I’m in Phoenix, Arizona at the moment, America’s only city that’s named for both a leading brand of tissue and a mythical bird. Go on, check and see! I’m here because Toyota invited me out to the opening of their new Toyota Arizona Proving Ground, a large facility where, based on the name, I assume Toyota leaves its dough to rest, ferment, increase in volume, and develop more rich flavor. Why an automotive company requires such an extensive facility is beyond me, but I suspect they’ll explain everything.
I think tomorrow I’ll be going to some ribbon-cutting ceremony – I hope to see a pair of giant novelty scissors, or I’m going to be very cross – and I think I’ll get to drive some things off-road and on a track, including, it’s been hinted at, a hydrogen-powered truck of some kind.
Which leads me to my Secret Agenda: I’d like to ask some Toyota engineers just why the hell they still make and “sell” the Mirai, their hydrogen fuel-cell car, and what they’re doing with hydrogen in general, and, you know, why. I was told I’d be able to do this, and I’m genuinely curious.
In fact, one of Toyota’s PR people happened to see our story this week about how baffled we are that the Mirai will continue to be sold, a car that makes up 0.0008% of Toyota’s American sales and, to their credit, suggested I talk about their hydrogen strategy with their engineers and other experts.
I think this is generous, since we’ve not really been kind to the Mirai in general, either, reporting on the many lawsuits owners have leveled at the company because Mirais have proven to be expensive albatrosses that can’t leave a few locations in California, because there is nowhere else to refuel them. We’ve come right out and said the car is a “fascinating waste of money,” because, let’s be honest here, it is.
I mean, it’s a car that I genuinely cannot think of any reason to buy. Would you recommend a hydrogen-powered Mirai to anyone? Sure, it’s well-engineered and built with Toyota quality, but you can only refill it in a handful of stations in the Bay Area and Southern California, and the fuel is way more expensive than you’d think, with per-mile costs being higher than battery EVs or gasoline cars. Why would anyone want one of these?
So, hopefully, I’ll get some answers to that mystery. And drive some stuff, and they say there’s a “surprise” here, too. I’m hoping it’s a new Will Vi!
Really, I’m not sure what to expect. But if there’s anything you’d like to know about what Toyota is doing or what a proving ground does or anything like that, tell me in the comments, and I’ll do my best to pass it along to the Official Toyota Officials, officially.
So, what would you like to ask Uncle Toyota?
Is their ‘deal’ mostly driven by possible use in their domestic market?
Ask them if they have considered helium as a fuel source for a flying car.
It worked for a house in the animated documentary film from a few years ago so it should work for a car.
I want to understand more about the fuel transfer system and tanks. I’ve always been a huge fan of concept of a hydrogen powered vehicle because the benefits of it (water vapor byproduct, abundance of the element, could likely retrofit current fuel stations) always seemed amazing and the challenges associated with using it (transportation, storage, and fuel transfer) did not seem impossible. In my mind, if we can transport nuclear waste safely, why cant we transport hydrogen? So I would love to know what steps they have taken to protect the tanks in a crash and what technology they are using for fuel transfer and storage.
Check out “Angeles Link”.
SoCal utilities uprating their gas pipelines to begin to blend in hydrogen for power plants and industrial customers.
Even the LADWP coal plant in Utah is converting to stored (underground) hydrogen and a NatGas-H2 blend.
Nuclear waste only tends to leak a tiny a bit, but it is moleculary very dense Hydrogen leaks a lot because it is not. Atoms are really annoying.
When are they going to roll out their nationwide Hydrocharger (TM) network and will the nozzle work with other vendor’s cars?
Wanna smell my finger?
Where is Toyota planning to get the hydrogen? Cracking apart hydrocarbons? Electrolysis on water? And how is THAT (whatever that is) better than existing electricity and battery technology
Have they considered using dirigibles to deliver hydrogen? This would avoid traffic and real estate costs. Simply run a hose down to the delivery point.
Oh the simplicity!
I’m picturing the hose getting loose and the whole dirigible flying around erratically and making a PBBBBBBBBBBBBBT sound, like an escaped balloon in a cartoon.
Ask why they keep creating Mirais and ruining consumer perception of hydrogen(too expensive, unattractive car, worse range than gasoline), instead of just sticking to the heavy trucking development where fuel cells have more benefits even with the lack of infrastructure. Also, what the heck Toyota?
Know what else Toyota makes? Forklifts. In a large indoor facility that operates dozens of forklifts (I work in expo, but there are warehouses and factories, too) it would make tons of sense to build hydrogen-powered forklifts and install a refueling facility right on site. I am really tired of inhaling exhaust from propane-powered forklifts. Ask them why they don’t make hydrogen forklifts.
Sort of a different Toyota though, Toyota Material Handling is part of Toyota Industries. Toyota Industries owns 8.5% of Toyota Motor Corp, and Toyota Motor Corp in turn owns 23.5% of Toyota Industries, but they have totally different boards and executive teams
I’m sure you’re right. The Toyota forklifts that I drive still use a descendant of the 1600 engine used in 1970s Corollas, just converted to propane. So I’m sure the two Toyotas can share engines, even hydrogen ones.
Oh they do, Toyota Industries has an auto parts division and even still builds complete RAV4s under contract to Toyota Motor at their Nagakusa plant in Aichi prefecture
You’re giving me flashbacks to when I worked in a warehouse full of propane forklifts. Oh the headaches….
What is their whole deal with hydrogen? Like, what’s that all about and shit
Oh I thought you’d never ask!
1. Do they plan to announce other means of converting H2 to mechanical work except the current inefficient oxidation process to make electricity? On second thought, if there is some secret way to rule the world with new energy they probably won’t tell you.
2. Are they planning a refueling infrastructure push like Tesla’s supercharger network? that turned out swell actually, now we even have a common standard. Or are they pulling a Betamax on US again.
3. Any timeline here until H2 can actually make sense through some combination of the above?
Actually, don’t mention the Betamax, could work out better that way.
Fuckin why?
I’d like to know how they are going to prevent the water vapor coming out of the exhaust from creating glare ice on the roads as it settles during the winter months.
Couple of questions:
What kind of incentives might they be getting in Japan to develop Hydrogen, but more importantly what is the overall scheme / long term economic plan / cultural acceptance, etc. towards hydrogen there. Is it viewed as a way of having energy independence, works better in dense cities, etc. over there.
Cars are a great test bed where you can stress things out and find creative user “applications” breaking things before they get released to industrial environments where reliability really matters. Other than the semi project at the port of LA or Long Beach, what else is being done with it in the rest of the world and what other things is this tech being planned to be utilized in? Toyota Forklifts? Regional Airliners? Navy ships?
Is it possible to make something like a gasoline, diesel, methane, etc. fuel cell that both beats the emissions and efficiency of an ICE engine?
Airbus has built and is testing megawatt-class fuel cells, so there’s some progress being made there– and there are DARPA programs underway for ships and heavy goods transport.
I’d like to add another question, what is the lifespan of the tanks, fuel cells, pumps, o-rings, everything. What would a 30 year old Mirai be like to restore.
The biggest killer of cars is them sitting unused for 2+ years, EV’s rarely can survive that, ICE usually can. How do FCEV’s compare.
Have them explain how storing liquid hydrogen is more energy efficient than storing electricity because I can’t figure that one out
Non-chemists always assume it’s “liquid hydrogen” long term but the chemistry around hydrides and ammonia says there’s a lot of alternative means to carry the hydrogen atoms around without the “pressure and embrittlement” worries the internet seems so concerned about. Weekly we’re seeing huge discoveries of “geological hydrogen deposits” (N. Africa has a bunch and there have been discoveries in North America recently), which calls into question the “hydrogen leaks away through any material it doesn’t embrittle” meme.
Airbus feels strongly that batteries as a “way of storing electricity” (and they have a very valid basis in this skepticism) is a loser wherever you are constrained by weight– so continue to invest in hydrogen as energy transport, as do the SoCal utilities building out the Angeles Link programs.
Gooooooogle Airbus ZEROe
Airbus already has shown fuel cells into the megawatt range.
My man! Batteries will address 20% of the carbon generation emissions assuming 100% of cars are electric. Then what?
Good question. We took 95% of cars off the roads of LA County in April-May 2020…. and emissions? Went down a whopping 4%.
We could spend $2 Trillion buying an EV for everybody in SoCal… and we’d still have 95% of the pollutants we have today. Makes you think, just maybe, that batteries are solving the wrong problem, eh?
Curious, where do you think the 95% of remaining emissions are coming from? Where does that number come from? It sounds a little bonkers that taking millions of cars off the road would cause so little change, given that EPA and CARB rules have had a very large and visible effect on smog in the area over the last 50-ish years.
Hydrogen for industrial processes, like in steel hardening, coming from electrolysis instead of fossil sources greatly decarbonizes that industry, but that’s not really the same as utilizing fuel cells for propulsion.
I suppose it all doesn’t exactly address the first comment that we aren’t talking about LH2, but highly compressed H2 vapor, but neat to hear that non-leaky hydrogen storage may not prove to be impossible. I’m not in this industry and had not heard of “geological hydrogen deposits” as a thing before.
It’s actually a pretty well-known issue for the SMOG and compliance folks. Modern cars are SO clean that we’re well past the point of diminished returns– and that’s the case for not “piling on” even more emissions-driven regulations, constraints, design complexity and reliability trade-offs. It “appears” that GM’s quest for the last-bit-of-efficiency on all those dead V8 engines was their move to 0W-10 oil or whatever absurdly thin formulation they ended up with. On light passenger vehicles? We’re throwing billions to eek out the last few percentage, at huge second order costs.
By now there’s lower hanging fruit. Lots of fruit.
To the question you asked–
1) Power plants (there’s still a pile of fossil fuel plants in SoCal)
2) Heavy trucks, delivery, drayage, hauling (mostly diesel, ugly)
3) Trains– many of the container trains coming out of the ports are diesel and relatively dirty
4) Bunker fuel for ships, in-harbor generators, etc
5) Construction equipment- highway, building, excavation
6) Cement plants– very dirty and relatively unregulated
7) And, non-electrified buses
Literally, during the first week of May 2020 I was driving out to Palm Springs from DTLA, got to that rise heading up to Redlands and looked in the mirror (keeping in mind that NOBODY was on the freeways then. Lockdown City.) and all you coulld see blanketing the LA Basin was the usual brown cloud. Wow. I almost couldn’t believe it, but it was true. NPR did a report on what the SMOG folks were saying– “Yeah, all the cars are gone but most of the pollution ain’t from cars anymore…”
https://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/air-pollution-los-angeles-20200511/
THIS. Thank you for the great write up here. Wild how we are still doubling down on passengers, but leaving so much on the table when it cleans to actually making things better. As an inland empire kid, I know that haze well. Made for some great sunsets in Redlands though.
Jason,
Please inquire on the current status of the Toyota hydrogen-power drayage truck pilot project in the Ports of Long Beach / San Pedro. By reports that had been going well– a long duration, zero-emissions, deployment where high torque was a big benefit moving containers around the yards. Theoretically, the hydrogen bus projects were also succeeding in Asia, as well.
Anyway, their body language about the more “heavy transport” part of the mix might provide clues on how committed they are in passenger vehicles.
Thanks and have fun,
tom
This.
If they’re making all that dough then why aren’t they calling it a proofing ground? Sorry. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not putting any dang hydrogen in my oven! I don’t care if it makes the bread better!
If Toyota were to cut you loose on the public roads in a Mirai, would you be able to make it from the proving grounds to the nearest public hydrogen station in LA without too much range anxiety?
And if you ended up doing multiple laps of Quartzsite following and photographing interesting RVs until you ran it dry, just how screwed would you be? Or is that why they’re sending you instead of Mercedes?
For that matter why are you going and not David who’s the engineer and already in the southwest?
Are they going to build their own chain of hydrogen filling stations? Otherwise how are they going to solve that particular problem?
Right? Follow Tesla’s lead here. They wanted to make EVs viable and built a charging network. If Toyota wants us to use hydrogen so much, put up or shut up.
Yeah, Toyota’s following the example of the pre-Tesla EV makers – “here you go, just plug it in wherever, you’ll figure it out”.
In theory, they have several trials going in Heavy Goods Transport— so I think the long range theory was that if you had large hydrogen supplies in every Pilot Truck Stop in the country? The same folks that were always buying Benz and VW diesel wagons would have the same access to hydrogen in 2035.
Airbus also seems to be investing heavily in hydrogen engines for commercial aircraft– so you’d have huge regional supplies of hydrogen to fuel aircraft, which could be leveraged to heavy goods and passenger vehicles.
How much will you charge me to convert my first gen Tacoma to a Mirai drivetrain? I live close to a hydrogen station and won’t complain (or sue).
*Ryan_Reynolds_But_Why.gif*
Woah this sounds like a fun trip! Ask them if they’re planning on funding more hydrogen stations in at least CA but maybe more states. Seems like the Tesla approach would be the only workable one here. Any plans for home refueling? Is that even possible? I truly don’t know.
How do they feel their FCEV tech stacks up against Honda and Hyundai, who both also offer FCEVs in the US? What tradeoffs do they make as opposed to those other two?
Also ask them if they’re doing this because they make plenty of money and just want to troll BEV maximalists lol
Also if they let you drive a new Mirai please do a review
Ask them why they refuse to build out the infrastructure themselves. Cause no one else gonna do it.
Do they have plans to offer home hydrogen generating and compressing stations?
Does anyone?
I don’t see any sort of fueling station network being built any time soon, but a home model might be interesting to the sort of people who are interested in hydrogen-powered cars.
Ah you beat me too it, haha!
Honda did, once upon a time
I’ve always wondered why they built the Mirai in the first place. Why not a hydrogen fuel cell RAV4 instead?
I’ve heard you can combust hydrogen, like a traditional ICE engine. It’s not nearly as efficient, but could it theoretically be used this way to keep the manual transmission alive?
The problem is that hydrogen embrittles metals, like aluminum or iron. A major function of the cylinder wall is to, you know, contain the exploding gases, so you might imagine that embrittlement would be a bad thing.
There are coatings to prevent that, but they wouldn’t hold up to the heat and friction of a moving piston.
Honda begs to differ 😀
Well, more than Honda: Mahle invented it but Honda started using it on certain motorcycles in the 1980s.
Forgot to mention the thing I wanted to mention!
The coating I was talking about is called nikasil.