# Toyota Executive: Hydrogen Currently Runs $50 for 300 Miles-worth of 'Fuel'



## EVDL Archive (Jul 26, 2007)

Toyota Senior VP of North America Bob Carter sees cost eventually coming down to $30 per tankful giving a driving range of 300 miles.

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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Electricity will always be cheaper. Fuel cells are a dead-end in technological evolution.


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## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

Totally silly, because PEM fuelcells need electrolytic-quality hydrogen- ppm levels at most of CO and CO2 each. Possible to make this quality of hydrogen from cheap natural gas in centralized stem methane reformers but the process of purification to these levels is very lossy in either input energy or product hydrogen. And centralized reformers mean you're stuck with the insurmountable problem of distribution of the product hydrogen- something that is already seen as a dead end. Smaller on- site reformers (which use the existing nat gas distribution network to source their fuel) are greatly more capital intensive because there's no economy of scale and nothing to do with the off-spec hydrogen coming from purification- unless you want to spend even more capital.

So I'm with PhantomPholly- H2 for vehicle applications is a dead end, for these and many other reasons, unless we miraculously find ourselves with ten times as much renewable electricity than we need- and even then, there are simpler and better ways to do range extension of EVs which suffer none of hydrogen's inherent physical chemistry- related pitfalls.


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Ya if solar keeps coming down to virtually free energy then electrolysis would be fine for niche markets (like maybe near the poles?). But still no good for energy density, no good for jets. Navy has better process with off the shelf stuff to turn seawater into JP5, totally renewable and carbon neutral for the angst-ridden. JP5 / diesel is safer than hydrogen and higher energy density; can work even in the arctic with a little prewarming.


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## epyon (Mar 20, 2008)

I'm waiting for the electric fuel cell too .


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