And entire world’s economy would drop by 100%. World is not ready to transition into EVs, and most likely will never be. In my opinion what Toyota is doing is the right approach. Higher quality ICE engine which can directly burn hydrogen. They already have the engine, just need to push it hard enough so R&D pays off. Hydrogen is expensive and hard to make (in terms of efficiency), but it’s infinitely more scalable than batteries, and cleaner too. But with higher popularity price will drop.
It also has the disadvantage of being harder to fill and harder to contain (not dangerous, exactly, but hydrogen tanks generally leak.)
All of that can be fixed. But one thing that can’t be done is improve energy density of Lithium batteries. Simply put they are too heavy for the amount energy they store, have issues in cold weather, prone to mechanical failures, etc. Even if high pressure tanks are more expensive, we could start with lower pressure ones and work our way up as technology improves. Simply put it scales better.
Unless you’re talking cryo, it’s practical density is not great at all. And if you are talking LH, you’re insane.
It’s not just a question of the mass of the fuel itself that matters- it’s also all the mass of everything needed to contain it, and when you account for that, the low pressures of gas stored hydro is a joke (and the reason we haven’t created hydrogen cars, Toyota isn’t doing anything that hasn’t already been done,) and LH tanks are… a bomb waiting to go off when Karen is late for the kid’s hockey game,
That said there are other battery technologies coming down the pipeline that don’t rely on lithium. Sodium ion, for example, or there’s the “old” work horse in space- the nickel-hydrogen battery.
Energy density can be designed around- they’re doing it with lithium cells, and with hydrogen ice. Lithium isn’t offensive because of its energy density, it’s offensive because of how the lithium (and other rare earths) are sourced. NH2 batteries don’t have that problem as much. Nickel and iron are both much easier to extract and recycle than lithium- and the other compontemt is hydrogen gas with some some KOH mixed in. The other primary advantage of NH2 batteries is their recharge cycle count is north of 20k- an order of magnitude more than other batteries (and the reason nasa uses them.)
So there may be some changes to habits, and it might be necessary to use hydrogen ICE in trucking and other long haul transport. But EVs for consumer vehicles are where it’s going.
Latest figures are that green hydrogen accounts for 0.04 percent of total hydrogen production.
Because there’s no demand for it. Currently production is very dirty but the engine itself is green as it gets. As the demand shoots up government can and probably will stimulate green production of hyrdogen. Point is, once you have hydrogen car there’s no upgrade path needed anymore. Initial ICE engines were of poor efficiency but it got better. But we have to pick technology which can scale with demand. Batteries are simply not it, especially when it comes to big transporters like boats and trains. You can’t use batteries on those. Even trucks are problematic as battery weight significantly reduces amount of cargo.
