Join us at the CTAN Holiday Party!
We’re having our first ever Holiday Party on December 13, at Barebottle Brewing in SF. Get your tickets here!
We will also be awarding our first Climate Tech COO of the Year award, and nominations are now open for Bay Area based climate tech companies, and the heros who pay the bills, run the HR, and keep the lights on! Submit your nominations here.
Disclaimer: I work at Toyota Research Institute, studying lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). Toyota is the largest maker of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by far, and has invested a lot of money into developing the hydrogen fuel cell technology and market.
Hydrogen vehicles are perpetually one of those things that make most people be like, “What is even the deal with hydrogen?1” Which is a fair question. Hydrogen cars may seem like the Betamax to the EV’s VHS, and indeed, they make up a minuscule portion of the vehicle market. EVs were about 14% of total vehicle sales in 2022. Meanwhile, I couldn’t even find a number for the percent of the market taken up by the three commercially available hydrogen fuel cell vehicles: the Toyota Mirai, the Honda Clarity, and the Hyundai Nexo. But, according to the IEA, there are about 50,000 fuel cell vehicles worldwide. That’s out of about 1.5 billion cars worldwide, which I think makes them about 0.003% of the world market. In California, the only state in the US that has any hydrogen fueling stations (apart from Hawaii, which has one), there about 12,000 Toyota Mirais, and about 15 million cars total. So, a whopping 0.08%.
But hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) have some advantages over battery electric vehicles (BEV) that make them worth thinking about. The first thing is range. Most EVs have a range of around 300 miles. (Teslas are advertised as having longer ranges than this, but real world results have fallen far short of their sales pitches, forcing them to create a special team just to deal with pissed off customers.) 300 miles is pretty good for most consumer day-to-day needs, but it doesn’t cover the needs of a lot of trucking, which have many routes over 500 miles, and have to haul heavy loads, which further reduces range. Hydrogen has a higher energy density, which translates to longer range. For instance, the Toyota Mirai FCEV has an EPA estimated range of about 400 miles, and, anecdotally, it appears to get pretty close to that.
Additionally, hydrogen refueling only takes a few minutes, as opposed to a full recharge of a vehicle, which typically takes several hours. Fast charging takes less time, but is far more damaging to the battery, meaning that it isn’t a good option for regular range extension for fleet vehicles.
California is set to allocate an extra $100 million in subsidies for hydrogen fueling stations, to try to improve the infrastructure for hydrogen cars and trucks (thanks to heavy lobbying from Toyota and Chevron). But, currently, there aren’t very many companies that build and operate hydrogen fueling stations, and it’s not really clear how green that hydrogen is. True Hydrogen, a major operator, says on their web page:
The U.S. produces about nine million tons of hydrogen per year. Ideally, a substantial amount of hydrogen power in our everyday lives will be delivered by electrolyzing water, with electricity from mostly renewables—solar, wind, bio-mass. Today the hydrogen that powers our fuel-cell vehicles comes from these sources as well as fossil fuels.
…
True Zero fuel far exceeds the state of California minimum requirement of 33% renewable. Today, True Zero delivers Zero Carbon Hydrogen for True Zero emission driving. Our fuel means cleaner air and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
This is very confusing, to say the least. True Zero delivers Zero Carbon Hydrogen…except for the other 66%? That probably comes from steam methane reformation (also known as “grey hydrogen”), which is pretty carbon intensive and requires fossil fuels. According to California Hydrogen, 71% of global hydrogen production is grey, and 0.1% comes from electrolizers (green).
We’ve also mentioned before that hydrogen is an attractive fuel source for aviation, where electrification is very difficult to achieve due to the fact that batteries have pretty low energy density.
Even though we don’t use a lot of hydrogen, and a lot of it isn’t green in 2023, I think the best argument in favor of keeping hydrogen in the mix is to have a diverse energy ecosystem. Just like in biological systems, energy diversity promotes resilience of our critical systems and infrastructure. It’s hard to know what the future will bring, and the changes required for decarbonization might be disruptive. Keeping hydrogen in the mix gives us insurance against uncertainties like the cost and availability of metals for batteries. Facing existential crisis, I think the right thing to do is always make a lot of bets, and see what works, instead of making one big bet.
My wife, who is from LA, often asks me “What is the deal with X?” and sometimes demands to know “Is X even a thing?” I have spent many hours discussing what the epistemological implications are of whether something is or is not “a thing”.