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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Tesla innovates at a rapid pace, even if judging solely on the battery architecture and cell chemistry between their platforms over the last decade. The tech in my 2021 and 2023 Ys is far superior to my earlier 2018 S and X. The jump in tech from v1 Superchargers to v4 is material.

Toyota invented the hybrid drive when the US was encouraging higher fuel standards with policy (and Toyota was concerned about being left behind), and have barely put forth a half hearted effort to build EVs. Their earlier compliance car RAV4 EVs used Tesla drivetrains, for example.

Meanwhile, Tesla sells almost 2 million EVs a year and continues to ramp manufacturing. Toyota manufactures press releases.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g15377976/what-came-be...

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/toyota-once-partnered-with-tesl...

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Tesla model 2023 is worse than earlier years simply because they removed USS.

Sales and revenue matter, opinions don’t. USS deprecation is unfortunate, but they still sell the cars so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Tesla is the ultimate one-trick pony. There will come a day when the BEV is abandoned. Tesla has shown no ability to move past that event. Toyota will make whatever car is in demand in the future.

You are aware that there is no hydrogen refueling infrastructure in most of the developed world and lots of jurisdictions have banned new combustion vehicle sales between now and 2035, yeah? What proven technology would you use besides batteries? Hydrogen infra that doesn’t exist?

Toyota isn’t dying tomorrow, but if they don’t switch to BEVs, they’ll die like Kodak or Xerox. There is no light vehicle hydrogen future.

We can build hydrogen infrastructure if we had to. None of those ICE bans are going to happen by 2035, at least not without massive loopholes. We will be driving ICE cars for a very long time to come. The correct pathway is finding a sustainable alternative to ICE cars that could happen organically, not fantasize about instantly turning everything into a zero emissions car tomorrow.

Tesla is the company that is going to die. The BEV is not going to be the only car in the future, nor will last forever. If anything, it is an outdated idea, and was an overreaction to the 2000s oil shock. Toyota will just make whatever cars people want.

> None of those ICE bans are going to happen by 2035

Many of the bans are happening by 2030. In Norway, 83% of new cars are already BEVs. I don't think they will look back, the market will make selling new ICEs in that country at least, impractical.

Hydrogen probably has a future in goods transportation (trucking), but even there they have to compete with a fully electrified rail system that goes to the arctic circle.

And either be reversed or will have loopholes. And Norway is one (small) country that is not representative of the rest of the world. And I don't think the political situation in Europe is all that stable either. A lot of the movement in European politics is about abandoning many of these absurd green energy ideas.

Hydrogen will just take over at some point simply because it is the only sustainable idea.

> Hydrogen will just take over at some point simply because it is the only sustainable idea.

Hydrogen is a horrible idea for personal vehicles: it takes a bunch of new expensive infrastructure to even get going (gas stations, but with compressed hydrogen tanks), it is energy inefficient (a lot of energy lost in compression, keeping it compressed, and then turning it in to electrons). It is just not economically viable when compared to BEVs where the biggest worry is finding a power plug.

It might make sense for trucking given its power to weight density, and the fact that trucks can have huge hydrogen tanks without much consequence.

It is cheaper than building out the grid needed to power all cars. In fact, you use basically the same land that gas stations current use up. It is quite straightforward.

Attacks on efficiency are anti-hydrogen FUD arguments. They were made up by BEV companies and are almost entirely false. It's important to realize that fuel cells are electrochemical systems just like batteries. FCEVs are also EVs just like BEVs. There is no fundamental downside. The upside however is that you avoid the huge amount of raw materials needed for the batteries. So this will be a far cheaper solution once we hit mass production.

In short, it is pretty much guaranteed that we will eventually switch to hydrogen cars. It is only a question of when and not if.

It really isn't. The grid is literally already there! The only new infrastructure needed is at the end point. If you are going to be generating hydrogen from electricity anyways, it isn't any different, except maybe you need less electricity because going from electrons to hydrogen back to electrons again you lose 40% energy.

The BEV companies aren't pushing FUD. They are just choosing the option that they see the most demand from, and can make the most money from. Japan has tried to make hydrogen happen for 20 years now, and it simply isn't going to happen.

Batteries don't require much more raw material than the fancy cyrogenic compressed hydrogen tank and fuel cell you need for a hydrogen car. Those batteries are also than those two things also.

That's complete nonsense. We will need vast amounts of grid upgrades to be able to be able to power all cars. And if the grid needs to be purely renewable, that problem explodes into something far harder. In fact, the problem becomes so hard that you will need hydrogen-based energy storage systems to make it work. But that completely undermines any efficiency arguments against hydrogen cars.

BEVs are over 100 years old. It is just a repeat of an obsolete idea. The moment we get serious about green energy, hydrogen cars will happen.

Hydrogen tanks are literally just tanks. They require very little raw materials compared to batteries. Fuel cells are tiny compared to batteries, and use up about the same level of raw materials as catalytic converters. Everything else is basically the same between FCEVs and BEVs. So you can quickly realize that the FCEV will be the far cheaper of the two ideas.

> That's complete nonsense. We will need vast amounts of grid upgrades to be able to be able to power all cars.

That is complete nonsense:

> A typical EV would require about 3,857 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. For 26.4 million EVs, that's over 101 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in a year or about 2.5% of what the U.S. grid produced in 2020. Although it's a small percentage, it's much more than what we're currently asking of the electrical grid.

https://www.evconnect.com/blog/can-the-power-grid-handle-ele...

Let's say we have 100 million cars, that is 10%.

You keep saying hydrogen tanks are literally just tanks. I get it, you don't believe compression is necessary, so no cyrogenic cooling at gas stations (powered by the grid of course), no fancy compression in cars. Is that what you actually believe?

Now do the math with 300 million EVs. Also, assuming SUV sized ones being popular too, alongside many commercial vehicles too. It is not that simple. Especially since so much of it will be DC fast charging and not slow speed charging.

Compression is not that energy intensive. It's more BEV FUD to make this to be a big deal. If done correctly, it is only a few percent loss of energy: https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/9013_energy_requirement...

Also, it is recoverable energy. Compressed gases are energy storage mechanisms in their own right. In the long run, this will be very minor loss of energy.

> Especially since so much of it will be DC fast charging and not slow speed charging.

Will it? Why?

What do you think is going to replace BEVs?

In the long-run, likely FCEVs. They are also EVs, just without the huge batteries. Advances in production are likely to reduce cost to ICE car levels. Advances in hydrogen production will make green hydrogen follow the curve of wind and solar, which is extremely cheap.

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