Toyota Unveils Project Portal 2.0 Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Semi Truck (cnet.com)

Toyota is actively working to make vehicles powered by alternative energy sources. Last year, the Japanese automaker unveiled Project Portal, a novel hydrogen fuel-cell system designed for heavy-duty truck use at the Port of Los Angeles. Today, Toyota announced that it built a second hydrogen fuel cell-powered heavy-duty truck with 50 percent more range. CNET reports: Project Portal gets its power from a pair of hydrogen fuel-cell stacks borrowed from the Mirai sedan. Combined with a 12-kWh battery, the truck put out an impressive 670-plus horsepower and 1,325 pound-feet of torque. Its total combined weight rating is a hefty 80,000 pounds. The first version's range was about 200 miles, but this second version pushes that range north of 300 miles. The new Project Portal also packs a sleeper cab and a revised powertrain that boosts cab space without requiring a longer wheelbase. Project Portal 2.0 will begin its drayage work this fall. The pioneering variant has already clocked more than 10,000 miles as it transported goods over short distances in and around the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. As with every other hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle, the only emissions byproduct is pure potable water, although I don't blame you if you're not comfortable enough to pour a glass and take a sip of tailpipe juice.

Comments

Tailpipe juice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just say it wouldn't be the first time.

Re: Tailpipe juice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't consume too much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

This is the truck of the future!

[Rei]

... said someone from 1996, maybe.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

... said someone from 1996, maybe.

You know I was thinking this was maybe just not the time yet, but the numbers from link seem to indicate that you can produce hydrogren for as little as a dollar per gallon of gasoline equivalent. Of course the cheap price uses coal gasification, so I'm not sure how clean that is.

Assuming that wikipedia page is correct, then the numbers for the fuel aren't that bad. If you move past coal, you apparently can produce hydrogen directly from nuclear for about $2.50 a gallon of gasoline equivalent.

  Of course LNG is the winner now, and likely will be for awhile for big vehicles.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[Registered Coward v2]

... said someone from 1996, maybe.

Truck emmisions are an issue for ports. A lot are older OO vehicles that aren’t clean idle ans aome ports offer incentives to get new tractors. If LA can get a significant numbers of the trucks to be H2 fueled it’s a win.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[Rei]

You're citing a "FutureGen" reference from 2005, backed up by a dead link.

Google "hydrogen price per kg", since a kg of hydrogen is approximately a gallon of gasoline equivalent. Prepare to be disappointed.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla will make a $35000 car .... said a retarded moron.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[LynnwoodRooster]

The cost is equivalent to $5.60 per gallon of gas, and Toyota includes 3 years of free fuel...

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

And the cost of hydrogen has gone down since then. But keep shilling for your shit Tesla’s. I’ll be laughing after your lost all your money and can’t get your over priced golf cart repaired then Tesla is bankrupt.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[Mashiki]

Welcome to regulations of Obama. That was the shit that gutted the piss out of the referb industry for truck engines. Which mean O/O's held on for dear life to the engines that they had, even if they were pushing 800k mi or more. Meaning they forced trucks to buy 'new' engines that were less efficient(at 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of a new truck), instead of a rebuild with modern tech, giving them the same efficiency but burning cleaner.

FYI It was Trump's EPA that revoked those regulations, and now referbs are starting to roll out. One company I know of already has a 2.5yr wait time if you want a rebuilt engine.

Re: This is the truck of the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of hydrogen has gone down because it is mostly reformed from natural gas. It's not an efficient way to use natural gas, and only makes sense long term if hydrogen is made from water as a form of storage for other energy sources. But hydrogen has such significant storage and transport issues, I can't see it beating EVs. However, a fuel cell means the drive train will be EV ready, and I suspect that is the long term goal here.

Re: This is the truck of the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

A refUrb is likely to be cheaper than new, but LESS efficient for a given output of NOx and PM5. If you think early death due to respiratory illness is a blessing, then fair enough.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[blindseer]

That fuel isn't "free", someone is paying for it.

The funds for the hydrogen likely come from a combination of car maker funding (paid for by buyers of their hydrogen, and non-hydrogen, cars), government subsidies, electric utility funding (because they get future customers if hydrogen from electrolysis takes off), and investment from "greenies" buying carbon offsets (which is either another government subsidy through a carbon tax, or just virtue signaling).

These fuel cell vehicles almost always have a battery pack to go with the fuel cells. This can be a means to buffer the output from the fuel cells and/or a means to be able to drive as a plug-in electric when/where hydrogen is in short supply. My guess is that once these cars run out of the "free" hydrogen that they will be sold off for parts, converted to a more conventional hybrid or pure electric, or driven unmodified as a plug-in electric (the fuel cells just being dead weight).

With a cost for fuel that high I can't see hydrogen getting very far in market penetration. I find it difficult to believe that hydrogen prices will come down much unless there is a drop in the feedstock for the hydrogen. Right now that feedstock is primarily natural gas, oil, and electricity, and if those prices come down then hydrogen still loses out on the competition.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[0100010001010011]

Welcome to regulations of Obama.

How exactly did Obama force the EPA regulations of 2004, 2007, and 2010? Those were set and being worked on before anyone ever heard of him.

Source: Diesel engine engineer that worked on all of the above emissions milestones before Obama was ever president.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[LynnwoodRooster]

Tesla entices people with "free" charging as well, for a while. How is that different?

Re: This is the truck of the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop getting in the way of blaming Obama with your facts!

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[dgatwood]

Tesla's vehicles cost half as much per mile as gasoline-powered cars when the free period ends, instead of almost five times as much ($13.99 typical cost per kg * 1.13 kg per gallon of diesel = $15.81 per diesel-equivalent-gallon versus the $3.23 average cost per gallon of actual diesel in the most recent month).

Hydrogen fuel cells are a dead end. It doesn't matter how many years of free fuel you give away, so long as the cost of fuel is that much more expensive.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[Mashiki]

You mean the part where they banned the refurbishment of older engines in 2009, then further restricted them in 2011? Gee, you'd think that someone who claims to be a diesel engine engineer would know this, instead of us lowly grease monkeys who do the hard work.

Re: This is the truck of the future!

[Mashiki]

A refUrb is likely to be cheaper than new, but LESS efficient for a given output of NOx and PM5. If you think early death due to respiratory illness is a blessing, then fair enough.

Referbs include new emission controls, this isn't rocket surgery. Between cans and blue, a referb can be a head of the curve on emissions then even the current year model. You're not doing anything but showing your ignorance on this.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[LynnwoodRooster]

So, better to spend $60K up-front on an electric, rather than $30K on an FCV and then another $30K, over the course of 5 years, about 5 years down the road?

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[blindseer]

Tesla entices people with "free" charging as well, for a while. How is that different?

Unlike hydrogen an electric car is not going to run out of a place to get filled up if/when the subsidies run out.

Those hydrogen filling points exist because of the subsidies. People fill up there because the fuel is free to them. If/when the subsidies run out the filling stations will have to support themselves on what they charge for fuel. Given the price of hydrogen now it's unlikely the stations can stay profitable, people will simply choose to sell the car or (if it can plug-in) just drive it like an electric. I'm guessing that people can find a way to fill up with hydrogen from an industrial gas supplier but that's going to be far less convenient and far higher cost.

Electricity is cheap and available nearly everywhere. A Tesla doesn't need to recharge at a Tesla charging point. Charging at a Tesla charging point can be cheaper or even free, it's likely faster than any other place to charge, but a Tesla is not tied to Tesla charging points like hydrogen fuel cell cars are tied to hydrogen filling points. If the hydrogen car has an ability to plug-in for recharging it's battery then it's not much different than any plug-in hybrid electric, there's an option to run on fuel or electricity, and if there's no fuel then it's just an electric car.

That brings me to something I've suspected for a long time, I suspect that few people with plug-in hybrid electric cars actually plug them in for a recharge. We've been trained for refilling a car at a station with decades of gasoline fueled cars, and filling a gas tank takes only minutes. Recharging an electric at home takes overnight with a standard 120 volt plug, and still hours with a 240 volt plug that few people have. It's probably cheaper to run on electricity than gasoline but gasoline is still cheap enough that I suspect people are willing to pay for the convenience of a quick fill up, and an excuse to go to the gas station where they can buy lottery tickets, cigarettes, pizza, or whatever their vice might be.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[dgatwood]

You don't drive a big rig for only five years, or if you do, you're selling it to somebody else who is going to drive it for another five to ten years. And the resale value is based on the assumption that you'll get O(15) years of life out of the vehicle.

If the fuel is free for only the first three years, it will be economically infeasible to operate it after those three years, because instead of consuming $70,000 in diesel fuel per year, you'll be consuming $350,000 in hydrogen per year, which means your fuel costs alone would exceed the purchase price of a brand new Tesla Semi by a factor of 2.8, and would exceed the total first-year operating cost of that Tesla Semi, including the hardware, by about a factor of 2.18 (assuming electricity continues to cost about half as much as fossil fuels).

Now to be fair, because fuel-cell big rigs are mostly electric, the reduced maintenance costs do offset some of that cost difference, but hydrogen-powered big rigs would still cost about twice as much per year to operate as diesel-powered big rigs, even if the hydrogen-powered big rigs had a maintenance cost of zero, which is probably not realistic.

Even if we assume that the maintenance costs are zero, and add that to the energy savings for the first three years, you still only save on the order of $325,000 (two years of fuel and warranted maintenance, plus one year of fuel and full-cost maintenance) over the cost of the diesel big-rig. You will burn through all of those savings in under a year. So by the four-year mark, you will have a vehicle that costs more to operate for another year than it would cost to replace it with your choice of either a diesel or electric. By the end of the 15-year service life, that translates to $1,815,000 in added costs by going with hydrogen — nearly as much as operating an entire second diesel truck.

Of course, if you buy a new one every four years, you only lose about $300,000 over a fifteen-year lifespan. Either way, that's not smart financially, it's pretty horrible for the planet, and it isn't a sustainable business model for Toyota. And that assumes that you're buying a base model at $80k. If you're buying a high-end vehicle at $200k, you would basically be throwing away an entire year worth of operating costs every four years, or $750k over a 15-year lifespan.

Hydrogen is a dead end and always has been.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[samwichse]

You know that hydrogen cars are also electric cars. If you want to throw out the "golf cart" terminology, you might not want to do it while defending... electric cars.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[samwichse]

Thanks a lot, Obama!

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[ananamouse]

>That brings me to something I've suspected for a long time, I suspect that few people with plug-in hybrid electric cars actually plug them in for a recharge.
I have a first gen Volt; the one with the bumper sticker that warns, “Powered Mostly by Nuclear and Dirty Coal”. For years I was able to make the round trip to wage slave work and back to home on a charge. I would go weeks without going to a gas station. One day I realized that and also that I really disliked gas stations. As a plug in hybrid owner I can assure everyone that not having to haunt gas stations is good thing you get used to fast.
I now live in a marina. I don’t miss mowing grass. I hate having to fill up every week.

Re:This is the truck of the future!

[ananamouse]

>Hydrogen is a dead end and always has been.
Not forever though. I built a lab scale reactor that we loaded with a nanopartical catalyst tuned for visible light. In this reactor we are doing plasmonics steam methane reforming (P-SMR). We have evaluated a number of catalysts and are making hydrogen at temperatures as low as 150C and are getting good yield at 200C. (You bake pizza at that temperature)
The process turns on and off with the flip of a switch. High nickel alloys are not required. The catalyst is easy to make. With *CURRENT* Texas prices for methane, electricity, and water the scaled up costs are much cheaper than fossil fuel.
We are constructing a larger reactor so stay tuned.

Only half a truck?

[Anonymous Coward]

How quaint are these Americans.

This truck is a triumph.

[Rei]

I'm making a note here: "Huge Success".

Re:This truck is a triumph.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

Re:This truck is a triumph.

[glitch!]

To me, a Triumph is a car that is almost certainly a sports car that failed in some way. Firstly, the "TR" references the fact that Triumph started out using tractor engines. The TR120 and TR140 were interesting, for those who like different designs or imported cars. The Spitfire was... I don't know. I think it competed with the MGB, but both were low in horsepower. The TR6 might be the best of the line. It had a great look, and apparently it did not fall apart like the offerings from Fiat. I have to admit that I did LUST (yes!) after the TR7 design. But comparing the TR7 to the Fiat X19 is probably not going to give useful service life information. And to finish off the story, Triumph got a 215 V8 in the TR7 and called it the TR8. Good idea (I think), but it didn't save them.

Re:This truck is a triumph.

[drinkypoo]

I know a guy who used to own a 1964 TR4 with a slightly hopped-up 350 chevy and a 10-bolt rear end. It was fast like a Shelby Cobra, but a hell of a lot cheaper even with the custom work done. It's unclear why anyone would drive an unmodified Triumph, or even if anyone could get one to go down the road reliably...

Re:This truck is a triumph.

[Barsteward]

I always understood that "TR" means Triumph Roadster

Re:This truck is a triumph.

[nukenerd]

Triumph made a lot of saloon cars too, mostly sporty up-market ones. I had a Triumph 2000, which had basically the same engine, transmission and suspension as the TR6. Nicest car I ever had. Then they stopped making Triumphs in the early 80's and put the name on some crappy little Honda to most people's disgust, and shortly after that the name died.

Re:This truck is a triumph.

[nukenerd]

The Spitfire was... I don't know. I think it competed with the MGB, but both were low in horsepower.

No, it competed with the MG Midget. You could get an MGB with a 3.5 litre V8 engine.

The TR6 might be the best of the line.

The top of the range Triumph sports car around that time was the Stag (with that same V8 engine as the MGB). Best looking car ever made IMHO :-)

reuse that water

[Anonymous Coward]

They should channel that water into the window washers or something.

Re:reuse that water

[DDumitru]

Actually a lot of water:

30 kg of H2 = 30 x (16+2)/2 = 270 kg of water or 71 gallons of water.

300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[drinkypoo]

If you're working port drayage, you don't need a sleeper cab. If you're going far enough to need a sleeper cab, you need more than 300 miles range.

Footnote: Why in hell is drayage not in the Firefox dictionary? Too busy making new icon sets?

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's about the same range as the Tesla truck, but given it's an H2 truck, if there are fuel stations, you can refill in about 10-15 minutes, which means long-haul is a potential. The rumored Tesla semi truck will have somewhere around 600 kWh of battery, meaning it would take a supercharger around 5 hours to recharge. That's a big advantage of liquid or gas fuels - near-instant refills. Range on a tank is really much less important when you have to stop every 4-5 hours to refill for 15 minutes, versus stopping every 4-5 hours to recharge for 4-5 hours.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Rei]

The Tesla truck comes in two versions, 300 and 500 miles. They charge to 80% in in half an hour at a megacharger station, aka during a US trucker's mandatory rest break (we have much more frequent rest requirements here).

Battery speculation runs between 600 and 1000 kWh.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tesla truck comes with a range of zero because it doesn’t exist. Just like the $35000 model 3.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[LynnwoodRooster]

So, the non-existent truck using non-existent chargers, still takes more refuel-to-road time as compared to the existing hydrogen-powered truck and the existing hydrogen stations?

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Mashiki]

Pretty much. Which means the only places these things really exist is at depots where trucks sit, or in locations where the trucks are used to shunt from a depot to another, or a short distance to a factory/dock of some kind.

Re: 300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Rei]

I guess the trucks they've had driving across the country and undergoing testing by fleet operators are a hallucination.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[sabbede]

My thoughts exactly. 300 miles is what, 15% of the range of a diesel semi?

What driver is going to want to waste precious time by stopping for fuel every 300 miles? The only reason they stop at all is that the law limits how long they can go before taking a nap. Plus, how likely are they to find a refueling station that can pump hydrogen?

Toyota knows that though, so I figure this is more a demonstration than something they expect to sell.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[necro81]

While I agree that the sleeper cab is a bit of a weird addition to this vehicle, the fact that its range is only about 300 mi does not make it worthless.

As the article stated, this truck's intended purpose is short-haul, drayage work at the port. That is: getting containers from boats at the dock to distribution centers at some distance away. That kind of work is a lot of start-stop moving around the port, idling in queues, waiting at stoplights. Diesel semis are terrible at that, from the standpoint of efficiency and emissions. The rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases in the communities around the ports of Long Beach and Oakland are very high. The start-stop is very hard on the vehicles, too, leading to accelerated wear of the powertrain. This is why electric semis (a fuel-cell vehicle is an electric vehicle) will be so useful in this niche, long before using them cross-country becomes practical.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Rei]

1) Multiple trucks exist. You're confusing "existing" with "being in mass production"

2) There is no nationwide network of either. The difference is that fuel for the electric truck costs an order of magnitude less than for the hydrogen truck, which is the most important factor for fleet operators.

3) As a general rule, EV batteries are cheaper and longer lifespan than fuel cells, too. FCVs having to also have a battery pack, just a smaller one.

Re: 300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no testing by fleet operators.

Re: 300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Rei]

Keep talking.

Re: 300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Anonymous Coward]

You link just confirms there are no fleets using it.

Re: 300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, looking at the cost of hydrogen per gallon, 16MJ per litre compressed for electrolysis, electrical cost, EV battery pack size for 500km, and an average of 7kg of hydrogen required, then currently filling up a car with hydrogen would cost about $ 200, and charging a Teslsa about $ 10. The former figure might be a bit out, though.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Mashiki]

1) Multiple trucks exist. You're confusing "existing" with "being in mass production"

If a truck isn't rolling it's costing you money. Trucking is the replacement of hundreds of giant warehouses full of people. It takes around 11 minutes to fill both tanks of a truck. Around 4 minutes at a self-serve depot that's card-locked, a shunt/local haul truck might need to be filled once per-day.

2) There is no nationwide network of either. The difference is that fuel for the electric truck costs an order of magnitude less than for the hydrogen truck, which is the most important factor for fleet operators.

Quite true. There's also not a network for trucks either, it's all for cars pretty much. And trucks have a very hard time fitting into tiny areas for cars. Trucks stops aren't adverse to charging stations, problem is expense. Fleets will absolutely not switch to electric or hydrogen unless it becomes cheaper then diesel, or diesel becomes more expensive then either. If it becomes more expensive, well the world is collapsing anyway.

3) As a general rule, EV batteries are cheaper and longer lifespan than fuel cells, too. FCVs having to also have a battery pack, just a smaller one.

Well yes and no. Nearly all trucks on the road have their own FC-APU's because of anti-idling laws, it generally takes 1gal of diesel to run one for 10 hours. Depending on where you are, that's either a waste or very efficient, since some trucks will 'light idle' in a single cylinder to provide the cab with heat/electricity and it works out to being around 0.78gal/10hrs. Their lifetime is around 15 years, 9 years under warranty.

Re: 300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Rei]

It literally says the exact opposite. The title of the article is "Tesla Semi test program partner says that performance specs are for real". Said partner is XPO Logistics, who, in a conversation with Morgan Stanley, stated:

The Tesla semi has already received important validation from some customers. We spoke with mgmt. at XPO Logistics, one of the largest logistics companies in the country, that has been talking to Tesla on their EV semi for the past 18 months, including testing live prototypes. XPO mgmt. confirmed that in their testing, the features and capabilities of the truck mostly lived up to Tesla’s claims at the launch event, including the performance vs. diesel trucks up a 5% grade (55 mph vs 45 mph), recharging time, safety/anti jackknifing features and payload (similar to a typical diesel truck, as confirmed by Tesla).

You stated "There is no testing by fleet operators." Are you saying that XPO Logistics isn't a fleet operator?

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Rei]

If a truck isn't rolling it's costing you money.

And if a truck is rolling without spending the mandatory half hour break (much more in the EU - 45 minutes every 4 1/2 hours), it's costing a heck of a lot more money.

500 mi + 80% * 500mi = 900mi, divided by 55mph = 16 hours = much more than you can legally drive in a day. About 65-70mph you start approaching breakeven, where the increased energy consumption and reduced-time-to-travel starts bumping up against your daily limits, and over that, the electric truck does start to slow you down. Of course, in Europe you never will hit the limits due to the much greater rest requirements, no matter how fast you drive.

Fleets will absolutely not switch to electric or hydrogen unless it becomes cheaper then diesel,

Electricity is already far cheaper than diesel. Semi uses about 1,600Wh/mi. Forget Tesla's promised price for electricity - even forget industrial rates. Say you're charging it on average home rates (aka, expensive electricity), $0,13/kWh. That's 21 cents per mile. How much do you pay for diesel? 40 cents? Electricity prices are also much steadier. Diesel prices, not so much.

. Their lifetime is around 15 years, 9 years under warranty.

1. Not the same technology (SOFC vs. PEMFC). SOFCs usually have about three times the lifespan of PEMFCs in a FCV.
2. Low power devices (APU rather than FCV) means that they can be overbuilt (lower power density), which increases longevity. Remember that there's many orders of magnitude difference between the power output of an APU and a the needs of a FCV.
3. APUs only run while idling

Re: 300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s a fake made up company retard.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[LynnwoodRooster]

PG&E electricity rates in Socal are well above $0.13/kWh - about double that to start, and more than triple as usage climbs. Making it more than price-competitive with diesel. By your own numbers.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[dgatwood]

Those are general residential rates. Superchargers get power at commercial rates, not residential. It costs about 26 cents per kWh in California at a supercharger, which is *much* cheaper than normal residential power rates. That said, it is much more *expensive* than the best-case cost on an EV-A or EV-B plan. At last check, those plans charged less than 13 cents per kWh for off-peak charging.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[sabbede]

The sleeper cab is the one part I'm questioning. It just doesn't make sense when you only have the fuel storage for short hauls, which is why I figure it's more for show than for sell with that cell.

Re:300 mi range and a sleeper cab?

[Mashiki]

FYI in most states, the posted limit for trucks is 60mph, some are 55 but not many. 16hrs is allowed, if your company has paid the fines a head of time for it. But you're allowed 12hrs off automatically at the end of the driving period.

Depending on the truck, most are averaging around $0.15/mile for fuel. Mountains aside of course.

Yeah, but we're talking about equipment that's already being used. SOFC really don't "exist" outside of trial or development phases, but companies are willing to put their name on the warranty period for PEMFC's. Remember that the fuel cell is doing the work as the APU, and the vehicle is off. That's the whole point of PEMFC's which use diesel. They can be started without having the vehicle running, and have their own draw pump from the fuel line.

DOA

[I will be back]

I don't think any of those hydrogen car manufacturers pursue profit.
They only aim for government grants.

Re: DOA

[atomicalgebra]

What are talking about? Anheuser-Busch purchases 800 hydrogen trucks. 20x the order they made with Tesla.

Re: DOA

[atomicalgebra]

Sorry. Here is the working link.

Re:DOA

[drinkypoo]

I don't think any of those hydrogen car manufacturers pursue profit.
They only aim for government grants.

GM is expecting to sell equipment to the military. Automakers are often the makers of military vehicles. Chrysler makes the Abrams tank, for example. GM and Honda are collaborating on systems, and expect the systems to be profitable by the next (upcoming) generation.

Re: DOA

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot 'purchase' from Nikola (which is by the way most likely a VC scam). You can make a reservation. Reservations are free (and the reservation list is, again, just a tool to fleece VCs). I made an order a couple months back for nearly a hundred Nikola One trucks under the name of Donald Duck, for use with his business, Fake Company, to be delivered to their address on Imaginary Lane.

Re: DOA

[atomicalgebra]

Yeah dumbass Anheuser-Busch is a real company. They made a business decision to support hydrogen trucks over electric trucks. So go fuck yourself.

Re: DOA

[Anonymous Coward]

And spent zero dollars in the process. What support!

Re: DOA

[atomicalgebra]

Shut up Elon.

Re:DOA

[I will be back]

So, government grants.

Just as I say ;)

How's it do with heat and/or air conditioning

[rsilvergun]

turned on? Last I checked EVs get better range without those, and I could see some truck drivers getting screwed by their driver managers into driving without heat or AC to push range...

Re: How's it do with heat and/or air conditioning

[Anonymous Coward]

That is already a thing with fossil fuels...

Toyota Unveils Project Portal 2.0

[DontBeAMoran]

Does it come with on-board GLaDOS?

Re:Toyota Unveils Project Portal 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but the upcoming Toyota jaeger will. Elbow rockets will be an extra cost option.

Where are you going to get the fuel?

[whoever57]

https://www.hybridcars.com/fue...

Hydrogen is just fossil fuel in disguise.

Re:Where are you going to get the fuel?

[AHuxley]

Water. Hydrogen economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Where are you going to get the fuel?

[whoever57]

Read all the statements about how the target prices for electrolysis have not been met. Look up the efficiency of turning water into compressed H2. It's much more efficient to use that electricity to charge a battery. Then you have all the distribution and storage costs (before the H2 actually gets into a vehicle). Then you have got the fact that hydrogen vehicles still need significant batteries because it's not practical to regenerate energy back into hydrogen in a vehicle.

Then you have the need for a massive infrastructure build-out, that isn't needed for BEVs.

Today, and for the next few years, hydrogen will be produced from fossil fuels.

The concept of the "hydrogen economy" is a con put out by the fossil fuel industry to delay the renewable fuel industry from taking over transportation.

Re: Where are you going to get the fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Producing H2 from H2O, disastrously inefficient as it is, might be a way to store the excess from overbuilt renewables producing nameplate power from time to time. Charging BEVs with that excess is difficult to coordinate. That said, all in all it would be hugely expensive.

Re:Where are you going to get the fuel?

[blindseer]

If these trucks use hydrogen from electrolysis, in California (the planned location for most of these trucks), and California continues with their plans to drive nuclear power out of the state, then these are natural gas powered trucks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Kenworth has been making natural gas trucks for years.
https://www.kenworth.com/news/...

There appears to be plenty of natural gas filling stations in California.
https://maps.cngnow.com/search...

Hydrogen fueled trucks are a stupid idea.

Re: Where are you going to get the fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

You would only get 25% or less of that energy back in a round trip (50% efficiency to electrolyze the hydrogen, and 50% to use a fuel cell to turn it into electricity again).

If you sent the excess electricity to pumped storage your round trip efficiency would be above 80%, and it would be the same 80% round trip efficiency or higher to use battery storage. It seems doubtful that it would ever make economic sense to electrolyze water to hydrogen with excess renewable energy other than in extreme edge cases.

Re: Where are you going to get the fuel?

[Rei]

Or contrarily, if you don't have a good location for pumped hydro, and operating on the premise that grid-scale battery storage is not cost effective, you could use said excess-power-hydrogen to create far-easier-to-store fuels while simultaneously removing CO2 from the atmosphere (e.g. reverse water gas shift + Fischer-Tropsch, Sabatier, or a number of other processes). There's also electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (ERC).

Re: Where are you going to get the fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only makes sense to use nuclear if it is so plentiful there's an excess, as it is dumping electricity that could be efficiently used for EVs into an inefficient process to create a fuel with significant containment issues. It would only make sense on a energy basis if the fuel was relatively expensive. On an MJ basis you are throwing 50% of your electricity away immediately, and have to expend more to transport and contain it than the same number of MJ of electrical energy. And then you only get 50% back to move a vehicle. Basically you'd need to charge about 3.5 times as much per MJ compared to electrical power.

Re: Where are you going to get the fuel?

[whoever57]

Or contrarily, if you don't have a good location for pumped hydro,

We already have the technology and infrastructure to transport electricity over long distances. Your pumped hydro doesn't need to be close to the generation site.

Re:Where are you going to get the fuel?

[RespekMyAthorati]

It would be great if all new long-haul cabs were required to be dual-fuel (Diesel and LNG).
LNG is far cleaner in both CO2 and pollutants, cheaper per mile, and 100% domestic product.

Re:Where are you going to get the fuel?

[RespekMyAthorati]

Oops. I meant CNG.

Give me a break

[ukoda]

When are people going to realise that hydrogen based vehicle are never going to amount to anything. I have been reading about them since the 1980s and it has gone nowhere in all that time. I can't help but wonder how many hydrogen vehicles were bank rolled by big oil to muddy the waters around EV development. News flash, EVs are here now and for most people practical (but still over priced) and hydrogen solutions will not be able to catch up with EVs.

Re:Give me a break

[blindseer]

When are people going to realise that hydrogen based vehicle are never going to amount to anything. I have been reading about them since the 1980s and it has gone nowhere in all that time.

That will probably happen about the time public schools teach real math and science.

I can't help but wonder how many hydrogen vehicles were bank rolled by big oil to muddy the waters around EV development.

I doubt "big oil" is behind funding hydrogen. They have nothing to gain from this. There's certainly a lot of hydrogen produced from natural gas right now but the oil companies have to know that if someone makes a working hydrogen vehicle that the next step is someone finding a means to improve electrolysis of water for hydrogen.

I'm guessing it's the car and truck manufacturers funding this. They are the primary target of "greenies" because of the petroleum they burn. Car makers have a lot to gain on hydrogen because the "greenies" are doing all they can to make car ownership unattractive. If cars can be proven to be able to run on hydrogen then nearly all the complaints on environmental impact go away.

News flash, EVs are here now and for most people practical (but still over priced) and hydrogen solutions will not be able to catch up with EVs.

News flash, no long haul truck is going to run on batteries.

Batteries just do not have the energy density required to keep a truck moving long distances. Trains might solve some of the long haul transport needed, and they can be electrified, but trucks still need reasonable range to do multiple short hauls in a day to compete with diesel. Even these short haul trucks can't be electric. This hydrogen fuel cell truck that Toyota is showcasing has a range of 300 miles or so on a tank, which is barely enough for running a day driving loops around a dockyard.

I worked in a metalwork shop and they had two forklifts for moving parts inside the shop. The "small" one (small in quotes because it's relative) was electric. The big forklift was propane. No one liked to drive the electric forklift because it was underpowered, and once the battery ran down it was done for the day and needed overnight to charge. In a forklift the weight of the battery wasn't much of an issue because it served nicely as a counterweight against what was being lifted, the propane forklift had steel counterweights. On even a short haul truck the battery weight counts against it as that reduces the cargo it can carry. On a long haul truck the batteries would have to weigh more than the cargo to get a reasonable range.

Battery-electric passenger cars are fine for a daily driver. Even then most owners of a BEV have a second gasoline vehicle for longer drives, such as taking the kids to visit Grandma once per month. The practicality of BEVs to be a true replacement for gasoline and diesel fuel vehicles is still questionable. Plug-in hybrids are a nice compromise but they are still burning hydrocarbons. Compressed natural gas vehicles seem like a more viable compromise over BEVs and gasoline. CNG vehicles cut CO2 emissions by half, can fill up at home like an electric (since many homes have natural gas service already), and can tank up in minutes at a station equipped with a CNG filling point.

I've seen hydrogen mixed with natural gas as a compromise, it reduces CO2 emissions further than natural gas alone but does away with many problems of hydrogen storage as the hydrogen is "dissolved" in the natural gas and doesn't attack seals and metals (and therefore creating dangerous leaks) like pure hydrogen. If we see hydrogen make it to the transportation market then it's likely to be as a mix with methane and other hydrocarbon gasses. This methane doesn't have to be from fracking out of the ground, it can be synthesized or from biomass processing.

Re: Give me a break

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost all natural gas service is very low pressure. Compressing it for use in a vehicle costs a lot of energy, even if you have the patience to do it near-adiabatically. Not efficient.

Re: Give me a break

[blindseer]

Almost all natural gas service is very low pressure.

Household service is very low pressure, less than 100 psi at the street and regulated down to a fraction of a psi to inside the home. Main service feeders run as high as 1500 psi.

Compressing it for use in a vehicle costs a lot of energy, even if you have the patience to do it near-adiabatically.

People do have compressors at home to fill their natural gas cars so it can be done cheaply enough to compete with gasoline. CNG filling stations have higher pressure feed lines, bigger compressors, and high pressure tanks on site. They can get the costs down through economy of scale and fill a CNG vehicle in minutes, about the same time as it would to fill a gasoline or diesel fuel tank.

Not efficient.

It all depends on your point of view and the specifics of the situation. Natural gas is the primary source of electricity in many places in the USA. Burning that natural gas in a turbine for electricity, then moving that down long wires, and charging up an electric car is not all that efficient either. Shipping that natural gas down a 100 psi feeder, regulating it down to 1/4 psi, then pumping that back up to 2000 psi in the vehicle tank, does have losses but I'm guessing still more efficient than electric cars in turning natural gas to transportation. If you live in a place that gets it's electricity from nuclear or hydro then that changes the calculations.

In the end though people don't much care about being energy efficient, they want maximum convenience at minimum cost. CNG has the convenience of at home refuel (like an electric), quick refuel at a filling station (just like gasoline), and at a cost less than or equal to any gasoline or electric.

Hydrogen? They mean natural gas

[blindseer]

There are no mines or wells to bring up hydrogen from the earth. Given current sources of electricity for electrolysis and how hydrogen is predominately formed this is a truck that burns natural gas. There are already natural gas trucks on the market, Kenworth announced they'd have some in 2104.
https://www.kenworth.com/news/...

Given that T. Boone Pickens has been talking about his "Pickens Plan" on energy policy for 10 years now moving transportation fuel to natural gas is far from new.
https://www.ted.com/talks/t_bo...

Cut out the middle man from natural gas to moving cargo and just use natural gas in the trucks. What hydrogen does is add the costs and losses in running power plants on natural gas for water electrolysis, or using that natural gas in steam reformers. Natural gas trucks exist now, they have better range than these hydrogen trucks, and I'm guessing that they cost less to make and maintain. Natural gas reduces particulate emissions, NOx emissions, CO2 emission, and other air quality problems.

If we burn natural gas in trucks instead of for electricity then where do we get our electricity? Pickens endorses wind and nuclear, and I believe he's right about that. Pickens admits his plan is a "bridge", a plan that alone is not a permanent solution because the natural gas will run out at some point. Something will have to replace even natural gas at some point. How long can natural gas last? Decades at least, if not centuries, so it's not like investing in natural gas will be a loss for someone buying a fleet of trucks, the trucks will have plenty of natural gas for the life of the truck.

What's one possible endpoint for the Pickens Plan "bridge"? Synthesized fuel. The US Navy has been researching how to turn electricity and seawater into jet fuel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

This synthetic fuel process from the US Navy doesn't have to produce only jet fuel, it can produce hydrocarbons of any length on that carbon chain, from methane (the primary component of natural gas with one carbopn) to cetane (primary component of diesel fuel with 16 carbons).

Synthetic fuels from this process the Navy is researching produces hydrogen as part of the process, they just take one more step of grabbing carbon (from CO2 dissolved in the water) and attach it to the hydrogen to make fuel. The Navy is intending this electricity to come from a nuclear power plant on a large warship but the electricity can come from anywhere, and the water can come from anywhere it is exposed to the air and dissolves the CO2 from the atmosphere. It closes the carbon cycle so this fuel is as "carbon free" as anything else.

I expect any plans to use hydrogen as transportation fuel to fail, unless that means of transportation is a rocket. It's just far easier and cheaper to cut out the hydrogen middle man and burn natural gas for cleaner running trucks. If the concern is CO2 output even from the natural gas then produce "synthetic natural gas" (or rather "substitute natural gas" since synthetic and natural are opposing terms) and introduce that into the existing natural gas infrastructure.

Hydrogen is a terrible fuel, especially since it's not really a "fuel" as most people understand it since it does not exist as something we can just dig up out of the ground. This Toyota truck burning hydrogen is a stupid idea and there are already existing solutions that are far easier and cheaper to implement.

The Texas strategy to hide their CO2 emissions and

[matthollingsworth]

Did you know that Toyota moved their North American HQ to Texas? Ask where that hydrogen comes from. It comes from hiding massive CO2 emissions at natural gas âoereformingâ facilities to generate that hydrogen. Itâ(TM)s all part of a strategy to greenwash the natural gas CO2 emissions in partnership with the Japanese who through industrial policy are trying to build a national moat around their high tech fuel cell business. This whole approach is more expensive than alternatives and of course is incompatible with stopping run away climate change making human extinct

Isn't water vapor an even worse greenhouse gas?

[pak9rabid]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't water vapor (the emissions from fuel-cell-based engines) an even worse greenhouse gas than CO2?

Re:Isn't water vapor an even worse greenhouse gas?

[DDumitru]

Water vapor is a big greenhouse gas when releases in the stratosphere. Water vapor at the surface does not translate into water vapor at altitude. If it did, then Florida humidity would doom us all.

Plus you need to consider that gasoline and diesel engines also produce a lot of water vapor.

Not a survivor based on performance

[AutodidactLabrat]

Loser tech.
Energy lost at every step in the process.

Re:Not a survivor based on performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Efficiency is irrelevant. I don’t have fucking hours to waste while a piece of shit battery recharged.

Re:Hydrogen? They mean natural gas

[Areyoukiddingme]

I expect any plans to use hydrogen as transportation fuel to fail, unless that means of transportation is a rocket. It's just far easier and cheaper to cut out the hydrogen middle man and burn natural gas for cleaner running trucks.

Amusingly, SpaceX has no interest in hydrogen either. The BFR is being designed around the Raptor engine, which burns cryogenic methane.

Toyota's truck doesn't burn the hydrogen though. It's a hydrogen fuel-cell. More efficient than burning, but absurdly expensive, and uses precious metals in the fuel cells. It will vanish into history as soon as Tesla Semis are available in fleet numbers, since they will be cheaper, probably permanently.

Re:Hydrogen? They mean natural gas

[blindseer]

The Tesla semi is as range limited as the Toyota hydrogen semis, both about 300 miles. It's not unheard of for a diesel engine truck to get 2000 miles on one fill. If we assume a truck driver goes their daily limit of about 10 hours in a day, on an open road pace of 70 MPH, that's 700 miles in a day. If an alternative fuel truck can't do even a single day on one tank, and have some left over for an emergency reserve, then it's not going to replace diesel.

Diesel trucks can allow for a 700 mile day drive out, an overnight stop, then a day drive back to base, and still have reserve for any detours or delays. With electric trucks the distance from base, where the chargers would be, and back is 150 miles and nothing left for reserve. Improvements on range to 500 miles on a charge, but allowing for some reserve, puts that range at 200 miles or so.

Electric semis will most likely out compete these hydrogen semis. What electrics won't do is replace diesel, at least not any time soon.

I brought up CNG trucks in my previous posts because the concern with the diesel trucks running these short run hauls is that they are dirtying the air around the dock and the cities to where they deliver. CNG burns clean enough that they are used indoors, in factories and warehouses, for trucks and forklifts. Propane is popular too, but I haven't seen any propane trucks, only forklifts. CNG trucks already exist, and there is plenty of natural gas to burn. If long range is needed then it's almost trivial to put a natural gas filling station most any where, because natural gas lines are everywhere. Hydrogen is difficult to pipe in, and when put on a truck it takes a lot of space for the energy it moves. Making hydrogen at the filling station is possible but means installing and operating expensive equipment, and which would likely be producing the hydrogen from natural gas anyway.

Dual fuel trucks do seem to be catching some traction. Dual fuel means the truck burns both CNG and diesel fuel. It can't run without diesel but it can run without natural gas. Not as clean burning as hydrogen or CNG but an established technology with little risk for fleet owners and big improvements on air quality. Dual fuel trucks can run clean(er) on short hauls where fleet owners can install their own natural gas filling stations, but can still run long hauls by filling up at any truck stop with diesel fuel.

Hydrogen tank resistance

[manu0601]

How did they address the problem of hydrogen making gas tank's steal brittle?

Tsk.

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA>_ ...1,325 pound-feet of torque.

I know, it's just because ordinary folks are used to those units. People talk about torque in parties and they use pound-feet as unit, right?

A nation of trolls.