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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."
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."
Please Mr. Summary writer. You are not getting torque from a fuel cell stack. That's the job of the motor.
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.
Nevermind that it's also (effectively) a fossil fuel since cracking water is prohibitive from an energy standpoint so they steam crack natural gas instead...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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oh the humanity!
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.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
> 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.
I am in agreement. The Japanese bet on the wrong horse and did not anticipate progress the battery industry has made and is making. Now they are just trying to beat that dead horse some more to see if they can get anything out of it at all.
Toyota has been going at this for quite some time. They still haven't produce a single hydrogen car for the consumers. And the prospects are not getting any brighter. If anything it is getting harder and harder to make a case for Hydrogen in consumer vehicles.
OK, let's do some algebra.
The mass of the atmosphere is 5.15E18 kg, 20% of which is oxygen, or ~1E18 kg. A day's worth of grid storage for the US is ~11TWh. Hydrogen has an energy density of 33.3 kWh/kg. So 11TWh is 3.3E8 kg of hydrogen. Hydrogen is 1/16 the mass of oxygen, so an equivalent mass of oxygen would be 5.29E9kg, however one molecule of hydrogen is produced per 1/2 molecule of oxygen in water splitting, so the mass of oxygen generated would be half that, 2.64E9kg. So to make enough hydrogen to store a day's worth of electricity for the US, we'd have to increase the O2 concentration of our atmosphere by 2.64E9/1E18 = 2.64E-9 (0.000000264%).
I think we'll be OK. Also, keep in mind that cars consume oxygen yet we generally don't die from lack of oxygen when standing by a busy intersection.
It's a local pollution reduction thing. That's why it sometimes makes sense despite the difficulties.
I can see California and China going for it for vehicles based entirely in cities.
Not every truck is on long routes.
I'd say every city that has some sort of industrial chemical production is very close to being able to supply it already. Hydrogen gas is produced as a precursor for a lot of things.
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?
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That's not what I meant. They don't make vast quantities of hydrogen by splitting water with electricity. They make it by splitting the hydrogen out of oil or natural gas which is essentially the same thing that we're doing when we burn it in the car.
It may be possible to use hydrolysis as a step in wastewater treatment, so municipalities could produce fuel instead of oil companies.
And a solar-to-hydrogen site could be done on a scale suitable for city buses, garbage trucks, etc. with the excess production sold to the public
But people are paranoid about governments running anything that looks like a business, and while it would be fair for the excess to be sold using an auction system, we'll probably end up with a privatized system that owns the equipment, makes the city pay for it, then sells hydrogen at a fixed rate above market value. At least that's how everything else works in my city.
I expect all the cool stuff to be tied up with patents (or trade secrets) for decades before anyone can make a go at local hydrogen production. I'll be retired and no longer commuting by the time the hydrogen economy becomes mainstream, if at all.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And why is nobody else but the Japanese car manufacturers even slightly interested in it?
Because of observer bias. Here's is some interest from others:
BMW Hydrogen 7
BMW i8
Mercedes F-Cell
Audi A7 H-Tron
VW Golf Hymotion
Hyundai Intrado
Nissan TeRRA
Honda FCX
The Americans have been a bit quiet recently but that didn't stop them playing with:
Ford Focus FCV
GM Hydrogen4
The AFCC is a joint venture between Dailmer and Ford to develop H2 fuel cells for cars. They were targeting 2017 for a release of a H2 car, but that's dropped off the way side a bit.
Toyota has been going at this for quite some time. They still haven't produce a single hydrogen car for the consumers.
No, they have. Their new vehicle comes as EV, PHEV, or as a Hydrogen vehicle. Of course, you can only buy it in California, but nobody outside of California is dumb enough to buy one anyway. And actually, you can only lease it. On the other hand, the lease deals are so good because they are so desperate to put asses in [driver] seats that if you actually use it as much as the lease will allow, you will wind up paying about $100/mo for the vehicle. That's because fuel is free. That's right, they're giving away fuel to the early adopters. The lease is around $300/mo, but you get $15k in fuel and there's a $5k tax credit from the state. Not a rebate, a credit.
What's actually interesting about this news to the masses, though, is that the next-generation hydrogen vehicles are going to actually be affordable. You might even be able to go out and buy one. This cost reduction is coming from a partnership between Toyota and GM. The next-generation fuel cell has the same performance characteristics as the one they're putting into vehicles right now, but it costs much less to produce. This is a sign that the technology is ready for prime time.
Of course, this doesn't address any of the issues regarding actually delivering hydrogen fuel. Every time the automakers make the case for hydrogen, they talk a lot about using excess electricity to make it, but then they never seem to actually do that. We just keep making it out of steam reformation of natural gas, which a) is based on increased natgas production, which is in turn based on fracking and b) which is itself extremely energy intensive. We might as well be using electrolysis, except of course you have to use distilled water for the process. Actually, what you want to feed into the process is deionized water, which is even more expensive because it takes even more energy to produce. But otherwise you're going to degrade your electrodes, fuel cell, or whatever stack it is you're using for electrolysis.
TL;DR: Hydrogen vehicle technology is here and you can buy it, and there will be more of it, but hydrogen is still crap.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"