Toyota believes it can “rebuild the story” of hydrogen as a viable fuel for vehicles in the future, due to developments in heavy industry and other fields.
The Japanese giant continues to invest heavily in hydrogen powertrains, working on both fuel cell and combustion versions as part of its ‘multi-pathway’ strategy.
It has launched two generations of the Mirai FCEV, but the saloon has sold only in tiny numbers, in part due to the lack of a hydrogen-fuelling infrastructure. There have also been criticisms of hydrogen’s suitability as a ‘green’ fuel, due to the environmental impact of its production compared with that of electricity.
Yet Thiebault Paquet, Toyota’s hydrogen boss in Europe, believes that continued development of hydrogen, including how to produce it more cleanly, means the fuel still has potential.
“For heavy-duty transport, we will need other solutions than battery-electric vehicles, and hydrogen could be the right solution,” Paquet told Autocar.
“We need to develop the infrastructure and the product at the same time, which is ongoing now. What we need to avoid and what maybe we did wrong before is not allowing for supply and demand. We learned from that, and I think we can rebuild the story.
“Heavy industry will create a lot of volume [for hydrogen], which can then contribute to the utilisations for other applications, like commercial vehicles and passenger cars.
“Companies developing hydrogen don’t make a distinction between hydrogen for transport and hydrogen for industry; it’s all part of their scale story. So hydrogen will come; this is something we’re convinced about.”
The EU is expecting hydrogen to account for 13-20% of its energy mix by 2050, with a target of 40GW of ‘green’ hydrogen production (produced from water and air using electrolysers) by 2030.
It has committed to opening hydrogen fuelling stations in every city and every 124 miles along key road networks, and while those are focused on use for long-distance delivery trucks, they could aid the development of a hydrogen fuelling network for cars.
Paquet also addressed criticisms about hydrogen’s inefficiency compared with batteries, claiming that electricity can be used only relatively close to where it’s generated, whereas liquid hydrogen is easy to transport.
He added: “In Europe, we will always have to import [hydrogen], but there are regions in the world that can generate green, renewable hydrogen in abundance, and we can easily transport that to areas that cannot fully sustain themselves.”
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The dark web of fossil fuel interests is still desperately hoping to continue to supply fuels into the future. They will keep trying to resurrect hydrogen for vehicles with increasing intensity as EV sales grow. Electricity can be generated anywhere and used to run a car, even by individuals. Ethiopia has banned the import of petrol and diesel cars because it spends $5bn a year on importing fossil fuel, even though it has its own cheap renewable electricity. In the UK, it costs £2.40 to power an EV for 100 miles using the Octopus Intelligent Go tariff. That's 7 times cheaper than petrol. Why would anyone want to stay chained to paying for expensive fuels when they can go electric?
The guy is a joke. What expert thinks electricity can only be used closed to where it's generated and liquid hydrogen is easy to transport. Has he never heard of cable, would one of his trucks keep pace with the speed of electricity.
Auto car are getting desparte with these dumb hydrogen car stories every week.
Very sensible comeback, I expected nothing less from someone of your intellect.
Come to think of it you're not the so called expert?