Toyota Opens Patents On Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology 124
An anonymous reader writes that Toyota will share almost 6,000 hydrogen fuel cell patents. "Hoping to speed development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, Toyota said Monday that it would offer thousands of patents on related technologies to rival automakers, for free. The announcement, made at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, echoes a similar move by electric car maker Tesla in 2014, when Chief Executive Elon Musk made Tesla patents available to all, hoping to spur innovation in the electric vehicle world (and, perhaps, to draw publicity.) Toyota has similar goals for the fuel-cell car market. 'At Toyota, we believe that when good ideas are shared, great things can happen,' Bob Carter, senior vice president at Toyota, said before the announcement. 'The first generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, launched between 2015 and 2020, will be critical, requiring a concerted effort and unconventional collaboration.'"
At Toyota... (Score:4, Funny)
So I take it they're not going to open their patents on gas pedal design?
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So I take it they're not going to open their patents on gas pedal design?
That's okay, this is the hydrogen gas pedal, not the gasoline pedal. What could possibly go wrong? Anyway, this is basically the only chance for the infrastructure to get built up. Otherwise, other automakers won't even think about trying to follow suit. They don't want to be perpetually behind. On the other hand, they may also not want to be perpetually dependent on Toyota for the technology...
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Very clever (Score:5, Interesting)
Let the competition flail around with dead-end hydrogen technology while Toyota works on a secret battery electric car?
Battery tech is dead-end in cars (Score:1)
You simply need too large a battery pack to give cars a decent range, and the larger the battery pack the longer a charge takes...
Hydrogen has some issues around production and storage, but those are being worked around - when they ware worked around filling is as quick as gasoline cars now, and you can retro-fit existing gas stations with hydrogen tanks. A hydrogen station can process the same number of cars per hour in the same space as the existing gas station, a fact that will never be true of electric
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Charging time still issue (Score:3)
I'm not so sure about that. Tesla just announced and upgrade to the Tesla Roadster that gives it a range of 400 miles.
The range is fine - because it has a massive battery pack, that even at a Supercharger station takes 15 min per year.
If a tipping point were reached and most people were driving electric cars, you'd be waiting about a day or so for a spot to open at a Supercharger station.
With the dead weight of the battery gone you have all the advantages of an electric car (because it's till electric), now
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you'd be waiting about a day or so for a spot to open at a Supercharger station.
Because we can't extend the capacity of charger stations beyond what we have now ?
No, not practically, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we can't extend the capacity of charger stations beyond what we have now ?
Filling up a car now takes about a minute. A Supercharger station filling up in about 15 (or longer) means you have to have 15 times the number of "pumps", more if the charging time really takes longer OR if more cars have less range.
Do you really think cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations we have currently?
There is some reduction from people who can charge at home, but not really much because of the number of people in apartments or just traveling long distances.
What none of you seem to be thinking of is what happens when ALL CARS AND TRUCKS are electric, which I consider inevitable. You all seem to be planning for a world where only the rich drive electric cars which makes for a huge reduction in the requirements around power distribution.
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Filling up a car now takes about a minute.
That's wildly underestimated. It's probably closer to 5 minutes for an average tank, including all the overhead. Also, there's no reason why charging a battery should never be improved to less than 15 minutes. Additionally, people can charge their batteries at home, at work, or in public parking lots.
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Supermarket and shopping mall car parks are the perfect place for charging. Around here, it gets pretty bloody hot and sunny during the day, and getting back into your car after doing the shopping is a less than pleasant experience.
Supermarkets are already getting into the fuel business here with shopper docket discounts on petrol, so it would be a logical extension for them to shade car parks with solar panels that charged your car while you were shopping. It would give them an instant competitive
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Filling a car takes a minute? No.... more like 3-6 minutes depending on the vehicle.
>> A Supercharger station filling up in about 15 (or longer) means you have to have 15 times the number of "pumps"
You're forgetting one very important thing. I can't plug my car into a gas line at home and have it fill itself overnight, but an electric car owner can. I'm betting 99% of Telsa owners don't use a Supercharger station habitually.
I believe you are looking for "parking" (Score:1)
I believe you are looking for something called "parking" which happens usually for an excess of 15 minutes. Yes, obviously, charging stations would need to be installed, but that is pretty trivial.
Fully agree that the North American power grid (really, world wide) is nowhere near ready for that much extra demand, and will probably be the biggest obstacle in going full electric. But hey, by the time it's ready, we're bound to have wireless charging concrete/asphalt.
Charger fraud (Score:2)
I believe you are looking for something called "parking" which happens usually for an excess of 15 minutes.
While the vehicle is unattended. Charging while parking would need some means to secure the charging transaction to make sure someone else doesn't unplug the charger while the vehicle is unattended during the charging session that you paid for. A gasoline fill-up is short enough that one is not terribly inconvenienced to remain standing outside the vehicle during the entire fill-up.
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It's my understanding that you can't simply just pull a charger handle out once charging has started, It's locked (on the Tesla Model S)
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Charging while parking would need some means to secure the charging transaction
You act like that's a huge deal. Just make a locking mechanism. And in the case somebody breaks the lock, the power can be cut until a new payment authorization is made.
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Locking isn't even necessary, when the charger is removed it ends the transaction. Done.
In case of an early removal, how would it refund the cash that was prepaid for the transaction?
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Prepaid card account per charging station chain?
That depends on 1. how much it'd cost to obtain a set of reloadable cards per driver, one for each chain, and 2. how the machines would prevent a third party from removing and stealing the prepaid chip card to which the transaction in progress is being charged.
Electricity not going to curb in general sense (Score:2)
Yes, obviously, charging stations would need to be installed, but that is pretty trivial.
Then why are parking meters either solar or mechanically powered?
Claiming charging station installation is "trivial", ignores the reality of how everything is built. Look inside a parking garage sometime and think of how "trivial" it would be to route power to every spot, when all that exists currently (ha!) is wiring built to support a handful of lights.
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the endpoint infrastructure is a PITA and nobody wants to pay to install it. But it is a trivial problem compared to the massive challenges if EVs were to get 50%+ vehicle share. it's the mainline distribution that's an issue. Expanding the electrical grid feeder for a residential block where the block energy use goes up 10x? then this happens throughout a city? extraordinarily expensive and difficult.
While there would be similar energy demands if we were 50%+ hydrogen (like Japan plans to be), you would on
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Expanding the electrical grid feeder for a residential block where the block energy use goes up 10x? then this happens throughout a city? extraordinarily expensive and difficult.
Wouldn't be 10X, at least in most use cases. I once figured it out - at 100% penetration, using median cases for power usage, miles driven, miles per kwh, cars per household, etc... The average household would use 50% more power if all their vehicles were electric.
Figure that the high 3 figure into 4 figure chargers are capable of standard time of use/load moderation signals, they'll even start charging at like 11pm when the grid is at it's lowest ebb anyways.
Though if solar power keeps taking off, it's p
Household not Space (Score:2)
The average household would use 50% more power if all their vehicles were electric.Though if solar power keeps taking off, it's possible that charging during the day(like at work)
Because what cities are no for is so many open areas where sunlight falls down upon everything. Um, no????? No to mention it would give you something like 10 minutes of power for a solar cell mounted on a car!?!
I cannot believe the massive ignorance of reality that goes on around thinking of mass numbers of EV chargers.
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average home averages 1KW load --> 24kwh/day. Nissan Leaf (and similar smallish EVs) has a 24kwh battery. if a home charges 2 cars, then the load triples. that's for a single family home. Now what about an apartment building that may have 100 vehicles parked? How much electricity will they use?
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No to mention it would give you something like 10 minutes of power for a solar cell mounted on a car!?!No to mention it would give you something like 10 minutes of power for a solar cell mounted on a car!?!
How'd you get the damnfool idea that I was proposing to mount the solar cells on the cars? You put them on building roofs and such where they belong! The idea is that if we start producing more than about 20% of our electrical energy from solar that the balance of generation vs consumption would flip from nighttime being the cheap time for electricity(due to always on powerplants matched with lower nighttime demand), to daytime because you have so many solar panels only producing power during the day, act
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average home averages 1KW load --> 24kwh/day. Nissan Leaf (and similar smallish EVs) has a 24kwh battery.
You're missing that the battery isn't going to be empty on average. If the battery is at 50% charge, that's only 12kwh needing to be charged, or another 500 watts of average load. 50% more.
Keep in mind that I said 'median everything' for a reason.
Redoing some work: .3 kwh/mile (leaf/roadster/model S are all about the same - the leaf is lighter but Tesla's inverter and motors are a bit more efficient).
12k miles/year per car
11k kWh/year [eia.gov] per household
1.9 vehicles per household(2.58 people)
6,840 kwh, about a 6
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How'd you get the damnfool idea that I was proposing to mount the solar cells on the cars? You put them on building roofs and such where they belong!
Which would produce enough electricity to "fill" a car or two, per rooftop. That sure does solve everything!
Going by your response to me, that's mostly because you construct straw-men
Sorry if you consider basic physics a straw-man. Not much I can do to help you if you insist physical laws of the universe do not matter any,
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Which would produce enough electricity to "fill" a car or two, per rooftop. That sure does solve everything!
If it's a residential rooftop, then yeah, it does pretty much solve everything. Well, at least the 'How do we charge these EVs?' question. You can already produce enough electricity to power the average home if it has about 50% of it's roof facing south, without using all of the roof.
From another post I did, the average household uses about 11k kWh/year and has 1.9 cars it drives ~15k miles each with.
So you need roughly 20k kWh/year. Figuring on 30% capacity factor, a 300 watt panel should produce around
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Look inside a parking garage sometime and think of how "trivial" it would be to route power to every spot, when all that exists currently (ha!) is wiring built to support a handful of lights.
That sounds like a job for exterior grade conduit. It's a parking garage, it doesn't have to be pretty.
I'm not going to say that it'd be cheap, but it'd be a fairly straight forward job. Expense would depend on how many garages they're doing, whether they want rigid steel conduit or are willing to go with flexible and/or plastic stuff. My thought is rigid steel.
As for parking meters - mechanical is legacy. Solar is because the power demands are trivial enough that solar is just plain cheaper than runnin
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That sounds like a job for exterior grade conduit. It's a parking garage, it doesn't have to be pretty.
But it DOES have to have enough power coming into the garage to run through the massive number of power lines you now have all ever, each one of which can expect a high voltage load...
Not to mention that all of those conduits being attached to the walls means a MASSIVE increase in maintenance to keep the concrete walls from crumbling around every bolt...
Solar is because the power demands are trivial enough
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But it DOES have to have enough power coming into the garage to run through the massive number of power lines you now have all ever, each one of which can expect a high voltage load...
Wiring the garage and running a power line of sufficient size to it are somewhat separate issues, at least in my mind.
Also, I'd say less 'high voltage' and more 'high wattage'.
Not to mention that all of those conduits being attached to the walls means a MASSIVE increase in maintenance to keep the concrete walls from crumbling around every bolt...
There's already plenty of bolts and such in them... As for attaching it, with rigid steel you don't need a lot of bolts. For maintenance that's more the realm of applying the proper epoxy/glue/sealant that might be chemically fancy, but simple to apply.
Is it trivial or not???
I wouldn't call it trivial, no. If the economics support it it'll still get done
Electric fueling infrastructure will be different (Score:2)
Do you really think cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations we have currently?
Why would they need to? I think you are presuming electric fueling infrastructure will strongly resemble gasoline fueling infrastructure. It will not. Electric charging stations can be put in every parking lot, home, business etc. Heck my little downtown has a half dozen electric car charging stations right now in our shopping district. One of my customers has battery charging stations in front of their office. We have gas stations because they are handling a toxic, flammable and bulky chemical which
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I think you'll see a LOT of hybrids before you see any sort of wholesale change to pure electrics. In some locations (remote and cold especially) I don't see internal combustion going away anytime soon.
Perhaps. Up here in Alaska I actually proposed installing a small hydrocarbon burner to provide the heat necessary as opposed to burning it in an engine. Even up here 'most' of the heat goes out the tailpipe and such. A gallon or two of 'something' burned intentionally for heat would still be a lot less energy wasted. Plus, faster heat!
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You make it sound like people won't be plugging their cars when while they're sleeping...
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Do you really think cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations we have currently?
Considering that a charging stations can easily be installed in parking stalls at coffee shops, restaurants, strip-malls, parking structures, home garages, etc. I think it would be no problem for a city to have 15 times the current number of gas stations.
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Yes Cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations.
In fact cities already have more than 15 times that many electric Gas stations.
They are called YOUR FUCKING HOUSE.
Why would you ever go to a fast charge station, when you could charge your car EVERY MOMENT IT IS IN YOUR DRIVE WAY.
Christ, you people are fucking retarded. The only time you will ever need to use a "Gas Station" (fucking americans) is when you are driving 400+ miles and you are between cities.
God damn you people are so stupid.
Not gas stations, charging ports... everywhere. (Score:1)
"Do you really think cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations we have currently?"
I don't know about 15 times, but around here we're probably down to about 1/3 of what we had a decade ago, so if we went 3-4x we'd probably be about on par.
More likely though, gas "stations" will become passe, and charge-spots will become like parking meters (hell, probably *part* of parking meters). Stop your car on the curb, grab a bite or do some shopping, and let the vehicle charge while you're away. Same while y
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Really?
The fastest I've gotten a pump to run is about 1/10th gal/sec. That's 6 galons per minute. So you fill your tank every time you're six galons down?
My "car" - a Ford F-150 pickup truck - has a 37 galon tank, which I normally run nearly dry before refilling when I'm using it in the SF Bay Area. (I keep it full when I'm in less forgiving areas - like the Nevada desert.) At 6 gal/min maximum that's a 6+ minute fill up - plus "topping off" to a round amount, two trips to the cashier. (No WAY I'm trus
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That's 6 galons per minute. So you fill your tank every time you're six galons down?
Usually filling up 6-7 gallons at a time, yes. It's only an 11 gallon tank...
I fill up about once per week.
At 6 gal/min maximum that's a 6+ minute fill up
I checked the Tesla site, it's at least 20 minutes - I seem to remember a reporters account of it being a half-hour.
So there goes the extra time you thought you were taking for gas... it's still much longer to charge.
Most people have smaller tanks that you though, so they
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Filling up a car now takes about a minute. A Supercharger station filling up in about 15 (or longer) means you have to have 15 times the number of "pumps", more if the charging time really takes longer OR if more cars have less range.
This is a misconception. With Electic Cars, you more often than not have the equalent of a Gas station where your car is parked overnight. Each morning you start with a full tank. You still might need to charge en-route, but not as frequently as an ICE.
Re:Charging time still issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed ; combine it with a cargo trailer and you have a sale : I have a small 2-door car that's a little snug when loaded with three people and their Christmas luggage. That Christmas trip is one of the few occasions I drive it more than 130 miles in a day. I'd happily rent a range-extending trailer with some cargo space in it for those occasions.
Unjustified assumptions (Score:2)
If a tipping point were reached and most people were driving electric cars, you'd be waiting about a day or so for a spot to open at a Supercharger station.
Only if you make the rather dim assumption that Supercharger stations cannot be enlarged or more of them added. Furthermore electric cars can be and would be charged at home so the need for refueling stations as we currently use them would be significantly reduced.
In the end what probably makes the most sense is a REAL hybrid, that is to say a combo of hydrogen/electric. The electric could charge for a 50 mile range, the hydrogen could kick in for extended trips.
Umm, where are you going to get the hydrogen? Gasoline/electric hybrids make sense because we have existing infrastructure built to support them. We have essentially zero hydrogen fuel infrastructure and no reasonable prospect of that changing
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Only if you make the rather dim assumption that Supercharger stations cannot be enlarged or more of them added.
You have to be even more dim to not understand how MANY would have to be added to serve a world with only electric cars.
If you want to keep electric cars as toys for the rich or super-dedicted, fine then.
Furthermore electric cars can be and would be charged at home so the need for refueling stations as we currently use them would be significantly reduced.
That's what I've always said, screw people t
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You have to be even more dim to not understand how MANY would have to be added to serve a world with only electric cars.
Let's say that 2016 is the 'year of the electric' because they manage to figure out a battery that acts like LiIon but holds 10x the charge, using sodium chloride and carbon, so it's also 10x cheaper. ;)
However, cars today are living to 13 on average [buzzle.com]. Even with such a cheaper battery, it would normally only make sense to upgrade to EV when you're looking for a new car anyways.
Tesla managed to build enough supercharger stations to cover all the major highways in about 3 years, and it's still a relatively sm
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The electric could charge for a 50 mile range, the hydrogen could kick in for extended trips.
In this case, quite a small part of driving will be on hydrogen. So it doesn't really make that much sense to go hydrogen, fuel cells etc when you can just add a small gasoline-powered generator, like the BMW i3 range extender. 20 kW would be more than enough, even 10 kW would be acceptable (enough to sustain an average speed ~100 km/h, the battery will buffer accellerations and uphills).
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a fact that will never be true of electric charging stations.
What is the basis for this wild claim ?
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Hydrogen fuel cells cannot even compete with *current* battery technology much less future batteries in the labs. The process of creating hydrogen, compressing it, and distributing it is insanely inefficient and dangerous and the idea that we are going to create a whole new hydrogen infrastructure in the world when every home already has electricity is just nuts. You are never going to fill your vehicle or your lawn mower with hydrogen at home. You can charge a Tesla to half its rated range in 20 minut
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Don't worry about the spelling, I knew what you meant. Unlike other Slashdot posters (not talking about you here) I'm not a whiny gradeschooler who snickers at each spelling/grammar issue in a post.
I also follow the improvements in battery tech, but it still doesn't bring down charging time significantly, nor the huge amount of weight and space batteries in a car take up.
Meanwhile there are ALSO lots of improvements around using hydrogen as fuel.
In the end both technologies will be around, but hydrogen has
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Even if the batteries can be refilled in a shorter time (and I still see a lot of if around real versions of that coming to market) that just increases the electrical demands on the systems that have to feed electricity to the charger, which were already substantial... basically you are always just shuffling deck chairs on the ship of impracticality for mass adoption.
Tesla has done a better job promoting electric cars that anyone, by far - but they simply do not have the resources Toyota has, and Toyota is
Elon has it covered Was Re:Very clever (Score:2)
Come on Elon, please quit fooling around with stupid things like hyper loop or manned mission to moon or orbital space colonies. Give us a 40 K sedan with 150 mile range.
Convince railroads to haul 18wheelers and cars on flatbed cars. 200 miles at a stretch. Build roll-on roll-off terminals at the highway intersections. We will happily sit in our cars while being hauled at 80 to 100 mph. It is not perfect, but it is better than the alternati
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Take a trip on Amtrack then get back to us with a revised plan.
I'll be at my destination while you are still waiting on the last car to load.
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Tesla is 100% limited by Li Ion supply. Until the Giga factory is ready, Tesla can't divert Li Ion cells from high profit model S even to slightly lower profit model X.
The Gen III vehicle will be done, but it will take another 3-5 years.
I actually hope Tesla Model S + Model X demand will be so high the Gen III car will have to wait cause the initial giga factory output will be tied with Model S + Model X production. The most important goal Tesla must achieve isn't the Gen III car, but actually fully disrupt
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right on many points. logistics companies are savvy, and know how to balance trains, trucks, boats and ships to move cargo most efficiently. Specifically to the GP, it is quite common to see COFC (container on flat car) either single stack or double stack, as well as TOFC (trailer on flat car). The reasons for choosing one mode or another are quite complex, but generally are an optimization of startpoint/endpoint, volume, available infrastructure, short term or long term business, desired price point, desir
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TBH it doesn't make sense to me but according to !w "The Auto Train had the highest revenue of any long-distance train in the Amtrak system."
You also have all the snowbirds. But just keep in mind that revenue doesn't equal profit if the expenses are higher yet.
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That would make a lot of sense. Hydrogen doesn't make much sense, it gives you the high initial vehicle cost of an EV with the fuel cost and carbon pollution issues of a gasoline vehicle (most hydrogen is fossil-sourced), with the energy transportation issues of something new entirely (a gas that escapes through solids and is flammable when mixed with air? Fun!)
Toyota was making a lot of amazing battery innovations before they apparently hit their head on something and forgot what a crappy idea Hydrogen is.
You ignore the future of hydrogen production (Score:3)
Toyota was making a lot of amazing battery innovations before they apparently hit their head on something and forgot what a crappy idea Hydrogen is.
Or perhaps a giant corporation with lots of money and a huge R&D department might be a bit more aware of what the future roadmap for hydrogen production looks like than you?
Vague appeals to authority (Score:2)
Or perhaps a giant corporation with lots of money and a huge R&D department might be a bit more aware of what the future roadmap for hydrogen production looks like than you?
Perhaps but if so they are being rather coy about how hydrogen somehow makes more sense than electric+battery. I'm an engineer who works in automotive and it's not like I wouldn't understand a good argument why hydrogen would make sense. I don't have anything against hydrogen as a fuel source. In theory it has a lot of potential advantages. But the reality is that those potential advantages face some very serious real world obstacles. I have yet to see anyone point out a roadmap for hydrogen powered veh
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I don't understand your perspective and focus on pollution issues. right now most industrial H2 in US is made from NG, but most transportation H2 is made from on-site electrolysis. If it's made from electrolysis then it's mostly made from NG, coal, or nuclear anyway. any EV is also powered from NG, coal, or nuclear as well. You could say that well EVs can be powered by renewables, then I can say that as well about hydrogen.
it's clear that due to the infrastructure issues there's a much larger critical mass
Not everything needs to be patented. (Score:2)
Patents work on a new market technology. Where the new idea can change the industry and the inventor should be able to get a strong first to market advantage. However for automotive there is a huge infrastructure and everyone is afraid to being first to market. There isn't a first movers advantage towards non-gasoline cars, it is actually a disadvantage because there isn't a proper infrastructure to support it. So in this case opening the patents makes sense, to allow all your other competitors to share
Smart, hydrogen clearly superior.... (Score:3)
This is great. Hydrogen is clearly superior to pure electric in usage, but is tricky to work with currently and patents probably were an encumbering factor for other users...
I predict within five years we'll see a hydrogen Tesla car. Tesla already knows how to build great electric cars, imagine when they are un-emcumbered by tons of batteries...
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Nope. Until there is a eco-friendly, sustainable way to generate hydrogen, there is no reason to move to hydrogen powered cars.
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Until there is a eco-friendly, sustainable way to generate hydrogen
I would think a handful of Nuclear generating plants around the country could be build with their output going to simply cracking water.
We seem to get by with a handful of oil refineries today. So it seems reasonably a small number of large multi reactor facilities could provide adequate resilience while limiting the ecological impact to just those sites. Without going down the usual Slashdot nuclear discussion rabbit hole, if these facilities were specifically designed to have a long operation life 100
There will be (Score:3)
Nope. Until there is a eco-friendly, sustainable way to generate hydrogen
The move to electric cars is inevitable.
The use of batteries in all those cars is impossible at large scale for all sorts of reasons.
Therefore there will be developed practical means of hydrogen generation - though why you insist on "eco-friendly" is a mystery, it just needs to work.
As for it being "sustainable", that's kind of obviously true if you think about where hydrogen generally comes from... :-)
What is also a larger mystery, is
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What is also a larger mystery, is why a company with the resources of Toyota clearly knows hydrogen can and will work
Microsoft thought that Bob would work.
Reality vs. Fantasy (Score:2)
The difference is that Microsoft just made some software and hoped it would take.
Toyota on the other hand makes real physical objects that rely on vast infrastructure to operate. You can bet that Toyota is nor pushing for Hydrogen without having a damn good idea of it being feasible.
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Toyota knows there will be one winner. Electric of H2 power? It won't be both.
Same as Tesla.
That is wrong, both will exist (Score:2)
Toyota knows there will be one winner. Electric of H2 power? It won't be both.
What you are crazily ignoring is that H2 *is* electricity!!
Electric cars are the winner, absolutely. It's just so obvious it's absurd.
But to claim there will only exist H2 or battery powered cars is to go just as far into the realm of absurdity.
The question then is what mix will there be of H2 use vs. battery, and that leads you to think about what it means if the majority of hundreds of millions of cars need power somehow...
Just
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That is a terribly overreaching statement. Perhaps "We currently do not have the capacity to produce the number of batteries necessary using existing processes and sources in a way that is economically feasible" would be better.
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We currently do not have the capacity to produce the number of batteries necessary
That is only one aspect of the insurmountable problems using batteries for all electric cars.
Again, ALL CARS WILL BE ELECTRIC. You have to think how that can work. The only way it can work is hydrogen. It's not hard to reach the conclusion hydrogen will therefore be used.
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there's not much additional needed to make green hydrogen. Buy renewable electricity for your hydrogen station rather than dirty electricity, and your done.
>Using current hydrogen production technologies, there simply wouldn't be enough hydrogen to power all-hydrogen transportation.
you're forgetting that H2 has been used for decades for industrial processes, and the market for industrial H2 is >>> transportation H2 by several OM. There's plenty of room to scale up hydrogen transportation product
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>until there is a n eco-friendly, sustainable way to generate electricity , there is no reason to move to electric cars.
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Hydrogen is clearly superior to pure electric in usage
How so? In a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen is not used to power the vehicle directly through internal combustion. It is converted first to electricity (thus the term "fuel cell", because it is essentially a battery). The engine is powered by that electricity.
Due to conservation of energy, hydrogen fuel cells will never be more efficient than "pure electric".
In filling, range, car weight, etc. (Score:3)
How so? In a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen is not used to power the vehicle directly through internal combustion. It is converted first to electricity
Exactly, hydrogen is all of the benefits of electric cars, without the huge weight of the battery pack, without the long recharge time when you need to refuel on the go, without having to recycle batteries and produce them in huge quantities either.
Due to conservation of energy, hydrogen fuel cells will never be more efficient than "pure electric".
So current ca
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Ah, so you meant to say:
Hydrogen fuel cells are clearly superior to common batteries in usage
Because the way you initially phrased it, I assumed you were talking about the efficiency of the energy conversion process.
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Because the way you initially phrased it, I assumed you were talking about the efficiency of the energy conversion process.
I appreciate you trying to make the statement more clear, though I think only engineers would treat "usage" as the efficiency of using electric to move a car, vs. the person using the car.
However, given the makeup of Slashdot readership I'd say probably you are a lot closer to the phrasing I should have used than I was. :-)
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Why don't you tell us how much Toyota and "American Hydrogen Systems" stock you own?
"So current cars are about efficiency? Of course not, they are about convenience. "
It would be convenient to have a supermarket inside every home so I don't need to go anywhere.
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Why don't you tell us how much Toyota and "American Hydrogen Systems" stock you own?
I didn't own any before today, but that's about to change (assuming you can buy stock in Toyota).
It would be convenient to have a supermarket inside every home so I don't need to go anywhere.
Amazon predicted, BOOM.
So sad that people can't take an obvious fact about humans in general and extrapolate anything obvious from it... all because of what you WANT to happen, vs. thinking about what WILL happen.
Re: Smart, hydrogen clearly superior.... (Score:2)
Except you can't fill up with hydrogen at home. All this garbage about needing electric charging stations everywhere is moot when you account for everyone with an electric car charging it at night in their garage. We should only need public charging stations for road trips and forgetfulness/emergencies.
Hydrogen is far less convenient than electric and has gotten a slow start. Therefore my bet right now is heavily on electric, especially when you account for battery swap tech that already has been demonstrat
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Except you can't fill up with hydrogen at home.
And that children, is why the fancy gasoline powered auto never took off over the horse and buggy, which you can simply feed at home.
All this garbage about needing electric charging stations everywhere is moot when you account for everyone with an electric car charging it at night in their garage.
Is slashdot wholly populated by elitist pricks that live in mansions or what? You never lived in an apartment complex????
Hydrogen is far less convenient than electric
On Infrastructure (Score:2)
I believe it's inferior because you have to build a new gas delivery infrastructure
But not one that is dissimilar to what already exists and works.
There's a loss of energy making H2 that's non-trivial.
I was not aware that gasoline refinement was free.
Then there's the conversion of H2 to electricity in the vehicle.
In many versions of hydrogen storage you essentially get batteries that consume hydrogen.
The delivery of electricity comes with efficiencies in the 90-percent range.
But not the distribution of elec
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Clearly monatomic hydrogen would be a superior fuel. Didn't you take physics?
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Elon is already on record stating it is a dead end technology, I believe.
NEWS FLASH - MAN PRONE TO EXAGGERATION SAYS COMPETITION TECHNOLOGY IS DEAD END.
Electricity is required to make the hydrogen - that has to be physically shipped using an infrastructure that does not exist
Electricity is required to charge a car, which at the scale of needing to charge EVERY car has to be shipped using an infrastructure that does not exist, and is far vaster than upgrading gas stations (we already have the physical infra
Probably neccecary (Score:5, Insightful)
echoes a similar move by electric car maker Tesla in 2014, when Chief Executive Elon Musk made Tesla patents available to all, hoping to spur innovation in the electric vehicle world (and, perhaps, to draw publicity.) Toyota has similar goals for the fuel-cell car market. 'At Toyota, we believe that when good ideas are shared, great things can happen,'
While I think its good of them to do this I am not so sure Toyota or Tesla really have many options. They want to sell a product, cars, that depend on certain infrastructure namely filling/charging stations. Unless they want to be forever in the business of operating those themselves they have to make it attractive for others to do so.
First they can't really expect people to pay to a risk investing in supporting their product, so extracting fees from would be station operators would only make it less like anyone will step forward. Which in turn makes it less likely they can sell cars to the public.
At the same time they really need their competitors to embrace 'their' technology as a kind of standard, for pretty much the same reasons. If they want the infrastructure to spring up there needs to be a critical mass of vehicles out there to make money supporting. If they want to sell vehicles beyond the boutique space Tesla currently operates in they need the infrastructure built out.
Which oil industry shill bribed them? (Score:2)
As a post above points out, the hydrogen supply isn't up to it.
The main supply of hydrogen today is ... yes, you guessed it, fossil fuels. Electrolytic production of hydrogren doesn't even come close. And it's ridiculously inefficient compared to battery electric vehicles.
The only useful thing that hydrogen has going for it is a fast fill time. On every other metric, it sucks balls - range, complexity, safety, price of storage equipment, price of equipment to convert it into useful work, energy efficiency.
T
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The beauty of electricity is that it can be generated in a number of different ways. Even though the majority is now generated by coal and gas doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
The beauty of electricity is that it can be generated in a number of different ways. Even though the majority is now generated by coal and gas doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
the exact same thing is true for hydrogen. hydrogen electrolysis scales incredibly well. when you build a station you buy electroloysis units with all of the balance of plant in a standard size shipping container, so it's literally electricity in, water in, high pressure H2 out. Then you can stack these things in as many as you need and have room for. It's stupidly simple.
Most H2 today is from NG, but it's used in industrial processes, mainly refining (it's easy to make H2 at a refinery, since you have a bu
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chicken and egg (Score:2)
Drug dealer business model (Score:5, Insightful)
The fine print on this announcement is that the patents are not really free. You have to apply and be accepted to the program (serious contenders need not apply?) and the royalty-free license period only goes to 2020. This is just enough time to develop and start producing something and then you can get hit with big royalty payments.
This is sucker bait.
Toyota is just pulling an HP and giving up (Score:1)
when HP realized their webOS was going nowhere, they open sourced it to save a little face and gain a little goodwill, and then abandoned it.
It probably occurred to Toyota recently that hydrogen is not a good idea because:
1. hydrogen molecules are tiny and thus tend to leak out of everything
2. storing hydrogen is costly because of its low density (lowest in the universe) and the insanely cold temperatures required to liquify it
3. the chicken-and-egg problem of getting gas stations to carry it
According to th
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If they abandoned hydrogen in a money-be-damned Cold War project like the SR-71, that should tell us something.
Sea water Hydrolysis (Score:2)
The hydrogen will be provided by sea water hydrolysis powered by off shore wind farms with off peak surplus power.
Fool cells are still fool cells ! (Score:2)
Every single fuel cell car is still an underpowered, unsexy car.
In the meantime Tesla is showing its cars can rival half a millon buck cars at less than 1/3 the price.
What Toyota will never conceed is that its fuel cell cars where never truly intended to replace gasoline cars. They are compliance cars, made strictly to comply with emissions regulations to offset the lowest mpg cars on Toyota's product line.
In the meantime Tesla is producing cars people actually want to buy, because its a high end car with a
It's like GPL (Score:2)
So to make invention still go you first need to patent it, then you release it for free to all. Why do we still have patents at all, again?
Because that's the current law and getting it changed is an exercise in futility.
So, just like copyright and the GPL, they have to patent it first to keep OTHER people from patenting it and locking them out of their own invention. Once that's done they can go ahead and give it away if they want (or cross-license with people with other patents on useful stuff).
Sure it