[RahulNagaraj]

Toyota has announced that its hydrogen-powered Mirai has broken a world record - the longest distance driven on a single tank of hydrogen. The Mirai FCEV covered a total of 1,003 km on a single tank of hydrogen.



The world record attempt started on May 26, 2021, at 5:43 am from the HYSETCO hydrogen station in Orly, France. The Mirai was driven on public roads, south of Paris and in the areas of Loir-et-Cher and Indre-et-Loire.



The total distance covered and the consumption levels were certified by an individual authority. As per the official figures, the Toyota Mirai recorded a distance of 1,003 km with an average hydrogen consumption of 0.55 kg / 100 km. The Mirai FCEV comes with a capacity to store a maximum of 5.6 kg of hydrogen.



The car used for the record attempt was its second-generation Mirai, which in normal driving conditions, is claimed to offer a range of 650 km. To achieve the world record, the drivers used an 'eco-driving' style. However, no other special techniques were used.

Link to Team-BHP news

[Everlearner]

Wow, that's a great achievement. This will surely help in popularizing hydrogen economy. How wide spread is hydrogen availability in Europe and Japan?

I hope they launch this in India

[dhruv.bansal]

This is incredible.

Is this Hydrogen normal Hydrogen or are there some additives added to make it usable for Vehicular movement?
This is a big move because even if we consider current Hydrogen cost - we are talking about running costs lower than EVs.

Correct me if I am wrong.

[Thilak29]

The fundamental limitation of hydrogen is energy has to be spent to generate hydrogen which is counterintuitive.

Storage is challenging due to its flammable nature. While it is possibly the greenest option, its long mile far in future before becoming anything mainstream.

[TrackDay]

Although this is a commendable effort, wonder if the battle is almost lost to electric technology. Unlike EVs, setting up hydrogen fuel was never practical and cost effective to the masses. Electric vehicles on the other hand have a much better future than hydrogen. Also despite this technology being out there for sometime now, nobody is willing to make it mainstream, say like how Tesla popularized electric technology. Anyways let us hope an alternative to fossil fuels becomes more practical and mainstream faster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebkuz2I0JcE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqi60XX9vP8

[Thermodynamics]

Originally Posted by TrackDay

the battle is almost lost to electric technology. Unlike EVs, setting up hydrogen fuel was never practical and cost effective to the masses.

Nope. China is planning massive green energy program based on Hydrogen as early as 2025. Link. If this prototype works, I guess many nations especially where sun shines brighter would adopt the concept. I see EVs and FCEVs would coexist.

[volkman10]

Toyota Mirai's world record drive in video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...l=ToyotaFrance

[GTO]

Nice way of making a bold statement (no EV has a 1000 km range yet), but IMHO, Toyota has lost the hydrogen battle against EVs. End of the day, it is the customer who decides what tech will work and EVs have more or less taken prime placement in his mind. Plus, even in terms of manufacturer or government support, everyone is on the side of EVs. Toyota is the lone warrior for hydrogen among the OEMs. In an advanced country like USA too, Toyota & Honda's hydrogen cars failed, despite lots of support.

That being said, I think hydrogen has a solid use case among commercial vehicles and even aircraft!

[SKC-auto]

Originally Posted by GTO

Nice way of making a bold statement (no EV has a 1000 km range yet), but IMHO, Toyota has lost the hydrogen battle against EVs.

The actual range of Mirai is 650km. Looks to me like they have slipstreamed to get the 1000km. Hyundai kona 64kwh has already achieved 1026km of range. We should take these records with a pinch of salt.

I believe Hydrogen has a place in shipping and probably in air transport.

https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en...ers-0000016507

[carthick1000]

Nice promotion stunt from Toyota. I wonder what, Jehu Garcia, who made the DIY BMW EV, which drove 1200km on normal roads, 3 years ago, thinks about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbnvZlPZZQc

[SnS_12]

Fuel cell cars and EV’s have one thing in common and that is both use electric motors.

The challenge for both of them depend on how the infrastructure is built to make it a success in the future.

Fuel cell are no more dangerous then our current gasoline powered cars and the current global fuel station network can be used to maybe convert to hydrogen refuelling stations, which may give it a upper hand over EV in terms of infrastructure? Plus it would take under 5 mins to refuel a hydrogen car over 30 mins required to charge EV that too with a fast charger.

Lastly 78% of the top guns of the auto world as per a survey in 2017 agreed that Hydrogen based cars are the future.



So maybe the Japanese know something that the Americans (Elon Musk) don’t know once again about the future of Automobiles?

[coolmel]

I cannot wait but to see Toyota's SSD battery powered EV's reach or possibly break this milestone. Really gunning for them and truly hope they deliver. WRT Hydrogen, personally feel it will do well for trains and buses.

[fulcrum29]

Originally Posted by GTO

Nice way of making a bold statement (no EV has a 1000 km range yet), but IMHO, Toyota has lost the hydrogen battle against EVs. End of the day, it is the customer who decides what tech will work and EVs have more or less taken prime placement in his mind. Plus, even in terms of manufacturer or government support, everyone is on the side of EVs. Toyota is the lone warrior for hydrogen among the OEMs. In an advanced country like USA too, Toyota & Honda's hydrogen cars failed, despite lots of support.

That being said, I think hydrogen has a solid use case among commercial vehicles and even aircraft!

I agree partially with the fact that electric vehicles have captured the market much better than hydrogen vehicles but this might be because they got a head start. Infact electric vehicles were first introduced into the mass market in 1890. They were even initially outselling gasoline powered cars till the early 1900's, until ofcourse the Ford model T came about which was about half the cost of an electric roadster of the day. The invention of the electric starter which deemed the hand crank obsolete also boosted the sales till electric cars almost died out. They made a resurgence in the early 80's and the rest as they say is history. However, I feel that hydrogen is the future and will again phase out electric vehicles like gasoline did at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first hydrogen fuel cell car only came out in 2013 and it is still in the nascent stage of development. The biggest problem with electric vehicles is that till date 65% of the world's electricity is still generated from coal, natural gas, peat and oil which is unsustainable. Electric vehicles are not as "clean" as they seem. Also, hydrogen fuel currently costs 70/- per kg in India. A full tank would cost 400/- , which is peanuts to pay for a 500ish km range I am aware of the issues faced in production and transportation of hydrogen, but am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for a surprise invention which clears the road for hydrogen powered cars.

[ads11]

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:

1. Energy Sustainability
2. Energy Security
3. 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:

[mmxylorider]

This approach however gives one a very convenient refueling mode and the ability to carry their own fuel. At scale, extracting Hydrogen should not prove to be too difficult. Of course affordability is the big question.

Personally - this might prove to the future in the longer term perspective while EV will rule for a bit.