Toyota Unveils Plan For Hydrogen Powered Semi Truck (rdmag.com)

New submitter omaha393 quotes a report from R&D Magazine: Toyota announced a new initiative on Wednesday aimed at advancing its work in vehicles powered by alternative energy sources. The automaker unveiled Project Portal, which is a novel hydrogen fuel cell system designed for heavy duty truck use at the Port of Los Angeles. A proof-of-concept truck powered by this fuel cell will be part of a feasibility study held at the Port this summer, with the goal of examining the potential of this technology in heavy-duty applications. The test vehicle will produce more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 pound feet of torque from two of these novel fuel cell stacks along with a 12kWh battery. Overall, the combined weight capacity is 80,000 pounds that will be carried over 200 miles.

omaha393 adds: "While hydrogen fuel has been criticized due to high cost of production and safety concerns, recent advances in catalysis and solid storage systems have made the prospect of hydrogen fuel an attractive commercial prospect for the future."

Comments

Torque

[Mr D from 63]

Please Mr. Summary writer. You are not getting torque from a fuel cell stack. That's the job of the motor.

Re:Torque

[thegarbz]

Please Mr D form 63 learn to read.

The test vehicle will produce more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 pound feet of torque from two of these novel fuel cell stacks along with a 12kWh battery.

The vehicle produces horsepower and toque. It does so using a form of energy storage. What is in between is irrelevant to the sentence.
Sometimes pedantic can be so pedantic that they forget how to actually communicate properly.

H2 is actually gaining (small) market presence

[scatbomb]

A couple years ago I'd have agreed with you, but a lot has changed.

Toyota unveiled a (admittedly very expensive) hydrogen-powered car that goes >300 miles on a charge and takes 5 min to refuel. Toyota, the largest auto manufacturer in the world, is probably not doing this as an empty gesture. They've announced they'll almost eliminate ICE cars from their lineup by 2050 and have yet to release an all-electric car (just plugin hybrids). They're working with Shell to provide fueling stations, of which there are >80 in Japan and 25 in CA right now, promising 160 in Japan within a couple years.

source: https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/f...

source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis of water or salt water from any source of electricity, including intermittent sources like renewables. The efficiency of electrolysis is very high today, approaching 90%.

source: http://www.h2fc-fair.com/hm14/...

It's not a perfect answer, but it's looking a lot less ridiculous than it did a few years ago.

Re:What are the benefits over electric?

[Jeremi]

Why Hydrogen?

Hydrogen is a way of storing power that doesn't require a heavy, expensive, short-lived battery pack.

Of course, this was a much better argument back in the bad old days when batteries had horrible energy density, were insanely expensive, and didn't last very long.

Now that battery technology has improved quite a bit, batteries only somewhat suck and are only expensive instead of insanely expensive -- so the advantages of hydrogen over battery storage are smaller.

I expect that in the future batteries will continue to get better, and people will stop talking about hydrogen because there won't be any advantage anymore.

Re:What are the benefits over electric?

[AmiMoJo]

Can we please kill this myth about batteries being short lived?

Tesla tested their old packs to 750k miles with 86% remaining capacity. Panasonic says they should do 900k to 80%, and with careful driving a million miles doesn't look unreasonable.

Taxi companies running Nissan Leafs with 200k miles report over 85% capacity remaining too. Considering the pack is zero maintenance that compares well with a petrol engine.

80% capacity is considered end of life, by the way, but in practical terms you could re use that battery in another vehicle or as a UPS for many more years.

That's with today's batteries. Future ones will be even better. Current warranties are usually around 8 years or 100k miles. Replacement Leaf batteries are around $4k but as far as I am aware no one has ever bought one. Even in the worst possible case, would you spend less than $4k maintaing a petrol engine over 8 years?