I drove 1800 miles in a Hydrogen Car
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- Опубликовано: 8 авг 2021
- I drove 1800 miles in a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car! Thanks to Toyota for sponsoring this video and lending us the 2021 #Mirai.
Upcoming videos in this series:
Hydrogen vs. Battery Electric
Grid Energy Storage
Concentrated Solar
Creator/Host: Dianna Cowern
Editor: Levi Butner
Producer: Hope Butner
Production Assistant: Patrick Muhlberger
Research: Sophia Chen and Erika Carlson
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Thanks to Toyota! 
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Being a chemist, I love it. But, like the others ask, how are we producing the hydrogen?
by burning carbon.
Ripping water apart with electricity it's an infinite loop
By electrolysis, using energy that was made from fossil fuels. Unfortunately not great, but if we achieved fusion that would mean almost free energy and electricity, and overall then hydrogen cars would be cleaner and more versatile then electric, but that would take into account battery production doesn't get better and the impact more efficient batteries would have. Still they would require many elements that would need to be mined and that is not environmentally friendly, hydrogen would be better here again. The infrastructure for hydrogen is also very lacking and that's a shame because the idea offers many advantages over fully electric cars
😂 questions that matter
How? Their exact technique, who knows, but it's probably from good ole H2O
As a chemist who has done research in zero carbon production of hydrogen (photocatalytic): We are still far from these being our cars, it seems more practical to use FCEV in heavier transportation (larger distances) but I think it's good that toyota is investing in advertising the tech. European green deal seems to recognise that we need hydrogen too (as an addition to batteries getting the largest section of the energy pie) for a cleaner future in transportation.
There's no real use or need for H2, it's a chemist employment program. Shift to durable materials science.
christiefou
"Zero carbon production of Hydrogen" NEVER accounts for the amount of extra green source energy it requires, nor the fact that extra energy could remove an equivalent amount of fossil generation from the grid.
It doesn't matter if the solar is connected straight to the plant, remote, or at point of use. That same solar could connect to the grid, or supply point of use energy to a BEV directly, or through battery backup, at 2.5 -3× efficiency.
The sums just do not add up.
Unless you can more than double the efficiency......?
The "large vehicle" opinion doesn't stack up either.
As with a smaller vehicle, s truck simply has to Outrange the driver, then add sufficient energy for the next journey while the driver refreshes.
Since drive time is limited by law, and a battery truck can easily provide power for that period, then repeat, Hydrogen is redundant.
(Not to mention the cost, crucial in the industry)
@@rogerstarkey5390 You are absolutely 100% correct based on the current data and electrocatalysis. I am talking about BASIC research on hydrogen production that's FAR from being scaled up now. Also I never said anything about grids, I talked about photocatalysis. This is still basic research done worldwide. Awesome if it works (right catalysts)- could never work, but that's how research works for everything.
Also what I mean by "Heavy" transportation= long range, not only cars either.
Also, its was never a BEV VS FCEV issue. Batteries are the future. They will never be 100% clean and issues on longevity, metal composition and energy density are being researched on and the tech is getting better fast.
Now imagine sunlight (photons) producing hydrogen directly from water. Kinda somewhat inspired from nature. That's hard to do, chemicaly awesome, clean as it gets AND at BASIC research level now (At least when I worked on it).
Look at Proton Technologies of Calgary Alberta.
I was debating between a Tesla and a Toyota Mirai and ended up taking the chance on the Mirai because of all the incentives being offered. I liked the the idea of having a car that runs on hydrogen and besides electric battery run cars are not that unique and innovative anymore. I have had my car about 6 weeks and love it. Have gone to Palm Springs and back about 170 miles round trip and no issues. The nearest hydrogen station to Palm Springs is in the city of Riverside.
There is another one in Ontario, Ca by the 10 freeway. Diamond Bar has one at the South Coast Air Quality Management.
I give my car an A in drive ability, interior and exterior design. Have no regrets.
How's that working out for you now?
@@garyculver4345 :The issue is lack of hydrogen stations. Also, before I purchased car, State of California App had 4 hydrogen stations to open up within 8 miles or less from where I live - Glendora, Chino, Pomona and City of Industry. Now they are not opening up. Also, the Hydrogen station inside EPA in Diamond Bar, breaks down often. The last time it was out, it was for 6 weeks. Ended up driving to Placencia and the second time was to Baldwin park, which will use up 15% of hydrogen round trip to fill up. Also, True Zero which is the Chevron stations charges 20% more per kilogram. So, is not worth it to drive to those stations.
Car is excellent inside and out, but, the lack of hydrogen stations is a big issue. Toyota has increase the manufacture rebate foe Toyota Mirai's by $14 thousand which is driving down significantly, the blue book value of the car. Also, the reduction in # of hydrogen stations that were supposed to open up is driving down the value of the car.
This is by far one of my favorites of your videos. I find most of your content very interesting and fun to watch but this almost made my eyes well up. I am an electrical engineer and went into the industry to find and aid in the progression of technologies like this to better the planet. Its easy to find arguments as to why we shouldn't read into alternative energies but the fact remains we eventually have to and your exploration was inspiring in a way that it reminded me why I have dedicated so much time and resources to be in the field that I am. I had heard of hydrogen cells in my college studies but to see it in a clean, marketable form is astonishing. Thank you for making this and hopefully more will be encouraged by our efforts to learn and "drive" innovation. Lame puns aside I also love motorcycles and cars so this really hits home. :P
I would be interested in more technical details.
Assuming H2 stations do local electrolysis, how many kWh goes into producing and liquefying the hydrogen per kWh output from the fuel cell?.
How many miles does this vehicle typically get per fuel cell kWh?.
How long does the platinum last?.
Any mention of metal organic framework powders that can a) store gaseous hydrogen and save on the liquefaction energy cost and b) save on weight of the high pressure storage tanks?.
The platinum is a catalyst so it never gets used up. There is a significant energy loss converting water to hydrogen and oxygen and then recombining them to produce energy. The energy required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis is about 260 kJ per mole of water. Splitting one liter of water would take at least 16 MJ (4.4 kWh), which is an enormous expense on an industrial scale. The combustion of H2 and O2 releases 286,000 joules of energy per mole of hydrogen gas burned. 1 liter of water will produce 55.55 moles of hydrogen. So it takes at least 16 MJ of electricity and you'll get 15.8 MJ back out of it.
@@soaringeagle5418 Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I'd still like to know how much energy is required to liquefy the H2 and what is this particular fuel cell's efficiency. I've read that if H2 is produced by steam reforming, it may contain sulfur that poisons the platinum.
@@soaringeagle5418 First, thanks for explaining with numbers. Too many "green technologies" have zero numbers associated with them.
@@soaringeagle5418 While the platinum doesn't get used up fuel cells are notorious for getting fouled up by the small impurities in the hydrogen and oxygen sources.
Check the Real Engineering H2 video if you want real answers.
I hope you will talk about these topics in the next videos:
- How is dihydrogen produced?
- What are the resources of platinum and the impact of its extraction
- What is the overall assessment of this change (taking into account the entire production chain)
Thanks a lot for this very interesting topic!
A couple other questions
- maintenance and longevity of the drivetrain
- how much platinum is needed to produce a FC
- when hydrogen is produced in a renewable, carbon neutral fashion, what other chemicals are involved and how much energy is required to produce a kg of hydrogen from how much water taken from the wild? (pollutants/impurities can foul the catalyst in a FC, requiring ongoing maintenance/replacement of the FC, and removing impurities means distilling the water, which consumes a large amount of additional energy, and then distilled water in turn can’t be directly electrolicized because it isn’t electrically conductive, so additives are required, and then more purification becomes necessary again, involving even more energy and materials, etc.)
These are some of the issues that nobody ever talks about with hydrogen fuel cells.
@@babybirdhome Indeed! I hope she talks about all this in the next video :)
@@babybirdhome H2 is produced from natural gas, unless electrolysis is deployed, which it almost never is. It makes no sense to electrolyze H2 as you loose a massive amount of energy in the process, it's better to simply dump the electricity in a battery and use it straight to an electric motor, which you can just charge at home.
Also the efficiency, the security and the waste products of electrolysis (like the materials used that get corroded)
Yes, like lithium, platinum is limited and has to be extracted. The environmental impact in the mined areas can be very devastating. Also, platinum is expensive which is one of the main causes of the high cost of using hydrogen for fuel cells. Hydrogen is also corrosive. Based on the pros and cons that I have come across from wide variety of sources, I still see hydrogen fuel cells being the preferred future of energy storage compared to lithium batteries. I am aware of research in other materials for energy storage but I am not well read enough yet in these projects to form a valid well reasoned and thought-out opinion.
Very informative video. Thank you! I been looking at getting a Toyota Mirai and wanted to learn more about it so glad I found this video.
Wow, this was so fascinating to watch. Thanks so much for bringing us along!
"Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to electric vehicles"
- The Verge Article I can't link because my comments are getting deleted
I wonder why a leading manufacturer of hybrids and FC cars is lobbying against BEV... I can't seem to find find the answer...
Yikes, this makes me doubt this video series will be very objective...
Toyota also makes bev's.
I just posted another link and it was deleted.
@@grieske Yeah but only because they HAVE to. They're doing everything they can to shift the market away, including these sponsored videos. H2 is not the way forward for cars.
Are you going to cover how the hydrogen is produced? Every time I've looked at the available options, FCEV didn't compare well to BEV unless you use steam reformation of natural gas which produces a huge amount of CO2, defeating the purpose.
You can do hydrogen with green sources.
Hydrogen can be produced by rubbing unicorn horns together .
The advantage is that hydrogen can be generated from water, anywhere there is energy. Geo sources, for example, are often remote to primary uses. But hydrogen could be created on-site, then shipped to wherever it was needed.
@@pcfirebeats You can also capture fairy farts, doesn't mean anyone is doing it!
Also consider the issue - you use green electricity (wind, solar, wave) to make hydrogen, there are losses, next you convert hydrogen into electricity, again losses, no matter what you do you are losing energy to generate the hydrogen, charging a battery has a single step loss, not two.
@@vizionthing
Not exactly, your converting AC to DC then DC to AC..
And your also stepping up or down voltages.
Multiple steps multiple loses.
Amazing video, I love how technical you get. What a treat.
Thanks for this video. Was very educational. Love your channel, keep up the great work.
I, and all chemists, diasgree with thumbnail. Hydrogen is in fact a gas at room temperature.
All jokes aside, great video. Still not convinced that hydrogen will be better than batteries for cars, but I'm really excited to see it in aeroplanes.
Aeronautics and long term storage is wher H2 will be viable, cars only if we have a lot of excess Energy and even then there will be better uses for the energy.
Sure you're making a joke, but it's not entirely correct.
Hydrogen is only a gas at room temperature at a certain pressure range. What's more is that fueling is also technically_not_ done at room temperature. Granted, the hydrogen is still a gas despite that, as far as I know.
Is Gas a liquid or a Gas and if it's a liquid (which Petroleum is) - WHY CALL IT GAS...??
Put actual house Gas into your car and see what happens... 🤣🤣
As a home owner, I will never get an FCEV because charging at home is just too convenient. I don't ever want to go to a "gas" station again. I've been driving BEVs for 6 years and I'm never going back. I'm sure the Mirai is a nice car, but I'm not trading in my Tesla for one any time soon.
But for a renter or street parker, maybe FCEVs are a better option? If you can't charge at home, and don't want to burn gas, the fast fill-up time of a FCEV sounds like a good idea. Of course, you will stuck in your home town for many many years waiting for the infrastructure to be built.
The elephant in the room is that we just don't have a good way to create compressed hydrogen gas. Natural gas reforming releases greenhouse gases. Cracking water wastes too much energy. When is the magic catalyst going to be found?
I wonder how many more kilowatt hours were added to your consumption when you started charging your car at home.
@@ostrichproject1715 i wonder how many gallons of hydrogen was added to your consumption when you started refueling in remote hydrogen station
mine adds 4.5 KWh to the bill after a days worth of zipping around my metropolitan home town (50-70Km).
@@ostrichproject1715 before covid, I needed about 30kwh per day to charge the car.
There's also the range issue for a lot of the US. There are significant parts of the country where the common 150-ish mile maximum range for BEVs is less than ideal. When not in plaguetimes it was not uncommon for me to but in 110 mile days easily for just local driving and not heading to a nearby city (about 30 miles off.) Teslas normally break that limit and make BEVs more practical for some of those areas, but that's specifically Teslas and they aren't the entirety of the BEV market, nor are they inclined to share much of their technology that enables that range. Even then, if we're ever going to break free of fossil fuels we're going to need something that can power trucking (rail doesn't go everywhere and even where it DOES go there's still short/medium haul that's required) and you're not going to be able to do that with something that's always going to have lengthy recharge times. Even the Tesla SuperCharger stations (if they're available) are going to take fifteen minutes to an hour or so and that's for the lower load passenger transport cars. BEVs definitely have a place, but that place seems better suited to predictable consumer daily driving (which is still important)
I'm impressed, very nice video with a lot of background knowledge.
I drive this Mirai myself in Germany and do so with enthusiasm. Super nice and cool CAR! Thank you Toyota!🥰
Also, I remember reading about a Japanese bus company back in the 1970s which converted their diesel buses to run on hydrogen. The advantage of burning the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is that it would require all of the rare minerals which are used in the above hydrogen fuel cell.
Let me guess the author who wrote that was the oil companies?
Edit: editing this to acknowledge that the videos following this one will most likely address the points raised below.
I get that this is a sponsored video, but I wish some actual tough questions were asked or at least acknowledged. Is hydrogen fuel production better for the environment than the alternatives? How are they handling the insane fuel costs not to mention costs of building the refueling stations? Can the industry survive without state government incentives? All we got was a shallow overview of hydrogen fuel cells and an even worse review of a car.
The cars are awesome pieces of technology, for sure, but there are just WAY too many BIG problems to overcome for them to be practical (like $11-14 per pound of fuel) even over lithium ion BEVs which also have some lingering issues that need to be addressed (I drive a 2016 Kia Soul EV). Maybe if half the automotive market decided to do HFC instead of just Toyota and Honda then things might have improved substantially and they'd be on an almost even playing field with lithium ion, but lithium BEVs are so far ahead of HFC there's no way they can catch up now.
This is the first of four videos, so at least some of those questions will likely be addressed later.
@@UnconventionalReasoning Fair enough. I'll make sure to check those out too.
Hydrogen is necessary. But not on personal vehicles. It will be necessary to cross electrical deserts where electrification is not available or long stops are impractical. Trucking cannot do with batteries alone, the math doesn't add up. This is also true for shipping that cannot carry enough batteries to make the weight to cargo ratio worth it. And so shipping and airplanes will be the next biggest users, only FC can bring those modes of transport to zero emissions or carbon neutral. All in all, this is the big tech for climate change combat. Private transportation is such a minuscule fraction of the entire mass of global emissions. But you got to sell the idea to the average consumer to shift government and industry action. It's a tough spot.
@@Leo0718 there are uses for new technologies which seem pretty clear, like trucking and shipping. I think it is a bit premature to cut out some other uses, like personal vehicles, because the development of the technology over the next decade or so could make unexpected progress. Also, the economics of the situation can change dramatically.
An electric car is 2.4 times more efficient than a hydrogen car.(source Wikipedia)
Why?
You have electricity.(hopefully generated via solar or other renewable way)
You use it to separate hydrogen via electrolysis(or other methods) and pump it into your car.
Your car turns then that hydrogen into electricity.
See the problem? We could have just use the electricity to charge an electric car directly.
Also we already have vast and fundamental electric grids versus a non existent 'hydrogen grid'.
I really expect that the next parts talk about this "little issue" with "H2 future" Toyota want to take (force?), otherwise it will tell this is just a paid ad. Sad.
I'm saving for a tesla
Efficiency isn't s problem if you've got enough renewable energy.
@@wo-olf
Yes it is.
Being 2.4 times less efficient means you're effectively emitting 2.4 times more carbon per unit of energy delivered to the wheels.
Plus you've forgotten to mention that the hydrogen needs to be compressed so it can be stored. The compression process takes a huge amount of energy too and this energy you're never getting back.
Really heartwarming hearing Jackie talk about the setting aside of the competition to focus on the greater good. If only more people could think this way, and especially more businesses could think this way, and just step aside for a moment to focus on how we can make the world more green energy efficient, we could accomplish so much by way of that. I never knew about hydrogen fueled vehicles until watching this. And now I'm actually considering buying one since my 2001 Chevy is basically dying and it's way past time for me to get a new car lol. I definitely was going to go for electric, so this is an interesting option. Thanks Dianna!
Are they even selling this car yet?
@@joeaveragerYes they do in California
Great video.
Loved the knowledge and your enthu!
I totally get this, but 1. making single-molecule hydrogen takes a lot of energy (so constantly, not just during the development of batteries or something), 2. not using the heat energy generated by h2o forming (just the electron flow), it's very much about tradeoffs. And if there are no actual graphs and numbers here, I'm not sure we're gonna get anywhere to attribute to climate change fixing. So I would very much ask companies to share the actual details, even if they're bad at the moment but they see room for improvement.
I'd be more impressed if I hadn't heard how Toyota had bet on hybrid and thought full electrics to just be niche for the next while, and now that Tesla et all are making viable electrics they are lobbying against electric vehicles. Very green of them.
It's cash green. The greenest tech of them all.
They are lobbying for hybrids. Not against EV.
To be fair, what are you supposed to do with those batteries when they wear out?
@@EnderKiller225 Currently, they just sit in toxic piles of battery waste. Some companies are trying to solve that problem by recycling, but that just tries to solve climate change by creating more problems.
@@k1fizz
There are several companies, big and small, that are finding ways to recycle car batteries. Everything from use for household electric storage through to remaking new batteries. It is the best interests of EV manufacturers to recycle.
Very good presentation..easily understood highly technical process.
Thanks
It would be great to listen to a discussion about the thermodynamics, and energy efficiency of powering a BEV charged most of the time from a PV array, compared with using the PV array to electrolyse water, separate the Hydrogen and Oxygen, compress the Hydrogen and make it available for filling the tank in a FCEV. The storage losses from the tank would also be interesting.
It's not much of a discussion, more like a summary. BEV's are hands down far more energy efficient, but interestingly fuel cells would require a lot less mining because they're using a fuel. But of course that fuel is a pain to deal with.
Most auto manufactures put the delivery pump/charger to wheel efficiency of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at 25% to 30%, and battery electric vehicles at 70% to 90%. 95% of hydrogen is now made from natural gas or coal gasification, so has almost zero pollution or CO2 benefits. Hydrogen fueling stations are very scarce, and it costs on average 16 dollars per kilogram, and the Mirai gets between low 50s to high 60s miles per kilogram, and averages about 265 miles on a "full" tank. Very expensive for a car that can barely be used in California, let alone the rest of the country. And the Mirai still has a battery pack to provide the surge power. Mirai's resale value is from below 9k to 15k dollars for a 2018. Not great for a car that cost 51k to 60k new. It has been estimated that Toyota is losing about 60k to 120k per Mirai sold.
H2 can only accelerate cars, they would still need batteries for braking.
@@BrianSu They need batteries to both accelerate and provide regenerative braking, as the hydrogen reaction cannot happen fast enough to produce enough energy for fast acceleration. So they are still hybrid vehicles, just with a hydrogen powered generator.
Quite a devestating summary.
@@GoCoyote ahh ok. I’ve only been on H2 buses. Not sure how they work
@@GoCoyote sounds like a good application for supercapacitors
Did they explain why the BEV won't be enough to get to a 100% green transportation future?
I think hydrogen is a great choice for planes and ships, but ground transport is more efficient with BEV.
They said that topic will be covered in a future video.
I think Hydrogen is a great technology to exist, and I'm interested in hearing why they think it's better than BEVs, but remain convinced that BEVs are the much better choice for most people.
I would think it would be related to issues with grid capacity. CA is already struggling and they are only starting to push to 8% of new cars sold being EV. A mixture of BEV and FCEV would ease strain on the grid. Range is also substantially better with FCEV so that would be better for long range transportation where BEV is more than sufficient for daily commuting.
It's still pretty terrible for planes, the tanks have to be absolutely massive. Liquid hydrogen is not energy dense compared to jet fuel.
How do you intend to charge fleets of BEVs? The CA grid for example, can’t handle today’s loads!
They say that BEVs can't do it alone but they don't produce any of those so have to push the FCEV as the "other" option.
I applaud you at taking this daunting task on and be straight about what the real pros and cons are. This is what really helps the avg Joe and Jill.
Love your videos. One thing that should be considered is the total emissions from vehicles versus the global industrial emissions from other sources including shipping, trains, etc. It really changes people's perceptive when they learn how little of global emissions is due to personal vehicles.
Working for the hydrogen division of M*chelin here in France, it's super interesting because it feels new even though the technology isn't that new at all (60's for space applications, wow) there is still a lot of work and progress to make. The prices of each system is horrendous (looking at 5 digits), it uses ultra rare metals (platinum for example) and because the fuel cell isn't reactive enough and you need a buffer in the middle of that, vehicles still needs a lithium battery. The lifespan of the stack is the main question. Automotive applications are supper harsh because of cold temperatures, vibrations, start and stop usage (the fuel cells likes constant load and temps). But even though, I'm super proud to work in that industry, and I still love my older cars to have fun in the week end 🤙
What's the system efficiency (grid to "wheels") of the latest fuel cell systems?
@@rogerstarkey5390 to be absolutely honest I don't remember (considering the production of h2 from water electrolysis and not gas). Those numbers exists somewhere but as we don't produce our own hydrogen for now, I can't tell how much power is needed to produce a certain amount of h2 (VS what our cells provide with the same amount of gas). Good question though
You don't need a fuel cell to use H2.
@@BrianSu true but you need h2 to use a fuel cell 😁. I'm following what Toyota does with a piston engine burning h2
@@frozenpete788 BMW made H2 powered piston V-12 engine 7 series.... it's called the BMW Hydrogen 7
When you know that Toyota is actively slowing down the adoption of BEV, this video has a different taste
@@k1fizz only 4% of hydrogen production is so called green... so who's liying now?
@@k1fizz also FCEV can't do regenerative break unless they have a battery inside (and they do... so FCEV is a whole BEV with extra part that consume 3 time more energy, need new kind of station with lot of protection as H2 is dangerous and can't be charged at home... so FCEV = BEV-------)
@@k1fizz Lie? There’s no lie about Toyota executives funding anti-Bev lobbying efforts, no one’s arguing about how green hydrogen is or isn’t in this comment thread just Toyota’s lobbying efforts
@@SylouCool A majoritiy of energy productioin is from fossil sources. The energy mix in the grid will get better over time, just like the energy mix in gas pipelines that also will get better over time.
Its the same thing.
@@SylouCool You can utilize supercapasitors if battery resources gets low to regenerate energy in a FCEV. BEV's value chain towards battery grade minerals is troublesome as we electrify the transport at bigger scale.
I've invested into miners and lithium index for this reason alone.
Awesome vid! Highly informative. Thx! 🙂
I've always wanted to know more about the mirai thanks!
I did a project on hydrogen fuel cells back in my high school geography class... that was like 15 years ago. I was starting to think everyone forgot about hydrogen fuel cells. Glad to see they're actually being tested now
Same here.
An amusing part is the notion that there will be one or the other. From global projections *before* we talked much about electrical cars or hydrogen cars as a reality, on NOVA, they talked to many people in various energy sectors and the broad consensus that the population is still growing and the needs of the world will require many sorts of energy production and applications. There may be areas where one technology is predominant, and in other sectors another.
Also what if China and Russia have a lot of the Lithium or whatever key component you want to name? Do we support them by piling ridiculous amounts of currency to get the materiel? And how much do we want to buy these things from authoritarians, despots, dictators, etc. ? And how much do we want to deal with countries where there are few human rights, effectively zero workplace safety, and a lot of the processes are hard on the environment and on the workers... what's our moral decision - buy materials and support awful regimes? Invade to take them? Or choose less optimal materials and technologies that come from decent countries with minimal(ish) environmental and worker safety issues?
This big energy transition we are going to be undergoing for at least 100 years is going to put many conundrums in front of us and often no really good answer. Where are our needs for power going to trump the safety of foreign workers who are humans as well? Some slaves effectively.... this is not a simple green revolution - it ties directly into some of the nastiest nations in the world.
Nobody has forgotten about hydrogen fuel cells it's just the cost to produce the hydrogen is way more expensive than fossil fuels and electricity. We experimented with Hydrogen bombs forever so we knew its potential.
Oil cabal will not allow untill oil is gone. They kill off any competition
@@danielk0106 Cost to produce hydrogen is an issue? I use electricity and electrolyte solution (mostly water) and I can make hydrogen with ease. On the other hand, I've been told that it is an energy-intensive process. Is that related to what you are saying?
Where is the hydrogen for the cars coming from. At present most hydrogen is produced by steam reformation of methane or natural gas, this releases vast quantities of CO2 and if you catalyse water with electricity where is that electricity coming from and would it be more efficient to put that electricity into batteries.
More efficient to just use petrol or alternative fuels. Hydrogen is just a battery.
You can catalyze water with electricity from green source (like solar or wind).
@@pcfirebeats so just use electricity
@@pcfirebeats Yeah it's certainly possible to produce hydrogen using renewable energy, but any third party hydrogen producer will try to maximize their profit and will do it in the cheapest way. So it would require some regulation to ensure hydrogen production doesn't defeat the purpose of going green.
Green H2 production is a chicken and egg problem. It's doable, but won't happen until the demand is there. If we wait until it's available to use it, it will never happen. This is the benefit of electric and H2 cars. They can literally get greener as the infrastructure evolves. We're already seeing this happen with batteries.
As far as "why not just charge a battery", it's about being able to refill quickly. This R
emoves the biggest hurdle to eclectic car adoption. Which was made abundantly clear in the video, making me wonder if you even bothered watching it.
My favorite so far! So interesting. Hilarious edits too.
Thanks for Sharing this and all your Videos ! 🙏🏼
I saw a video by Real Engineering “The Truth about Hydrogen.”
The arguments brought up in the video seem compelling to me and he calculated if I remember correctly something around 75% efficiency for BEVs from Power generation to the electric motor and somewhere around 30% for HEVs. With you running your car, what were your numbers?
Are they better than the model calculations by Real Engineering or are they even worse? I’m really curious about your story and data!
Yes. And broadening it out _Real Engineering_ is very good on renewables generally. That's the place I'd go to get a much better understanding of this topic.
efficiency of the fuel doesn't matter if your source of energy is very cheap. Like hydrogen production from nuclear power. VHTR reactors produce electricity and hydrogen too.
don't forget they get the hydrogen from methane steme reforming, so you need to add a buttload of CO to their overall emissions, and not just take tailpipe readings. CH4 + H2O ⇌ CO + 3 H2. both methane and steam are so cheap it's like it's free compared with green methods of generation
@@Azrudi
The efficiency matters.
1) The end user pays for the energy.... ALL the energy to produce the fuel (check the comparative price per mile)
2) Any energy ("electricity") used could replace Fossil generation on the grid.
The fact that it doesn't obviously means more fossil fuel remains. "Green hydrogen" is not green.
@@guest_informant Agreed, Real Engineering is not being sponsored by Toyota while this video is.
I've got one of those BEVs. I charge it up in my garage; turns out that electricity is nearly ubiquitous so basic charging infrastructure is already everywhere. Faster charging is only needed on longer trips, and is already in a usable (could be better) state for most of the US. I think these details will prevent FCEV from wide spread adoption, except maybe for some unusual markets, because BEVs have plenty of infrastructure already in place.
Then there is the whole issue of how the hydrogen is produced and how much carbon dioxide the production releases.
I agree.
Green Hydrogen also is a wate of electricity, because electricity is used toproduce H2 and then H2 is used fo produce electricity again. All this costs more than half of the energy.
If BEV is an viable option for the purpose in mind, FCEV won't be able to hold up.
@@mAx-grassfed Doesn't really matter considering the fact that we could have so many times more electricity than we need if we used more of the potential the sun is giving us day to day. H2 would be a great way to store that energy.
@@wo-olf
I kind of agree.
Though I think we should use our green energy as efficiently as possible as long as we do not have enough.
Meaing for private mobility:
bicycles > electrified public transport > BEV > FCEV
The saved green electricity should be used to produce green hydrogen to decarbonize the steel and aluminium production, as well as the chemistry industry. Also, it is needed for special case of cargo transportation like ships and planes.
@@mAx-grassfed absolutely. As long as we don't make use of enough renewable energy to cover our energy demand we should not waste it.
100% GREEN hydrogen is available today in California. Find the stations here: cafcp.org/stationmap
FCEV using green hydrogen will emit 79%-80% lower life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car and it is being done today.
A BEV using 100% green electricity will emit 81% lower life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car, but the grid is only 10-20% green at night when BEVs are charging: www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html When is California's goal to have a 100% renewable electrical grid? 2045: focus.senate.ca.gov/sb100/faqs
Even the worst hydrogen you can fuel up with today (33.3% green and 66.7% blue) emits 72.44% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. Whereas the average BEV in the United States will emit 57% - 68% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. This means driving a BEV will contribute more to carbon emissions than driving a FCEV today.
I love what Jackie has said about putting aside competition for the greater good! Different companies having a single mission sounds awesome!
Yaaaa but they arnt sharing tech. They are just making their public image better really, making the idea of hydrogen more appealing for sure, but still refusing to work together publicly with the tech.
It makes sound business sense. Same as android phones are all compatible. They are all aiming to take on ICE and accept that they will not have a monopoly on the technology. You can only go it alone like Apple if you are big enough and wish to corner an exclusive part of the market.
Isn't true though. Toyota actively lobbies against BEVs because they dragged their feet on that tech and success for other OEMs' BEVs is bad for Toyota competitiveness.
A standardized nozzle is not a particularly impressive example of cooperation for the greater good. And every other OEM that actually sells vehicles has given up on the obvious dead-end of H2 for passenger vehicles anyway.
@@PyedrHydrogen for Semis and Airplanes Jets is the way of the future. Imagine a Jet plane with batteries on fire mid air over the ocean. Really?
So my roommate has this car, we live in the bay area, you cannot drive this car to So Cal since it cannot cover the distance to the next fill up station, it may be close or you may end up just reaching. Filling up the car takes a lot of time as compared to a gas car however it is still faster than charging a full electric car. Hydrogen is expensive but the good thing is when he got the car there was a promotion and i think toyota handed out a $15K debit card for fueling (can only be used to fuel the car). The lines at the stations are long, if the station is out of service you need to go to the next location which is what causes the long lines.
I feel this technology would be epic for the trucking industry, as electric motors provide max torque at 0 RPM, to improve what the mirai has we need to add a replaceable battery pack (so that when hydrogen runs out you still have reserve and also have a charging system), use the trailer bases as add on tanks that would extend the range depending on the trailers they run.
The epic part about this car is it pees while driving, it is a rear wheel drive one can drift :P. Also since it acts like living things since it uses oxygen in the atmosphere will it deplete our oxygen? :O
When water is split through electrolysis, hydrogen and oxygen are created.
The oxygen goes in a cycle and is not used up or lost in hot oxidation!
"It actually requires armor piercing rounds that we can only get in the US"
...of course
time to send it to Demolition Ranch
Murica, 'F' YEAH!
The whole "a chemical reaction happens but the electron is forced take the long way around" is how batteries work too
That's why they also call it "cell" or "battery" sometimes on the video :)
Yep, except you can refill a battery cell anywhere there is electricity......
Batteries leave a larger carbon footprint tho
@@johnroberts5500 Please site your sources.
Just found out about this channel I was researching hydrogen powered cars. I was wondering what happens to the hype. I love this channel already!
thank you very much Jackie u are very good with your knowledge
What was the range of the car on one tank(s) worth of hydrogen? I don't remember it being mentioned in the video.
500 km
@@giovannip8600 Then how much that hydrogen costs at the "pump"?
@@ikocheratcr $75-$88
@@paperhouse6282 which is why car makers are subsidizing the fuel.
Note, there are only something like 44 hydrogen fuel stations in the US. One in Hawaii, the rest in California.
@@giovannip8600 that short‽ There's BEVs with more range, but to be fair the Mirai is about 6-7 years old now isn't it?
Hey Physics Girl, how much editorial control did you give up to Toyota? You showed us the taped up phones, now please share the limits of your NDA with Toyota.
Or, do a follow-up video talking about the opposite viewpoints (assuming that you aren't constrained from making such a video).
@@aveekbh And if you are restricted, don't make the video and we'll know you had to give up a lot of control to get the sponsorship.
Assuming there's an NDA is already pretty big assumption, and even if there is, how is she going to show the limits of it? Do you know what an NDA is? What lol??
@@MrKangorilla 1.The NDA is signed BEFORE they tape up your phone's cameras. Clearly you've never visited an R&D center.
2. It perfectly fine to talk about the limits of an NDA.
3. yes
4. you are a doofus
I, along with quite a few other potential buyers, was invited by Toyota to test drive the Marai, when it was released, IIRC, in 2014. I was truly impressed by every aspect of the car, and we also attended a mini-seminar on the total hydrogen use/production of/cost analysis, comparison to gas and BEV, cost-benefit, pollution (almost not measurable) and more. In my mind it passed the litmus test.
The only negative I noticed in the car was it had slightly less power/acceleration than my Camry Hybrid. I understand Toyota has upgraded the electric motor, but have not driven one with the upgrade. The only other negative was there weren't enough fuel stations to drive to S. CA, but that has been remedied also.
The pricing of a Marai is a little lower now and there are over 20,000 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles in CA now, appx 9,000 of them are the Toyota Marai. When fueling nationwide comes into place I will definitely buy a Marai.
Thanks for the review.
The nozzle doesn’t freeze because of hydrogen gas expansion from high to low pressure sense Hydrogen has a negative Joule Thompson coefficient which means the gas heats up as it expands. This is the opposite of all other gases expect Helium. They actively cool the compressed gas to allow it to be pumped more efficiently and more quickly at pressure.
Hey Dianna! Make sure to present how the hydrogen is being produced.
currently, or in the future?
@@diazinth I think both of them would be great. How the industry would like to move forward also influences public opinion.
It's important than using hydrogen
"Toyota is not responsible for the operability of third party fuel stations or the availability of hydrogen fuel".
Well, of course they don't they don't want to be responsible for the part that dictates why we'll never have hydrogen cars.
Battery EVs immediately answer your questions about range. Sure, there might be more or less superchargers in a certain area, but worst case scenario you can just charge it at home or on any regular outlet, and things will get better with time.
Meanwhile, Hydrogen has a *severe*, so far *unsolved* problem with availability. And the problem is fairly simple: Hydrogen is expensive and *slow* to manufacture. The two ways this could work is either each gas station makes its own hydrogen, or hydrogen is centrally manufactured and distributed, just like gas. The first case would *never* work, first because the initial investment is *massive*, and there are no customers, and second, because when there are enough customers, a gas station can't make hydrogen fast enough to supply them. What about centrally manufacturing it and distributing it like gas? Well, there are again no answers here. There isn't enough hydrogen production to go around for any significant amount of vehicles, so you're guaranteed to see prices fluctuate UP the more hydrogen cars there are. Just like gas. And there's no WAY that supply could keep up with demand if there was any serious demand.
So, basically, the only way hydrogen cars could work is if there was only a few select vehicles with a steady, predictable requirement, such as the buses on a city or trucks.
And I think hydrogen works fine for trucks. Distribution is easier since truck typically drive between industrial areas, and hydrogen demand on the scale of an industrial area is very predictable.
And there's of course the problem with batteries of not scaling very well. Batteries are heavy, there is usually a regulatory limit on how heavy vehicles are allowed to be, so the weight of batteries limit the useful load a truck can haul.
@@HenriZwols I agree. As I said, trucks, city buses, and similar large-vehicles with predictable routes could work.
The fuel station infrastructure in LA is terrible. I love driving my mirai, but it’s not a practical vehicle as there are so few pumps. To make matters worse, the hydrogen stations seem to be out of fuel a lot of the time, or they have maintenance issues. It’s just not a realistic car to own if you want to use it regularly, as getting fuel simply isn’t possible a lot of the time.
@@florianschura4150 Exactly. The problem is, it's a scam. The manufacturer *knows* what the fuel situation is like, and they know that it's something that is *inherent* to the fuel type. It's not a matter of "there aren't enough *yet*", it's a matter of production and are intrinsic issues of H2, and there is no solution in sight.
The manufacturers that are nonetheless pushing H2 vehicles are doing so in order to fight the shift to electric. Toyota is using their hybrids and H2 as excuses to lobby Congress against EV policies. Basically, they push a vehicle that they know is intentionally not viable, and then say "See? We need to slow down, the world is not ready yet".
10:25 The gas is actually expanding. The Storage has to be at a higher pressure, otherwise it would not flow. Hydrogen and Helium (unlike other gases) heat up on expanding. It needs to be cooled to -40 C to prevent this from happening and overheating the cars tanks. Joule-Thompson effect .
12:04 omg i JUST watched a video on how in America there isn't a standardized plug for electric cars. Thanks you SO much for not falling into the same trap with Hydrogen that detail for refueling is going to help infrastructure and adoption of hydrogen vehicles SO much, bc that means they might be the vehicle to stand in the gap until electric infrastructure catches up, bc MAN is it outdated and diverse in America rn.
It's so hard to know if this is a positive move, environmentally, when you hear statements like, "0 emission vehicle." We've moved the emissions to another location, but not eliminated them. I understand that it's a long and nuanced conversation and the numbers aren't small. Laymen (like me) don't know what those numbers mean without context of other industries.
I'd love to hear your perspective on how to make sense of all these options from a big picture view.
I should carry a load of stickers reading "here" to correct the stickers on BEVs that read "zero emissions". Really annoys me!
Right now, fossil fuels and natural gas are used to produce hydrogen. But you could easily use solar, wind, hydro, geo thermal, or even nuclear energy to create hydrogen from water through electrolysis.
@@reallynotpc
You'll need more, saying "3 times the emissions of a BEV" for Hydrogen vehicles (not at the vehicle, of course)
@@rogerstarkey5390 At the moment a couple of dozen will suffice over here.
Zero emmision at the point of the car is relevent for L.A. as eliminating smog was a major impetus for these vehicles and the subsidizing of them.
Almost two decades ago, we already thought fuel cells were the future. This is painfully slow.
Yup, BEV won and now Toyota is just being stubborn.
@@TheLastMoccasin It's not that simple. Batteries "won" _for now,_ for a very small percentage of vehicles (less than 0.5% of vehicles currently); it's quite insignificant currently, although I will admit there's at least _some) traction for the future as well.
There are multiple good arguments explaining how batteries aren't viable -or at least optimal- for ubiquitous/universal use in the future though. So there can still be an introduction to hydrogen down the line, be it 5 years or 50 years.
There's still a lot of time and a lot of unbuilt green vehicles (over 99%), and everything has a shelf life too, so it's not like once all vehicles are BEVs (super unlikely) that a HEV couldn't still occur.
@@TheLastMoccasin Me thinks BEV is a road map to hydrogen and hydrogen is a roadmap to something else beyond our lifetimes 😂.
@@TheLastMoccasin Toyota now builds Hybrids, HFCs and BEVs ...... and not only Toyota is investing in the technology. Honda, Hyundai, GM, BMW, Porsche, VW, Land Rover, Jaguar are all investing in HFC technology
@@SnowWolf9999 I guess we will just have to put our bets down (stock market) and see who wins then!
I won’t go zero emission until a hydro vehicle is available and the fuel is readily available as well.
@10:25: Unlike most other gases, hydrogen gets warm by expansion, not cold.
That's why the fueling stations cool down the hydrogen to minus 40 degree Celsius. To avoid too much heatup of the tanks. That's why the nozzle gets so cold.
Still strikes me as really unfortunate that America has such a dependency on cars. Having good public transportation would go a huge way in reducing carbon emissions.
Ask someone in a flyover state about public transportation.
Having said that, we need all the sources of energy we can get, and we need to be free to choose the one that's appropriate for our location/situation.
That is likely always going to be the case as well. Even if the governments built efficient public transport, most people in suburban areas will not use it.
Somehow I feel you live in a country the size of a small state. The amount of even one resource like copper to begin building infrastructure would triple the cost of copper. The amount of open pit mining to get the resources would be devastating. You may not realize it also, but there are other countries in North America and it is a very large mass of land. You cannot drive from New York to LA in a day like some people think.
@@mollygundies6966 Obviously the public transit would only be of benefit in cities… which, coincidentally, is where 5/6 of people live.
I've lived in Berlin, where public transit is widely available & cheap. A lot of people there don't own cars, because there's no need.
@@jursamaj Well, I live in the American coastal west, where because slightly more than half of the population lives in the cities and are dependent on liberal ideology, the cities control the politics. But I'll tell ya, if you go to Costco you'll see almost all SUVs in the parking lot. It takes one of those to haul home your purchases. We do like to drive here.
I always enjoy seeing your work, thank you for doing this wide-ranging series!
Great great job!!! Thanks Diana Team!
We have many in the Coachella Valley in an near Palm Springs that are available for the public to use. Our local public transit SunLines offers it to the community to use.
We've crunched the numbers on this technology. it loses to BEV on every environmental metric, but the real reason hydrogen fuel cell technology will never catch on is because it costs more.
Well, BEVs aren't all that great for the environment in their own right.
I think the best we can do is explore as many different alternatives as well can.
@@mechanomics2649 Do you seriously still believe all that FUD? FYI, Tesla has released their environmental impact report. It's been all over RUclips for about a week now. Here's the link:
www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2020-tesla-impact-report.pdf
Of course, we could all give up motorized transportation completely, but as far as the environment is concerned, What Tesla is doing is the next best thing.
@@surferdude4487 you do realize making the batteries uses a lot of CO2 right? Neither are totally clean, the truth is that, regardless of infrastructure cause that’s a different story, FCEV and EV are on par with eachother or EV is ahead a little, but you can’t write off different alternatives because they aren’t efficient, remember, the average person doesn’t really care about efficiency and environmental impact
@@matthewmizrachi1877 Yes, I can write off solutions for being inefficient. Inefficiency translates into additional costs.
And, as for battery production being bad for the environment, have a look at Tesla's environmental impact statement. I provided the link in one of my other replies in this thread.
BEVs pull ahead of ICE vehicles in total life-time CO2 produced by 5,000 miles. And that's with current technology. Bevs will be even better than that within the next two years because of new technology such as dry battery electrodes and larger form factor cells.
There are no such improvements anywhere in sight for hydrogen fuel cell powered hybrids.
@@surferdude4487 do you know what the company plasma kinetics is?
Thanks soo much for highlighting FCEV technology! Although I think the best application is for heavy duty vehicles and equipment (replacement for diesel fuel and aircraft engines), it DEFINITELY has a strong place in the green future economy. Much faster to fill up. No need to dig into the Earth (for Green Hydrogen). And nearly 5x the power density of latest mass produced batteries for cars!
Love your energy and curiosity! Hope you get well soon.
Without watching the other video, I would assume fuel cells have a lower carbon emission to make than that of batteries, especially when factoring in the rare metals required for the batteries.
The fuel cell is stainless steel and rubber gaskets
@@scottalan4655 electric car batteries require 6 times the amount of minerals of conventional car batteries, and require some minerals which standard car batteries don't require such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite. They are using up substantially more of the rare Earth Minerals, they aren't just stainless steel and rubber gaskets.
Don't forget the toxic pollution that mining the resources that make batteries create. While we cannot get away from the mining, the scale that would be required to build so many batteries is insane.
It was nice that Toyota let you tour and film part of their facility, but ultimately there was no science discussed in this video other than addressing the headers of a few topics + infographics without any numeric depth (no numbers = no science IMO).
This honestly seemed like corporate propaganda from Toyota. Nice to watch, but ultimately lacking any real info and rather meaningless besides an emotional impact (save the planet, etc.). The select few concerns addressed in this video were brushed-off/dismissed without any substantial response by Toyota's team (ex: hydrogen will worm its way through any material I've seen, what difference will a polymer wrap make? Hard to just sit here and trust the Toyota lady at her word without a better explanation).
Exactly, she never discussed the efficiency of the car as well which is like the most important aspect of a new technology
Well it’s a sponsored brand integration not a critical journalistic piece. She probably had to have lots of meetings with them to go over ground rules and such. I wouldn’t have high expectations of transparency when a brand is paying you to make a video imo.
@@rutvikpanchal5726 - Or the emissions in the hydrogen fuel generation process, which imo is even more important than the efficiency.
This video made physics girl look pretty blonde.
@@rutvikpanchal5726 Now there's a video that discusses the efficiency!
I was hoping to hear "where does the hydrogen come from?"
"shhhh dont think about it" - toyota
i get this argument, but seems like methane is preferable over gasoline for one thing, and for two, in traditional vehicles, both the fuel production and use creates emissions, but in this case its only the production. not perfect but a step maybe?
definitely not a mature industry at this point, but seems like it has potential - especially if hydrogen is used as energy storage during peak production (like solar)
it was the first element ever in the history of the world part 1
@@JW-hh4qg that feels like a step backward. Moving to hydrogen by way of natural gas still requires intense infrastructure modification and it opens up centuries of hydrocarbon harvesting, entirely defeating the point. We can MAKE methane from landfills, giving an indefinite supply and lengthening carbon emissions simply for the sake of not abandoning hydrocarbon-based energy. If the end goal is electricity, then collect it from the sun, wind or water without polluting the air and causing widespread health issues.
@@gelerson1642 Except that our current solar, wind and hydro-electrical infrastructure do exactly that. Solar and Wind take large amounts of plastics and silicon. Plastics obviously require petroleum. Silicone requires a ton of open-pit mining and is toxic. So much so that the levels of silicone in the Silicone Valley water supply are reaching near undrinkable levels. There isn't a magic fix to our problems.
Thank you. Very informative. More, please. 🙂
Thank you for the great informative video. I shared it with my wifes sister and her husband as they are considering an electric car in the future. Perhaps my next new vehicle for us also.
Aaaaand Toyota's propaganda video does its job.
What will happen instead is you will stick with a gasoline car based on the 'future promise' of hydrogen, which is all Toyota has left to sell from their massive R&D mistake.
They are using the Mirai not to sell you a Hydrogen car (it's expensive and impractical) but to keep you out of a competitors battery vehicle. The goal is here is to make your next car yet another Corolla and not a Kia EV or a Tesla.
What this Toyota scripted commercial deliberately left out was where the H2 actually comes from, it's methane, the Mirai is a fossil fuel powered vehicle with refinery CO2 emissions. Yes, it *could* use green electricity, but it doesn't. If it did, it would be even more expensive per mile, and use 3x the electricity of a battery EV, which in turn puts more burden on the grid which leaves less green electricity to displace CO2 emitting generation.
Using hydrogen as a fuel is a lose lose situation. Either use the methane directly in a natural gas combustion engine (LNG) or use the electricity directly in a battery EV. Going via Hydrogen makes no sense now that batteries are heading to $100 per kWh at the pack level - in all fairness to H2 research, batteries used to be $2000 per kWh - but have not been for a decade now.
Toyota doesn't really want to sell you a hydrogen car, they want you keep buying gasoline, they don't have a capable EV offering because they have been asleep at the wheel.
Is Physics Girl throwing out physics? A hydrogen car is an electric car with the inefficiencies of hydrogen (making, compression, loss). The only probable advantage would be range which most electric cars do just as well. There's no HFC infrastructure! There's a reason there's not more companies working on hydrogen fuel cell. Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are DOA.
It might be a waste for personal travel, especially in urban area's, but for heavy commercial traffic or Agricultural applications batteries are just too, heavy/bulky for the needed energy density, and the refuel times are far too long.
A refueling experience like that of a ICE car is the appeal. Unless two minute recharging becomes a thing, EVs owners will not enjoy that kind of "fill up" and go experience on a leg of a road trip.
@@unraisinable Compressed hydrogen gas still won't match up well against liquid fuels for energy density by mass and definitely not volumetric. I wonder how that'll work for a hypothetical aviation world, whether they burn it in turbines or use fuel cells. But I suspect for most ground vehicles, especially mass limited ones like road transport and agricultural equipment (max weight per vehicle/axle pressure) combined with faster refueling it could become part of a solution.
Theoretically if we ever get a surplus of renewable energy that could be used to produce and store hydrogen gas I guess instead of being wasted? There are some areas that already have excess solar/wind power at times, but I'm not sure how well the processes are at quickly ramping up and down with hydrogen production and if intermittent activity will end up being sufficient or even financially viable (with subsidies).
As for the downsides of losses mentioned by swirlingbrain in the original comment: I do hope the other 3 parts she alluded to at the start will adress those. This one since they got some exclusive Toyota access might've been restricted and subject to their approval before uploading. I think BEV is probably going to be preferable for a lot of use cases as well, especially most personal use but there are some activities that'll really struggle staying functional without liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Long distance aviation and ships are probably the hardest ones to deal with, hypothetically ships could go back to using sails as primary power source but that'd be very unpredictable and hard to combine with current container ships (both loading/unloading and unpredictable schedules). Won't go so far as to say that fuel cells are dead on arrival but they definitely have a tall mountain to overcome with both infrastructure and unsustainable production emissions currently.
I can charge my electric car at home, always ready when I need it. Also, I have chosen to automatically charge when the power has the lowest cost that day. I cannot see how H2 fuelcell can compete with the availability of electric charging as long as the prices are as they are atm. H2 vs. Electric power and the investment of buying the car itself.
Hello, I'd like to just point out that lithium is mined using fossil fuel as an energy source and also that the electricity you use to charge your vehicle has come from your power plants. Which almost always burn fossil fuels. This isn't a fixall by any means. These vehicles change the game. We need to work towards lowering the price of hydrogen fuel cells.
@@cocoacastsdjgod you are right, but dont forget that as of today, most of the H2 is made from non renewable gas sources (but it seems to be starting to change). Also Im fortunate enough to live in a country with close to 100% hydro power.
I believe nuclear power in the grid, in combination with battery cars is more realistic, unless batteries or their ingredients get too expensive to compete.
Good for you! So, your battery-based car works well, for your case, that is actually great, but that doesn't mean it's the solution for every case. I mean, for the car example, I've read about the struggles of someone who has to park on the street so he only charges when there's opportunity somewhere else, and you could argue this should get better with time and I agree, also it would be nice if he only had to do a quick hydrogen refueling instead. But there are also trains, ships and airplanes, where the weight and size of the batteries in proportion to the energy stored can be a problem and this could be a solution. So, we need to keep improving researching, because Hydrogen along with batteries, also has a lot of potential to solve our fossil fule dependency. So, let's hope both keep improving, not everything has to be "my team" vs "your team"
@@walkinmn yep! But it might as well end up as one of the technologies that are "not ready yet". The investment in H2 is nothing compared to battery...
Because two of the biggest factors that prevent me from getting an electric car - that I can't fuel it up as quickly as a gasoline car and that I live in an apartment with no electricity in the garage.
Jackie seems super passionate about this and explains it super well!
She a westcoast tree hugger that’s why 🤣
I love it also.The more you learn about this the more it makes since its still electric it just doesn't have a 2000 pound explosive battery and it pees water out the tail pipe.And the tanks are like scuba tanks.Brobably safer than driving with gas.
As charming as Physics Girl is, she finally asked the most important question in the very end, “where is the hydrogen coming from?”
I guess that depends on how well the renewable energy infrastructure is where you're driving. But once people are driving electric cars, you can't blame the cars for the pollution, and the infrastructure is left with the responsibility.
With electric cars, clean energy is at least an option.
@@diazinth even if 100% of the energy used to produce hydrogen comes from renewable sources, it is still too inefficient of a process to be viable at large scale, which is really what we are aiming for here. If 90% of the energy goes to waste (and it does) then we should choose the process that is 70% efficient (ie batteries) over the one that is 10% efficient (from production/extraction to wheel)
@@Supreme_Lobster I saw somewhere that for long haul trucks is better the use of Hydrogen and for passenger cars is better the use of batteries
@@diazinth where does the charging station get a majority of its power.
@@matthewgibbs6886 that depends on the infrastructure where you live. If you live in a renewable energy challenged part of the world: probably coal or some other form of burnt carbon. If you live in Norway: mostly hydropower.
The things is, once cars run on other things than fossil fuels directly, it's possible to influence how clean energy cars run on for many users at the same time. While it's challenging to replace a coal driven powerplant, it's more challenging to make a bunch of ICE lovers stop loving their archaic engines. And you have to start somewhere for capitalism to do it's magic and fill/adapt to a market.
You mentioned a couple of times the source of energy of these vehicles, the fact that it's "renewable", or that it would be green in some way. I am very sceptical. Would you care to make a follow-up video on this topic?
From what I understand, there is a theoretical limit to the efficiency of the conversion of electricity to hydrogen which is fairly low, in other words turning electricity to hydrogen is kind of a waste. Thus the only way to produce hydrogen from electricity that makes sense is to produce it with electricity coming from renewable, green, sources (that's a given, right?) which would be otherwise wasted, because there is almost always a better usage of the electricity produced than storage as hydrogen. An example of a good "source" of energy would be a wind turbine working during the night, when people sleep and the demand on electricity is low.
If you combine the poor efficiency and the low availability of these renewable sources, I don't see how it's possible to imagine replacing even a tiny fraction of all the vehicles of the world with hydrogen vehicles.
Of course you can produce hydrogen with hydrocarbons, but that's not renewable, and it produces a massive amount of CO2
Currently, nearly all industrial hydrogen production (something like 98%) is by high-temperature steam-reforming of methane gas, so... that's not ideal. There are a lot of people working to come up with ways to generate hydrogen (via hydrolysis or other processes) more cheaply and efficiently, but the biggest issue currently is the amount of energy required and the problem of increasing to industrial scales.
What makes the most sense currently is nuclear power; a single 1GW reactor can produce as much electricity as 150-350 square miles of wind turbines, and could produce around 250,000 tons of hydrogen a year. However, as much as I'm a huge proponent of nuclear power, we're absolutely abysmal at it in the USA: antiquated aging reactor designs, no fuel reprocessing and poor waste management, just to name a few highlights. Even disregarding cool flashy new technologies -- or the ever-elusive commercial fusion -- France, in contrast to the US, has been reprocessing spent fuel since the late sixties and it's estimated they've reclaimed roughly 15 *additional years* of national energy production, in addition to reducing waste storage requirements.
Anyway, hydrogen not only costs multiple times more, it is also extremely inefficient compared to BEVs: ruclips.net/video/f7MzFfuNOtY/видео.html
PEM electrolysis seems to be a lot more efficient than what I had been told. It doesn't affect my other concerns but it's quite a significant update for me.
100% GREEN hydrogen is available today in California. Find the stations here: cafcp.org/stationmap
FCEV using green hydrogen will emit 79%-80% lower life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car and it is being done today.
A BEV using 100% green electricity will emit 81% lower life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car, but the grid is only 10-20% green at night when BEVs are charging: www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html When is California's goal to have a 100% renewable electrical grid? 2045: focus.senate.ca.gov/sb100/faqs
Even the worst hydrogen you can fuel up with today (33.3% green and 66.7% blue) emits 72.44% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. Whereas the average BEV in the United States will emit 57% - 68% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. This means driving a BEV will contribute more to carbon emissions than driving a FCEV today.
Well, it's coming from a privileged French dude but the fact that your grid is only 10-20% green at night seems to be the one problem you need to solve, not selling more hydrogen cars.
Now, granted, nuclear energy isn't zero waste (and it's not any kind of waste) but it has a very low carbon footprint, which is what matters most right now.
I'm also concerned about the availability of lithium and the lifecycle of batteries. It's not an easy topic.
Finally, I get that, in many places, not owning a car is not practical, but in many other places increase of public transport, car sharing and car renting would probably have a greater impact than any new technology. Changing our behaviour and culture is sadly a lot harder than pushing a technology.
Thankyou for The Information
this is quality content, loved it
I realize you're not the only educational youtube channel to do this lately (Veritasium comes to mind) but it concerns me that there's a conflict of interest between covering the topic and the sponsor of the video. :/
welcome to car youtube
Toyota pushed hybrids and failed to invest in BEV's since the first Prius came out.
Now that the mandates are in and timelines set for a zero tailpipe emissions future they are scrambling to be relevant without looking foolish.
It seems a sunk cost fallacy for them.
But damned if they aren't going after the fully electric cars offered by other manufacturers.
I imagine much of that is because no one else is interested in sharing the load of hydrogen infrastructure they need to sell their FC cars.
This doesn't matter much to me (what are you worried about? Maybe you've thought of something I haven't). If you trust the content a channel posts when the video is not sponsored, then you should (usually) trust the content they post when they do imo. Forgetting about any moral obligations they may have as a creator, unless they are getting paid (tens of) millions, these creators have much more to lose by lying to their audience than just by refusing the changes the sponsor requests on the video. Companies like Toyota realize this too; if they were ever exposed (which they probably would be if there were any obvious lies or misleading statements), this video would probably do more harm than good for them.
@@Erik-R Knowing something about the topic, I can tell that Diana is getting a bit “snowed” by “self-charging EVs” Toyota here. She also, is not getting any outside information.
When I saw this video pop up, it gave me flashbacks to the Veritasium video from a few weeks ago. I didn't find this one *quite* as nauseating to watch as that, but these videos still really feel like companies wanting science edutainers with PhDs in physics to endorse their products…"Let's use all that reputation for intellectual integrity and authority to make algorithm-friendly fluff pieces that discuss very little science and a whole lot of why our company's product is the thing to buy."
Next thing we know, Neil deGrasse Tyson will be telling us about low-emission vehicles in a TV special sponsored by Volkswagen 🙃
I'd like to hear about the carbon footprint of H2 production. My impression is most of our hydrogen production comes from scraping it off of fossil fuel molecules.
100% GREEN hydrogen is available today in California. Find the stations here: cafcp.org/stationmap
FCEV using green hydrogen will emit 79%-80% lower life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car and it is being done today.
A BEV using 100% green electricity will emit 81% lower life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car, but the grid is only 10-20% green at night when BEVs are charging: www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html When is California's goal to have a 100% renewable electrical grid? 2045: focus.senate.ca.gov/sb100/faqs
Even the worst hydrogen you can fuel up with today (33.3% green and 66.7% blue) emits 72.44% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. Whereas the average BEV in the United States will emit 57% - 68% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. This means driving a BEV will contribute more to carbon emissions than driving a FCEV today.
If you want to stop carbon emissions, cease breathing.
95% of global hydrogen comes from processes on waste from fossil fuel refineries, basically
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
awesome i ve wondered for awhile how they work
So great video!
One answer to the "why hydrogen?" question is "because the people who transport petroleum/natural gas/diesel around the world are used to transporting fluids so they'd really like the replacement for gas to be a fluid that needs transporting", also right now hydrogen is mostly made from those same things so they can keep selling natural gas to you in a green washed format.
Assuming we didn't already have these oil giants with infrastructure in place for transporting hydrogen, what element/ chemicals would be superior for electric production as opposed to this hydrogen and their fuel cells?
Really curious if there are "better" (greener but maybe not as economical) options for fuel cells, or an entirely alternative power source to hydrogen or the lithium batteries of today whose extraction from the Earth is harmful to the environment
Even for normal battery EVs energy comes from the same gas plants
@@ligametis One thing to take into account is that energy storage is costly and negates much of the benefit of intermittent power sources, such as wind and solar. If we take that excess energy and use it to create hydrogen from water we are offsetting the energy storage cost.
Hydrogen isn't natural gas, that's usually methane which is of course even worse.
Also, if Hydrogen is used mainly used in cars it can be taxed/priced similar to petrol/diesel so it’s a win for the suppliers and government.
They cannot currently price/tax electricity in the same way as it’s used everywhere, in the uk electricity tax is approx 5%
Fuel duty and vat is extremely high approx 50p/litre duty plus vat.
Is she going to talk about how hydrogen is an energy carrier, nearly always produced from methane (which is *by far* the least wasteful method), not a fuel source? It's thus not green at all.
It's an electric car. They all have this problem.
Even the worst hydrogen you can fuel up with today (33.3% green and 66.7% blue) emits 72.44% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. Whereas the average BEV in the United States will emit 57% - 68% less life-cycle green house gas emissions than a comparable gasoline car. This means driving a BEV will contribute more to carbon emissions than driving a FCEV today.
Look up the methane vents that opened up off the coastline of WA. Methane is a natural gas. I have no idea what it takes to find, collect, and refine it.
@@k1fizz in USA
@@k1fizz Also, where did you get those numbers? when i search i found only 4% of H2 is "green" and 95% is grey/blue
I drove a hydrogen production vehicle 12+ years ago. Hydrogen production and distribution was then and it still is an unresolved problem.
Sounds better than the battery options.. lovely video..
To add to the comments I've already seen around the production of hydrogen, there are real questions around the hydrogen distribution network, which is basically non-existent at the moment. Sounds like they've done great work with the tanks in the car, but a nationwide distribution network for hydrogen would be hugely expensive... BEVs have an existing distribution network, which goes all the way to everyone's home. I think it's neat to see the video, but I really think BEVs are a better technology.
Remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare? Never is a very long time! There is a lot more hydrogen in the Universe and on this planet than lithium!
Maybe you could base the grid on independent stations. Producing hydrogen is pretty simple and you can do it everywhere. Build a smaller local fuel cell with a solararray per town and they can produce it right there at the fuel station rather than having a big company that supplies everyone. You don't even need to waste energy for transport.
Another thing that would be possible is people making there own hydrogen at home using the fuel cell in there car in reverse. Just plug in your car when you get home and i don't know any numbers but maybe it's enough to get to work the next morning. This might not be the soliton alone but am addition to it.
Why, because they've been around longer? That doesn't make sense.
@@TheReaverOfDarkness no, because it's less efficient to use electricity to make hydrogen, compress it, and then use hydrogen to make electricity to run the car than to just use the electricity to charge a battery.
@@Foxholeatheist Oh, sorry, I misinterpreted your comment.
"Road trip" made me chuckle a little, since there are only about 50 HFC refueling stations in the entire country and almost all of them are in California. So if you live in California, HFC vehicles ALMOST make sense. But otherwise, not so much. Way too many issues to be resolved, and they are resolvable issues but the problem is that lithium ion BEVs have progressed so much in the past 10 years in terms of performance and especially cost (about 1/10th as much as they used to be) that there is no way HFC can catch up now even if those issues were resolved, which it doesn't look like.
Think about it: Toyota and Honda have been producing HFC cars and trying to get them off the ground for more than 10 years now and yet still there are only a few tens of thousands of them in existence, with only about 50 refueling stations in all of the US. They have invested billions of dollar in the technology and understandably don't want to abandon it, but it's time for them to see the writing on the wall and move on. Lithium has won.
I remember a time, not that long ago (at least it doesn't feel that long ago), reading comments online about the lack of recharging stations outside of California and how electric vehicles would never take off as a result. Granted, it's a flawed comparison because the grid allows the creation of charging stations much easier than a hydrogen station. I guess what I'm saying is that I hope in 10 years, electric fuel cell cars are as widespread as the battery electric vehicles are today.
same here in Germany only 19 Stations to refuel in total, while first hydrogen fuel cell cars where built in the 1970s by BMW......... to me this technology describes niche :P
@@SMAMtastic It does not make much sense in cars, long term storage and aviation is where H² will work best. Much less H2 infrastructure and little to no long term losses.
@@SMAMtastic But remember: That's only 50 refueling stations _after ten years of progress and hard pushing by Toyota and Honda._ But as you say the main issue is that electric charging stations can be added virtually anywhere there's electricity, and that's virtually everywhere! On paper, just skimming the few advantages of HFC, it looks to be the answer to our prayers but look a little deeper and it is riddled with very serious problems. That being said, though, HFC does make sense in certain applications like certain types of truck hauling, etc.
One of the big problems with hydrogen is that it's extremely expensive right now and the only way to bring the price down is to get more people onboard. But people don't want to get onboard (automakers and consumers alike) unless the price of hydrogen comes down, so it's a vicious circle that makes hydrogen adoption unlikely on any large scale especially since BEV has had so many years to improve itself and get cheaper (about 1/10th its price of about 8 years ago). I don't see how hydrogen can ever catch up.
@@TheOneG36 Exactly. If they can't get the ball rolling after 50 years' time then it must be a ball that's flat on one side!
I love that Jackie was and probably still is a "Total" gear head. The Passion
Came here just for the silly thumbnail "not gas" when yes, hydrogen is indeed gas LOL.
There were a few Mirai's driving around on Oahu with the only hydrogen station on the island being just down the road from where I worked. Toyota promised free hydrogen to Mirai lease holders for a few years as an incentive.
My brother leased the Honda version. They gave him a prepaid gas card that was sized to the standard mileage for the lease. They paid for the fuel, in other words. A fill-up would otherwise cost $80. This is in California.
The shocker was the cost of the special non-conductive coolant for the fuel cell. It was $70/liter, the smallest premixed size available. Once the seal was broken, you used all or part of it. Oh, sorry. Not you. The dealership had to do coolant top-offs, and they were not optional. Proper coolant level is critical to the operation of the $30,000 fuel cell. It would shut itself down to protect Honda’s property (lease only).
Running out of fuel was also a tow truck flatbed call because the auxiliary Li-Ion battery had no limp-home mode (could not work without the fuel cell) and could only be charged by the fuel cell. Flatbed because it violated the lease to tow with wheels on the ground.
that's why James May sold his... huh his free hydrogen timer must have ran out
@@Markle2k Oh dang, that sounds quite restrictive. I think I remember seeing a few Honda Clarity vehicles on Oahu as well.
@@dallatorretdu James May already bought the new generation Mirai and he loved it 😍
Most Hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas and even making Hydrogen from water loses quite a lot of energy compared to charging an electric car. Because of this, Electric cars will always be better for the environment. But hydrogen cars might be a bit more convenient for people who want to have a high range and don't want to wait for it to charge.
Don't want to or can't - charging at home isn't an option for everyone.
Love it! How would graphite hold up compared to platinum?
I'm a chemistry guy with undergrad degrees in physics, math, and of course chemistry. I also worked at NASA for a bit.
This is fascinating.
I think it's interesting to learn about hydrogen electric and would easily get one if it was an option. But this video really feels like a Toyota add. Spent the entire video kinda cringing cus it felt so coporate and ungenuine.
it is. they sponsor almost all the coverage of these cars, and it's the only time they are mentioned unless it's someone bringing it up as a tech dead end
Sure but if this video wasn't sponsored she would never have been able to drive a car like this, let alone talk to the actual engineers working on said car. It's a sacrifice I think anyone genuinly interested in these things is happy to make.
@@seldoon_nemar the thing is, too, this could imply some legal stuff. A video should clearly show that it is sponsored if it is. That didn’t happen here.
@@kevkevpurple ^ true. and youtube is _super_ strict about that. there are laws for it. that is not so on traditional tv. you never had to disclose that info on tv. I think there was a tom scott video about that
@@kevkevpurple it says "This video is sponsored by Toyota" around the 29 second mark.
Personally I'd like to see a battery/hydrogen hybrid. A battery with say an 80 mile range as that would cover 95% of my weekly travel without having to recharge every day. Then a hydrogen backup granting an additional 200 mile range for when I have to make longer trips. It would give me the best of both worlds - direct electric efficiency and no range anxiety courtesy of hydrogen refueling.
At least for quite a while, I feel there would be more range anxiety refueling hydrogen than charging a battery, especially when a station can just run out of fuel with little warning. EV charging infrastructure is super cheap, you can plug a Tesla into the same plug you charge your cell phone with, and even a much quicker home charger is only $500-1000. I an only imagine how many hundreds of thousands of dollars or maybe millions the hydrogen refueling stations cost to build. Present day we have many EVs with over 300 miles of range and a select few already over 400
@@StalePhish Yeah, I was assuming a national network of Green Hydrogen filling stations, as convenient as we enjoy with hydrocarbon fuels today. You're right, that's a long way off, and if a 300-400 mile range becomes the norm for a BEV car (at an affordable price) then a hydrogen network may never become a reality. Tesla have demonstrated what's possible and others are scrambling to catch up. The momentum behind that may be too much.
It would be really interesting to hear what Joseph Romm says at this point. He wrote the 2004 book "The Hype About Hydrogen." His main point was that there were too many challenges to make the hydrogen economy worth pursuing. As Dianna says, there still are many challenges. But we've made significant progress. I remember when blue LEDs were regarded as out of reach, and when everyone said manufacturing LCD displays was so difficult that laptops with 17-inch screens would be prohibitively expensive. Now look where we are...
Putting a fuel tank is sometimes called cooking off. The military will often perform this test on ordnance. The fun of being a test engineer you get to try to blow things up.
How does the fuel cell behave when in high altitudes and low oxygen rate? And is it possible to compress more air in the intake increasing the reactions and generate more power output, like turbo chargers in combustion engines?
The kinetics of the reaction will be affected and power output decreases (as oxygen will start acting as a limiting reagent). Amount of air put into the cylinder depends on how much pressure it can withstand, so increasing intake means thicker cylinder and higher cost of production. Here, they struck a balance between performance vs cost.
lol
hydrogen just seems like adding extra steps to an electric vehicle/making sure you still have to fill up at a station. where as with my tesla I can just charge from my garage.
Hypothetically you could do that with hydrogen. We just need fusion to power the grid then we'll have all the energy we need to use electrolysis and hydrogen for pretty much everything. It could still happen even now, the only reason it shouldn't is that the grid is powered by fossil fuels and adding electrolysis to that would be just as bad for the environment.
This isn't limited to just vehicles, either. We could operate factories, robotics, wireless charging stations, and pretty much anything else with a fusion-electrolysis combination.
@@AmbrotosArkhon "Fusion." So, basically magic.
@@agluebottle If you're so far behind in science that you'd call multiple nearly-functional tokamaks "magic" then yes, I suppose. Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. If nothing goes wrong we will have multiple operational fusion reactors in the next decade.
@@AmbrotosArkhon "Just need fusion", better said than done because that technology been right around the corner for the last 40 years and could take another 40 even with how promising recent news seems.
@@eclipse9304 Functioning fusion in 40 years seems like quite a ways off but it's really not. That's being extremely conservative. Realistically mass adoption may be 40 years away but many tokamaks will achieve first plasma by 2035. By that time there may be other technological advances that enhance fusion capabilities. The possibilities are limitless if they receive actual funding.
That map of hydrogen stations was interesting - the only one I know of wasn't on it. (Shell station on 190th Street in northern Torrance. Yes there's usually a bunch of Mirais there.)
At one company I worked at we used Helium for leak testing since it is a very small molecule.