Toyota’s portable hydrogen cartridges look like giant AA batteries – and could spell the end of lengthy EV charging

6 comments

1. Come back when they’ve made fueling your car with hydrogen just as cheap as charging an EV.

2. I feel “could” is doing some heavy lifting here.

3. Hydrogen has been *the future* long before modern EVs even existed – and it will remain *the future* indefinitely.

4. Lol hydrogen has less energy density than petrol realistically you would need a big shopping cart of these cylinders if you wanna drive more than a few miles.

   and emits noting when used isn’t exactly true as you burn the stuff NOX will still form from the nitrogen in the air its only true in a fuel cell setup or when you bring your own pure oxygen

5. That’s astonishingly backwards even for Toyota… keep in mind all of this has been tried before and is woefully unsuitable to cars.

   For starters, the volume is nothing. By the images, it’s maybe 12cm diameter and 40ish long for ~4L of enclosed volume. If we assume this is a commodity pressure vessel, e.g. 100 or 120 bar, that’s just shy of 3L of usable hydrogen volume if there are no special parts inside (e.g. double sealing connectors to prevent hydrogen leaking during connection or when connecting partially). Say it’s 360L of uncompressed hydrogen – that’s 30g of hydrogen. Up the ante – 350 bar (H35 pressure) – still just 100g. That’s – on a good day – 3 or 10km of range or the equivalent of charging an EV with 0.5-1.5kWh.

   Second, anything pressure vessel and consumer grade is a safety nightmare. People will store these inside their homes and hydrogen does not stay in pressure vessels indefinitely. Because of its small size and limits on how well you can seal a valve, this is going to leak and build up hydrogen indoors. It’s not a good idea.

   Lastly, holy smokes how are you ever going to sell this. A few grams of hydrogen is worth pennies, this container is going to at least contain one of those fancy Staübli high pressure sealing connectors which in volume cost about $100 a piece. They don’t last thousands of cycles and people are not going to ferry hydrogen back and forth to their car hundreds of times – this is maybe an emergency option like getting a can of gas when your car is stranded. This is not an alternative to hydrogen filling or EV charging.

   This post is already way too well-reasoned for how stupid this idea is, let alone how stupid the people at Toyota are to have this brainfart be published.

6. EVs disrupting the market slowly but steadily

   No other OEM even talking about hydrogen, just trying to balance gas/hybrid/EV production while staying profitable.

   Hydrogen fueling stations being decommissioned in Cali and not even built anywhere else

   Toyota: “Hold my hydrogen canister”