Toyota Motor Corp said Saturday it is conducting trials of a vehicle powered by a hydrogen engine in Australia, making it the Japanese automaker's first such test of the environmentally friendly car on public roads toward its commercial use. In the trial from late October through January, a specially modified…
A hydrogen engine is so much worse for efficiency than a hydrogen fuel cell, and even that is not good compared to batteries. I’d estimate the round trip efficiency of a hydrogen engine to be about 10-15%. So for the same energy that could be used to drive a battery EV 100km, this car from Toyota could drive 12km.
Additionally, hydrogen is not very energy dense per volume. A compressed hydrogen tank that replaces the boot/trunk of the car would have enough hydrogen for about 100km of range.
Please let me know if I’m wrong about any of these numbers. For Toyota’s sake, I really hope I’m wrong.
Your numbers are way off. No manufacture would even think about touching hydrogen ICE motors if they only got 10-15% efficiency.
https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-73-hydrogen-22-ice-13/
according to this website, hydrogen ICEs are very inefficient. same with fuel cell vehicles. the main losses come from converting the hydrogen into and out of electricity. but if said electicity is generated in abundance with renewable energy at a cheap price, this could really be something.
edit: you can’t really burn electricity, so as a car enthusiast i really hope hydrogen ICEs become a thing.
BEVs are a lot of fun to drive. Car people are nostalgic for burning fuels and roaring engines, but future generations will be far less so. We just need far lighter batteries.
Lighter batteries, lower costs, quicker charging and way longer range under load. Hydrogen is the way forward. I don’t understand why there is so much push back from the EV crowd. EVs are great for city driving, but are terrible for long range and heavy load equipment.
I was specifically talking about cars that are fun to drive. The one thing I dislike about my BEV is that it’s so heavy.
Personally I don’t think hydrogen is the way for most personal vehicle applications. Batteries are improving a lot and becoming quite a bit cheaper too. Also many large car makers have gone the EV route and they are king makers. But who cares, the better technology will probably win out.
The issue with this metric is they’re talking about energy used to get the power. It completely ignores the fact that hydrogen can already be pulled from the atmosphere using solar plants. There are a few companies out there now that are developing stations that are basically automated.
The ICE motors Toyota and Hyundai have shown, have very little loss of HP/Tq numbers from their gas counter parts. Unless the battery industry comes up with a super light, quick charging (5 mins) and long lasting battery, EV will be resigned to the city at best and no heavy workloads for it either.
Efficiency still matters significantly with hydrogen solar panels, because solar panels aren’t free.
Suppose solar to wheel is 60% efficient in a battery electric vehicle, but 30% efficient in a hydrogen vehicle. You need half as many solar panels to power the battery electric vehicle, and spend at most half as much to charge it. That matters.
It really doesn’t when the hydrogen you’re burning isn’t creating pollution like the mining and destruction of the earth that lithium batteries create.
no manufacturer except one that’s still desperately trying to push for a hydrogen economy because they invested too much into hydrogen production
Is that what they’re doing by releasing one vehicle in a couple of US states and now another in a different country? I think your take is pretty extreme.
For decades, they had been one of the only companies to electrify their vehicles with numerous hybrid options. There doesn’t have to be only one single alternative to ICE engines. We can build and develop multiple things in unison.
Uhh, no… hydrogen is the only way forward, unless battery tech magically becomes so much better overnight. We haven’t developed a new battery tech over the current stuff since the 70s.
Here’s big names who are working on hydrogen cars:
BMW Hyundai Honda Toyota Jaguar
How you going to tell me hydrogen which is the most abundant thing in the universe, is not worth it?
You’re the guy hedging his bets on horses and farriers.
EV works for cities but that’s about it.
Well. Basically no one except for dumbass boomer executives forcing the company in a direction. Like Toyota.
I thought they were using ammonia powered vehicles and calling them hydrogen just because ammonia contains hydrogen. Wasn’t there a bunch of hype a few months ago about Toyota inventing an ammonia internal combustion engine that was so efficient it would “make electric cars obsolete”? The article just mentioned liquid hydrogen though. So I don’t know what to believe anymore.
I think the biggest thing that people forgot in the efficiency debate is cost. What will hydrogen actually cost to go 100km compared to electricity
The current cost to drive a car with green hydrogen from electrolysis (not blue or grey hydrogen from methane reforming) is roughly equivalent to $50/L (AUD) for petrol, or $120/Gal (USD) for gas. This is one of the reasons most hydrogen today is made from fossil fuels.
and you have to use it up within a week or two, or your fuel disappears