July 18, 2024
During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the recent RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said that his company’s philosophy focuses first on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the automotive future must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the diversity of uses for motorized vehicles (check the video above to see the Pratt section).
Toyota, he said, recognizes the difference between decarbonization – which is the goal – and electrification, which is one means of reaching that goal. Toyota therefore is building hybrids, electric vehicles (EVs), and internal combustion engines that use hydrogen rather than gasoline or diesel as a fuel. In the developing world where electricity is in short supply, he added, the best choice may be low-carbon liquid fuels.
Prior to being recruited by Toyota to lead its research institute, Pratt had worked on robotics and neuromorphic computing at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, making machines that could help in disasters and computers that worked more like the human brain. There, he says, he learned that technological predictions are often unreliable and that we must expect to be surprised.
Today’s vehicles are so far advanced from those of just 20 years ago. Today, global positioning systems help guide drivers through both urban traffic and rural roads; we now have telephones and the internet in our vehicles; and today’s vehicular onboard computers are sophisticated enough to drive themselves safely with or without passengers.
But we have also concluded that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future. The “quick fix” of electrifying everything has proven to be a stubborn challenge, if only for the sheer magnitude of battery-EVs needed to replace 300 million American vehicles and a billion and a half worldwide, most of which operate on gasoline or diesel fuel.
To achieve a safe self-driving vehicle, Toyota opted for a diverse approach with a focus on saving lives sooner. The company’s approach to decarbonization has also focused on diverse solutions, including battery-EVs, plug-in hybrids, and fuel-cell EVs. “We want to give people around the world from all walks of life the best tools to solve the global problem of climate change,” Pratt said in a 2021 Toyota Research Institute video.
“Different people,” he said then, “have different circumstances and different needs. Some live in areas with electric grids powered by renewables; others live in areas that will be powered by fossil fuels for some time. Some have convenient charging stations at home; others live in cities where that is more difficult. Some are wealthy; most are not.”
One benefit of this strategy is the wiser use of available lithium, the critical element in today’s EV batteries. Pratt explained that Toyota’s strategy focuses on maximizing the carbon return on investment of every battery cell produced, which is defined as grams of carbon dioxide reduced divided by grams of lithium used.
With the average U.S. daily commute of 32 miles a day, hauling around a 320-mile-range electric battery yields a low carbon ROI. Allocating the same components of these large EV batteries into multiple hybrids multiplies the carbon ROI for these expensive battery components. One battery-EVs uses about 90 times the lithium as one hybrid. On the other hand, braking energy adds to the efficiency of battery-EVs in city traffic.
Toyota has found that hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles have similar lifetime carbon emissions as battery-EVs at a lower cost to the consumer. Fully EVs may still be the better option wherever there are ample fast-charging options and sufficient electricity capacity at affordable prices.
But this is hardly the case in the developing world, nor even across much of the U.S. landscape today. That’s one reason Toyota has a focus on hydrogen-powered vehicles, which also have zero carbon tailpipe emissions. While hydrogen is a gas that must be cooled to near absolute-zero or pressurized for use in motor vehicles, there are ample supplies. The petrochemical industry alone creates enough hydrogen to fuel millions of vehicles.
Hydrogen has been used in racecar internal combustion engines, but Toyota believes its “sweet spot” may be in 18-wheeler trucks, tanks, cranes, and other large vehicles that would otherwise require huge electric batteries that add weight and reduce load capacity. While intensifying its European operations via Hydrogen Factory Europe, Toyota is applying fuel cell technology to buses and trucks, railways, ocean and river shipping, and even baseload electricity generation.
A recent article notes that Toyota’s hydrogen combustion engines provide great performance while utilizing efficiency in engine features. These engines can provide up to 400 horsepower, equivalent to many piston Atkinson cycle gasoline engines, and can reach a thermal efficiency of up to 45%, equal to that of the best diesel engines. The only emissions from these engines are clean water vapor.
Another recent article explains that Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell system involves the chemical reaction of the hydrogen stored on the vehicle and the oxygen from the surrounding environment to produce electricity to the electric motor without the need for the heavy lithium-ion batteries utilized in battery-EVs.
Pratt compares the decision by Toyota to seek a multi-pathway approach to the automotive future to the old debate between VHS and Beta. Those who put all their eggs in the Beta basket ended up bankrupt as VHS proved more amenable to consumers than the technologically superior Beta. But, he says, in tomorrow’s automotive universe, battery-electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen powered vehicles may all play important roles.
The bottom line, though, is that the poor and middle class worldwide will continue to rely on gasoline- and diesel-powered internal combustion engines until these newer technologies can produce vehicles they can afford to buy and maintain and until fuel supplies (including ample electricity) are also conveniently available at affordable prices.
While the gasoline fuel hose and the electric charging cable area about the same size, the fuel hose today delivers ten times the power of the electric charger in a much shorter time frame. Multiply the charging time versus the liquid refueling time and you begin to see the magnitude of the challenge.
Texas-based Buc-ee’s just opened its largest station, with 120 pumps on a 75,000-square-foot lot. They would have to have 1,200 of today’s best chargers, covering perhaps 750,000 square feet, to service the same number of EVs today
With 80% of the EV chargers in the U.S. today being slow chargers, the transition even in the developed world may be slower than politicians and bureaucrats demand.
Duggan Flanakin (duggan@duggansdugout.com) is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Hydrogen burning cars emit H2O which is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, not that it is very warm outside of the Tropics most of the year.
Outside of the Tropics people need heated buildings, heated transportation. and warm clothes to live there most of the year.
Hydrogen is a fools paradise. Hugely expensive and power hungry to produce, and highly dangerous to store and use.
Pouring large quantities of water vapor out of vehicles in winter in cold climates is not a real good idea.
Huh? I gave up 1/3 way through this article.
Hydrogen was mentioned so often to drive away critics? Agree, nearly unreadable content.
“we have also concluded that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future.”
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
“that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future.”
Absolute BALDERDASH !!
Basically everything in modern society is there BECAUSE OF fossil fuels.
and WT* do they mean “exceed the limits of human tolerance”
Complete and absolute NONSENSE !!
What really threatens the future, is the stupidity of the Net-Zero agenda.
“Committee For
A Constructivethe Destruction of Tomorrow”That is you need to know !
Pratt has a ways to go, I wouldn’t bet on him.
And well named
Any air breathing engine is going to produce NOx as well as water and if its carbon based fuel, CO2.
Porsche use electrolysis to produce synthetic gasoline at a pilot plant in Chile.
Obviously the electricity could come from any generating process.
Yeah, but it’s a highly inefficient way of creating energy in storeable form, even though the energy density i probably much higher than that of hydrogen.
Not one of the 49 headlines in a Google search of the couple who died trying to prove that one could sail the Atlantic without using fossil fuel mentioned that fact.
https://news.google.com/search?for=couple+atlantic+dead
story tip
I mean, you only have to look at history to know it’s possible to sail the Atlantic without fossil fuel. Too late to tell them now, I suppose.
You just can’t tell some people…
Most likely, Columbus and the 16th century explorers who followed him knew some things about navigation and dealing with storms that the recent couple who died never researched.
Of course, in the 16th century, not all of the crew survived the voyages.
Magellan is credited as the first explorer to circumnavigate the globe, but he died along the way, and some of his crew completed the voyage.
I bet you could also dig up information about how many died trying. Too ate to tell them THAT, too.
We’re going to get rid of fossil fuels by whenever the deplorables can manage it but we’re just exploring some transitioning here you understand folks-
New gas exploration permits to tackle supply challenges (msn.com)
Watch what they do not what they say with their dooming meme.
Ugh. Another deluded idiot whose brainless ideas will do far more harm to life on Earth than all the “climate change” we will ever experience short of the descent into the next glaciation.
I guess we can describe Toyota’s approach as, pragmatic. That is obviously the correct way of looking at the market and offering what any specific section of the market needs.
Their position will enable Toyota to meet the demand of society with products suitable to the consumers wishes, which is on the face of it a good thing.. It does not answer the fundamental question however, why is the market asking for the wide range of unique products to solve a basic need?
If the driver of change is a false anxiety about the current dominant technology in use then Toyota would be wise to devote some of their development and research spending on educating the market.
Some research money spent on correcting false narratives could have a profound impact on the market demands, and on society.
Remodelling society’s core energy market is too serious a business to simply leave in the hands of fashion influencers or ignorant over anxious and uninformed decision makers.
Making square pegs to suit round holes has never been a practical or profitable endeavour…
Neither Toyota nor anyone else gets to “educate” me about products. I don’t buy stuff from people who come to the door with amazing deals nor send me emails about solutions to problems I don’t have. If I don’t already know I need it, I don’t want it.
Just make a product that solves a (local) problem well and people will buy it.
If the problem is that some people don’t feel good enough about themselves and worry they’re being judged for not having an EV, then sure, they’ll want an electric car to fix that, so let them have it.
Me? I feel absolutely fine about not having one.
we have also concluded that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future.
Not a shred of evidence supports that statement.
“…decarbonization – which is the goal.” Not for any sane person it isn’t.
Refertilization of the biosphere by fossil fuel burning has pulled life on earth back from the brink of starvation. It would not be good to reverse that.
At least Pratt is smart enough to understand that carbon is not do big a negative as to justify unplugging either his car company or the modern world, but it would be much better still if he understood that the external value of carbon emissions is actually positive.
His job depends on him pushing decarbonization. What do you think he’s going to say?
“But we have also concluded that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future.” ??? Who is WE, white man?
As a carbon based life form, I do NOT want to be “Decarbonised”.
But mainly you need to know that Toyota has been making excuses about its small, outdated batteries in hybrids for decades and they already knew how China was going to dominate EV batteries. They are trying to protect what they already invested in and distract from their failings. The other half of their deception game is to not admit to all the dead-end ugly-on-purpose compliance cars for California.
I question the use of the word “wisely” in the title of this article.
[QUOTE FROM ARTICLE]“But this is hardly the case in the developing world, nor even across much of the U.S. landscape today. That’s one reason Toyota has a focus on hydrogen-powered vehicles, which also have zero carbon tailpipe emissions. While hydrogen is a gas that must be cooled to near absolute-zero or pressurized for use in motor vehicles, there are ample supplies. The petrochemical industry alone creates enough hydrogen to fuel millions of vehicles.”[END QUOTE]
Hydrogen is the lightest known element, meaning that it needs to be compressed to extremely high pressures in order to be stored aboard a motor vehicle.
For purposes of illustration, consider a gasoline-powered car with a 16-gallon tank. Gasoline weighs about 6 lb/gallon, so the full tank would contain 96 lb. Gasoline produces about 19,000 Btu/lb of energy when burned, so that burning the full tank would produce about 1.82 million Btu of heat.
Hydrogen has a heat of combustion of about 51,000 Btu/lb, so the same amount of heat could be produced by burning 1.82(10^6) / 51,000 = 35.8 lb of hydrogen, or 17.74 lb-moles. From the ideal gas law
PV = nRT
where P = absolute pressure, psi
V = tank volume, ft3
n = number of moles = 17.74 lbmol
R = gas constant = 10.73 psi-ft3/lbmol-R
T = absolute temperature (assume 50 F = 510 degrees Rankine)
The product of pressure * volume would then be 17.74 * 10.73 * 510 = 97,081 psi-ft3.
If the hydrogen was compressed to 3,000 psi (over 200 times atmospheric pressure), the required tank volume would be 32.4 ft3, or about 242 gallons. At these pressures, a spherical tank would be required, with an inside diameter of about 3.95 ft. It would have to be made of high-alloy steel, capable of resisting chemical attack from the hydrogen.
Assuming a wall thickness of 0.5 inch, the volume of steel required for a spherical tank 4 ft in diameter would be about 2.05 ft3, which would weigh slightly over 1,000 lb. This would add significantly to the weight of the car, and would probably negate any increases in efficiency of hydrogen over gasoline.
Another serious problem would be safety. Where is the best place on a car to put a spherical tank 4 feet in diameter where it wouldn’t explode in the event of a collision, fatally burning everyone inside?
As the announcer of the Hindenberg disaster famously said, “Oh, the humanity!”
I’ll believe in Gill Pratt’s “wisdom” in developing hydrogen-powered cars when he or one of his engineers can design a safe and feasible hydrogen tank.
Seems the weight is comparable to a LiPO EV battery.
Well, at that size and weight, everyone just pulls around a “fuel tender” behind their car. You know, like steam locomotives used to.
What’s old is new again!
And you could have an “eject” button in the car so if you see someone is about to crash into your “tender” (aka “bomb on wheels” you can detach your car from it and hopefully coast to a spot outside the blast radius.
“We want to give people around the world from all walks of life the best tools to solve the global problem of climate change,”
Huh?
Oh, so we now get to apply diversity, equity, and inclusion to how people choose their transportation. Finally a DEI insertion that makes sense.
“The petrochemical industry alone creates enough hydrogen to fuel millions of vehicles.”
Global production stands at around 75 MtH2/yr as pure hydrogen and an additional 45 MtH2/yr as part of a mix of gases.
For a 300 mile driving range, an FCEV will need about 5 kg of hydrogen. That’s 1 car, 1 trip.
I can fuel missions of cars with a barrel of gasoline, just 1 drop per car.
The valid point is, the petrochemical industry does not produce an excess of hydrogen (to that amount) beyond what is needed for other things. If it did and all the technology hurdles were cleared, we would be using hydrogen. Problem is, it isn’t merely the quantity produced.
There are some deficiencies in this article. Toyota is smart to be pragmatic. They traded their Hybrid Prius architecture and IP to Ford in return for its European diesel technology and IP. Saved billions in R&D for both. I still drive a MY2007 Ford hybrid Escape based on that trade.
Hybrid partial electrification makes good sense. Long battery life given medium discharge battery float architecture, no range anxiety, fuel saving pay back any hybrid premium for first owner. For my 2007 Hybrid Escape, fuel savings already over $12k—regular vs premium for comparable V6, and 50% better gas mileage. Half the original vehicle cost.
Hydrogen makes no vehicle sense, either for ICE or fuel cells. No way to practically store and refill. Cryogenic too expensive, high pressure too little energy.
Can you still find 8 track tapes?
8 track tapes were phased out in 1983. This is my newest car. My oldest is a MY1999 Audi A4 Quattro with manual transmission up in Chicagoland. A fun drive. Amazing how much money I save by being cheap about cars. Buy new, maintain well, run ‘forever’.
Indeed you can find 8-track tapes! I’ve got many and working players, even recorders.
Like Rud I also drive a Ford Escape Hybrid. Mine hails from 2008 and has the “SYNC” touchscreen navigation and satellite radio which also includes Bluetooth connection to my phone and a hands free interface with steering wheel controls., 10GB storage to rip CDs but no 8-track, alas. For that I can rip them to my phone and play them thru the SYNC system. This was a Factory Option for the Escape and other Ford models from that time. All of the original electronics are working fine.
Now past 217K miles still running the original NiMh 330volt battery pack. Gets between 35 – 40 mpg on drives around my rural area 30 miles from Mt. Rainier.
WAY too much deference to the “climate” bullshit here. NO, the “goal” is NOT “decarbonization.” It is to make cars people actually want.
Which are most definitely NOT EVs, plug-in hybrids, or hydrogen powered.
Hydrogen is utter stupidity (like EVs and plug-in hybrids are, but for different reasons). Hydrogen, the “Elizabeth Taylor of Elements,” is always “married” to something else. The “divorce” will cost more energy than will ever be extracted by burning the hydrogen.
And all of those energy inputs, as usual, and whether directly or indirectly, will come from…coal, oil and gas.