Japanese firm believes it *could* make a solid-state battery...
The key word here is obviously *could*.
Add one more to the pile of claims and beliefs floating around that have yet to transform into viable products.
I have been a Toyota fan from way back. I have owned a number of their vehicles. But in my mind, they lost a lot of technical credibility when they tried to apply political influence in a short sighted attempt to steer the marketplace toward hydrogen.
This was really just a thinly veiled effort to prolong the marketplace viability of the internal combustion engine --- to the detriment of the global environment.
Exactly this. Hydrogen is like crypto. It has just enough interesting tech to attract (using D&D terminology here) high INT, low WIS people.
Hydrogen will probably never work unless someone comes up with a stable molecule that includes hydrogen, is large enough to not move through solid objects, and still retains enough chemical energy to be useful. Ammonium is one option, but it is highly toxic. Only really practical in cargo ships.
Hydrogen also can be useful for inherently expensive things like rockets and jet planes. But never cars.
It was never going to compete with electric. EVs have been slandered for so long that people just assumed we would come up with something better. But EVs are great. Driving an ICE car after being in a Tesla feels like playing a first-person shooter over dial-up.
I would not underestimate the amount of weight behind the development and commercialization of hydrogen technology. Everyone in the oil and gas industry, including natural gas utilities, has a strong incentive to figure out how to make it work.
Literally everyone has a massive incentive to make green hydrogen work. It is pretty fundamental to industry, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, etc. There is no path to zero emissions without it. In reality, just a handful of vocal BEV fans oppose this technology on purely personal grounds.
I'm one of those vocal opponents for hydrogen cars, but I do like the technology in general. I'm a huge fan of hydrogen for agriculture, forestry, and other big applications where grid access is really challenging and even small gaps to recharge are unacceptable. Personal transport just doesn't make the list.
Hydrogen won't ever make sense for personal transportation since the cost of batteries has come down way too far. Green hydrogen under perfect conditions has way too many efficiency penalties to compete with pure battery vehicles, so the cost per unit distance just won't ever make sense compared to the tiny losses for batteries.
I don't even care that much if companies like Toyota want to waste their development dollars on personal hydrogen transport that won't ever happen. I just want to make sure subsidy dollars are spent correctly. Use government money on decarbonizing farms and long distance heavy transport with hydrogen. Don't waste that money on cars that will always be too expensive to operate compared with BEVs.
That’s absurd. Hydrogen cars will drop to costs comparable to ICE cars. It is a massive reduction in raw material needs. Not to mention the millions of people who need fast public refueling since they do not have access to home chargers.
People are stuck in an innovation trap with BEVs. It is pretty much what Clay Christensen wrote about in his book Innovator’s Dilemma. You cannot just linearly improve a single idea until it surpasses all other ideas, now and forever. Especially one that has many limits as BEVs. It is inevitable that there will be step functions in change, i.e. disruptive changes, coming to the market. Forward thinking companies will plan for that inevitability, not pretend BEVs are the final destination of personal transportation.
The world has already squandered billions of dollars on every kind of green technology. That could easily imply BEVs themselves. It is the biggest of double standards to not insist on hydrogen subsidies. If you truly oppose the idea, then oppose all subsidies for all green energy. If not, then accept hydrogen subsidies as a good idea.
> Literally everyone has a massive incentive to make green hydrogen work.
There is also the reality that certain company have taken a lot of money for a long time without producing many results. Specially if its fossil fuel companies that rubs people the wrong way. Just as giving money to Ford and GM wasn't the solution to get EV going. So its understandable that many people don't love the promotion of it.
I am as anti-hydrogen as anybody but I do believe it has a place. However, it should be limited and only used in places where you really need it. So instead of using it in transportation, using it in the chemical industry makes much more sense. Its simply not needed for the overwhelming majority of transportation applications. And even for the the stuff that is left over its often questionable if its worth developing the new infrastructure. Using it for personal vehicle and most cargo transport is utterly idiotic. Using it for most trains is idiotic. The list goes on.
Some people believe the massive steel CO2 use will be solved with hydrogen, but as with transport, there are better ways forward then that in my opinion. But again, hydrogen is getting the lions share of investment there too.
In general I am much more against they 'hydrogen economy' idea and concept, rather then hydrogen. Using energy to split water is reasonable, but most of the time hydrogen is just a short temporary state until it gets turned into something else. Very different from the hydrogen economy people in-visioned.
Another question is if electrolysis of access renewable production is really a great path forward.
These are opinions based on profound ignorance. Many sectors can never reach zero emissions without hydrogen. Things like airplanes and ships. You must invest in the infrastructure no matter what.
And how can you have hydrogen for steel production without necessarily reducing the cost to the ballpark of coal or natural gas? If you can grasp that part, you should realize that it must be a cheap fuel in the future. Cheap enough that it can be easily affordable for transportation purposes. And for those who can't afford BEVs or don't have access to chargers, that is major motivation to pursue hydrogen cars.
Ultimately, you're left with many unsolvable problems if you try to tackle climate change without looking at hydrogen where it is applicable. You also need to think seriously about the downside of alternative ideas, and not pretend they are magically perfect. Batteries are heavy and expensive, nor are they environmental friendly to produce. If you see hydrogen as a far greener type of energy storage, then you will see there are upsides too. In other words, you are only looking at the cons, not the pros and the cons.
That's a completely ignorant statement. Hydrogen cars actually exist and work exactly as advertised. There are no fundamental challenges. This reads like one of those anti-BEV posts from a decade ago. In both cases, the author is totally oblivious to the current state of technology.
> It was never going to compete with electric. EVs have been slandered for so long that people just assumed we would come up with something better.
Hydrogen cars are EVs. This is a deep misunderstanding of the issue.
The production and storage of hydrogen is expensive, had the downside of requiring a large tank in the car and is less efficient than just using a battery.
The cost will drop to nearly zero, just like the rest of renewable energy production. Tanks are cheaper, smaller and lighter than li-ion batteries. Fuel cell cars are also EVs, just like BEVs. The "efficiency problem" is greatly exaggerated.
> Hydrogen cars actually exist and work exactly as advertised.
And if by that you mean very badly and very impractically then you are correct.
> There are no fundamental challenges.
Except, you know building them cheap at volume. Just a small thing.
> This reads like one of those anti-BEV posts from a decade ago.
Except it also reads like anti-Hydrogen EV post from a decade ago and since then BEV have made utterly insane amount of progress and hydrogen vehicles are still in the utterly sorry and embracing state they were 10 years ago.
I probably should have said "fuel cell cars are EVs." But yes, you can make an ICE powered by hydrogen. It is likely to be a niche product, mainly sports cars and perhaps some diesel engine replacements.
Supra isn't a Toyota; it's a BMW, so it isn't exactly helping the case that Toyota is on the right development path. They have to use a partner for high performance applications since they can't be bothered to develop their own.
B58 is a truly great combustion engine, but the idea any turbocharged ICE can compete with an electric motor for input lag is ridiculous. B58's twin scroll turbos certainly reduce lag compared with more run-of-the-mill turbo engines, but even naturally aspirated race engines with light flywheels feel laggy after driving even low-end BEVs.
Another key word is "Toyota" -- even if the battery tech is great, is Toyota really going to start making EVs or selling batteries? Japanese manufacturers have been dragging their feet on full EVs, possibly because the domestic Japanese grid can't really support EVs.
possibly because the domestic Japanese grid can't really support EVs.
The domestic grid has no impact on most Toyota/Japanese cars which are exported or built elsewhere --- often using engines made in Japan.
This was about saving a large segment of the Japanese economy which is centered around the internal combustion engine and associated expertise and know how.
Very similar to Germany. Als tooting the hydrogen horn.. Again similar to Germany. A wild pattern of sabotaging the successor by naming his little brother king emerges.
It’s comically bad. The charging curve is horrible, entertainment system is a joke, doesn’t look appealing and has issues with retaining charge on the 12 volt battery.
The infrastructure needed to fully support hydrogen would take decades to develop. Starting with some way to efficiently manufacture hydrogen without using even more fossil fuels.
It's the stall that they wanted --- to give them more time to milk ICE and adapt.
There is no corresponding infrastructure delay for EVs which are already being adopted.
Toyota has actually pivoted and partnered with Mazada to share tech to fill watch other's gaps. Toyota is releasing a full electric car in about 12-15 months.
Yes --- they're now being forced to play catch-up after their ridiculous attempt at diversion went nowhere.
Here is what they were spouting less than 2 years ago.
“By promoting further collaboration in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines, the five companies aim to provide customers with greater choice”.
There are currently over 150000 public charging points available all across the USA. And there are no technological issues to prevent more from being installed. At some point, more capacity will be needed but again --- no technological issues to prevent this.
Last time I looked there were less than 60 hydrogen refueling stations --- "pilot" projects in California put in place with government funding.
I rest my case. Like it or not, the decision has already been made by the marketplace --- the future is electric.
You will need many millions of them, and enough generating capacity to power then all. That is many years away. Likely decades.
There's also no technological issue preventing the expansion of hydrogen stations. It's also worth noting that this directly replaces the gas station, both in number and location. This is not nearly as big of a challenge as you might think. Unlike charging stations, which must exist in much greater numbers and new locations.
Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because:
[ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.
[ ] it will be too expensive for users.
[ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.
[ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.
[ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.
[ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable.
[ ] it has too short of a lifetime.
[ ] its charge rate is too slow.
[ ] its materials are too toxic.
[ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.
[ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.
[ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.
[ ] by the time it ships li-ion advances will match it.
There's a cynical comment like this on every battery story, ignoring the fact that battery breakthroughs do exist, and that lithium ion energy density has ~tripled in the past decade.
> lithium ion energy density has ~tripled in the past decade.
That's actually false. It originated from a literally made-up story by Bloomberg. In reality, NCA cells have existed since the late-2000s. Effective energy density was 250 Wh/kg. We have not significantly improved on this value since then.
I remember this kind of news for tech like hard disks. Day to day it felt that this improvements do not matter but that 20MB hard disk became 100MB then 400MB. It was exciting to see 1GB, it seemed impossible. Now you have for granted 1,000,000MB SSD super-fast high-capacity hard disks.
I hope that batteries continue improving like this and other technologies. It is going to be like magic.
Toyota position on EV for the last 10 years 'we will have these super uber amazing batteries soon, and then we will magically make amazing cars in high volume quickly'.
While Toyota has been busy looking for silver bullets that will solve imagined problems, Tesla has been scaling hard with good-enough technology. Their Q2'23 production is a hair under 2 million units per year, so they're already a mid-size OEM (the size of BMW, MB, Audi, etc).
Maybe Toyota does not want to compete in the luxury EV business because they do not see a profit for them. Toyota's success was not built on their luxury models.
EVs (at least those with road-trippable range) are currently aiming for a "luxury-ish" segment, because it helps hide the cost of the battery.
Extra $8K on a $50K car isn't too bad and can be hidden by cutting costs somewhere else. But on a <$20K car there's nothing left to cut, and the extra cost takes it out of the budget segment.
No one looks at TCO. A $28k EV vs a $20k ICE car will have significantly lower TCO over a ten year period. Oil changes alone will be $1200 if done every six months at $60 a pop.
It’s funny seeing these battery breakthrough articles repeatedly. It’s been years of them now :) I’m always curious who the science writers are who can’t exercise critical thinking and ask a few tougher questions or review a battery breakthrough rubric.
Are you implying there haven't been any battery breakthroughs? What do you think the average capacity, density and cycle time of a battery in 2003 vs 2023 is.
There has been a good gradual progress, and all the incremental improvements added up to much better batteries.
However, there regularly are press releases promising breakthroughs, but they either never reach production, or end up being one of the small incremental improvements, not a revolution.
The key word here is obviously *could*.
Add one more to the pile of claims and beliefs floating around that have yet to transform into viable products.
I have been a Toyota fan from way back. I have owned a number of their vehicles. But in my mind, they lost a lot of technical credibility when they tried to apply political influence in a short sighted attempt to steer the marketplace toward hydrogen.
This was really just a thinly veiled effort to prolong the marketplace viability of the internal combustion engine --- to the detriment of the global environment.