Apparently Toyota is doubling down on Hydrogen
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According to Bestcarweb, the 2025 Prius will have a Hydrogen engine as part of its hybrid system
I guess this is for people who don’t have ENOUGH range anxiety with a PEV or plain old’ hydrogen vehicle.
I think the low energy density of hydrogen makes for a crappy choice for the ICE portion of a hybrid power train. -
@classicdatsundebate Maybe they've developed a system that recycles water dropped from the a/c's condenser that converts the the water back into hydrogen, that is then burned and then reconverted into water as the only emission!!!! I'll show myself out now.
I've seen things that you could not comprehend..without a couple of drinks
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@classicdatsundebate They might make this for certain markets, but there is zero chance they will make a hydrogen ICE for mass market. It is pointless, infrastructure is just not in place.
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@musashi66 Engineering Explained did a great video on efuels but they also did an analysis on other fuels as well. Converting solar to hydrogen for fuel cells seems like the best option if we can get the infrastructure in place.
What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.
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@classicdatsundebate Hydrogen has low volumetric energy density but by mass, it's actually more than petroleum based fuels.
On a mass basis, hydrogen has nearly three times the energy content of gasoline—120 MJ/kg for hydrogen versus 44 MJ/kg for gasoline
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Is it a cultural thing on why they keep doubling down on it? It seems like plain electric vehicles are "good enough" without having to dump huge amounts of money into building out hydrogen infrastructure.
There's a few things that bother me about hydrogen for use in passenger vehicles:
- it's still a really inefficient process to use electrolysis to convert water into hydrogen, compress it, and ship it to where it is needed. As a result...
- the majority of hydrogen still seems to be produced by cracking hydrocarbons. From an environmental standpoint, this makes zero sense. As I once heard "trading one pile of bull**** for another is still a lateral move".
- the high pressure tanks require inspection every 10 years or so.
- the idea of really high pressure tanks full of explosive gas seems even less appealing than sitting on a slab of lithium ion batteries.
For grid storage? Sure. For container ships or large trucks? Sure. But for passenger vehicles? It no longer makes sense. But Toyota seems to have hitched it's wagon to that horse, regardless of where it's headed.
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@classicdatsundebate I'm confused. The energy density of hydrogen is nearly 3x that of gasoline. Surely there is a term that refers to the energy per unit of volume. Any engineers here to educate?
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@baconsandwich I think the problem in Japan, quite frankly, is space. Plenty of people have cars, but not everyone has them in a space where they can charge at home. Typical problem for big cities, but in Japan it's a bigger problem because of the density of the cities. With a hydrogen based system, it would just be a matter of upgrading existing fueling stations rather than having to create an entirely new infrastructure to support it. That is why Toyota is doubling down.
I've seen things that you could not comprehend..without a couple of drinks
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@mr-ontop maybe. It still seems like the vehicles would have to be parked somewhere, and I bet trickle charging at 110v would be good enough for most people.
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@classicdatsundebate RE: hydrogen energy density
Fuel energy density as a comparison has never, will never make sense. If it did, we would all be driving nuclear cars. IMO the only reasonable metric is miles of range per dollar. From that perspective, conventional BEVs make the most sense, as long as the concerns of range anxiety and recharging locations are met.
Energy density of a consumable fuel alone is irrelevant- when you take into account thermal efficiency, things start to make sense. A BEV is more thermally efficient than an ICE (Teslas are ~75% (which is amazing) vs. ~40% on the absolute best ICE, which is going to be a diesel, maybe 30% for a gas vehicle). Generally, fuel cell technology, being still somewhat nascent, is in the ballpark of 60% thermal efficiency. The startup I interned with as an undergraduate had a goal of 85% thermal efficiency, which was met during peak load testing on our prototype unit.
So, if you can get and carry a lot of fuel for not that much money, the necessity of thermal efficiency goes down (ie, gas powered cars).
The main benefits of an FCEV are theoretical ease of refilling- you should be able to fill one up in comparable time as a gas car. However, this relies on you finding a place to fill it up. They're few and far between for most of the country. Thus, the main hurdle to a Hydrogen FCEV fleet is infrastructure. Importantly, this is also a problem for BEVs, but those are sexier and get more investment.
Sidebar- the startup I worked at shut down because fuel cells fucking suck, they're hard and expensive to make, and they break all the goddamn time. So yeah, buy a BEV, Mirais are dumb as hell.
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@musashi66 Hydrogen FC vehicles aren't ICEs. There is no combustion reaction. A fuel cell works by exploiting a redox reaction. Basically, hydrogen or some hydrocarbon gas is pushed through a tube with an anode on one end, cathode on the other, and a valence electron is pushed off of the relevant molecule when the redox reaction occurs, and bam there's the current you can do some work with. It's complicated and a massive engineering challenge.
Edit, I see where you got ICE from now. I would be shocked if that article is valid, I'm not too trusting of autotranslated articles. It would make a lot of sense for Toyota to make an optional FC range extender, since they've already developed so much FC tech.
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It would be incredibly stupid if they equip the Prius with an ICE that runs on hydrogen... all the downsides of a FCEV, but with much worse efficiency.
It has already been done before by BMW.
It would make far more sense to turn the Prius into a proper BEV and offer a small hydrogen fuel cell as an option for additional range (which I predict few people will end up going for).
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@baconsandwich it literally wouldn't help. even if you do have a house, in a lot of places, your parking spot and your house could be several blocks from each other. There just isn't a way to run that much power all over the place. I'll see if I can dig up some pics, It's easier t understand when you can see it.
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@krustywantout I should have been more clear, I meant the infrastructure to charge a hydrogen car isn't in place now and no way a Hydrogen ICE Toyota will be sold for the mass market.
Hydrogen as a fuel is damn fantastic. The infrastructure already exists in the form of regular gas stations - conversion for hydrogen tanks and pumps should not be hard. Infrastructure to deliver it exists.
It is just a matter of making it cleanly and cheaply and having enough cars to use it. Chicken and an egg problem here - no one is going to make hydrogen cars if the infrastructure doesn't exist, and no one is going to develop the infrastructure if the cars don't exists. Plus, governments are throwing their weight into EVs, so not enough support or tax breaks.
2023 BMW X3 M40i | 2022 Toyota Tundra | 2019 FIAT Abarth 500
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@classicdatsundebate This seems like the best path forward for the Prius. It was "the" eco-car. Now that the Corolla comes in a hybrid flavor, the Prius is redundant. Making it hydrogen powered will differentiate it from its more attractive sibling.
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@qaaaaa Regular hydrogen engines aren't ICE, but Toyota has an hydrogen burning ICE engine.
2023 BMW X3 M40i | 2022 Toyota Tundra | 2019 FIAT Abarth 500
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@musashi66 I did not know this. Weird.
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@qaaaaa @Ermahgerd @krustywantout
Good point regarding Hydrogen vs Gasoline energy density. Because energy density is measured by weight, from a practical standpoint you have to consider ρ = m/V. The Mirai only holds 5KG of Hydrogen, because of the constraints of their 10,000psig tanks. I guess what I meant is that gasoline is so much more dense that hydrogen, it would take a lot of engineering to produce a hydrogen vehicle that had the same range as a gasoline vehicle, package to package. -
@musashi66 I believe that the hydrogen revolution will come in the future. One great proposal is to use wastewater from sewage plants to create hydrogen to it doesn't use a fresh water source. Government and green venture capital needs to throw money at it to make it work. Batteries are great if we can increase their energy density but for things like commercial transport, hydrogen is the future.
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@kitt222 said in Apparently Toyota is doubling down on Hydrogen:
@classicdatsundebate This seems like the best path forward for the Prius. It was "the" eco-car. Now that the Corolla comes in a hybrid flavor, the Prius is redundant. Making it hydrogen powered will differentiate it from its more attractive sibling.
No... making the Prius a hydrogen vehicle will kill it for infrastructure reasons alone. The best future for the Prius would be to make it a BEV.
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@musashi66 said in Apparently Toyota is doubling down on Hydrogen:
Hydrogen as a fuel is damn fantastic. The infrastructure already exists in the form of regular gas stations - conversion for hydrogen tanks and pumps should not be hard.
No, the infrastructure doesn't exist. If anything, hydrogen has to be stored more like CNG in most places. And that means above-ground storage.
But the thing is, converting a regular gasoline station for hydrogen duties would basically mean ripping out almost everything that's there and building an entirely new station.
If anything, it would be far easier and cheaper to convert gas stations to BEV charging stations.
And that exact thing is already happening in Europe.
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@manwich I don't see infrastructure as a valid critique of hydrogen for the sole reason that we can build it up. We are building a BEV infrastructure (and Tesla already has one), and gasoline cars needed infrastructure that was built up, so there's no reason we can't do the same for hydrogen.
Right now? Sure, an HEV Prius would be VERY difficult for people not in California, and tank its sales. But the Corolla HEV is right there for those not in California. Toyota has also stated their focus is hydrogen and solid state batteries. They can do both. My opinion takes Toyota's stance in mind; if they want to focus on hydrogen, AND have a hybrid variant of everything in their lineup, the Prius is redundant. Thus, making it an HEV would differentiate it and keep its place in Toyota's lineup as their flagship eco car.
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@musashi66 said in Apparently Toyota is doubling down on Hydrogen:
It is pointless, infrastructure is just not in place.
That was the consensus 10 yrs ago in regards to EVs, and look where we are now.
Nobody has figured out a way to build the infrastructure for hydrogen profitably.
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@baconsandwich I have to wonder whether the challenges of finding the resources to make billions of EV batteries is playing into Toyota’s calculus.
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@baconsandwich said in Apparently Toyota is doubling down on Hydrogen:
the idea of really high pressure tanks full of explosive gas seems even less appealing than sitting on a slab of lithium ion batteries.
How's that different from a regular fuel tank full of gas? Or a city bus or garbage truck with a propane or CNG tank?
