Hydrogen is not for use cases where there is an electric alternative. Electric almost always wins. But there are use cases where there is no electric alternative or none that is available any time soon, most notably chemicals and steel.
They made a bet on hydrogen, hydrogen cars failed, and they are now sinking in more costs. They are a financial and executive failure, not a scientific one.
There is still use for hydrogen outside of vehicles (and possibly some highly specific scenarios involving vehicles).
Most of the problems with hydrogen for cars comes from how you produce that hydrogen.
Obviously, producing hydrogen from methane to power cars is a stupid idea if your goal is to reduce greenhouse gases.
However, pure electric cars are only successful in some niches, and larger vehicles like buses and lorries just aren't practical yet, whilst hydrogen buses are already a thing. Battery technology has come a long way, but the energy density is still absolute garbage when you compare it to the energy density in any fuel.
If you can produce hydrogen directly from solar power, then the overall efficiency may be less important: the advantages of greatly increased power density, and ease of refueling may make it more appealing.
For battery-powered cars to be the long-term solution, and not just a stop-gap measure, there will need to be a massive breakthrough, to the point that energy densities can be compared with other fuelds.
As petrol/diesel cars are phased out, there will be an increasing number of customers whose needs cannot be met by the current state of electric vehicles, and there will need to exist another option. At that point, maybe hydrogen won't look like such a bad bet...
Hydrogen has good energy/kg, but it has really poor energy/l. Buses are mostly empty space so they more volume limited than weight limited. Battery powered buses are already far more common than Hydrogen buses and the trend will accelerate quickly.
In Europe, battery powered trucks can carry a heavier load than diesel trucks. The weight disadvantage of a battery powered truck is about a tonne. The batteries weigh a lot more than a tonne, but so does the engine, transmission and fuel in a diesel truck. The difference is about a tonne. In Europe, they allow battery trucks to weigh two tonnes more than diesel trucks, so... In America battery powered trucks have a 1000 pound weight limit increase.
Green hydrogen is always going to cost about 10x as much as electricity. Using electricity to electrolyze water, compress the hydrogen, transport the hydrogen, strip off the electrons in a fuel cell, charge a battery and then drive a motor is necessarily a lot less efficient than using than skipping 4 of those steps to charge a battery directly.
And truckers don't care about fuel density, they care about costs.
Compared to fuel yes. Compared to batteries, even at relatively low pressures, I think hydrogen still wins even by volume, and at higher pressures it's an order of magnitude difference.
> In Europe, battery powered trucks can carry a heavier load than diesel trucks.
You mean legally? If we're discussing which option is technologically superior long term, then it doesn't really make sense to argue based on arbitrary laws today. Is there a particular retionale behind the law that would make sense for electric trucks but not hydrogen ones?
> Green hydrogen is always going to cost about 10x as much as electricity.
Possibly, but as more renewable energy sources come online, the problem is going to change from "can we produce enough energy?" to "is the energy available at the right time and place?". Electrical energy is very difficult to store and transport in any significant quantity. We already have to turn off renewables sometimes because they're simply producing too much power when we don't need it. That power may as well go to creating hydrogen than doing nothing.
I don't know that hydrogen specficially will be the long term solution either (after all, something better could always materialize) but current battery technology is definitely not a panacea.
> ... is necessarily a lot less efficient than using than skipping 4 of those steps to charge a battery directly.
High battery/payload weight ratio means you need more energy to get where you're going, which is not typically considered when comparing the efficiency of batteries to hydrogen. Batteries also take a lot of energy to manufacture in the first place, and have a limited lifespan, which is also rarely considered. I think that with some minor efficiency improvements to a couple of steps, and a lowering cost of electricity at "off-peak" times, that the overall equation will shift.
> And truckers don't care about fuel density, they care about costs.
Costs come from a lot of places. Trucks sitting around charging instead of delivering goods are a cost. Reduced range means increased costs. Expensive batteries that have to be replaced every X years are a cost.
> Possibly, but as more renewable energy sources come online, the problem is going to change from "can we produce enough energy?" to "is the energy available at the right time and place?".
This is the most important point of the economics of renewables. Eg, I think Toyota was too early and applied to the wrong industry (personal vehicles), but not wrong.
For example, burning diesel for electricity (which is done a lot in remote areas and as backup) is really expensive, even just looking at the point of generation and not the externalities. If renewable electricity generation is hovering around the 2c per kWh mark, even with all the losses, H2 starts to make a lot of sense for a lot of energy intensive industries. Even more so when the electricity used to generate it was never going to get even sell for that price because it just wasn't needed.
Renewables have an economic problem currently where every solar panel and wind turbine added to an electricity network will have a lower ROI than previous ones due to their intermittent nature, lowering the return of older assets as well. As their use grows, this problem will get worse and generators will have this large earning potential with an asset generating wasted energy, with a life span measured in several decades. Long tail, lots of opportunity to do more with those assets.
Toyota is not wrong at all. Hydrogen is going to be the future of personal transportation too. EVs are basically unsustainable ideas as they require so much raw materials. Not to mention that we have to have hydrogen to hit zero emissions, but we don't need EVs at all.
I think the efficiency of pure EVs is too good to ignore. I'm not disagreeing that we have to have hydrogen to hit zero emissions, but lots of factors related to personal vehicles where pure EV makes sense. I don't think they will be the only types, possible over time as green hydrogen economics improve we might see more of a mix for sale.
But given how long it will take to build out to 3x renewable generation capacity and then auto makers to change, etc etc I don't think that will be for another 10+ years, but hope I'm wrong.
It's already starting to happen. It won't be something that happens decades in the future. The disruption of EVs by hydrogen technology is likely a current event.
I think its time we start realizing that much of the "efficiency" argument is an exaggeration or a lie. EVs aren't that efficient especially in cold weather, and fuel cell cars aren't really that far off. The other big issue is the inability to capture excess renewable energy. As we keep on building out more renewables, we're finding out that curtailed energy is growing exponentially. Pretty soon the vast majority of renewable energy will just go to waste. Hydrogen allows to use that energy, but batteries won't. Combined with the huge resource requirements of batteries it's clear that this technology is primed for a major stumble.
When I was working in a warehouse as a poor college student we drove electric forklifts inside for obvious reasons.
When the forklift went flat, you got another forklift to remove the battery and replace it with a fresh one.
Tesla tried this once and it wasn't a great success however, if you have a depo with a stack of batteries, you run a fleet of trucks, this makes a lot more sense.
It's something I'm suprised hasn't been floated as a lot of the customers for the electric trucks are fleet customers
Oh ok. Well thank you for making this prediction, that's got to be why out of all the companies that fielded Hydrogen cars all but two have now switched entirely to BEVs. We must have a different definition of disrupted.
If you know the history of disruption, you'd know that very few companies survive them. "All but two" could the list of dead companies from this, not the survivors.
Just for added advice: Toyota also makes battery powered cars alongside their hydrogen cars. Tesla however does not make hydrogen powered cars at all. So without getting into details, it's clear that Toyota knows more about how each technology stack up against each other. So for Tesla to be right on this, it means that without having any knowledge of hydrogen cars they still know that it can't work, even over a company that knows something about both.
It can be described as Toyota having both eyes open whereas Tesla is blind in one eye, but still claiming that the latter sees better.
My current gasoline car has a 500km range. If I can get 400km range on an electric car then I will just pick the car with the cheapest "fuel" costs and that's not going to be hydrogen.
Fuel cell cars are electric cars. Since hydrogen is much more plentiful than lithium, it's nearly a certainty that the vast majority of cars will eventually switch over to hydrogen.
Hydrogen is not for use cases where there is an electric alternative. Electric almost always wins. But there are use cases where there is no electric alternative or none that is available any time soon, most notably chemicals and steel.