Toyota’s prototype 'cartridge' is a way to make hydrogen portable
engadget.com
engadget.com
So, let's oversimplify and say that a typical household microwave consumes 1200W continuously. That's about 4.8kWh over 4 hours.
Given current Lithium battery energy densities (18650: 200Wh/kg) then you'd need 24kg of lithium batteries to supply the same amount of energy.
The cartridge Toyota has developed manages to do this for 5.5kg. Not bad, but not a paradigm shift, considering you have to build a logistics network to refill the cartridges.
> In its press release, Toyota acknowledges that most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels and so not exactly green. But it thinks that it'll be generated with low carbon emissions in the future, and that the cartridges could help with some of the infrastructure issues.
If we could all stop shilling for "Green Hydrogen" that would be great. Batteries can be charged today from low-carbon sources, and the electric grid is already present in most places you'd drive an EV, and certainly more places than have a preexisting hydrogen cartridge distribution network.
> However, Toyota seems to be pitching the cartridges for personal and home use, but it's not yet clear what you'd use them for.
In a world where Lithium batteries exist and the technology has far more R&D investment, what would you use these for? Why is Toyota still throwing cash into the hydrogen money pit?
Have you got any grid-scale "green hydrogen" projects with a higher energy efficiency than existing grid-scale renewable energy projects (solar, wind)? Because unless you do, "green hydrogen" is dead on arrival in any market.
> can we stop shilling for green electricity?
No, because we already know how to make grid-scale low-carbon energy.
Show me grid-scale "green hydrogen" and I'll retract my criticism.
Course this could end up like Concentrating Solar Power plants and end up on the wrong side of the cost-benefit equation, but I'd argue it is still worth a look.
(*) https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/hydrogen/massive-green-...
No, we cannot and should not, because that is part of a healthy discussion.
I am tried of it. It only got traction in the first place because it was something that seemed to work "like people are used to" ie. tanking fuel at a fuel station and at the same time needed "development". This made it a nice way to show your car company was hip and with the times and at the same time didn't mean you actually had to build the things since more development was always needed. Battery powered cars were always too easy to create into whatever disapointing lackluster form they had at that time in history.
For me unless you preface that you have an interesting use case for hydrogen or solved one of the fundamental inefficiencies in getting hydrogen and using it then I am not interested in hearing about it. Especially in combination with personal transportation.
Oh and Green Hydrogen functionally does not exist. Ditto Blue Hydrogen (as in that CO2 sequestering probably doesn't work). That leaves grey Hydrogen from steam reforming and that how hydrogen is made from natural gas creating a lot of CO2. Shilling for Green Hydrogen basically means Shilling for grey hydrogen and that is the worst.
I have some hope that pyrolyse will be used in the future instead of steam reforming because it seems you actually can sequester that carbon it creates but its less efficient by a lot vs steam reformation and emitting CO2.
Uh, yeah, ahm, I'm gonna go ahead and sort of disagree with you there.
Especially when those costs could be hugely shifted with a single tax on emissions.
So it's 5.5kg, plus a fuel cell vs 15kg for a battery that doesn't need extra parts to produce electricity. Also, can't recharge on common infrastructure, cost is not mentioned, etc. Overall a slight improvement that's practically useless. That's hydrogen in a nutshell for you.
With this you need to make a ton of these cartridges and then have a big delivery infrastructure to ship them around that uses a ton of power, way more than is consumed by the power grid shipping energy from a power plant into a battery.
As far as Batteries lasting 'decades', you won't get far with that argument when talking to Nissan Leaf owners who are having to replace their 9 year old batteries after 150K miles (**)
I'm all for EV's, but proponents should remember EV's started somewhere too, with lots of the same skepticism thrown their way (expensive home systems to recharge their batteries, the cost of recharging networks, cold performance, etc...) As I see it, there's way too much of the same talk coming from the Battery EV crowd when they talk about Hydrogen.
(*) https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/electric-vehicle-battery-...
(**) https://driving.ca/features/feature-story/the-big-looming-pr...
> expensive home systems to recharge their batteries
It cost <$200 to install a NEMA 14-50 outlet in my garage and the charger was included.
> the cost of recharging network
I've spent ~$225 in charging cost to drive my EV ~8,200mi so far (8200mi / 3.5mi/kWh * $0.096/kWh). A 25mpg car (seems about normal for a crossover) going that distance would use 328 gallons of gas (8200mi / 25mpg * $3.50/gal). If we just say gas was ~$3.50 on average over the last year, that means I would have spent $1,148 in gas driving the same amount. Even if you were to amortize the entire cost of the outlet install in the first year of driving (which, I mean, you wouldn't, that plug will be fine practically until the house gets torn down), you're still talking ~$425 versus ~$1,148. And that's just the first year of ownership, this difference then compounds even more every year after.
Tell me again about how expensive $225 is compared to $1,148.
Oh, I agree that replacing a full battery like the Leaf is rare, but the costs are what the costs are. Accidents happen, and the costs aren't small, regardless of the reason why it's being replaced.
> the cost of recharging network.
Great, I'm glad your BEV is that inexpensive to charge. However, how much did that charging STATION cost? Recent estimates for Tesla's are in the neighborhood of 250K USD each. I'd argue that they are getting built, and the economics are there, otherwise they wouldn't be built. However, when BEV's first started coming out you better believe the costs to develop that network of BEV stations was widely discussed (esp. irt who would pay for them).
My point is that a lot of similar BS arguments are made against Hydrogen by BEV fan bois. I've no issue with the point that Hydrogen isn't here TODAY, and that some of the issues it faces are large. But to argue (as too many have done) that any investigation into Hydrogen is a waste of time, and that BEV's are the ONLY solution is both short-sighted and wrong.
And, accidents are covered by insurance, so not really a big worry to me. 100,000mi is like $11,000 in energy cost difference. Add a grand in oil changes, a couple of grand in other maintenance that I wouldn't need, and you're probably at $14,000 saved to make up for potentially needing a new battery at that point, so maybe about break even if your battery goes bad faster than expected. But maybe rebuilt batteries are cheaper in 8 years, who knows.
> However, how much did that charging STATION cost?
I already mentioned it, just shy of $200.
Older Leaf models are worse than >2015-2016 models. They switched to a more heat tolerant and stable battery chemistry.
I would avoid them though in very hot climates like Phoenix or Las Vegas.
THere are meny potential use cases where green hydrogen would make sense, even if people with calculators will tell you differntly.
Hydrogen is useless at this point. I don't want to have range anxiety with ICE/hydrogen and worry about jerrycans/cartridges. I want the confidence that I can refuel literally anywhere.
The cynic in me believes there are incentives for automakers not completely and immediately abandoning fossil fuels, but instead enabling a slow transition. Hydrogen allows for this while batteries do not. I'm not sure what these incentives might be, but a gradual transition off of fossil fuels always seems to come through in Toyota's marketing materials for hydrogen.
Honda is a bit more understandable since airplanes look to be going to hydrogen and they make airplanes too, but not that much more really. I assume they have some very good reasons.
If current events are anything to go by, we shouldn't bet on energy resources of others. If we truly want a greener future, and the world itself to be in a better place, why should we make the same mistakes again?
I understand how common a "battery" is nowadays, and how great of a solution they might seem. After all, they are readily available.
But we shouldn't kid ourselves. Where do these materials come from? What conditions are those miners subject to? Is it really wise, to add that much weight to a body in motion, both in terms of safety, and energy efficiency? Wouldn't we enable authoritarian countries to strangle others again, by further rewarding favorable geographical locations? Or, further reward colonial powers, that have taken over Africa, again? I mean, Congo has 80% of cobalt resources (needed in high density batteries, LFH cobalt-free batteries have about 50% of the energy density found on their cobalt based counterparts, which means a low 0.16kWh/kg density) and China owns the majority of the mines there. Look up the Sicomines deal.
I know this post might sound cynical, and perverse. But really, I don't really think this is the way forward.
You'd also need to add the weight of the element that converts the hydrogen into electricity no?
If you need to go further than a single charge, well, hydrogen may provide faster charging times than electric will.
You also have to think about the AC / heat, how you're driving, battery degrading after first year or so. It's an anxiety I don't need.
Plus in my case I would have to get my Tesla towed 3 hours away with major issues. I now minor ones the traveling repair can deal with. A neighbor had a collision and didn't have his Tesla for 4 months. The facilities are so backed up. No one knows how to work on them except Tesla.
Electric is the future, but it's like 4 to 5 years out. Hybrid is good enough right now.
With ICE you literally pull of an exit, take 5 minutes to fill up and you're back.
Its objectively the reality I live with. I definitely spend more time pumping gas in my Santa Fe than I do my Mach E. A bit over 5 minutes every week and a half versus 0 minutes so far in my Mach E. 34.666 * 5 = 173.33 minutes of waiting, as a lower bound, in the ICE means just shy of 3 hours a year I spend waiting on my gas car. Meanwhile, the amount of time I spent waiting on my Mach E to charge last year was 0 minutes. This is objective and factual.
> You also have to think about the AC / heat, how you're driving, battery degrading after first year or so.
If you want to, you can stress about these things. I don't, I practically always have way more range than I need every time I leave my garage. Meanwhile I do regularly get frustrated about getting a low tank of gas and think "ugh, gotta stop by the gas station sometime on this trip, even though I'm in a hurry and would really rather just get to where I'm going".
You could also stress about things like AC or how you're driving in your ICE, these things impact your gas mileage and will impact what you spend. Which your per-mile energy cost is waaaaaaaaay higher in an ICE than an EV, so you'd think you want to conserve even more. Having a lead foot in an EV is a lot cheaper than in an ICE.
> No one knows how to work on them except Tesla
No one knows how to work on my Mach E than Tesla? Only Tesla can repair a Ioniq 5? That sure seeems strange to me!
Cool, now consider that lots of people make very few longer drives.
They're not deluding themselves just because they use a car differently than you do!
I and many people I know own an EV, and it is literally zero stress. In fact it's less stress than with my old ICE car, because I effectively always have a full tank in the morning. I don't even have level 2 home charging, but it's still a complete non issue.
I've done longer drives too, and I would describe those as "slightly inconvenient." In all honesty I sort of appreciate the breaks, but I know it annoys my girlfriend who likes to keep rolling. It definitely adds time, that's a fact!
But realistically owning an EV today is incredibly straightforward and stress free. I an everyone I know who has one would agree.
In the mean time, if you're in this situation, I personally wouldn't fault you for getting a gas-powered car. EVs are still more constrained by supply than demand.
USA is not the only country in the world.
Other countries can have wildly different situation and setup, and in fact building home charging stations might be problematic for significant portion of future buyers that Toyota might want to grab.
P.S. A bit under 30% of worldwide Toyota production goes into USA - that still leaves a huge chunk of sales that might have wildly different needs to cater to.
I realize not every car buyer can have their own charger at home, that's obvious. But let's not act like it's a rare thing for people to have the ability to charge at home. Over half of all households in Europe and US can probably add home charging for little cost. That's a ton of EVs to sell, an absolutely massive market able to be addressed now.
When your trips are drive-across-the-country, so you need to recharge multiple times en route, that's when it starts becoming substantially harder to find something else to overlap with your need to recharge. Even just doing Midwest-to-Mid-Atlantic drives, I'd complete my lunch pitstop (including eating, filling gas tank, and emptying bladder) before an EV charge could fill up again, even discounting the fact that the lesser range of an EV means I'd need to squeeze in another charging pitstop uncomfortably early to overlap with dinner.
What this means is that if you fill gas 1-2x a week to handle the average 20 mile commute, you've saved 10 minutes because the refill of the electric is at home, with little effort.
Now you bank that 10 minutes every time you take any one way <~200 mile trip with electricity at the ends.
If you're doing regular multi region drives you are not average, you're likely in the top 1% of consumer long range trips.
To add, the longer and "more often" stops are healthier for you and your passengers; very few cars have a less than 200 mile range now, and if you're sitting for that period of time, moving (or at least not sitting) is a good idea to prevent deep vein thrombosis, the longer the better.
Good thing I do well less than 1 of those on average every year, along with practically every other passenger car in America.
Is driving from San Diego to New York City really a common thing people do here? Is that what the average driver does on a weekly basis? Is that really what we should be targeting our cars to do?
EDIT: This is with a Hyundai Ioniq 5, not my current Mach E. The Mach E doesn't charge as fast as this most recent generation of EVs, so it would be a bit over 4 hours each way in the Mach E. However, if my plans for a car was "go on a yearly road trip", I would have probably bought an Ioniq 5 exactly for this reason. Personally though I'd probably just fly for either of those distances instead of spending 20+ hours in a car each way. Which is why the standard range version of the Mach E is perfectly fine for me.
That depends, one person probably isn't doing that in a single shot, but a three people driving in shifts might.
If that's not what you're suggesting then that was not done in any commercially available EV in the US today. Even starting closer to the California border like El Centro and only making it to fringes of Houston like Katy is ~1330 miles, so ~665mi a leg. No generally available EV in the US has that range. So I take it you did a number of like 10-60% or whatever charge jaunts.
Even then though, if you were to sum up all of those shorter charging sessions you probably had to recharge your car a total of at least four charges energy-wise. If you get 300mi of range on a full.charge, 1,330 / 300 = 4.4333...
It’s more just that it really, really matters time-wise that the car is not charging up to full on any given stop, because that means the charging stops are significantly faster.
People who latch on to the idea of judging EVs on their time to get “fully”‘charged are going to get such a distorted idea that they will never believe current EVs could be a good option. But, they would be mistaken.
But as an EV owner, long (like multi hundred mile) trips are the only time I would ever do that. Otherwise it's just frequent top ups while I'm at home or doing errands or whatever. So from my perspective the time to charge to full is kind of a red herring unless you are someone who regularly does like 300+ mile trips.
For example, let me approximate the numbers I had at a recent supercharger stop. It took me about 15 mins to charge from 3% to 60%. Then another 10-15 mins from 60% to 80%. Then another 15 mins from 80% to 90%. In general, for better battery life and to not waste your time, it is recommended to charge to 90% or below.
And that wasn't the most recent gen supercharger. At some, I had personally seen peak charging speed of 580+ mi/hr.
And if i am in a rush, i just charge at a supercharger for that quick 15 min charge to 60% and go along.
I guess I am just not bothered much by taking a short break after multiple hours of driving. And the costs being much cheaper than gas (about $17-18 for full tank at a supercharger, virtually free at my apt building or work) kinda helps.
Cars that charge that fast to 100% either do not care about not destroying the battery, which makes sense in a racing context without sustainability concerns, or the 100% reported by the battery management system is a lot lower than the maximum state of charge possible.
That’s why you cannot find common electric cars that charge to 100% in 15 minutes. But you will find some that can charge fast for 15 minutes and that’s what matters.
That's 3 hours of downtime with my ICE, 0 minutes of downtime with my EV. Which one resulted in more downtime again?
In most cases having a battery will get you from A to B without issue - same on a tank of gas. When it won't, you will spend more time waiting on the battery to charge, which is a tradeoff that is probably still worthwhile for the vast majority of people.
> Similarly, for the sake of argument, I could keep a gas pump in my garage to fill up at night, which would mean I had "0 minutes of downtime" as well.
You literally couldn't unless you were massively wealthy or lived on a farm or something along those lines. You probably wouldn't be able to secure the permitting to have that much gas on site at small residential lot. It would also be a pretty big headache managing the gas delivery contracts for such a small amount. It would be a huge hassle getting it delivered to your home. Realistically, you couldn't get as much convenience at your home assuming you lived in a statistically average suburban/urban single family home.
Meanwhile all it took for my EV was to install an outlet, <$200. No crazy permitting, no massive storage tanks storing hazardous liquids, no managing additional delivery contracts needing to get big fuel trucks to pull up near the house to deliver gas, no EPA inspections for that storage tank, etc.
Maybe a 20 minute fill up where you can do other things at the same time isn’t that much worse.
Not having enough electricity to make it to work is akin to not having enough gasoline for most local trips.
Assuming a 30 mile round-trip commute, I'd have to forget to plug it in 6 times before I would run into this issue my car with ~200mi of range.
I've had more times where I needed to be sure to stop and get gas before I head to the office than I've had times where I had to wait for my EV to charge before I head in.
The part where you can't leave the pump shouldn't be longer than 1-1.5 minutes.
As someone who does not have a commute and mainly owns a car for the 600-2000 mile road trips I take _at least_ every ~6 weeks. I'd much prefer a PHEV, which incidentally can drastically increase range while also handling the ~30 mile average daily commute electric-only quite easily.
The absolutism is tiring.
It may not a paradigm shift for cars but definitely a game-changer for aviation. Right now, there are a few experimental light aircraft powered by batteries can manage 20-30 minutes in the air. Quadruple that and you have something that's actually practical transportation.
No point in these compressed hydrogen things for airplanes. The weight is just too high. Hydrogen aviation only makes sense with cryogenic hydrogen storage IMHo, and only for very long duration
With massive downsides. Sure, liquid hydrogen probably makes a lot more sense for a plane than these things. But I don't think "only for very long duration" is true at all.
did OP not just point to a 4x increase in energy density?
It's also good to diversify the alternatives to fossil fuels. It's not clear that there are sufficient accessible deposits of lithium and other raw materials to meet the demands of electrification of everything via lithium batteries, and the vast majority of current lithium supply is controlled by Chinese businesses. So it's prudent for a company the size of Toyota to be investing in this, even if the technology is not currently competitive with batteries for automobiles.
One area where I could see this being useful is in construction. Being able to swap out a fuel tank and just keep working seems would be a huge benefit over having to let heavy equipment sit idle for hours to charge, and that's assuming there's access to the electric grid onsite.
Yes, it is clear. It’s one of the most abundant elements in the earth’s crust and is common in brines. Can also be extracted from seawater for less than current market spot prices.
if the increase in demand outpaces the increase in supply, you'll see a price squeeze, regardless of how much salt remains in the oceans
if someone goes and outlaws internal combustion engines, for instance, you may see demand increase quicker than supply can catch up
Another would be extreme cold environments. Most lithium battery packs I'm aware of in cars can be permanently damaged if they get too cold internally. In many cases there is a special heating element to prevent this by drawing just enough power to keep the battery in a safe temperature range. But I'm certain there are still edge cases.
The case everyone seems to ignore however; 'Developed' countries are just barely getting their act together with public charging infrastructure on the whole. Barely. What about all of the still Developing countries?
My stab-in-the-dark guess is that Toyota and Honda hope that at scale, Fuel cells will not be much more expensive than ICE vehicles. i.e. a Mirai and Camry if made in same numbers, would maybe be 1-2k away from each other in price. In that scenario, Hydrogen makes sense in a lot more places, even if it is not an ideal solution.
And while this cartridge is not super useful for cars (my understanding is that hydrogen charging been already done to high usability level) it does increase options for disconnected operations that presently have to use fossil fuels.
Theories: - Their engineers didn't think batteries were practical back in 1992 (reasonable). But by the early 2000s, batteries started to prove themselves, and fuel cells continued to struggle. But now those engineers from 1992 are in charge, and refuse to admit they've spent their career traveling a dead-end road. - They have some deep insight into other uses (trains, forklifts, jet-skis?) and need to build out the tech, and cars are their home. Germany is similarly stubborn about hydrogen trains too.
My money is on face. Toyota has spent too much money, and can't change until some senior people retire.
> Not bad, but not a paradigm shift,
So P100D (100kWh) needs 20 cartridges, or 110kg, instead of nearly 500kg of Li-ion battery. 400kg savings. The comment means you probably know nothing about vehicle dynamics. Or too accustomed to dull handling of heavy pickup trucks.
Maybe because hydrogen is infamously corrosive.
And that means they can build a huge maintenance business if consumers are gullible enough to adopt the technology.
Meanwhile, the best prototype lithium ion cells are in the 400-650Wh/kg range, in other words identical on the high end.
What’s the point of hydrogen again?
I think 5kg containers for 3.3kWh is a good number, especially comparing with batteries, which had recent decades of targeted development. At least the technology is nowhere near of clearly losing to alternatives. "Green hydrogen" can definitely be obtained without generating CO2, the questions are elsewhere.
why? A Green Hydrogen company that builds infrastructure to make ship and sell GREEN Hydrogen is a good thing.
Hiding your energy source under the guise of "clean energy electric cars" is the bullshit we should stop shilling. Any other color Hydrogen marketing is just the same bullshit shilling as well.
Green Hydrogen goes a long long way towards fixing the institutional issues we have with greenwashing.
Instead they keep doing this bizarre hydrogen fixation.
Just the physics of "green" hydrogen seems so miserable. Take electricity? Use it to convert water at great cost to hydrogen. Then use more energy to compress it? Then lots of cost in shipping and handling (hydrogen is hard to handle). Then turn it back into electricity, then use that to run an electric motor.
It brings certain advantages in terms of charging speed and energy density scaling that can be problematic for batteries (and while there's considerable flexibility depending on users to just accept longer charging, that blocks you away from certain use cases beyond light car market)
What I am wondering is:
1. How is this different than just using H2 canisters that are already available for welding (for example)? I wouldn't want to do a "hot swap" for a gas tank in a car as there are a ton of things that can go wrong, but that's pretty much what these canisters are trying to do anyways.
2. For home use, big propane tanks are already commonly used in places where there is no municipal natural gas line, so why would someone use theses small canisters instead of just installing a big tank for hydrogen outside?
3. Isn't the energy density of H2 way lower than other gases that could be used for automotive purposes? For example, in Europe is common to have after market conversions to propane or natural gas. Both have more energy density than hydrogen, leading to either smaller/lighter tanks and/or higher range with the same volume of gas. I get that hydrogen has the potential to be green with electrolysis (but we are not there yet and most H2 available now is made from hydrocarbons anyways) but it seems to be trying to be solving a problem in a convoluted way and/or mimicking the "electric battery" hot swap technology but for hydrogen without getting complete tech parity with it.
Toyota H2
5 kg (empty?)
10 L
3.5 kWh
prototype
Greenworks Li-ion[1]
3.6 kg
2 L
0.35 kWh
retail $270
Greenworks vs Toyota
Mass: 3.6 kg * 10 / 5 kg = 7x
Volume: 2 L * 10 / 10 L = 2x
Cost: ?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Greenworks-PRO-Lithium-Battery-GBA805...
I guess it probably wouldn't be very efficient...
Or just put everything on dry land: heavily insolated land with minimal other use isn't in very short supply: just ask Australia and half of Africa.
I guess you could put the panels on land but you'd have to pipe in water. You could pull from the ground water I guess.
Plus, distributed H2 generation is probably less efficient then a few massive refineries, and almost certainly would also consume more resources (worn out equipment, tanks, etc) which would take more energy to replace.
How are you going to move it without using any energy? Is that massive barge just going to move to shore and back using zero-point energy? Is the gas going to compress itself using that same zero-point energy source? Are we just going to ignore the much higher maintenance costs of all the moving parts of the ship and compressors and tank repairs versus the lower maintenance costs of fixed and stable solid infrastructure?
And the actual electrolysis plant could be made within a mile of the shore if you're worried about how you'll supply water.