Nobody is saying they don’t have a good history or tons of resources but company leadership is not a constant. They blew a multi-decade lead and do not appear to be reacting well enough to catch up – likely because their senior people need to admit that their hydrogen gamble failed, which is hard enough even when it doesn’t involve multi-billion dollar write-offs. This is especially so because hydrogen worked out exactly how basically everyone else predicted it would when they made that bet, so they can’t claim nobody could have foreseen this outcome.
This is BEV propaganda. Toyota's hydrogen bet has yet to be even tested. There is a very good chance that batteries get disrupted by hydrogen. In that scenario, almost everyone is decades behind Toyota.
Something you can just look at being used in the real world can’t be propaganda. I know people who have been driving BEVs for over a decade and while they’d be the first to tell you there are real problems (e.g. long road trips) but it’s a commodity technology they’ve been using, so clearly it works for many people. Since people have been using them all over the world at scale, you can get reliable data on how it’s working for any particular question.
Contrast that with hydrogen, which is only barely out of prototype stage with extremely limited availability. The Toyota Mirai is the most successful with around 21k units sold total since 2014 - 3 full orders of magnitude lower than Toyota’s annual sales count, or the total BEV sales.
Now, it’s possible that things will pick up if there are some big improvements in cost and availability but that’s a huge if since it requires major advances in multiple areas just to become competitive with BEVs: it’s not just price but especially fueling - batteries are slower to charge but electricity is available almost everywhere so your plan B is a lot better than needing a tow if anything goes wrong with the one station you were planning to refuel at in the few regions which have any stations at all. Again, that’s not intractable but it’s a much harder chicken-and-egg problem, especially as long as it relies on customers choosing to lock in higher costs and significant restrictions. Environmentalists care about the result, not the technology, so they’re just going to buy an BEV if they aren’t riding an e-bike.
People who have actually driven FCEVs will tell you they work basically identical to BEVs. They make it a point to mention that there are no problems with the cars themselves.
In reality, the moment hydrogen becomes comparably as cheap and available as gasoline or diesel, it is likely the end of the BEV. It is the availability of fuel that is the fundamental problem right now.
The availability will be the biggest problem for the next decade, unless governments force it with huge subsidies.
The EU has mandated that every "major highway" must have a H2 depot every 2-300km, can't remember exactly.
But still you need to get it made somewhere, preferably not from natural gas, because that's just stupid. It needs to be transported to a station, by truck, on a regular schedule or it'll stop working.
Compared to EV chargers which are, in essence, glorified power outlets.
Pipelines are likely the cheapest option, with trucks for last mile deliveries.
The problem with "power outlets" is that they're heavily dependent on fossil fuel power plants. Since it is an unpredictable variable load, even more so than you think. Which is why it is really a transitional solution. From the beginning, it was about replacing distributed emissions with centralized ones, usually far away from cities. At some point, it became this green fantasy that could seriously replace fossil fuels. It is highly unlikely to do so in reality. Even BEVs will need hydrogen power plants to solve variable grid load problems. Eventually, you'll realize that hydrogen is a mandatory part of the problem, and the battery becomes redundant if not a negative.
Hydrogen doesn't work with pipelines, the molecule size is too small. The losses would be uneconomical and possibly dangerous.
Currently the grid over here is producing 17g of CO2/kWh, pretty much 90-95% is either nuclear or renewables. We're also exporting a portion of our excess to neighbouring countries.
The fact that Americans can't modernise their grid doesn't apply to the whole world, you see.
In reality, hydrogen is much cheaper than expanding the grid. You are basically dismissing basic physics with nationalism. Whichever country you're from, it too will find out that is cheaper to build a hydrogen network rather than massive grid expansion.
Our grid already feeds 2-3kW to pretty much every parking spot because of block heaters needed to get ICE vehicles running in the winter. The grid needs exactly zero changes for an EV future. A few last-mile upgrades maybe, but nothing major. This is according to the government organisation that handles the grid infrastructure.
As for "hydrogen network", we have pretty much zero infrastructure bringing natural gas or any kind of gas to residential homes. I think the capital city used to have a gas pipeline, but it got dismantled and people just use portable CNG tanks.
Toyota does not live by the timeline of Tesla. It reminds me of the time the Germans became obsessed with diesel whereas Toyota focused on longer term projects. It did not end well for the German car companies. There's a good chance that Tesla's short-term strategy ends up not mattering.
If the mass adoption of BEV passenger vehicles makes hydrogen fueling stations economically infeasible, then Toyota does live by the timeline of Tesla.
Hydrogen in the US feels destined for trucking and heavy industry if it sees success anywhere, but hydrogen filling stations at truck stops aren't going to sell a lot of Mirais.
Diesel cars at one point made up the majority of European car sales before collapsing. This is still short-sighted thinking.
People really need to stop thinking about current market position and start thinking about the conclusion of each technology. Just like how diesel ultimately led to another fossil fuel burning ICE car, BEVs only lead to heavy and expensive vehicles that are highly dependent on exotic metals. What is the solution to that last problem? It has to be a vehicle that is both zero emissions and doesn’t have weight and resource dependency problems. If you think in that way, you pretty much always end up with a hydrogen powered car of some sort.
In the interest of disclosure, do you have some kind of connection to Toyota or the hydrogen industry? You keep saying things about BEVs which aren’t true and downplaying legitimate problems even the people trying to make hydrogen work acknowledge, which is disappointing to see because you’re not only failing to persuade anyone but also not helping the thing you love. Nobody is going to buy a FCEV because some internet stranger trash-talked the alternatives but because it’s better in some way. If you really want hydrogen to succeed, acknowledge real problems and spend your effort fixing them.
No, I have no such connection. A better question is why there are so many people here who "know" the future of cars, despite having zero experience in the automotive industry? This comes off as one of those cultural fad, since people with minimal knowledge feel the need to lecture others.
My position is mostly from the direction of fact checking. People are blatantly BSing about BEVs, and talk about it with zero understanding of real automotive issues. The facts in favor of FCEVs speak for themselves. It is mainly awareness that is the problem.
Does hydrogen really have much weight advantage? The Mirai is 700 lbs heavier than an Avalon, much closer to a Model S. And the hydrogen fueled Hyundai Nexo is closer in weight to a larger Model Y than the similarly sized Tucson.
The Mirai is a converted Toyota Crown, and is basically a large luxury car. The Nexo is something like 500 lbs lighter than the Y. Also, at the ranges they provide (350-400 miles), BEVs will need to weigh closer to 5000 lbs to match that.
