this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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Toyota, and Japan as a whole, are in a tricky situation with their electric grid. It's been developed separately by nine different companies in each region; the southern regions use 60 Hz supply cycles, where-as the northern regions (including Tokyo Electric) use 50 Hz. Add to this the populations reluctance for nuclear power after Fukushima, and you get a very fragile supply grid with limited capacity. Toyota is gunning hard for Hydrogen because Japan itself can't support EVs and for some reason it doesn't want to/can't manufacture both.
Okay, but if they don't have the electricity for EVs they definitely don't have enough electricity to waste 2/3 of it turning it into hydrogen and back.
I mean yeah, but on the other hand with hydrogen you have much more control over when and where you use the electricity as you can choose to manufacture most of it during off-peak periods and when renewables create excess energy. Then you can transport it by pipes or by trucks/ships without overwhelming the electric grid.
You can do off-peak charging with EVs too, that's not a magical hydrogen thing. My hot water system is on its own circuit which can be turned off by the power company whenever they need to cut demand, providers have been doing that sort of thing for decades.
So providers just prevent people from using what is potentially their only transportation option as it suits the power company?
Hot water isn't usually a survival need as long as you have liquid water available. Means of movement can be.
They don't just... leave it off. They turn it off for like 15 minutes in the middle of an 8 hour charging session. Nobody notices or cares.
No? Thats effectively the same thing as a gas station closing. You can go elsewhere to charge it.
You can't store the power in EVs for weeks and weeks and also you can't move it around on a whim, without loosing that stored energy.
What? Of course you can store power for weeks. It doesn't just dribble out onto the floor. Go away for a month and come home, your EV is still sitting there with the battery charge whatever you left it on.
Yes, EVs use their stored energy for driving... I'm not sure what your point was there. Do you think transporting hydrogen is free and doesn't cost energy?
No, it doesn't dribble on the floored, but to keep the battery conditioned takes a lot of energy. There are countless post around all sorts of forums where the battery was empty after 2 weeks, because cooking the battery in the summer heat took a lot of energy. And you can't leave an EV plugged in at the Airport.
Transporting hydrogen is cheaper than having to rebuild a whole power grid.
You don't need to rebuild the whole grid. The power over night goes up, but that's OK because night is currently very low usage. Sometimes that has meant turning off renewables as there is no where to put the power. In fact, this can cause negative power costs were they will pay you to take power! So next is where you need it, say a charging forecourt. But that is only during the day, so put in some huge batteries you charge over night. Top up with day time renewables if you can. All this already happens.
That's the case for Germany or the UK, not Japan. Bit different there.
I know nothing about Japan's grid. How it different?
I've parked mine outside in the Australian summer. It didn't magically lose energy. The battery is a dense insulated brick on the bottom of the vehicle, so it doesn't really get hot enough to need cooling even when it's 40C / 104F and you park in the sun.
You can drain the battery in a few weeks, but you need something running like Sentry Mode consuming power.
So, let's say I leave an EV at the airport, with 60% charge, battery in reasonable health, and return 2 months later and head home, having lost maybe 3%. You are telling me that's....not doing exactly what you're saying I can't and didn't just do?
You don't also immediately lose all the stored energy either. In a (hypothetical, future tyme) properly kitted out scenario, I leave my EV plugged in at the airport and it's battery contributes to local grid storage while I'm away. So the 60% I arrived with might drop down during high load, but since my utility company has a handy app I can schedule when I need to unplug and ask for the charge percentage to be topped up in time.
I might even not have to pay to park my car in that scenario, or potentially even earn credits back...
You will not have lost 3%. You will have lost 30-40% - because no Airport has (and probably never will have) Parking, where you can leave your EV plugged in.
Explain to me what hypothetical means to you. Then re read my post and note where I point out the hypotheticals.
And you definitely would not lose 30-40%. I'd meet at 8-10% but you are either inexperienced with the tech or shilling an agenda with that 30-40%.
But what would me and my actual lived experience know right?
That's more an issue with hydrogen than it is with EVs. Hydrogen is very leaky.
No it isn't. Toyota and Hyundai have had tanks for years now that are not leaking anything. Same goes for Linde.
Boil off from liquid hydrogen is still an issue as of 6 months ago:
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/innovation/solving-the-liquid-hydrogen-boil-off-problem-us-awards-48m-towards-h2-research-and-development/2-1-1522238
Rio Tinto's scientist puts the boil off of hydrogen at about 1% per day in storage tanks.