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

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.