission lines between cities and regions. But those are usually made of aluminum, not copper.

Copper is more conductive than aluminum so to make an aluminum wire with the same capacity it was to have a cross section about 56% bigger, so your wire has 56% more aluminum by volume. But copper is way denser than aluminum (8.96 g/cm^3 vs 2.7 g/cm^3) so the aluminum wire is only 47% as heavy as the copper wire. For lines that are not buried that means your supports only have to be half as strong, lowering their costs.

Aluminum is also a lot cheaper ($2.57/kg vs $9.50/kg) so the aluminum wire is only about 13% of the cost of the copper wire. That's a huge win even with buried lines.

What else would be needed that would use copper?