Toyota to launch hydrogen powered Corolla and Prius in 2023

[FROSTYBALLS]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2021/08/29/toyota-to-launch-hydrogen-powered-prius-and-corolla-in-2023/?sh=3e6b0d0a2fa1

 

[Yugguy1970]

Now that is interesting, especially the part about using hydrogen directly as a fuel.  Cutting out 9ne of the energy exchange processes makes it more efficient overall 

[AJones]

10 hours ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2021/08/29/toyota-to-launch-hydrogen-powered-prius-and-corolla-in-2023/?sh=3e6b0d0a2fa1

From the driver's perspective there's a logic to petrol or diesel plug-in hybrids, its a bridge technology with the range and comprehensive fuel availability from the petrol/diesel, combined with zero emissions electric driving where charging facilities are available. It's a stepping stone to all electric driving, while the charging infrastructure gets rolled out and Battery ranges improve. A hydrogen plug-in Prius is the opposite, it combines the two least available fuels, there's so few hydrogen fueling stations that in most the UK it could only function as a short-range EV, in which case most drivers would be better off with a regular EV. It's a strange proposition to the customer.

A hybrid Corolla might be more promising, if the combustion engine could be designed to run on hydrogen and petrol that could make it an interesting proposition, hydrogen where it's available and petrol where it isn't, similar to LPG cars. You could buy that and run it anywhere.

At some point though Toyota is going to have to learn from Tesla, if you want consumers to adopt your particular fuelling technology then it needs to step in an support the fueling infrastructure. Part of Tesla's success is that it built the Supercharger stations to let owners charge their vehicles. Anyone buying a hydrogen car has to fend for themselves.

[Stopeter44]

1003 km on a full tank of Hydrogen (in French)

About the infrastructure. Paris has a number of Hydrogen fill up stations, so I can see a Mirai being an option for taxi drivers. I have already seen Tesla Taxis in France, so why not the MiraI.

Quote

A hybrid Corolla might be more promising, if the combustion engine could be designed to run on hydrogen and petrol that could make it an interesting proposition, hydrogen where it's available and petrol where it isn't, similar to LPG cars. You could buy that and run it anywhere.

That would be interesting, but methinks that E85 hybrids would be more cost effective, at least in the short to medium term. In my neck of the mountains, I don't see widespread access to Hydrogen anytime soon, but I do see more and more Petrol stations selling E85, which is less than 50% of the price of E10(95 octane). 

[AndyRC]

I can see how Hydrogen would work for vehicles which return to a base every day , buses , local delivery vehicles , short trip HGVs etc. If you can make the financials stack up and have your own bulk hydrogen tank then it could make sense. 

[Roy124]

On 12/16/2021 at 12:30 PM, AndyRC said:

 If you can make the financials stack up and have your own bulk hydrogen tank then it could make sense. 

I was thinking about a hydrogen tank system and it is no different from a petrol tank system. 

Electricity demands with a comprehensive network or, on exceptional off-grid locations, a generator. 

Hydrogen shares the same distribution advantages and disadvantages as petrol.  In off grid, ie lacking EV infrastructure, it is little different from petrol. 

Of course you have all the other considerations, cost, efficiency, environmental. 

[Cyker]

Blimey, they must have been going very slow or had access to a very high-pressure hydrogen pump to get it to go that far  

I heard typical Mirai ranges around 250-300 miles, which makes them not very appealing vs EV's. Esp. with the lack of hydrogen stations (And assuming those work!).

I'm still on the fence about hydrogen, as it's a horrific waste of electricity to make it, and only really makes sense if that electricity was going to goto waste anyway. But I also can't see an alternative for anything that needs to be used constantly all day, like tractors, plant machinery, haulage etc.

 

[forkingabout]

19 hours ago, Cyker said:

But I also can't see an alternative for anything that needs to be used constantly all day, like tractors, plant machinery, haulage etc.

 

 

I'm a Toyota forklift technician, we had the hydrogen people in doing a site survey last year as the current lead acid powered fleet is coming up for renewal & the customer trying to be green as possible is looking at what's available to power there fleet of forklifts that run 24 / 7 every day apart from xmas day. 

There are benefits to hydrogen such as refuelling in 90 seconds & being able to fill up 4 x forklifts at a time from 1 filling station.

There are downsides - the ongoing costs of refilling the storage tank for the filling station with the hydrogen & the costs of having hydrogen trained technicians on site 24 / 7 in case of emergencies.   

It's looking like lithium ion batteries are the future for us - cheaper to install, cheaper to run, fully charged in an hour, take opportunity charging, no topping up & all you need is a suitable 3 phase electrical supply for each charger.

If Toyota get the solid state Battery technology correct, hydrogen fuel cells could be a short lived technology. 

[Cyker]

Why don't you stick with the lead-acid ones if they work for you?

Hydrogen will be much more expensive to run than electricity, and lead acid batteries are *MUCH* better for the environment than lithium ion ones.

90+% of a lead acid Battery is recyclable, and indeed most lead acid batteries are made from recycled lead acid batteries

Lithium-ion is effectively not recyclable at the moment - Spent batteries mostly just get re-purposed or re-sold as lower capacity packs, or the good cells are cherry picked to make new packs. The rest just gets sent to land fill, although some small-scale actual recycling is done, but either involves huge amounts of energy, or loads of toxic chemicals.

It's just too expensive to be worth it - It's far more expensive in resources, time, energy and money than mining the materials in the first place, which sortof defeats the point of recycling it, and is only profitable with subsidies/grants so hardly anyone does it. What they do extract is usually the nickel - The lithium is so poor quality and quantity it normally gets disposed of with the rest of the waste from the extraction process!