Re: Toyota Mirai breaks world record with 1000 km drive on a single tank of hydrogen I think there is a sense that for the passenger vehicle segment, BEVs have won out for the short and medium term certainly with the prevailing customer sentiment and accordingly the majority of OEM development reflecting this. However there are certain difficult to decarbonise sectors like commercial vehicles where hydrogen is likely to have a significant role to play. Basically think busses, trucks, ships - it's highly unlikely that battery technology will achieve the energy density necessary to make their usage in these sectors practicable. Flow chart simplifying the various sectors in need of decarbonisation and the relative difficulty attached to each (Ref: Phillip Ringrose, 2020)
Now, as Elon is always more than happy to point out - producing hydrogen with the cracking of water molecules is counter intuitive even if the electrical energy for this is from renewable means. However the picture isn't that simple. Increasingly I'm sure you must be hearing about different colours associated with hydrogen. Simply put they're a means to describe the varying provenance for the hydrogen itself. See the chart below: While I don't particularly like how they've done the arrows for the final two parameters it is useful to think about the relative degree of public acceptance with each hydrogen production type In Europe for example, with the infrastructure of the North Sea and the relative wealth of the surrounding countries, there is very much potential for CCS in a blue hydrogen use case
Now it obviously goes without saying Elon has his interests and his shareholders when it comes to decrying FCEVs, but I think when looking at the bigger picture for the energy transition especially in the mobility sphere: there is no single silver bullet!
I get a bit frustrated when folks try to put everything in one basket, and I can see why that makes sense. As far as investors on the market are concerned, they'd rather be backing one horse to sweep the stakes and win massive that way than back a whole host of them and win smaller increments on each.
Coming back to hydrogen and the different sources, even with green hydrogen, you could imagine a scenario where excess grid capacity during night time is utilised towards the production of hydrogen. The Saudi's have made a big bet on continuing to be one of the worlds biggest energy explorers by pivoting to hydrogen, in their case grey hydrogen IIRC. Energy resource starved countries like India & Japan on the other hand could have potential to exploit the vast offshore deposits of gas hydrate (more specifically methane hydrate) towards turquoise hydrogen (although there remains the not insignificant matter of there being no commercially feasible means of exploiting these gas hydrates). A salient point that gets missed is that the energy transition is a triptych of factors: - Energy Sustainability
- Energy Security
- Energy Affordability
While we're right to focus entirely on point 1 given the prevailing needs of the hour, we have to remember that in the real world points 2 & 3 are a very real and big factor. In that regard you can see how valuable to large economies like Japan, India & China it could be if there energy security needs were solved by being able to exploit an endemic resource. It also has the handy corollary of reducing the not insignificant footprint of the transport of hydrocarbons to these countries.
In closing I don't think Toyota is missing the boat in taking a gamble on hydrogen, I think there is certainly room for it for our future transport mix. Compared to the total rethink in infrastructure we'd need to accommodate charging stations for an entirely BEV motor scenario, I think the hydrogen storage quandary is relatively simple in comparison, especially if it means we can retrofit the existing and mostly built up fuel station infrastructure globally to suit FCEVs as well. To give you an idea of what the future energy mix might realistically look like, here's a lovely graphic from the latest energy transition report by DNV:
Last edited by ads11 : 4th June 2021 at 20:52.
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