[HN Gopher] Toyota Mirai hydrogen car depreciation: 65% value lo...
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Toyota Mirai hydrogen car depreciation: 65% value loss in a year
Author : iancmceachern
Score : 130 points
Date : 2026-02-21 18:09 UTC (12 hours ago)
HTML web link (carbuzz.com)
TEXT w3m dump (carbuzz.com)
| sremani wrote:
| I once did some research on Mirai and found at that time Plano,
| TX where Toyota NA is Headquartered did not have a Hydrogen
| station. Not sure if they have one now. It is such a limited car
| and because of the infrastructure stuck to LA and San Diego, I
| guess.
|
| Pure range is 500+ miles but not many Hydrogen stations.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| This is one of those cars that's interesting to me, but I don't
| know that we'll ever go this route in a significant amount.
| Problem is how complex it is to create hydrogen, although 'green
| hydrogen' is a thing, it would take quite a bit regardless.
| Interesting to note that if we could extract only 2% of the
| hydrogen burried under the earth, we could power the entire world
| for over 200 years. Which is crazy to think about.
|
| The other interesting thing about these cars is the output is
| water out of the tailpipe.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's very easy to create hydrogen from fossil natural gas.
| Which is the real motivation behind 99% of H2 projects;
| continue to emit CO2, just hidden from the end user.
|
| Battery electric is now pretty much inevitable.
| pfdietz wrote:
| In fairness, hydrogen from gas would enable the CO2 to be
| sequestered. If the vehicle itself burned the natural gas
| that would require recapturing the CO2 from the atmosphere
| itself, which is much more challenging.
|
| None of this is to detract from the attractiveness of battery
| vehicles.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Carbon sequestration is another of those "if we did this,
| it might solve the problem, but there's no serious move to
| do it and pay for it on the scale required, plus it's prone
| to cheating".
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| How do you solve aeronautical and maritime applications?
| danhor wrote:
| Certainly not with hydrogen directly. It might be involved
| in the production chain, but it's such a pain. If it's at
| all possible to electrify, that'll very likely win.
|
| For flights, a combination of batteries for smaller,
| regional planes starting with "islands hoppers" now and SAF
| from either Biofuel or produced from Electricity (with
| Hydrogen as an intermediate step). Although I think that we
| might first see moves to reduce the 2x non CO2 Climate
| Impacts which can be much cheaper to tackle (such as
| Contrails).
|
| For maritime applications, batteries when regularly near
| ports, probably hybrids with methanol for cross-ocean
| passage far away from coasts.
| fsh wrote:
| Hydrogen is not great for airplanes since the extremely low
| density makes the tanks too large. The best solution would
| be synthetic hydrocarbons (synthesized using hydrogen)
| which can outperform fossil jet fuel.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The Toyota Mirai neither flies nor floats.
|
| There's a bit of a movement for battery electric ships, but
| currently limited to short haul ferries. I have a suspicion
| this simply won't be "solved" for quite some time after car
| and heating electrification.
| mono442 wrote:
| It's possible to create hydrogen from coal and carbon capture
| is supposed to be feasible. Though I don't know how
| commercially viable this is.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Carbon doesn't really contain all that much hydrogen.
|
| Feasibility is key.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSV2kVkO1w
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Carbon doesn't really contain all that much hydrogen.
|
| The hydrogen also comes from water reacted (mildly
| endothermically) with carbon, and by further reaction of
| carbon monoxide with water.
|
| C + H2O --> CO + H2
|
| CO + H2O --> CO2 + H2
| Rohansi wrote:
| Creating hydrogen isn't the only problem. Storage and
| transportation is a big one since it is an actual gas instead
| of a liquid. Needs to be compressed, causes embrittlement,
| highly flammable, etc...
| helterskelter wrote:
| I've seen exactly one of these in person while in San Diego for a
| month or so. I never did see a fueling station for it though.
| kotaKat wrote:
| There's only... well, 51 of them. If you're lucky, you're near
| one of the 42 that are actually online and available for
| fueling (as of this comment).
|
| Stations running out of fuel and stations going offline for
| hardware failures runs rampant.
|
| Oh, and some stations might not be able to provide the highest
| pressure H2, so you might be stuck taking an 85% tank fill...
| and at nearly $30/kg and a 5.6kg (full) tank, that's an
| expensive fill.
|
| https://h2-ca.com/
| peterfirefly wrote:
| And they are not even supposed to explode anymore!
| themafia wrote:
| In the US. How does their value fare in Japan?
| decimalenough wrote:
| Given the complete collapse in sales last year (-83% to 432
| units, in a market of over 4M cars sold), I'd venture to guess
| they're faring pretty badly.
|
| https://www.automotiveworld.com/news/fcev-sales-in-japan-fal...
| numpad0 wrote:
| https://www.carsensor.net/usedcar/bTO/s235/index.html
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It's not really fair to compare depreciation against MSRP when
| they were being sold new at massive discounts. You could've
| gotten one of these for $40,000 off.
|
| https://www.carscoops.com/2024/02/toyota-offers-crazy-40k-di...
| appcustodian2 wrote:
| It's extremely fair to compare depreciation against MSRP.
| What's not fair is to say that they were being "sold new at
| massive discounts" when in reality it's an asterisk-ridden
| rebate process that applied to one model year under specific
| circumstances. That article was spam when it was written, can
| you provide a first party source for these massive discounts?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Depreciation is measured against the price someone actually
| paid.
|
| The MSRP doesn't matter. The S stands for suggested.
| stetrain wrote:
| This is a source of a lot of similar press around EV
| depreciation. They compare the MSRP of an EV 3 years ago with
| the current used market price, ignoring that the actual price
| paid is often significantly less due a combination of
| discounts, tax credits, and rebates.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The part that's interesting to me is how much the
| depreciation is posed as negative rather than positive.
|
| The long term value of a car is only really relevant if one
| is constantly cycling through cars and needs the trade-
| in/resale value. If a car isn't viewed as an investment
| and/or the intention is to drive it into the ground,
| depreciation is purely positive because it means that there's
| insanely good deals on some great cars right now. Of course
| everybody's needs are different, but for a lot of people
| there's nothing that comes remotely close of the value of a
| gently driven, practically new 1-3 year old lease return EV.
| freetime2 wrote:
| > The long term value of a car is only really relevant if
| one is constantly cycling through cars and needs the trade-
| in/resale value.
|
| Depreciation is based on real-world qualities of a vehicle
| that determine how desireable it is to own over time.
| Toyotas tend to depreciate slower than Mercedes-Benz, for
| example, because maintenance and repair costs tend to be
| lower. For someone looking to buy a car new and drive it
| for 10+ years, they are probably going to be drawn to car
| models that have a reputation for reliability and thus hold
| their value. Even if you don't care about the resale value
| of a car, you probably do care about the underlying factors
| driving that resale price.
|
| With EVs the factors driving depreciation are concerns
| about rapid tech obsolescence, battery degredation and
| replacement costs, incentives and new price cuts, and
| charging infrastructure. You also hear stories about Tesla
| drivers waiting 6+ months for a replacement part, Rivians
| being totaled because of a dent in a rear quarter panel,
| etc. These are all reasonable things for a buyer to be
| concerned with, in my opinion.
|
| But I agree that if you are ok with all of the above in a
| used EV (range and charging speed may not matter if you
| have a place to charge at home, for example), there are
| good deals to be found.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't understand why this is grey, this is exactly
| correct. Depreciation is good actually ignores the
| realities of why a car's value is tanking in the first
| place. The only time high depreciation is good for you as
| a buyer is if you think the market is mispricing cars and
| they're actually far more valuable than the cost they're
| being sold for. But best keep that secret because the
| market will be quick to correct once it's discovered.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I would point out a subtlety here: deprecation is based
| on _perceived_ value, and this perception tracks much
| more closely with the glacial knowledge of the larger
| public than it does with that of an informed individual.
|
| Battery degradation is extremely overrepresented in the
| minds of the public for example and based mostly on the
| performance of early entrants like the original Nissan
| Leaf. Since then, chemistries and management systems have
| progressed dramatically and rendered it a moot point --
| most EVs made in the past several years will have their
| batteries outlast the useful life of the vehicle. In the
| case the Ariya, Nissan appears to have overcorrected for
| the Leaf's reputation to such an extreme that they can be
| fast charged to 100% for many dozens of cycles and still
| show no capacity loss.
|
| This is a gap in knowledge that smart buyers who are
| willing to do a little bit of research can exploit and
| get much more car for their money than would otherwise be
| possible.
| loeg wrote:
| My state assesses annual car taxes based on MSRP rather than
| real market value, unfortunately, so these fake MSRPs matter
| to me. :-(
| LTL_FTC wrote:
| Toyota restricted the sale of its hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to
| specific, qualified customers who lived or worked near existing,
| functional hydrogen refueling stations. I remember looking into
| them when first released but realized I wasn't eligible and the
| fact that Toyota restricted the sale meant there was a huge risk
| in buying them.
|
| With all the recent outrage and lawsuits, I wonder how many
| buyers actually did their due diligence and weighed the risk
| before committing to them? Or maybe the huge fuel subsidy was
| seen as a win even if this event played out? Idk but I commend
| Toyota for taking the risk and going for it.
|
| Edit: typo
| decimalenough wrote:
| Approximately zero regular consumers purchased hydrogen cars.
| They were all fleet purchases designed primarily to publish
| burnish eco-friendly credentials, like this:
|
| _" This new initiative reinforces Air Liquide's commitment to
| decarbonizing transportation and accelerating the shift toward
| sustainable and low-carbon mobility solutions."_
|
| https://www.airliquide.com/group/press-releases-news/2025-11...
|
| Of course, Air Liquide would also profit massively from
| building hydrogen infra if it did become commonplace.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Funny thing, Air Liquide. They were going to build a massive
| green hydrogen plant in upstate NY and backed out when the
| tax credits disappeared...
|
| https://www.airproducts.com/company/news-
| center/2025/02/0224...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > and backed out when the tax credits disappeared...
|
| As they should. If the terms of the deal change, you need
| to start over with the business case and financials.
|
| If you want someone to be mad at, it's the politicians
| making these bad tax credit decisions. Not the companies
| trying to respond to the tax credit incentives. Getting
| companies to build things they otherwise wouldn't is the
| entire purpose of tax credits.
| butvacuum wrote:
| Hydrogen systems just don't make sense. Neither do
| molecular Hydrogen Fuel Cells.
|
| Now, green hydrogen for ammonia, and Ammonia fuel cells?
| Yes.
| LTL_FTC wrote:
| Well... I did/do see many around the Bay Area. Especially
| during the morning commute. But I agree, overall it was a low
| volume car.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| I don't think hydrogen will ever be a thing for personal cars.
| Apart from the abysmal "well to wheel" efficiency it's also just
| such a hassle to create a fuel network for it. Gasoline is bad
| enough but a gas that will just leak away whatever you do seems
| like a stretch. It is just so much simpler with electricity.
| Pretty much every gas station already has it. No driving it
| around with trucks. Just maybe once install a bigger cable or a
| battery/capacitor.
| bombcar wrote:
| My understanding is most hydrogen fueling stations produce the
| hydrogen onsite via electrolysis of water.
|
| EDIT: My understanding was wrong - it's produced locally onsite
| but via steam-methane reforming:
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-na...
| hvb2 wrote:
| If you can do that at a meaningful rate you might as well
| install ev charging and just not electrolyse when cars are
| charging
| b112 wrote:
| He didn't say it doesn't have local tanks. Only that it
| makes h2 local. You can still make h2 to replenish, and
| have storage.
|
| This is akin to how almost all power used to charge cars,
| is not-green. For example, there are still Ng, coal, and
| other types of power plants. If cars switched to gas,
| instead of electric charging, then some of those could be
| shut down.
|
| But the true point, is as we convert to more and more
| solar, we'll eventually shut down the last of the fossil
| fuel burner plants, and eventually the cars will all be
| green power sourced.
|
| Same with h2. Getting non-polling cars out the door and
| into people's hands, is key. Eventually, where the power
| comes from will be clean. And really, we're already having
| issues with power infra, even before AI, so re-purposing Ng
| pipelines for H2 would be a great thing.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| We won't get rid of natural gas any time soon. Ng
| pipelines are not in _any way_ similar to H2 pipelines
| except the word 'pipe'. You can't just put hydrogen in
| them. You can't even retrofit them. You're looking at
| laying an entirely new pipeline either way.
|
| Furthermore, most H2 is produced by fossil fuel
| extraction. We aren't cracking water to get H2, we're
| pulling it out of the ground. Cracking water is
| _hideously_ expensive.
|
| All in all, combustion engines are more efficient than
| green hydrogen. That's the core problem. We simply don't
| have the absurd amounts of unused energy required for
| green H2 production. If we did, we'd be pumping fully
| half of that energy into the atmosphere as waste heat.
|
| Hydrogen cars aren't going to happen. We won't have grid-
| scale hydrogen. It's just a terrible idea. Hydrogen is
| too difficult to handle and incredibly dangerous to
| store. The efficiency is so ludicrously bad that you
| would genuinely do better to create syngas from captured
| atmospheric carbon and burn it in regular combustion
| vehicles.
|
| Avoiding carbon emissions is not the only concern in
| regards to the climate. Focusing on carbon and nothing
| else leads you to really dumb and bad ideas like piping
| hydrogen gas across the continent.
| b112 wrote:
| h2 can be co-mingled with Ng and extracted with a molar
| filter at the other end.
|
| Ng pipelines are everywhere, so it makes perfect sense.
| adastra22 wrote:
| None of the pipes or valves are designed for hydrogen. It
| will steal leak. And leaking a very flammable gas isn't
| great.
| mike50 wrote:
| Let alone the compressors or the flow measurement
| equipment. Also significant portions of the pipesline
| (especially in neighborhoods / last mile) aren't metal
| anymore.
| fsh wrote:
| This is not quite true. The original gas pipes in most
| cities were built for "town gas" which was produced from
| coal and is 50% hydrogen by volume. The infrastructure
| could handle hydrogen just fine, but the low conversion
| efficiencies make it impractical.
| blibble wrote:
| this is the case while they're in the hype building phase,
| when people are paying attention
|
| if hydrogen even gained widespread adoption, it would be mass
| produced via steam reforming of natural gas
|
| (which is why the oil majors are the ones desperately pushing
| it)
| b112 wrote:
| That makes no sense. If the oil companies were pushing H2,
| every car would be H2 by now.
|
| H2 can be generated anywhere there is power. Any power that
| can be used to charge a car's battery, can be used to make
| H2. Yes, I'm sure you have 1000 reasons, but I don't really
| care, it's just not reasonable to discredit h2 because of
| made up paranoia.
|
| We should embrace _any_ way to get a clean running car on
| the road.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| But isn't that a counter point? Just putting the
| electricity directly into a car seems sensible instead of
| converting it to H2 and then back to electricity.
| Especially now that wo don't usually have a huge
| oversupply of green energy. We can think of ways to use
| the oversupply when it really becomes a problem. But I'd
| assume then BEV will be so dominant the no one will go
| through the hassle of supporting H2.
| Tade0 wrote:
| There's no point. EVs go 50% further on the same amount
| of energy, are easier to charge and are, of course,
| cheaper.
| b112 wrote:
| EVs take forever to charge, rendering long trips
| unrealistic. They are not cheaper long term, for they
| rely upon thousands of pounds of heavy batteries.
|
| If they go further now, that is not a given down the
| road.
|
| Were you to employ this logic when electric cars first
| came out, there wouldn't be a single one on the road.
| It's only through trillions of research dollars, that
| current battery tech is where it is.
|
| But sure, let's not work on multiple paths. Let's
| discount other attempts at clean tech. Even if they're
| older, cost less to the environment to build (batteries
| are terrible, environmentally), and so on.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from natural
| gas is more affordable. Both are alternatives to BEVs,
| which are the better approach to electrifying transport.
| If Toyota had gone all in on BEVs when it began its H2
| strategy, it would be selling more EVs than Tesla.
| Instead it entirely ceded the field to others, first
| Tesla and BYD.
| b112 wrote:
| _H2 from electrolysis is wildly expensive. H2 from
| natural gas is more affordable._
|
| Irrelevant. It seems like everyone who argues against H2
| is stuck on "now". Had that been the case with battery
| powered cars, they'd have never got off of the ground.
|
| Batteries were terrible, wildly expensive, extremely
| unreliable. It's only been the immense research poured
| into them, that has brought their costs down.
|
| Meanwhile, the cost of storage on an H2 car is nothing,
| compared to the immense and exorbitant cost of all those
| batteries. Batteries which make a car extremely heavy.
| Batteries which cannot be charged below -20C, and require
| heaters. Batteries which are incredibly dangerous in car
| accidents. Batteries which are costly, and damaging to
| the environment to create, difficult to recycle, and
| damaging to the environment to recycle.
|
| Compared to battery tech of any type, H2 is a dream from
| the gods.
|
| Yet because there hasn't been 17 trillion dollars of cash
| thrown into h2 generation tech, people prattle on about
| how expensive h2 generation is.
|
| And it doesn't matter where h2 comes from _now_. It
| matters where it _can_ and _will_ come from. The goal isn
| 't to make sources of power to generate h2 clean, the
| goal is to get end-polluters, cars, clean.
|
| If the only goal was "clean", then most electric
| batteries charging right now, would fail that very goal.
| After all, there are still coal and gas power plants this
| very moment, and if we pulled all electric cars off the
| road, those would close.
|
| No, the goal is to work towards more and more solar
| power, wind, etc. And in parallel, get cars ready for the
| day when power they're charged from isn't polluting.
|
| The myopic view of what I deem hyper-environmentalists,
| is disturbing to me. It is paramount that we don't let
| short sighted views fog the reality around us.
|
| Anyone arguing 1000lbs of batteries, all environmentally
| damaging in their construction, recycling cost, and
| disposal, is superior to h2, is arguing from a pedestal
| of sandy, earthquake prone, unstable support.
| fragmede wrote:
| You raise dying some good points, but hydrogen is really
| hard to store. It leaks out of everything. You have to
| very carefully design three containment vessel in order
| for it not to go wrong.
| blibble wrote:
| say you're Shell
|
| you are vertically integrated, you have billions invested
| in oilfields, refineries, distribution, and the retail
| channel ("gas stations")
|
| if transport switches to electric, what's your role?
|
| answer: there isn't one, you are completely redundant
|
| but what if hydrogen took off instead?
|
| if you produce via electrolysis, you only keep the retail
| channel
|
| but if you can get H2 established, then you can do a
| switcheroo and feed in H2 produced from your existing
| natural gas infrastructure, and massively undercut
| everyone's electrolysis business
|
| at which point you're back to the old days, just instead
| of selling gasoline from your oilfields, you're supplying
| hydrogen produced from their gas
|
| ... and that's exactly what they're trying to do
| constantcrying wrote:
| >We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on
| the road.
|
| No. We should embrace the technically most feasible,
| which opens up new technology to the most people.
|
| EVs are the clear winners. Every cent spent on hydrogen
| infrastructure is a cent wasted, because it could go to
| making the one feasible technology better. Arbitrary
| openness to technology long after it has been clearly
| established that the technology is inferior is not a good
| thing, it is a path to stay on ICEs forever.
|
| Hydrogen is a _bad_ idea. The only way to defend it is by
| pretending modern EVs do not exist, since they solved all
| the existing problems and offer numerous benefits over
| hydrogen.
|
| Additionally the customer has already chosen and he has
| chosen the right technology, because the value
| proposition of an EV is far greater than that of a
| hydrogen car.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > We should embrace any way to get a clean running car on
| the road.
|
| Only if it's also feasible to fuel that car in a clean
| way.
|
| And looking at where the hydrogen would come from is not
| "made up" or "paranoia".
| b112 wrote:
| It is entirely feasible. And it is made up to claim that
| "Well, this second it looks like there's no infra for
| green h2, so it can never happen! So there!"
|
| If that was the case, we'd still have electric cars with
| 50km range, and 1000lbs of batteries.
| toast0 wrote:
| Natural gas vehicles make way more sense than hydrogen. But
| they didn't survive in the (US) market outside specific
| fleet applications.
|
| Turns out compressed gas fuel is a big PITA.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They were popular in Thailand and Cambodia for awhile due
| to domestic natural gas reserves. But after those wells
| began to dry up Thailand at least decided EVs were the
| future instead.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| Okay not driving it around then. But somehow it's worse. You
| still have to build the special tank and the special pump and
| also get an electrolysis device that is big enough to create
| enough hydrogen and also you have to get heaps of power
| somewhere that could instead be just straight put into a
| battery in a car. Make it make sense. What's the point? Who
| is willing to do that?
| MBCook wrote:
| Don't forget keeping everything cold enough.
|
| On the vehicle side, you can make a gasoline tank in pretty
| much any shape you want. We have lots of experience making
| batteries in different shapes thanks to cell phones.
|
| High-pressure tanks only want to be in one shape. And it's
| not especially convenient.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| Is the shape round? I bet it's round.
| flir wrote:
| Ultimately, it's shrapnel-shaped.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| Is that shrapnel arranged in a roundish pattern?
| mmooss wrote:
| > battery
|
| Batteries create a lot of toxic waste. I'm willing to live
| with that if it doesn't cause climate change but there is
| an advantage to hydrogen? What is the impact of H2 fuel
| cells?
| XorNot wrote:
| Batteries do not create a lot of toxic waste and are
| essentially fully recyclable.
|
| The lead in automotive lead acid batteries today is
| almost entirely recovered and remanufactured into new
| batteries.
| hannob wrote:
| Your understanding is entirely wrong.
|
| Most hydrogen fueling stations receive it from the next steam
| reformer, which will make it from fossil gas.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Isn't this bad? This means H2O molecules are being destroyed
| and the water is not returning to the water cycle to be
| reused. We will literally run out of water if everyone did
| this.
| dxdm wrote:
| Water gets split into oxygen and hydrogen using energy. The
| hydrogen then gets burned to release usable energy, which
| creates water. At least as far as I remember from chemistry
| class ages ago.
| vardump wrote:
| There's some truth to what the gp said. Some hydrogen
| will escape, enter the upper atmosphere, and be blown
| away by the solar wind and thus be permanently lost.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| That's not a thing. Anyone who's seen hydrogen being split
| from electrolysis knows it takes a lot lot lot of electricity
| and is very slow. If two people needed to fill up in the same
| day it would run the well dry.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Completely wrong.
|
| Globally over 95% of hydrogen is sourced from fossil fuels,
| particularly natural gas wells. Electrolysis is very limited
| to niche applications or token projects.
| mmooss wrote:
| The electrolysis needs power and could be fueled by fossil
| fuels.
| bombcar wrote:
| Maybe that's what it was - produced onsite via steam
| extraction from piped in natural gas (which means you could
| just as easily burn the natural gas in the vehicle).
|
| Either way there aren't many trucks full of hydrogen
| zipping around.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| > Pretty much every gas station already has [electricity].
|
| Sure but they don't have electric vehicle recharging
| electricity.
|
| They have run the pumps and power the lights electricity.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| Still seems like a smaller investment to get a bigger cable
| than H2 infrastructure (Tanks, Pumps, maybe even electrolysis
| system).
| buckle8017 wrote:
| Bigger cable is a laugh.
|
| Bigger cable, upgraded delivery infrastructure to support
| that cable (think more or stronger poles), transformer
| upgrades, and finally the charging stations which unlike
| the home ones aren't just a complicated switch because DC
| fast charging.
|
| H2 is a stupid fuel, but the idea that high power vehicle
| charging stations are a cheap or simple upgrade to a gas
| station is ridiculous.
| MBCook wrote:
| True, but they already exist.
|
| Hydrogen stations don't. If you have to build new ones,
| especially if you have to supply them with enough power to
| create their own hydrogen for water, what's the difference
| from just building EV chargers?
|
| And if you're going to add hydrogen to existing gasoline
| stations then same question.
|
| If hydrogen was somehow able to use existing gasoline
| infrastructure it would make a lot more sense. But it's not.
| glitchc wrote:
| H2 can be transported by trucks. Must lay expensive hydro
| infrastructure to do the same for electricity.
| XorNot wrote:
| But not by the same trailers, not stored in the same
| tanks as gasoline, nor transferred by the same pumps.
|
| This like saying obviously we can distribute grain using
| gasoline infrastructure: after all, also both transported
| by trucks.
| helterskelter wrote:
| I always figured it would make more sense for hydrogen to be an
| option for renewable infra if the problems with leaking and
| embrittlement could be solved. Currently, moving renewable
| power over very long distances and storing it at scale is a
| non-trivial issue which hydrogen could help solve.
|
| This way, for example, Alaska in the winter could conceivably
| get solar power from panels in Arizona.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Storage is the bigger problem, specifically very long
| duration or rarely used storage (to cover Dunkelflauten, for
| example) for which batteries are poorly suited. Hydrogen (or
| more generally e-fuels) is one way to do that, but another
| very attractive one is very low capex thermal storage.
| Personally, I feel the latter would beat hydrogen: the round
| trip efficiency is similar or better, the complexity is very
| low, power-related capex should be lower, and there's no need
| for possibly locally unavailable geology (salt formations)
| for hydrogen storage.
|
| With this sort of storage, Alaska in winter gets its energy
| from Alaska in summer.
| BadBadJellyBean wrote:
| Only if we had a true oversupply of green energy. Converting
| electricity to H2 and then back is so incredible inefficient.
| It's less work to just create better electrical transmission
| systems. China did that with their high voltage DC lines.
| fsh wrote:
| These problems are grossly exaggerated in popular
| discussions. Hydrogen has been routinely transported and
| stored in standard steel cylinders for over a century. Most
| cities originally used coal gas (50% hydrogen by volume) for
| heating and illumination before switching to natural gas
| after World War II. What kills the idea is the abysmal
| efficiency of electrolysis and hydrogen fuel cells. Standard
| high-voltage DC power lines would be much better suited for
| getting solar power from Arizona to Alaska.
| stetrain wrote:
| Moving renewable power is easy, we have a grid for that.
| Infrastructure for movement of electricity is ubiquitous in
| places that have never seen a hydrogen pump.
|
| If the grid is insufficient in a particular place or
| corridor, investing in upgrading it will provide a better
| long term solution than converting electricity to hydrogen,
| driving that hydrogen around on roads, and converting it back
| into electricity.
|
| Storage is a bigger issue for sure.
| mappu wrote:
| Gaseous form is a problem, but have you seen the Fraunhofer
| POWERPASTE? I was optimistic when the news was first announced,
| but that was a decade ago and of course it's not widely used.
| XorNot wrote:
| At that point you're just building a weird battery storage
| system again though.
| cbmuser wrote:
| > It is just so much simpler with electricity.
|
| Yet the market still thinks differently. Lots of countries
| still keep subsidizing EV despite them already being mature
| technology for such a long time.
|
| We didn't have to subsidize the smart phone to make it
| successful, we shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars
| either.
| pjerem wrote:
| Maybe if we had smartphones that emitted greenhouse and toxic
| gases by using a mini ICE engine that were so cheap nobody
| would buy anything else, we would subsidize the electric
| ones. We may even ban the gas phones.
| kibibu wrote:
| We also wouldn't need to if environmental externalities were
| costed into petroleum prices.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > we shouldn't have to subsidize electric cars either.
|
| Smart phones were subsidised, just less obviously. Much of
| the fundamental research into the radio systems was done by
| government labs, for example.
|
| Not to mention that governments provide maaaaasssive
| subsidies to the entire fossil fuel industry, including
| multi-trillion dollar wars in the middle east to control the
| oil!
|
| Look at it from the perspective of pollution control in
| cities. China just invested tens of billions - maybe hundreds
| -- into clearing out the smog they were notorious for.
| Electric vehicles are a part of the solution.
|
| The alternative is everyone living a decade less because...
| the market forces will it.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| ICE love is cultural, and there's a bunch of FUD from
| entrenched interests.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| And more to the point, if you want to use synthetic fuels, why
| on earth would you pick hydrogen?
|
| Yes, it burns to clean water, but if the carbon feedstock is
| renewable, synthetic hydrocarbons are renewable too. The
| efficiency loss from doing the additional steps to build
| hydrocarbons is not large compared to the efficiency losses of
| using hydrogen, and storage can be so much easier with
| something denser.
| haunter wrote:
| Beautiful car but for example I live in Hungary and there is a
| grand total of one charging station in the whole coutry in
| Budapest. Yes it's free to charge but probably only makes sense
| to get a Mirai if you are a Bolt or Uber driver. Nice tech demo
| though.
|
| Here is the european charging station map https://h2.live/en/
| Benelux countries, Switzerland, and the Ruhr area are most likely
| the best places to own this car
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Why was it made? I ask because GM's EV-1 was discussed earlier
| and it basically existed due to California's zero-emission
| requirement in the 90's. Is this just Toyota doing some random
| R&D while fulfilling a state minimum requirement?
| testing22321 wrote:
| To trick people into thinking hydrogen cars are the future so
| they don't buy an EV now.
|
| I've driven my own vehicles through 65 countries on 5
| continents, and even the most remote villages in Africa and
| South America had electricity of some form.
|
| I've never seen a hydrogen filling station in my life. The idea
| we can build out that infrastructure faster than bolster the
| electric grid is laughably stupid. Downright deceptive.
| avidiax wrote:
| I think there's some truth to this. Toyota desperately needs
| the future to play to their strengths, something more
| complicated than EVs, which I think is behind their obsession
| with hybrids.
|
| Not sure that a fuel cell vehicle isn't just an EV with extra
| steps, however.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think that + it's an EV that Toyota don't have to source the
| battery cells. FCEVs are full EVs just like Tesla, that uses a
| different kind of battery than Li-ion.
| beAbU wrote:
| The latest model comes with a li-ion battery pack. Previous
| model had Nimh cells I think.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I still feel hydrogen fuel cells are the better choice. The
| convenience of refilling quickly is great. Maybe that'll matter
| less if PHEVs are allowed to exist but with some places banning
| gas cars entirely, I don't have hope.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| The inefficiency of creating, transporting, and converting
| hydrogen into motion is way too much to bear for the purpose of
| eliminating a 45 minute charging stop.
| audunw wrote:
| The convenience of filling is only there if you have the fuel
| stations. Considering how expensive it is I'd argue that it's
| far better to spend that money on EV charging infrastructure,
| you get a lot more bang for gour buck. And EVs are arguable
| significantly more convenient when you have the infrastructure.
| Would you buy a phone that lasted a week or two, but you had to
| go to a phone filling station to refill it?
|
| And yes, EVs can be more convenient also for street parking.
| It's just an infrastructure problem and by now there are dozens
| of different solutions for every parking situation imaginable.
|
| It's frankly absurd reading debates about this online from
| Norway. It's over. Yeah Norway has money and cheap electricity,
| that's what makes it possible to "speed run" the technology
| transition. But other than that it's a worst case scenario for
| EVs. Lots of people with only street parking in Oslo. Winter
| that's brutal on range. People who love to drive hours and
| hours to their cabin every weekend. With skis on the roof. Part
| of schengen so people drive all the way down to croatia in
| summer. We gave EVs and Hydrogen cars the same chance. Same
| benefits. EVs won. End of story. Though a hydrogen station near
| me blew up in a spectacularly loud explosion so maybe that
| makes me a bit biased.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > The convenience of refilling quickly is great.
|
| Is it more convenient than plugging in an EV overnight at home,
| and having a full "tank" every morning?
|
| It is not.
|
| Electricity supply is everywhere. More so than Gasoline supply,
| and far far more so than hydrogen supply.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'll take the convenience of being able to charge my car every
| night compared to having to drive out of my way to go to the
| extremely rare hydrogen fuel station.
|
| I spend more of my time pumping gas in my ICE car than I do
| waiting on my EV to charge. Quite a bit more time despite
| having a similar-ish mileage.
| constantcrying wrote:
| When comparing EVs to hydrogen cars it is very obvious that one
| is the superior solution.
|
| An EV is a clear simplification of an ICE. Add a Battery and
| replace the mechanical complexity of a combustion engine with a
| relatively simple electric motor. So many components are now
| unnecessary and so many problems just go away. EVs also make
| charging simpler.
|
| Hydrogen cars on the other hand are very complex and also quite
| inefficient, requiring many steps to go from hydrogen generation
| to motor movement. And they require a very sophisticated network
| of charging infrastructure, which has to deal with an explosive
| gas at high pressures. Something which is dangerous even in
| highly controlled industrial environments.
|
| I just do not see a single reason why hydrogen cars would catch
| on. EVs are good already and come with many benefits.
| glitchc wrote:
| > An EV is a clear simplification of an ICE. Add a Battery and
| replace the mechanical complexity of a combustion engine with a
| relatively simple electric motor. So many components are now
| unnecessary and so many problems just go away. EVs also make
| charging simpler.
|
| Is it? Then why isn't it cheaper to produce and cheaper to own?
|
| > Hydrogen cars on the other hand are very complex and also
| quite inefficient, requiring many steps to go from hydrogen
| generation to motor movement. And they require a very
| sophisticated network of charging infrastructure, which has to
| deal with an explosive gas at high pressures. Something which
| is dangerous even in highly controlled industrial environments.
|
| It's a standard combustion engine, nothing special.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| EVs are cheaper to own - the fuel savings are enormous.
|
| EVs aren't cheaper to produce yet, but battery costs are
| still falling and they will reach parity with ICE vehicles
| soon.
| bdangubic wrote:
| EVs are so much more cheaper to own that it is difficult to
| explain to people who own ICE cars as they, in majority of
| cases, just cannot comprehend it
| vel0city wrote:
| My EV has cost me ~$1,100/yr less to operate over the last
| few years for the same mileage compared to my ICE, and I
| didn't even have any major issues with my ICE. Meanwhile its
| been charged with almost exclusively 100% renewable, zero-
| emission energy.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| You're both wrong, the Mirai uses a fuel cell as the voltage
| source for an otherwise EV drive train. The Mirai is an EV
| with a fuel cell instead of a battery.
|
| There is no ICE in a Mirai.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Kinda glad this is the case. When people go out of their way to
| avoid common sense they should be punished.
|
| Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the
| ground. There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being
| the next oil and therefore greedy people want to get in early on.
| But this blinds them to the basic chemistry and physics.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > There seems to be some kind of psychosis around it being the
| next oil
|
| There's a very well financed propaganda campaign.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, it's not the new oil, it's the same oil in "green"
| packaging. Plus some comforting lies about carbon capture.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Even if it was fully green, you can't run an electrolysis
| system from home. So you have to buy it, so there's a
| market and an expensive solution.
|
| Electricity comes out the wall.
| thrownthatway wrote:
| What do you mean?
|
| You can run electrolysis from a cup.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I know, I have one of those weird H shaped flasks with
| the plat electrodes.
|
| I also have a gas bbq, yet couldn't fill up a LNG car at
| my house. Maybe there's something more to it than just
| making small amounts of room temperature / pressure H2.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| You can't make and store bulk hydrogen at home
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _You 're not my HOA_
| thrownthatway wrote:
| You can't.
|
| I'm willing to give it a go.
|
| I've got the excess solar from the rooftop solar panels,
| the electrical and electronic knowledge, and the gas
| fitter and metal fabrication experience.
|
| I have an oil free air compressor, and anyone can by a
| helium based cryo-cooler. I have an account with an
| industrial gas supplier.
|
| Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
|
| If Nile Red hasn't blown his lab up by the time I publish
| this comment, I reckon I stand a chance.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Round trip efficiency of hydrogen is at best 50% and at
| worse half that. You have the horrendous efficiency of
| electrolysis and then the equally bad efficiency in the
| fuel cell.
|
| Efficiency pumping your excess solar into the EV itself
| is more like 80-85%, most of which is loss in the
| electronics, not the battery - those typically have a
| coulombic efficiency of over 95%.
|
| Hydrogen a boondoggle. It's not nearly as stupid as
| making ethanol from corn (which is an energy-negative
| process) but it's close.
|
| Also, "gas fitter and metal fabrication" experience isn't
| worth anything unless it was hydrogen-specific. It is
| _far_ leakier than natural gas /propane. One of the
| biggest hassles of a hydrogen fuel chain is that the
| stuff leaks through _everything_.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Same with nuclear. The most expensive form of electricity
| generation there is. No grid operator wants to touch it, but
| the nuclear industry has been very busy lobbying congress and
| both the current and last administration.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Why is it such a terrible idea? In theory you can generate it
| via electrolysis in places with plentiful renewable energy, and
| then you've got a very high-density, lightweight fuel. On the
| surface, it seems ideal for things like cars or planes where
| vehicle weight matters. Batteries are huge and heavy and
| nowhere near as energy dense as gasoline.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Besides being expensive to generate unless you already happen
| to have an electrolysis plant handy, hydrogen is awkward and
| hazardous to store. Once generated, it costs yet more energy
| to liquefy, and then it seeps right through many common
| metals, weakening them in the process. It's just not a good
| consumer-level energy source, and nobody could figure out why
| Toyota couldn't see that.
|
| Interestingly, liquid hydrogen is nowhere near the most
| energy-dense way to store and transport it. I don't recall
| the exact numbers but absorption in a rare-earth metal matrix
| is said to be much better on a volumetric basis. [1] Still
| not exactly cheap or convenient, but it mitigates at least
| some of the drawbacks with liquid H2.
|
| 1: https://www.fuelcellstore.com/blog-section/what-hydrogen-
| sto...
| smcin wrote:
| Remember that China briefly embargoed Japan for rare earth
| metals in 2010, and Toyota launched the Mirai in 2014. My
| theory was that it was developed as a national fallback for
| Japan in case that embargo continued or got worse. Think
| 1930s Volkswagen. Anyone can comment on that?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Japan went heavy into hydrogen for a couple of decades
| ago. The only reason we are even talking about hydrogen
| passenger vehicles now is because Japan thought it was
| the future, they made a mistake.
| smcin wrote:
| I'm pointing out that the timeline of continuing funding
| it, to the point of a major model design and launch, and
| nationwide network of hydrogen stations, might well be
| linked to China's emergent REE dominance and that Japan
| doesn't have those raw materials.
|
| (In some future decade/century, people might conclude
| that car dependency on fossil fuels, after electric from
| renewable became viable, was a mistake.)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I think Japan made their plans in the 2000s, maybe
| starting to gain traction in 2010, this is long before
| China became an EV power house or even had a dominant
| share of rare earth processing.
| smcin wrote:
| Independent of that. I'm saying there was some wisdom to
| continuing to fund it in Japan post-2010 as a hedge in
| case REEs were unavailable.
|
| (Separate to whether the idea originally made sense back
| in the 2000s.)
| stephen_g wrote:
| It's horrible to work with - dangerous, embrittlement issues
| etc., and very energy intensive to compress into very heavy
| cryogenic storage containers...
| credit_guy wrote:
| > dangerous
|
| It is actually less dangerous than other fuels, for the
| simple reason that it is extremely light and buoyant. A
| gasoline fire is bad, because the gasoline stays where it
| is until it fully burns. A hydrogen fire is less bad,
| because it will tend to move upwards.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Hydrogen mixed with air has a very wide range of
| concentrations where it is explosive. It accumulates
| inside containers or just the roof of the car... where
| the passengers are. It takes just one lit cigarette for
| it to go boom.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| And it burns _really_ hot
| chongli wrote:
| That's assuming the hydrogen is just loose in the area,
| like it'd been released from a balloon in a chemistry
| classroom. That amount of hydrogen is extremely small,
| from an energy standpoint. Equivalent to a teaspoon of
| gasoline or so.
|
| If you assume a realistic fuel capacity for a hydrogen
| vehicle, the hydrogen tank will be both much larger than
| a gas tank and the hydrogen will be under extreme
| pressure. A tank like that in your car would be extremely
| dangerous even if it were filled only with inert gas.
| Rygian wrote:
| Check out the "Clean Hydrogen Ladder" document.
|
| Hydrogen wastes a large amount of energy.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Unless you produce it using the Sulfur-Iodine cycle in a
| high-temperature nuclear reactor.
|
| See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur%E2%80%93iodine_cycle
|
| and: https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/nhc/en/research/hydro
| gen_he...
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Hydrogen is the minimum viable atom: one proton, one
| electron. H2 is a tiny molecule. "hydrogen embrittlement" is
| when it's small enough to diffuse _into_ solid metal, because
| it 's that much smaller than iron atoms.
|
| It's hard to work with because of this, and what's the point?
| For most uses, electricity supply is already everywhere.
| L-four wrote:
| The cheapest way to make hydrogen is to use fossil fuels.
| loeg wrote:
| It's hell to store. The energy density is terrible and as a
| tiny molecule it escapes most seals. When it transitions from
| a liquid to a gas, it expands manyfold (i.e., explodes).
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Ignoring some of the other issues:
|
| Imagine we have this electrolysis plant, splitting up water
| to produce the hydrogen we need for an area. That's fine.
|
| But it needs fed electricity to keep the process going. Lots
| of it. It needs more electrical power to split the water than
| combining it again produces.
|
| So it starts off being energy-negative, and it takes serious
| electricity to make it happen. Our grid isn't necessarily
| ready for that.
|
| And then we need to transport the hydrogen. Probably with
| things like trucks and trains at first (but maybe pipelines
| eventually). This makes it even more energy-negative, and
| adds having great volumes of this potentially-explosive gas
| in our immediate vicinity some of the time whether we're
| using it individually or not.
|
| Or: We can just plug in our battery-cars at home, and skip
| all that fuel transportation business altogether.
|
| It's still energy-negative, and the grid might not be ready
| for everyone to do that either.
|
| But at least we don't need to to implement an entirely new
| kind of scale for hydrogen production and distribution before
| it can be used.
|
| So that's kind of the way we've been going: We plug out cars
| into the existing grid and charge them using the same
| electricity that could instead have been used to produce
| hydrogen.
|
| (It'd be nice if battery recycling were more common, but it
| turns out that they have far longer useful lives than anyone
| reasonably anticipated and it just isn't a huge
| problem...yet. And that's not a huge concern, really: We
| already have a profitable and profoundly vast automotive
| recycling industry. We'll be sourcing lithium from automotive
| salvage yards as soon as it is profitable to do so.)
| aunty_helen wrote:
| It's not even the grid, by the time you've done the
| electrolysis you'd be better off just charging a battery.
|
| Also, compressing and cooling a gas takes another huge hit
| at the efficiency. Electrolysis comes out at atmospheric
| pressures.
|
| Oh and the platinum electrodes you need...
|
| I'm also just now visualising a hydrogen pipeline fire...
| terrible terrible idea.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| It's the everything, yeah. There's a lot working against
| using hydrogen as the local energy source for automotive
| propulsion in the world that we presently have.
|
| Some advantages are that a fuel cell that accepts
| hydrogen and air at one end and emits electricity and
| water at the other can be lighter-weight than a big
| battery, and it can [potentially] be refueled quickly for
| long trips.
|
| Some disadvantages: We need a compressed hydrogen tank --
| which isn't as scary to me as it may be for some people,
| but that's still a new kind of risk we need to carry with
| us wherever we drive. And we still need a big(ish)
| battery and the controls for it in order for regen
| braking to do its thing (which hybrids have shown to be
| very useful).
|
| And, again, the grid: If it were cheaper/better/efficient
| to move energy from electrical generating stations to the
| point of use using buckets [or trucks or trains] of
| hydrogen, we'd already be doing that. But it isn't. So we
| just plug stuff in, instead, and use the grid we already
| have.
|
| A quick Google suggests that a regular 120v US outlet
| might charge EVs at a rate somewhere in the range of 3 to
| 5 miles per hour. So a dozen or so hours sitting, plugged
| in at home every day, is enough to cover most folks'
| every-day driving. There's far faster methods, but that's
| something that lots of regular people with a normal
| commute and normal working hours can already accomplish
| very easily if they have private parking with an outlet
| nearby.
|
| For most folks, with most driving, that's all they ever
| have to do. It shifts concerns about refueling speed from
| "Yeah, but hydrogen is fast! I waste hardly any time at
| all while it refills!" to "What refueling stops? I just
| unplug my car in the morning and go. I haven't needed to
| stop at gas station in years."
|
| The main advantages of hydrogen are real, but they just
| aren't very useful compared to other things that we also
| have.
| nkoren wrote:
| Zubrin's "Hydrogen Hoax" from 2007[1] is basically an
| ironclad critique. The physics are inescapably poor, and
| always will be. (Zubrin makes other points in that article
| which should probably be taken with more salt, but his
| critique of hydrogen stands).
|
| 1: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-
| hoa...
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the
| ground.
|
| It's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its head
| around not making engines. Ironically, the place hydrogen might
| work is airplanes where the energy density of batteries doesn't
| work.
| breve wrote:
| > _It 's coming from Toyota because Toyota can't wrap its
| head around not making engines._
|
| Of course they can. Toyota sells BEVs. As time goes on BEVs
| will become a greater percentage of their sales.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Toyota sells bad EVs and was the last OEM to offer one.
| It's the most anti-EV OEM by far and engages/engaged in the
| most EV FUD.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The bZ4X was particularly bad. Toyota adopted a combo of
| NIH syndrome and DNGAF. They didn't anticipate cold
| weather. The batteries lost like 30% of their capacity in
| the cold and the resale value of it tanked.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| They're also just phenomenally ugly cars.
| dcrazy wrote:
| It shares the same ugly design language as much of
| Toyota's lineup.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > The batteries lost like 30% of their capacity in the
| cold
|
| Here in Norway Toyota was invited to include the bZ4X in
| this years winter range test[1], but they declined.
| Suzuki entered with their eVitara model, which is a
| "technological twin" of the Toyota Urban Cruiser.
|
| The Urban Cruiser really disappointed in a regular test
| performed in cold weather[2]. So perhaps unsurprisingly,
| the Suzuki eVitara was by far the worst in the winter
| range test, with the least range overall and more than
| 40% reduction compared to its WLTP range, among the worst
| in the test.
|
| [1]: https://www.tek.no/nyheter/nyhet/i/d4mMkA/verdens-
| stoerste-r...
|
| [2]: https://www.tek.no/test/i/OkQAwE/toyota-urban-
| cruiser
| some-guy wrote:
| I have only purchased Toyota vehicles (currently in the
| market for an EV) and it baffles me that Dodge created a
| Charger in EV form and Toyota hasn't made even an EV
| Corolla or Camry.
| breve wrote:
| That's essentially the bZ3. But a Corolla branded BEV
| will eventually happen:
|
| https://electrek.co/2025/10/13/toyotas-best-selling-car-
| elec...
| lostlogin wrote:
| An electric Corolla or Camry is my ultimate. I hate
| driving.
|
| I want an appliance that just works. The Corolla and
| Camry were this for petrol.
|
| I love my Leaf but it isn't a Carolla.
|
| What's with the turning circle on the Leaf?
| freetime2 wrote:
| > it baffles me that Dodge created a Charger in EV form
| and Toyota hasn't made even an EV Corolla or Camry
|
| Dodge's Charger EV has been a sales flop [1] and pretty
| much universally panned by critics as something that
| nobody asked for.
|
| The Camry and Corolla were the best-selling sedan and
| compact sedan of 2025 [2]. I think this shows that Toyota
| is listening to what Corolla and Camry drivers want -
| something inexpensive and reliable to get them to and
| from work every day without issue.
|
| Some day Toyota will make an EV sedan. I think their 2026
| bZ Woodland [3] shows that they are starting to figure
| out how make compelling EVs. And Toyota's EV strategy
| seems pretty reasonable to me overall - their delays to
| develop a decent EV don't seem to put them under threat
| from any legacy automakers. They are being threatened by
| Chinese EV makers, but so is Tesla - so even a huge head
| start likely wouldn't have benefited Toyota much either
| in that regard.
|
| [1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a69927938/dodge-
| charger-da...
|
| [2]
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g64457986/bestselling-
| cars...
|
| [3] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/02/looks-a-lot-
| like-an-ele...
| freetime2 wrote:
| > Toyota sells bad EVs
|
| The 2026 bZ Woodland [1] looks pretty nice in my opinion.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/02/looks-a-lot-
| like-an-ele...
| badc0ffee wrote:
| And yet they had one of the first hybrids (although not a
| plug-in hybrid) in the Prius.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Honda also was early in hybrids, but they like Toyota are
| also late on EVs.
| dehrmann wrote:
| The bZ4X? 10+ years after the Nissan Leaf?
| breve wrote:
| And the bZ3, bZ5, bZ7, bZ3X, bZ Woodland, C-HR+, the
| Lexus RZ, and soon the Hilux EV:
|
| https://electrek.co/2026/01/09/toyota-electric-pickup-
| images...
| bdcravens wrote:
| A list of cars that aren't available for purchase yet
| doesn't disprove the argument that Toyota is late to the
| game.
| breve wrote:
| They are available for purchase.
|
| Toyota is in the game of selling cars. Toyota has been
| the best selling automaker for the last six years
| straight.
|
| Toyota had record sales last year:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/toyota...
|
| It's possible that Toyota understands the car business
| better than you do.
| bdcravens wrote:
| All of the bz* models you listed are Chinese models, and
| while the Woodland and C-HR are listed on their US
| website, they aren't really available for purchase
| (though I did find _one_ C-HR if I 'm willing to drive
| 500 miles to buy it). Obviously the world auto market is
| greater than the US, but the US is the leading market for
| Toyota in terms of total units sold, so it's odd to me
| that if I drive to the Toyota dealership 10 minutes from
| my house, their game of selling cars only leaves me with
| one model to purchase if I'm committed to buying a BEV.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| What does this mean? They have electric vehicles too.
| qingcharles wrote:
| The energy density doesn't work _for now_. Everybody hoping
| for that breakthrough, and battery aircraft are moving into
| certain sectors (drone delivery, air taxis etc).
| aunty_helen wrote:
| One of the trade offs is that engines are actually
| ridiculously heavy. Compact, extreme high power electric
| motors are starting to be commercialised. But also, fuel
| burns so you lose weight as you're flying whereas batteries
| stay the same.
|
| Electric aviation is interesting but as someone who knows a
| bit about the industry, biofuels make more sense here.
| Lerc wrote:
| Structural batteries were supposed to be the solution where
| the density wasn't so important. I don't really have a good
| understanding of the ration of fuel weight to structural
| weight in existing aircraft though.
| nomel wrote:
| casing is around 25% of the mass of a cylindrical cell,
| with the rest being actual battery bits that can't have
| any stresses applied. is 25% weight saving that
| significant?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Jet engine and wing efficiency have increased enormously
| over the last 50 years.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| With diminishing results.
|
| Turbofans and supercritical airfoils are done to the
| point of engine manufacturers looking to propfans and
| alternative materials (carbon fibre) to eke out further
| efficiencies.
|
| Although carbon fibre has significant down sides.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I have patented the idea of replacing the nitrogen in the
| cabin air with helium. I'm waiting for the money to roll
| in!
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Has the hydrogen storage problem been solved yet?
|
| Last time I checked it needs to be stored in cryo / pressure
| vessel and it also leaks _through_ steel and ruins its
| structural properties in the process.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| There are some innovation like hydrogen paste but it's not
| going to be useful for a combustion engine cycle.
| eptcyka wrote:
| The Mirai does not combust hydrogen.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| We store hydrogen all the time for industrial processes.
| It's not some super science, it's just expensive.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| We do? Where? Using what fabrication technologies.
|
| I've worked mostly in or adjacent to manufacturing and
| primary industry.
|
| As far as I'm aware, the majority of hydrogen production
| is use on site, and mostly for ammonia production.
|
| There isn't really much in the way of hydrogen storage
| and transportation, it's mostly used where it's
| generated.
|
| And if we use _expensive_ as a proxy for heavy / energy
| intensive, which it is in the case of hydrogen, that goes
| a long way to preclude it from anything like being useful
| for _transportation_.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| There is hydrogen all over the place in exactly where
| you'd expect to see it: petroleum refineries and
| petrochemical process plants. The metallurgy of handling
| and storing hydrogen is well understood and has been for
| a long time. You just have to use alloys resistant to
| hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen is squirrelly - it
| doesn't like to stay put but you can make it stay put
| long enough to make it useful.
|
| When you are specifying valving or piping in a refinery
| one of the big things you have to find out is how much
| hydrogen is in the process because a _lot_ of stuff in a
| refinery has at least some hydrogen and it will destroy
| common alloys.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > Has the hydrogen storage problem been solved yet?
|
| No. Not for using Hydrogen for transportation. People have
| been trying to use Hydrogen for transportation for more
| than 50 years. These people are trying to bend the laws of
| physics. And there are _a lot_ of con artists in the mix
| who prey on the gullible. See the convicted fraudster
| Trevor Milton of Nikola fame.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| We're actually not that far off.
|
| Right now, liquid fuels have about 10x the energy density of
| batteries. Which absolutely kills it for anything outside of
| extreme short hop flights. But electric engines are about 3x
| more efficient than liquid fuel engines. So now we're only
| 3x-4x of a direct replacement.
|
| That means we are not hugely far off. Boeing's next major
| plane won't run on batteries, but the one afterwards
| definitely will.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Well, there's also burning regular fuel in a fuel cell, a
| FCEV. That doubles the efficiencies over ICE, so I guess
| that bumps it back up to 8x away?
|
| Given the great energy densities and stability in transport
| of hydrocarbons, there's already some plants out there
| synthesising them directly from green sources, so that
| could be a solution if we don't manage to increase battery
| densities by another order of magnitude.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > there's already some plants out there synthesising them
| directly from green sources
|
| I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different
| from a regular carbon atom. They both result in CO2 when
| burned.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| And, the two major byproducts of burning hydrocarbons are
| water and carbon dioxide.
|
| Literally essential plant nutrients, essential for life.
|
| Tangentially related, the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha`apai
| volcanic eruption ejected so much water vapour in to the
| upper atmosphere, it was estimated to have ongoing
| climate forcing effects for up to 10 years.
|
| Water vapour is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon
| dioxide.
|
| And we heard _precisely nothing_ about that in the media
| other than some science specific sources at the time and
| nothing on an ongoing basis.
|
| From Wikipedia:
|
| _The underwater explosion also sent 146 million tons of
| water from the South Pacific Ocean into the stratosphere.
| The amount of water vapor ejected was 10 percent of the
| stratosphere 's typical stock. It was enough to
| temporarily warm the surface of Earth. It is estimated
| that an excess of water vapour should remain for 5-10
| years._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga%E2%80%93Hu
| nga...
| robertjpayne wrote:
| Please, the media didn't report on this because natural
| disasters affecting the climate is not controllable by
| humans and thus doesn't warrant a global effort to
| address unless it's so large as to be species ending.
|
| Global warming is not fake, there's tons and tons of
| evidence it is real and the weather is getting more and
| more extreme as humans continue to burn petrol.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Yes, and it doesn't fit the narrative.
|
| We should be moving towards being able to terraform Earth
| not because of anthropogenic climate forcing, but because
| one volcano or one space rock could render our atmosphere
| _overnight_ rather uncomfortable.
|
| You won't find the Swedish Doom Goblin saying anything
| about _that_.
|
| > burn petrol.
|
| Well yeah, so making electricity unreliable and
| expensive, and the end-user's problem (residential roof-
| top solar) is somehow supposed _help_?
|
| Let's ship all our raw minerals and move all our
| manufacturing overseas to counties that _care less_ about
| environmental impacts and have dirtier electricity, then
| ship the final products back, all using the dirties
| bunker fuel there is.
|
| How is _that_ supposed to _help_?
|
| I mean, I used to work for The Wilderness Society in
| South Australia, now I live in Tasmania and am a card
| carrying One Nation member.
|
| Because I'm not a _complete fucking idiot_.
|
| Wait till you learn about the nepotism going on with the
| proposed Bell Bay Windfarm and Cimitiere Plains Solar
| projects.
|
| I'm all for sensible energy project development, but
| there's only so much corruption I'm willing to sit back
| and watch.
|
| With the amount of gas, coal, and uraniam Australia has,
| it should be a manufacturing powerhouse, and host a huge
| itinerant worker population with pathways to residency /
| citizenship, drawn from the handful of countries that
| built this country. And citizens could receive a monthly
| stipend as their share of the enormous wealth the country
| _should_ be generating.
|
| Japan resells our LNG at a profit. Our government is an
| embarrassment.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Natural resources are not required to make a country an
| economic powerhouse. See Japan, for example. Hong Kong,
| Taiwan, S Korea.
|
| What's needed are free markets. Any country that wants to
| become a powerhouse has it within their grasp. Free
| markets.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| And political will.
|
| The Antipodes have such a problem with successful people
| we even invented a term for it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
|
| On the subject of free markets, Australia excels. We even
| let foreign entities extract and sell our LNG and pay no
| royalties and no tax.
|
| https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/zero-royalties-
| charge...
|
| Doesn't get _any freer than that!_
| WalterBright wrote:
| Spain stripped S. America of its gold and silver, and
| neither Spain nor S. America benefited from it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Also some time after that other guy copied and pasted his
| canned Hunga remark into his big spreadsheet of climate
| denial comments the international community of climate
| scientists concluded that Hunga cooled the atmosphere, on
| balance.
|
| "As a consequence of the negative TOA RF, the Hunga
| eruption is estimated to have decreased global surface
| air temperature by about 0.05 K during 2022-2023; due to
| larger interannual variability, this temperature change
| cannot be observed."
|
| https://juser.fz-
| juelich.de/record/1049154/files/Hunga_APARC...
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Thanks for linking that document, I'll have a read.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Its the time shift. Burning a plant releases CO2 and it
| is still considered to be carbon neutral.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Sorry, that's just verbal sleight of hand. There's no
| such thing as "green" CO2.
| jeffbee wrote:
| How do you justify exhaling then?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| The problem isn't CO2 it's pulling carbon out of
| geological deposits. Thus the carbon atoms in synthetic
| fuel can be considered "green" provided an appropriate
| energy source was used.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I understand that, but it's a fallacious argument. It's
| still emitting the same amount of CO2 into the
| atmosphere.
|
| You can also bury dead trees in a landfill.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| The point is that emitting CO2 into the atmosphere was
| never the problem. Adding geological carbon back into the
| carbon cycle is the root cause of the entire thing.
|
| You can certainly bury dead trees. I'm not sure how deep
| you'd need to go to accomplish long term (ie geological
| timeframe) capture. I somehow doubt the economics work
| out since what is all the carbon capture research even
| about given that we could just be dumping bamboo chips
| into landfills?
| breve wrote:
| > _Boeing 's next major plane won't run on batteries, but
| the one afterwards definitely will._
|
| Jet engines work better. Boeing's next major plane will
| have jet engines, just like their previous major planes.
|
| Synthetic, carbon neutral jet fuel will be the future for
| commercial jets.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| More accurately, the calculation needs to factor in the
| fact that battery weight doesn't decrease as charge is
| used.
|
| Commercial aviation's profitability hinges on being able to
| carry only as much fuel as strictly[1] required.
|
| How can batteries compete with that constraint?
|
| Also, commercial aviation aircraft aren't time-restricted
| by refuelling requirements. How are batteries going to
| compete with that? Realistically, a busy airport would need
| something like a closely located gigawatt scale power plant
| with multi-gigawatt peaking capacity to recharge multiple
| 737 / A320 type aircraft simultaneously.
|
| I don't believe energy density parity with jet fuel is
| sufficient. My back of the neocortex estimate is that
| battery energy density would need to 10x jet fuel to be of
| much practical use in the case of narrow-body-and-up
| airliner usefulness.
| WalterBright wrote:
| You laid it out better than I. Thank you!
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Thanks Walter!
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| An A320 can store 24k liters of fuel. Jet fuel stores 35
| MJ/L. So, the plane carries 8.4E11 J of energy. If that
| was stored in a battery that had to be charged in an hour
| 0.23GW of electric power would be required.
|
| So indeed, an airport serving dozens or hundreds of
| electric aircrafts a day will need obscene amounts of
| electric energy.
| vardump wrote:
| Jet engines are not 100% efficient.
|
| Electric motors can be pretty close, 98% is realistic. Of
| course other parts of the system will lose energy, like
| conversion losses.
|
| Of course that doesn't mean batteries are currently a
| viable replacement. One should still take efficiency into
| account in quick back of the envelope calculations.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > So now we're only 3x-4x of a direct replacement.
|
| The math leads out an important factor. As the liquid fuel
| burns, the airplane gets lighter. A lot lighter. Less
| weight => more range. More like 6x-8x.
|
| Batteries don't get lighter when they discharge.
| giobox wrote:
| Not to mention that jet planes routinely take off heavier
| than their max safe landing weight today too, relying on
| the weight reduction of consuming the fuel to return the
| plane to a safe landing weight again while enjoying the
| extra range afforded. This trick doesn't work well with
| batteries either.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There isn't any battery technology on the horizon that
| would lead to practical airliners.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You could do it with a ground effect plane for inland sea
| jaunts, like Seattle to Victoria. If you can float, then
| you don't technically need a huge reserve like is
| normally needed.
| Qwertious wrote:
| It's not that simple.
|
| Batteries are inherently more aerodynamic, because they
| don't need to suck in oxygen for combustion, and because
| they need less cooling than an engine that heats itself
| up by constantly burning fuel. You can getv _incredible_
| gains just by improving motor efficiency - the difference
| between a 98%-efficient motor and a 99%-efficient motor
| is the latter requires _half the cooling_. That 's more
| important than the ~1% increase in mileage.
|
| Also, the batteries are _static weight_ , which isn't as
| nightmarish as liquid fuel that wants to slosh around in
| the exact directions you want it not to. Static weight
| means that batteries can be potentially load-bearing
| structural parts (and in fact already are, in some EV
| cars).
|
| The math leaves out a _lot_ of important factors.
| rgmerk wrote:
| Hmmm. If we do simple extrapolation based on a battery
| density improvement rate of 5% a year, it takes about 30
| years to get there. So it's not as crazy as it sounds - and
| it's also worth noting that there are incremental
| improvements in aerodynamics and materials so that gets you
| there faster...
|
| However, as others have pointed out, the battery-powered
| plane doesn't get lighter as it burns fuel.
| beAbU wrote:
| The Mirai is a fuel cell EV. There is no engine. Not sure
| what your point is regarding engines?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the place hydrogen might work is airplanes where the energy
| density of batteries doesn't work.
|
| How is that going to work? Cryogenic liquid hydrogen? High
| pressure tanks? Those don't seem practical for an airplane.
|
| What does work for airplanes is to use carbon atoms that
| hydrogen atoms can attach to. Then, it becomes a liquid that
| can easily be stored at room temperature in lightweight
| tanks. Very high energy density, and energy per weight!
|
| (I think it's called kerosene.)
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Diesel, kerosene, rocket propelled RP1, and fuel oil /
| bunker fuel in the case of cargo ships.
|
| It's not a coincidence that where easy of handling, storage
| safety, and high energy density are needed everything seems
| to converge on compression ignition medium to long chain
| liquid hydrocarbons.
| saalweachter wrote:
| What if you just, like, put the hydrogen in a big balloon?
| dev1ycan wrote:
| They are just too much in bed with big oil to want to switch,
| instead they spend rnd on hydrogen in order to mess up with
| renewables on purpose.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Hydrogen only makes electric vehicles look good and the
| only alternative. In fact, if this purposeful which I
| doubt, it probably helped stopped other companies from
| making hydrogen
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| It might also be because the Japanese government works very
| hard to have full employment and EVs require less labor.
| hogehoge51 wrote:
| WTF , you are commenting about FCEV - these things dont have
| engines!
|
| The strategy clearly stated by Akio Toyoda is multiple power
| train technology. You can listen to his interviews on the
| subject, some are in Japanese, but as you have stated a clear
| and unambiguous interpretation of Toyota's policy I will
| assume you have that fluency.
|
| (Automotive OEMs are assemblers, the parts come from the
| supply chain starting with Tier 1 suppliers. In that sense
| TMC does not do "making engines", but possibly the nuance and
| consequences here of whether not it "wraps it's head" to
| "makes things", vs if it has the capability to specify,
| manufacture distribute something at scale with a globally
| localized supply chain AND adjust to consumer demand/resource
| availability changes 5 years after the design start - in this
| context i ask you, can you "wrap your head" around the latest
| models that are coming out in every power train technology
| fcev, (p)hev to bev)
| WarmWash wrote:
| Toyota has had this hydrogen bug since the early 90's.
|
| What's that old meme?
|
| Stop trying to make ____ happen, it's not going to happen.
| api wrote:
| Biofuel makes more sense for airplanes. No conversion even
| necessary. You could fuel up a 737 with properly formulated
| biofuel and fly it now, though a lot of validation would be
| needed to be generally allowed especially for passenger
| flights.
|
| If we want easier to produce biofuels then LNG aviation makes
| sense. We are flying LNG rockets already. You could go ahead
| and design LNG planes now and they'd emit less carbon even on
| fossil natural gas. Existing turbofan jet engines could be
| retrofitted to burn methane.
|
| Biogas is incredibly easy to make to the point that there are
| pretty easy designs online for off grid biogas digesters you
| can use to run a generator. You can literally just turn a
| barrel upside down in a slightly larger barrel full of water,
| shit, and food waste, attach a hose to it, and as the inner
| barrel floats up it fills with biogas under mild pressure
| that you can plug right into things. May need to dry it for
| some applications since it might contain some water vapor but
| that's not hard.
|
| Industrial scale biogas is basically the same principle. Just
| large scale, usually using sewage and farm waste.
|
| LNG rockets also mean "green" space launch is entirely
| possible.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| There _is_ a great way to store, transport, and use hydrogen:
|
| Bind it to various length carbon chains.
|
| When burned as an energy source the two main byproducts are
| carbon dioxide which is an essential plant growth nutrient, and
| water which is also essential to plant growth.
|
| Environmentalists will love it!
|
| And they can prise my turbo diesel engines from my cold dead
| hands.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which makes the world
| warmer on average. It also lowers the PH levels of the
| oceans.
|
| If the oceans die, its very likely that many or even most
| humans will also. As a human I am pretty strongly opposed to
| dying, but thats just, like, my opinion man.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Take The Great Barrier Reef for example.
|
| There's more of it now than in the reefs recorded history.
|
| Well, 2022 data:
|
| https://www.aims.gov.au/information-centre/news-and-
| stories/...
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| "The picture is complex. Recovery here, fresh losses
| there.
|
| While the recovery we reported last year was welcome
| news, there are challenges ahead. The spectre of global
| annual coral bleaching will soon become a reality."
|
| This article also mentions that a recent large recovery
| was due to el nino conditions
|
| "Great Barrier Reef was reeling from successive
| disturbances, ranging from marine heatwaves and coral
| bleaching to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and
| cyclone damage, with widespread death of many corals
| especially during the heatwaves of 2016 and 2017.
|
| Since then, the Reef has rebounded. Generally cooler La
| Nina conditions mean hard corals have recovered
| significant ground, regrowing from very low levels after
| a decade of cumulative disturbances to record high levels
| in 2022 across two-thirds of the reef."
|
| Not sure if you were trying to imply some long term
| recovery or that global warming didn't hurt it because
| the article says heatwaves were part of a many other
| conditions that caused massive damage
| nandomrumber wrote:
| No one ever attract public support and funding by saying:
|
| _Don't Panic._
|
| _Everything is O.K._
|
| ---
|
| Edited to add: Rate limited so can't reply without
| creating more alt accounts than I'm willing to, so:
|
| @Timon3 - that's actually a really good point, and I
| follow at least a few folk that could be categorised as
| such at least some of the time.
| Timon3 wrote:
| No, many people say exactly that and make a lot of money
| doing so while also telling us that all the evidence is
| fake.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Trump asked for a billion. [0] He didn't get the whole
| billion (as far as we know), but he's keeping up his end
| of the deal.
|
| [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-
| oil-exec...
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Bad news, there has been a fourth great bleaching event
| going on since January of 23. This time 80+% of all reefs
| have been impacted and the consensus seems to be that its
| unlikely there will be any reefs left at all before too
| long.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/13/coral
| -re...
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Yes yes, The Sky Is Falling(tm).
|
| All the more reason to give our ounce great nation away
| to _fuck wits_ who think shooting up Jews is a reasonable
| idea, making electricity expensive chasing a target that
| will have approximately no impact on global carbon
| emissions and further drive manufacturing out of the
| country, all the while making even my generation
| (Xillenials) worse off now than we were ten years ago.
|
| Young people and the working poor? They can freeze in the
| dark on the streets, _fuck them_.
|
| Turn up unannounced and utter the shibboleth _asylum
| seeker_ and we roll out the red carpet. Low interest
| loans so they can start businesses, and priory social
| housing. _Fuck the locals_.
|
| And you _cum guzzlers_ keep voting for _more of it_.
|
| There's only so much ideology we can take. Check One
| Nations recently polling.
|
| I'm encouraging young people to get in to the trades,
| especially brick laying and masonry because if things
| keep going they way they are...
|
| _We're going to need more walls._
|
| Know what I'm sayin'.
| Intermernet wrote:
| I think you've been listening to the wrong people. That's
| a whole lot of dog whistles in that screed.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Right, don't address the substance of the message, just
| drive-by-dismiss the concerns of a growing segment of
| voters.
|
| My comment you responded to didn't happen overnight.
|
| You're welcome to go through my comment history and
| address my concerns as detailed over the previous
| thirteen years, many of which are much more level headed
| and many contain references to thinkers much more
| intelligent and way more eloquent than anything I'll ever
| write.
| itishappy wrote:
| Yes yes, The Sky Is Falling(tm). :)
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Haha! Yeah, embarrassing to say that then go on to write
| that screed.
|
| Time for a top-up!
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > Know what I'm sayin'.
|
| I do, and if I were you I would stop to think about your
| priors. You have stacked an awful lot of ideas on top of
| each other to build a world view that has lies,
| misinformation, and unsound science at the base of it.
| Worse, a lot of it is selfish, but in a way that only
| works if the entire global economy is a zero sum game.
| Enlightened self-interest can be right, and even noble,
| but only if you know the game well enough to comprehend
| why altruism is still important, and you don't. The world
| is NOT a zero sum game, and this kind of self-interest is
| the bad kind.
|
| Some of the logic at the top of your pyramid would be
| sound, if the bottom wasn't a pile of mush. A few minor
| points:
|
| 1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now (for net
| new electricity). It's been that way for awhile now, but
| one particular bubble tries really hard to stop people
| from learning that. If cost is your concern you should be
| pushing for more solar, and less of the fuel you
| literally set fire to and have to keep digging up forever
| until it runs out.
|
| 2) Giving money to hostile Arab nations who hate you is
| not going to stop anyone from "took 'er jorbs"ing you. In
| fact, you would have more money if your car didn't
| literally burn your money constantly and also require
| expensive oil changes and other maintenance constantly.
|
| 3) Pretty much everything you said about loans and
| housing is based on absolute fabrications, or extreme
| exaggerations. Even if it weren't, other people receiving
| assistance doesn't actually cost you anything. The
| national debt has INCREASED at a record pace under Trump,
| exactly as it does during every Republican presidency,
| and it's not because Trump loves helping people so much.
|
| Republican presidents have added about $1.4 trillion per
| four-year term, compared to $1.2 trillion added by
| Democrats since 1913. During my lifetime there has never
| been a Republican president who was fiscally conservative
| in the slightest. Trump is somehow making it worse while
| also letting children starve thanks to cutting USAID.
|
| 4) There's nothing wrong with the trades, if your body
| can physically handle it for 40-50 years. It's good and
| honest work, and we need more folks to go into them. It's
| also likely to be more stable and less demanding than the
| kind of work most of us here do.
|
| 5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing
| jobs? The only reasons humans have them is that humans
| (in some places) are cheaper than robots. Robots are
| getting cheaper every day. Moving them here will get us a
| few (even richer) billionaires. Not more jobs (at least
| not the kind you're probably thinking of). It will also
| increase the cost of ALL THE THINGS.
|
| The worst part of this mistake is that while normal
| people spend most of their money billionaires spend only
| a miniscule fraction of their income. Billionaire money
| just idles non-productively most of the time, or is
| engaged in parasitic interest gathering via obscure
| financial instruments. Giving money to billionaires is
| kind of like throwing it in the garbage. Giving it to the
| middle class is good for everyone, because they buy
| things and drive demand.
|
| Lastly, I'm also a Xennial, and I have to say that I'm
| better off now than 10 years ago. Maybe I just made
| better choices?
|
| Either way, drink plenty of water before bed. It will
| help with the hangover in the morning.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| [delayed]
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Factually correct, but you also missed the joke.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It was only _kinda_ a joke. It 's a joke in the same way
| that uncle on Facebook makes jokes. You know the one.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The major problem with hydrocarbons today is that we are
| releasing carbon dioxide stored hundreds of millions of
| years ago.
|
| If, theoretically, you could produce hydrocarbons from the
| carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere, then it
| could be a substantial reduction in net carbon dioxide
| being added; and it would be compatible with the fuel
| infrastructure of today.
| thrownthatway wrote:
| What must have been the composition of the atmosphere all
| those hundreds of millions of years ago for all that
| carbon dioxide to have been removed from the atmosphere
| and sequestered as biological matter, to then be buried
| and reacted to form vast quantities of hydrocarbons.
|
| The bind moggles.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Your mind should boggle. It's all pretty amazing.
|
| 2.5 billion years ago the earth would have been
| uninhabitable to most modern life. Single celled life
| evolved in those conditions and began creating glucose
| and oxygen from CO2 and water. When those primitive
| lifeforms died some of them became oil and the CO2 was
| sequestered.
|
| Over time the CO2 levels dropped until about 20 million
| years ago the CO2 levels fell to about 300ppm. That's
| when life as we know it really took off. Yes, it took
| BILLIONS of years to get there.
|
| Humans have only existed for about 200k years. During
| that time our CO2 levels have mostly been below about
| 280ppm. The are now at 429ppm and are rising
| exponentially. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
| thrownthatway wrote:
| What role, if any, did carbonate mineral formation have
| in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's possible to synthesise hydrocarbon analogues of
| petroluem-based fuels. The problem to date has been that
| this isn't cost-competitive with petroleum, though the
| difference is narrower than you might expect. Most
| famously, a Google X Project attempted this and succeeded
| technically, but the economics were unfavourable: Project
| Foghorn: <https://x.company/projects/foghorn/>. Both
| Germany and South Africa have performed synfuel production
| (from coal) at industrial scale since the 1930s / 1950s,
| respectively. Using non-fossil carbon is largely the same
| chemistry; the process _does_ in fact scale.
|
| Fischer-Tropsch and Sabatier process can both operate with
| scavenged CO2. There's been some work since the 1990s
| utilising seawater as a CO2 source, with CO2 capture being
| far more efficient than from atmospheric sources.
|
| Whilst hydrocarbons have numerous downsides (whether
| sourced from fossil or renewable sources), they are also
| quite convenient, exceedingly well-proven, and tremendously
| useful. In some applications, particularly marine and
| aviation transport, there are few if any viable
| alternatives.
|
| I've commented on this numerous times at HN over the years:
| <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&
| qu...>.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The problem is all the effort = energy you need to spend
| collecting carbon atoms.
| foota wrote:
| > Hydrogen is such a terrible idea it was never getting off the
| ground.
|
| See: the Hindenburg disaster
|
| afternote: There's the potential for an amazing pun in here,
| but I don't think I quite did the opportunity justice.
| AngryData wrote:
| Ehh, the Hindenburg had a flammable skin. Barrage balloons
| from the World Wars were most often filled with hydrogen and
| yet were extremely difficult to ignite or take down even with
| purpose build incindiary ammo for that purpose shows hydrogen
| balloons can be safe. Often they would be riddled with dozens
| of holes but still take many hours for them to lose enough
| hydrogen to float back down to the ground.
|
| The only real downsides are slow travel speed and
| vulnerability to extreme storms since there arent many places
| to put it with a large enough hanger even with days of
| warning beforehand.
| cyberax wrote:
| That's because regular bullets are actually pretty cold,
| especially by the time they reach the height of anti-air
| balloons.
|
| But hydrogen itself is SCARY. It has an extremely wide
| range of ignitable concentrations, and it has very low
| ignition energy. It also tends to leak through ~everything.
| AngryData wrote:
| But hydrogen is also so easy to produce on demand that
| you can design your balloon to be at small positive
| pressure all the time and always leaks outwards into the
| open air. If oxygen is allowed to leaked in undetected,
| yeah that's a death trap. The same if hydrogen leaked
| into semi contained oxygen enclosures. But leaking
| through the skin of the balloon to open sky even with
| decent size holes and a bit of positive pressure doesn't
| ignite particularly well, despite hydrogen's wide range
| of ignition conditions.
|
| It is not such a fool proof technology that everybody
| should have one, but to me building and operating a
| hydrogen balloon isn't dissimilar to running a steam
| locomotive. It can be dangerous if done badly or
| incorrectly, but it can also be done safely with pretty
| well known and understood technologies and methods and
| practices. And considering the massive efficiency of
| lighter-than-air transport I find it hard to dismiss its
| potential even so long after their heyday and previous
| problems.
| beAbU wrote:
| Pointing to the Hindenburg as an example of why hydrogen is a
| bad idea is the same as pointing to Chernobyl as an example
| of why nuclear is a bad idea.
|
| _wait..._
| belorn wrote:
| People looked at how the cost of wind and solar went down and
| made a assumption that green hydrogen would follow. The
| reasoning was that the cost of green hydrogen was energy, and
| thus at some point green hydrogen would be too cheap to meter.
|
| The whole energy plan of central/northen Europe, especially
| Germany, was built for the last several decades on the idea
| that they would combine wind, solar and cheap natural gas and
| then replace the natural gas part with green hydrogen. In
| Sweden there were even several municipalities that spear headed
| this by switching mass transportation and heating towards
| hydrogen, initially with hydrogen produced through natural gas,
| as a way to get ahead on this plan.
|
| The more sensible project were the green steel project. As
| experts in green hydrogen said consistently said through those
| decades, is that green steel would be the real test to make
| green hydrogen economical. The economics of burning it for
| energy or transportation would come several decades later, if
| ever. The green steel project however has not ended up as
| planned and gotten severely delayed and has seen a cost
| increase by an estimated 10x. municipalities are now giving up
| the hydrogen infrastructure and giving it an early retirement,
| as maintenance costs was significantly underestimated. There is
| very little talk now about replacing natural gas with green
| hydrogen, and the new plan is instead to replace the natural
| gas with bio fuels, hinted at carbon capture, at some
| unspecified time.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Good context. It's a shame none of these people did high
| school chemistry.
|
| I do remember there being some news about the steel manf.
|
| I wonder if further advancements in rocketry are adding H2
| tech that could help us manage the difficulties of dealing
| with the stuff. It still only makes sense in very specific
| circumstances. Like when you need energy in tank form.
|
| But I think battery / biofuel is the future.
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| Sweden has very little natural gas in its energy mix:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-
| sou...
|
| I highly doubt that hydrogen heating was ever considered.
| It's usually pushed by the gas lobby (since most hydrogen
| comes from gas), and Sweden doesn't have a strong gas lobby.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That was _extremely_ stupid of them then. Hydrogen has been
| very good at one thing: subsidy extraction. But I don 't
| think it was or ever will be a viable fuel for planetary
| transportation.
| scraptor wrote:
| The idea was to transition from coal to natural gas while
| using solar and wind to reduce fuel consumption, thereby
| significantly reducing CO2 emissions. Any claims of hydrogen
| being burned were either lies to the public to get the gas
| plants built despite the non-green optics or lies to
| investors as part of a fraud scheme.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I had to Google what is green hydrogen. It is hydrogen
| produced by electrolysis.
|
| If you've already got the electricity for electrolysis, would
| it not be more efficient and mechanically simpler to store it
| in a battery and power an electric motor?
| overfeed wrote:
| Before the introduction of 800V charging architectures,
| long charge-time for EVs was a big con. Hydrogen Cell
| vehicles were supposed to be EVs with drastically faster
| fill-up times. The tradeoff was more complex delivery
| infrastructure.
| somat wrote:
| I think that is the way it is headed. But you never know.
| Sometimes when comparing it helps me to reduce these things
| down to lower levels.
|
| What is a battery? A chemical cell to store hydrogen and
| oxygen(true, it does not "have" to be hydrogen and oxygen
| but it usually is) to later get energy out of. For example
| lead-acid(stores the oxygen in the lead-sulfate plates and
| the hydrogen the the sulfuric acid liquid) or nickle-
| metal(charges into separate oxygen and hydrogen compounds,
| discharges into water) the lithium cell replaces hydrogen
| with lithium. Consider a pure hydrogen, oxygen fuel-cell,
| it could be run in reverse(charged) to get the hydrogen and
| oxygen and run forward(discharged) to get electricity out
| of it. So it is a sort of battery, a gas battery. Gas
| batteries are generally a bad idea, mainly because they
| have to be so big. Much time and effort is spent finding
| liquids that can undergo the oxidation/reduction reactions
| at a reasonable temperature. But now consider that there is
| quite a bit of oxygen in the air, if we did not have to
| store the oxygen our battery could be much more efficient,
| This is the theory behind free-air batteries. But what if
| our battery did not have to run at a reasonable
| temperature. We could then use a heat engine to get the
| energy out. And thus the Mirai. They are shipping half of
| the charged fluid to run in a high temperature reaction
| with the other half(atmospheric oxygen) to drive a heat
| engine that provides motive power.
|
| As opposed to having the customer run the full chemical
| plant to charge and store the charged fluids to run in a
| fuel cell to turn a electric motor for motive power.
| Honestly they are both insane in their own way. But
| shipping high energy fluids tend to have better energy
| density. Perhaps the greatest problem in this case is that
| it is in gaseous form(not very dense) so has no real
| advantage. Unfortunately one of the best ways to retain
| hydrogen in a liquid form is carbon.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The value proposition of hydrogen is energy density.
| Batteries have low energy per unit of volume and awful
| energy density by unit of mass. You will never, ever, fly
| across the Pacific on a battery powered aircraft.
| Transoceanic shipping is also not feasible with batteries
| (current and proposed battery powered shopping lanes are
| short hops of a couple hundred kilometers or less).
| dotancohen wrote:
| The Toyota Mirai is a passenger vehicle, not an airplane
| nor a transatlantic container ship.
| rswail wrote:
| Green hydrogen is a way to _ship_ solar power elsewhere
| that doesn 't have it, similar to a battery, but with the
| advantage of being able to be piped/pumped/liquified etc.
| dmix wrote:
| > When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they
| should be punished.
|
| Sounds like it was mostly just people reacting to government
| incentives. Subsidized markets acting irrational.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Politicians are conduits. Someone wanted this to happen.
|
| But yea, subsidies. I've been on many a call where "there's
| govt funding available if we shape this like x" is one of the
| major selling points.
| dmix wrote:
| Politics has a habit of being very insular once elections
| are finished.
|
| There will always be a strong belief in artificially
| changing market behaviour by simply throwing money at it
| and hoping it sticks. When the money dries up the public
| tends to go back to "what's practical and affordable?".
| HPsquared wrote:
| Synthetic fuels (including hydrogen) do still make a lot of
| sense for heavy stuff like trucks, buses or trains, and
| aircraft where the energy density is a big plus. Those are
| where you'd expect to see hydrogen take off first, not
| passenger cars. Same as how diesel started in trucks -
| expensive engines but economical when amortized and worth it
| for heavy usage applications.
|
| If they couldn't crack those areas, no chance in the highly
| competitive passenger car space.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Trucks and busses would be better off with battery swaps at
| depo like electric forklifts do. More mileage more towing
| weight for trucks, just stack more batteries. Overweight? Use
| a diesel.
|
| Trains is an easy one, over head lines.
|
| Aircraft, I think short distance trips <1hr maybe otherwise
| biofuel. Likely we'll see biofuels widely used by 2040.
| Electric motors on a 777, I'm not sure.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they
| should be punished.
|
| This is the most ridiculous assertion i've seen today. You'd
| shut down science, for example, and innovation in general.
| laughing_man wrote:
| >When people go out of their way to avoid common sense they
| should be punished.
|
| You could say the same about EVs. Most people in the US who
| bought an EV decided to go back to ICE for their next vehicle.
| rswail wrote:
| Green hydrogen makes sense as a way to _ship_ solar power to
| places that don 't have it.
|
| Using it as a car fuel only makes sense as an interim step to
| full renewable/EVs.
|
| Internal combustion engines, no matter what the fuel, are way
| more complicated than electric motors. Doesn't matter how you
| slice and dice the argument.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| With solar/wind oligarchs can't charge you every time you
| charge your EV at home
|
| Hydrogen was meant to replace Oil so that the oligarchs can
| keep their oligarchy rather than "pull themselves up by
| bootstraps"
| retired wrote:
| Cheapest second generation Mirai I could find is EUR9950
| including VAT. It has scuffs all-round but no major or structural
| damage. Only 103k km.
|
| This was a EUR71,000 car four years ago. That is 86% of the value
| gone. And you were driving around on very expensive hydrogen
| (compared to diesel and BEV).
| vel0city wrote:
| > And you were driving around on very expensive hydrogen
|
| That original owner was probably doing all those miles on the
| free hydrogen given by Toyota.
| alexose wrote:
| I've always been fascinated with these things. Is there any way
| to make your own H2 to fuel them? I suspect the purity
| requirements are too high for at-home electrolysis...
| empathy_m wrote:
| At one point recently the Mirai came with a fuel incentive
| program: when you buy the car, Toyota gives you a gift card worth
| $15,000 towards fuel at hydrogen stations.
|
| An interesting second part of the program was that if you live
| near a hydrogen station but it's broken, Toyota will instead
| reimburse a rental car and gas for the rental, one week at a time
| but presumably for as long the hydrogen fuel station remains
| broken.
| kccqzy wrote:
| $15,000 worth of fuel card sounds generous until you find that
| hydrogen stations have jacked up prices to $36/kg.
| smcin wrote:
| Full tank capacity of a Mirai is ~5 kg / (120 liters in
| volume).
| stbtrax wrote:
| still means nothing, what is the mileage or $/mi there?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Apparently 1kg of hydrogen is about 60 miles range, which
| seems like a lot, but apparently fuel cells are that good.
|
| Currently hydrogen fuel if you can get it is about 15 quid
| a kilo in the UK, giving a tank range of around 400 miles
| for PS80. This makes it a little more expensive than
| diesel, considerably more expensive than petrol, and
| roughly the same price as electric.
|
| By comparison Autogas LPG is around 92p/litre (or about
| PS1.80 per kilo) and in a very large heavy 4.6 litre Range
| Rover you get around 250-300 miles for your PS80 tankful,
| depending on how heavy your right foot is.
| foota wrote:
| > This makes it a little more expensive than diesel,
| considerably more expensive than petrol, and roughly the
| same price as electric
|
| Is electric charging more expensive in the UK than
| petrol? That's nuts.
| michaelt wrote:
| According to [1] it breaks down like this:
|
| EV at rapid/ultra-rapid chargers: 25p/mile
|
| Petrol, diesel: 15p/mile
|
| EV charging at home: 8p/mile
|
| This is because there's a government price cap on _home_
| electricity, but not on _commercial_ electricity - and
| rapid chargers are all commercial (and of course for-
| profit).
|
| [1] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-
| cars/charging/electric-...
| stoneman24 wrote:
| If you can get a cheap electric overnight home charging
| tariff in the UK, then the electric cost is lower. Mid
| week, I charged 43kWh for the cost of PS3.04 (7p per
| kWh). My home charger does 7kwh in a hour. Usual mileage
| is about 4 miles per kWh (typical rush hour drive into
| Edinburgh). That should give me about 170 miles of range.
|
| Scaling it to 400 miles (400 miles at 4 miles per kWh is
| 100 kWh which at 7p each is about PS7. Pretty much an
| order of magnitude better than your estimate. I admit
| home charging is the best arrangement and I am fortunate
| to have it. I did a holiday trip to the highlands and
| used public/hotel chargers which were closer to your
| numbers but also much faster (up to 150kWh per hour
| capacity).
|
| I think that even discounting hydrogen engineering
| difficulties, the infrastructure for electric is pretty
| much in place and the race of the technologies is over.
| newyankee wrote:
| I think a few people were expecting the same cost curves that
| happened with batteries to happen with hydrogen but it seems
| the challenges are more difficult to overcome. Otherwise I
| think a Solar PV plant combined with Captive hydrogen
| production for refuelling on major highways sounds interesting,
| at least in countries like US, Australia etc. I believe this is
| not just about PEM or AEM electrolyser or specific tech, it
| never got the scaling boost.
|
| Ironically the stack comprising fuel cells of different types
| is possibly very well studied since decades.
|
| For me the Wells to wheel efficiency never made hydrogen
| worthwhile for short to medium distances and this battle is
| effectively over.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Forget the type of electrolyzer, even if they were free
| hydrogen would still be expensive. The challenges with
| hydrogen getting cheaper are thermodynamic and can't be
| innovated around. The amount of energy required to
| electrolyze water simply cannot drop by 10x.
|
| The other difficulties (low energy density, ability to leak
| through many materials, massive explosion risks, near-
| invisible flames, etc., etc.) are all inherent to H2 as a
| molecule.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Not that much worse than an ev.
| vel0city wrote:
| Used models for my five year old EV are still selling for ~50%
| of what I paid for, so no, its far worse than most EVs.
| sksasi wrote:
| A full tank would cost $200 for about 300-350 mile range.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| If you think depreciation on a few cars is bad wait until you
| find out how many hundreds of millions taxpayers spent to build
| hydrogen stations for cars that don't exist.
|
| At least it's not as blatant of a green energy scam as the high
| speed rail to nowhere. In this case they actually built a few
| stations that worked.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| Cars are not investments.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Depends on the car. Some are so special they will have a better
| ROI than your retirement plan.
|
| https://www.myartbroker.com/investing/articles/top-10-most-i...
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's got the EV problem, but 100x worse. No only do you have to
| worry about where to find a place to refuel, there are _far_
| fewer of them, and level 1 charging isn 't a fallback. It also
| doesn't have the EV upsides.
| some-guy wrote:
| I lived a block away from a hydrogen fuel station in Oakland, and
| in the ten years I was there I maybe saw two different Mirais use
| it.
| swifferfan wrote:
| Obligatory paper - Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense? (2006)
|
| https://alpha.chem.umb.edu/chemistry/ch471/evans%20files/Pro...
|
| Nothing fundamental has changed in the last 2 decades to refute
| the arguments Bossel made in 2006.
| dizhn wrote:
| According to some youtube (doomer) videos I watched a lot of EVs
| and luxury cars also had this kind of depreciation lately.
| GregDavidson wrote:
| This technology is completely amazing - for large fleet vehicles
| like buses, trucks, ferries, etc. Also airplanes! Getting this so
| compact and refined is a technological miracle. Now put it where
| it fits!
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| Buses are already largely electric (with the US as a notable
| exception), and trucks are quickly getting there:
|
| https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...
|
| Meanwhile, hydrogen trucks are nowhere to be found...
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Theres something clickbaity and missing from this article, I
| encourage watching youtubers like 'mirai club' for better info.
| What i recall from his videos is:
|
| - The Mirai made financial sense AS A LEASE for folks in Southern
| California back in 2022 (possibly 2023) because:
| - Car prices in general (including EVs) were fairly highly priced
| at the time due to demand, the chip shortage, etc. -
| There were clean vehicle incentives to get a Toyota Mirai,
| including things like a hydrogen fuel fill up card to cover
| expenses. - At the time there was some assumptions
| that hydrogen fuel costs would go down over time, but they
| actually went up.
|
| Again, I suspect most folks LEASED the Mirai due to it being a
| very niche car with limited usage outside of california due to
| the lack of hydrogen fuel stations. Youre now seeing some viral
| videos on the ultra low cost used Mirai's showing up in states
| that dont have hydrogen infrastructure due to some odd car dealer
| auction buys (Transport Evolved has a youtube video on this.)
|
| The article does talk about the lack of investment in hydrogen
| infrastructure, this is true and theres been a huge split between
| _announced_ infrastructure investments and what has actually
| happened (see
| https://bsky.app/profile/janrosenow.bsky.social/post/3labfzi...
| for a chart going through 2021-2024). The current US political
| situation and its impact on clean energy probably doesn't help
| either.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| The Mirai was _only_ available as a lease, back in the 2018
| timeframe anyway, in Southern California.
| haneul wrote:
| There were also really good financing deals during Covid. Net
| for me after all costs after resale was $1k for the years I
| owned the car (the 2nd gen).
|
| But I got in near the bottom and got out before the market for
| it dumped.
| HoldOnAMinute wrote:
| The last time I checked local ads, they were giving these cars
| away free, and you could get a tax deduction. They were paying
| you to take it.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| This article is too long because it's written by a llm
| jacquesm wrote:
| You only see Mirais within spitting distance of the one place
| where they can tank. The network just isn't developed to the
| point that owning one of these makes any sense at all.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Sorry. EVs won.
| decryption wrote:
| I'm surprised it's only 65%. There's hardly anywhere to fuel
| these things up and the price of hydrogen isn't exactly a
| bargain.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Hydrogen fuel solves a long term strategic problem for Japan,
| which is why the Mirai got as far as it did.
|
| Japan imports energy. They have to be very careful about which
| type of energy they build infrastructure for, because they must
| pay to import that type of energy for decades or centuries. (LNG
| vs Coal use very different equipment) This is specifically a
| strategic problem for Japan compared to other energy importers
| because they both use a lot of energy, and don't have a military
| option to secure a foreign supply.
|
| Hydrogen fuel could be created by almost any energy source and
| then used just like any other fuel source. Ideally Japan would
| like to pay energy exporters to convert their energy to Hydrogen
| so Japan has maximum flexibility when importing energy.
|
| Projects like the Mirai exist as proof of concepts for Hydrogen,
| and the United States was never going to be an early widespread
| adopter of this technology.
| alephnerd wrote:
| ^^^ This.
|
| But Japan has also been heavily investing in solid state
| batteries, whose supply chain Idemetsu Kosan and Toyota have
| begun to productionize [0].
|
| The Japanese government made a decision in the early 2000s to
| make a dual-pronged bet on Hydrogen and solid-state battery
| chemistry because they lacked the supply chain and a legal
| method to access IP for lithium ion batteries.
|
| On the other hand, Samsung and LG got the license for Li-On
| back during the NMC days, and BYD was able to piggyback on
| Samsung and Berkshire's IP access when both took growth equity
| stakes in BYD decades ago.
|
| Another reason that _a lot_ of people overlook is the Hydrogen
| supply chain overlaps heavily with the supply chain needed to
| domestically produce nitrogen-fixing fertilizers which is
| heavily concentrated in a handful of countries (especially
| Russia with whom Japan has had a border dispute with since the
| end of WW2) [1].
|
| [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/idemitsu-
| build-pi...
|
| [1] - https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/impacts-and-repercussions-
| pric...
| killingtime74 wrote:
| I went to the Toyota museum where they actually have one of these
| cars as a cross section. I would never drive one. It's like
| driving around with a massive bomb under the rear seat. Forget
| thermal runway from batteries, I wonder how big the crater of the
| explosion from one these would be.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Safer than liquid fuel. There are videos out there of what a
| leak+fire looks like on a hydrogen and gasoline car. You would
| rather be trapped in the hydrogen car.
|
| https://youtu.be/OA8dNFiVaF0
| m463 wrote:
| It's really simple.
|
| 1 Kg of hydrogen is SUPER EXPENSIVE (equivalent ~ 1 gallon of
| gas)
|
| $17/gallong when I looked at the pumps
|
| When the Mirai first came out, owners didn't care because the
| fuel was free.
|
| But after that ended, they had to buy it for themselves.
|
| who wants to pay that?
|
| (also, stations weren't plentiful like EV chargers, and even
| though you could fill up faster than an EV charge, who cares when
| you can't go very far (distance-wise from home).
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