Akio Toyoda, Toyota Motor’s chairman, has never been a huge fan of battery electric vehicles. Last October, as global sales of EVs started to slow down amid macroeconomic uncertainty, Toyoda crowed that people are “finally seeing reality” on EVs. Now, the auto executive is doubling down on his bearish forecast, boldly predicting that just three in 10 cars on the road will be powered by a battery.
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“The enemy is CO2,” Toyoda said, proposing a “multi-pathway approach” that doesn’t rely on any one type of vehicle. “Customers, not regulations or politics” should make the decision on what path to rely on, he said.
The auto executive estimated that around a billion people still live in areas without electricity, which limits the appeal of a battery electric vehicle. Toyoda estimated that fully electric cars will only capture 30% of the market, with the remainder taken up by hybrids or vehicles that use hydrogen technology.
Critics of hydrogen cars are repeating the same criticisms of EVs just before they took off. Same can be said of wind power or solar power. In reality, it’s just the same anti-green and anti-progress BS you hear about any new green technology. It’s all the same story.
Meanwhile EVs have taken up a significant share of the market while hydrogen is still niche.
BEVs were a niche for about 100 years.
BEVs were around early on, but petrol vehicles overtook them. Battery technology is finally practical for automobiles and it’s mainly a matter of increasing energy density/range. Hydrogen, on the other hand, has a lot more obstacles to clear if it wants to get anywhere near the adoption level of even current BEVs.
Also, last I checked, hydrogen vehicles end up using a battery anyway which is charged by the hydrogen, then the battery is what powers the motor. You might as well just use a petrol plug-in hybrid, especially since more energy-dense batteries will mean more and more trips can be covered by the battery alone. In fact, that’s my situation right now. I have a plug-in hybrid petrol vehicle and it covers the vast majority of my trips on battery alone.
The only reason why we see BEVs today is the obsession to be green. If that wasn’t there, BEVs would still be dead. It has not come close to solving the fundamental limitations of batteries. One of which is that you need a huge charge infrastructure, something that will be more expensive than its backers think.
Hydrogen cars do not necessary need a battery, and only use it for regen power. This is the equivalent of a hybrid car. A hydrogen car is also 100% zero emissions unlike a petrol car. The main point is that a hydrogen car fully replicates the experience of an ICE car. For millions of people, that is an absolute necessity.
BEVs have their advantages beyond being green. I wake up with a full “tank” every morning, I can use the heater or air conditioner without emitting carbon monoxide so I can do this in my enclosed garage, the electricity is cheaper than gasoline (plus I can get free charging at work), and if you have a BEV then the vehicle is a lot simpler to implement which means more companies can make vehicles since the barrier to entry is lower and thus increased competition should drive down prices (look out for China, provided governments don’t make tariffs too high).
Not everyone can recharge at home. Hydrogen have all of the same advantages except recharging at home (and even this is a “kinda”, because home refueling is possible, and plug-in cars exist).
The problem is that we are hitting the limits of the BEV, and no amount of handwaving is going to make the problems go away. This mirrors the push for ethanol powered cars, and sudden realization that we cannot grow enough corn to make it happen. And fantasies about how China or whatever solving the problems is just a repeat of cellulosic ethanol, which was suppose to magically solve the problems of ethanol production.
Storage and transportation of hydrogen continue to be the limiting factor for hydrogen and those hurdles don’t seem like they can be cleared easily. Only Toyota has really given it much of a try and the hydrogen stations are available in very limited areas. Plus with how complicated the stations are and the problems they can encounter, I’ve heard they go out of order pretty frequently. Plus the number of vehicles that can fuel at the same time is limited. Given how the hydrogen has to be pressurized or liquefied or whatever, I’m struggling to understand how a home setup would work.
The cool thing about batteries is that there are all sorts of materials to choose from. For example, sodium-ion batteries are hitting the scene now. There are trade-offs, but options are there. Yes, not everyone can recharge at home, but it’s a lot easier to set up a charging station than a hydrogen fuel station (or a gas station, for that matter). I think the best option at this point is a plug-in hybrid petrol vehicle, though the downside is the complexity of the drivetrain.
Those are wildly exaggerated. The main limitation is that society hasn’t invested enough in hydrogen infrastructure. At least not yet. The problems would quickly go away if we did.
You also forget that we’ve poured many billions of dollars into electrification and battery production. That amount of investment would have solved a lot of those limitations.
As green hydrogen is made from water, there is basically no battery chemistry that can rival it in terms of availability. It is basically the best energy storage mechanism of this type already. Saying that batteries can get better is just misdirection. Also, you can have plug-in hydrogen cars too. The natural path is probably hybrids -> PHEVs -> plug-in FCEVs. Pure BEVs are in many ways a side-trip.
Take it easy, it’s a bit more complex than that. Slow as it might be, everyone understands you can charge an EV even with just a regular 15A 120V plug. Stuck at your father in laws out in the country? They’ve still got a plug.
Generally, people are uncomfortable with high pressure explosive gases. I think overall, hydrogen gas a better shot in industrial/heavy trucking markets than consumer transport.
No it isn’t. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s much harder to wire up millions of charging stations with the necessary amount of power, than to deal with high pressure gas. We’ve just normalized the danger of high-voltage electricity. In reality, this is just as safe if not more so, and a lot easier to pull off.
You can plug an EV into an outlet in your garage. No way could hydrogen be easier than that.
You have to have a garage to begin with. People have created a distorted grasp of what infrastructure even is.
Two thirds of Americans have a garage. Roughly zero can refuel hydrogen cells at home.
2/3 is still not 100%. And you can refuel at home if you really wanted. In fact, you can even refuel a gasoline car at home. But in reality this was never a major selling point. It’s just the crutch BEV fans are relying on. The refueling infrastructure is the only thing that really matters.
Most EV users charge at home, this is absolutely a major selling point, and they would all lose this ability if they switched to hydrogen. Which is why they aren’t switching to hydrogen.
And a lot of people can’t charge at home. You will still need public stations.
In the end, this is just the whining of a handful of rich people. If it is more straightforward to get everyone to refuel at public stations, it is the better solution.