Here's Why Toyota's New Hydrogen Engine is the Future (Goodbye Tesla)

several weeks ago there were rumors that yondai was canceling its development of the genesis hydrogen fuel cell ev indefinitely of course prices on hydrogen car related stocks fell instantly but as it turns out hyundai didn't can the project instead they clarified that the project was just delayed now here's the thing major car makers like yonder and toyota are investing heavily in hydrogen fuel cell technology but on the other side of the camp are big rigs like elon musk who says hydrogen cars are extremely silly and mind-bogglingly stupid and then there's volkswagen's cea herbert diesel says it's too expensive inefficient slow and difficult to roll up so who's right today we're looking at the hydrogen controversy and how this will impact the american car industry so hop in and let's get going well what's the main difference between the electric car versus the hydrogen car put simply the electric car needs to be charged by plugging it into a charging point on the other hand you don't recharge a hydrogen car instead you go to a hydrogen fuel station and fill it up with hydrogen this hydrogen is then stored in a secure fuel tank just like gasoline or diesel-powered car from there it's fed into the fuel cell where it mixes with oxygen to generate electricity on board and on demand no batteries needed so let's look inside the fuel cell we find a liquid with a positively charged anode on one side and a negatively charged cathode on the other kind of similar to a battery then hydrogen atoms split into protons and electrons thanks to a reaction with oxygen the protons turn into pure water that's the exhaust product so you have raining cars the electrons provide the power for the car's electric motor add that to all the smaller reactions happening inside the fuel cell and then boom you got yourself a running hydrogen powered electric car did you know that there's also a battery on board too this saves power for later like when you accelerate even with this battery the fuel cell usually just sends power directly to the motors now i know what you're thinking isn't it kind of dangerous to carry around all that hydrogen in your car what if it explodes after all remember the infamous 1937 hindenburg airship disaster and how it was caused by leaking hydrogen and it killed almost 40 people well while it is true that hydrogen is flammable so it's gasoline and you carry that around within your car all the time now gas isn't as flammable as hydrogen but you can be sure that the hydrogen car companies are taking the proper precautions the hydrogen is pressurized in the car's hydrogen tank is designed to contain all this extreme pressure and enzyme it shouldn't be any more dangerous than your conventional gasoline-powered car elon musk is against hydrogen technology he sent out some pretty controversial tweets about hydrogen powered cars in 2020 tweeted that fuel cells equal fool cells later he said that hydrogen fuel cells make no sense and that hydrogen is barely worth considering for a rocket's upper stage he also equipped that it will be super obvious as time goes on let's just say this isn't the first time that musks express strong opinions against us i think that they're extremely silly if you're going to pick an energy storage mechanism hydrogen is incredibly dumb one to pick you should just pick methane that will become apparent in the next few years there's no reason for us to have this debate so why all the hateful hydrogen-powered car musk's main ripe is that the usability of hydrogen in a car because it's very difficult to make and then to store it and use it part of the reason is because hydrogen is too low in density and it's flammable if elon musk had to pick an alternative source to hydrogen he'd rather choose methane or propane musk isn't the only one to hold the negative opinion on this there's also herbert d ceo of volkswagen but the driving reason behind his anti-hydrogen view is the car's impact on the climate he believes that hydrogen cars are bad for the earth but one thing's for sure don't expect either men to invest in hydrogen technology anytime soon they have their money bet on battery cars which they are producing but it's not just these two men actually did you know that the debate between lithium ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells has been raging for decades elon musk is obviously on team lithium after all that's what his tesla empire is built on but actually hydrogen fuel cells have been around much longer than lithium-ion batteries many people don't know this but hydrogen fuel cells played a fundamental part in nasa's putting men in the moon in 1969 but in the end lithium-ion batteries proved to be much easier to commercialize especially for use in passenger cars look if these two high-profile leaders of two major car brands are anti-hydrogen then does this mean that hydrogen power cars are really all that bad well let's compare the hydrogen car versus the electric car first let's talk about refilling with the electric car you need to recharge it it can literally take hours your car doesn't care if you have an important job or review or a baseball game to catch if it's got a charge you gotta wait on the other hand with the hydrogen car you can fill up with a hydrogen fuel pump and it only takes a few minutes similar to what you do with the conventional gas or diesel car at the pump another advantage of hydrogen is that it's literally the most abundant element in the entire universe that means it's pretty easy to find and pretty hard to run out hydrogen fuel cells also don't generate greenhouse gas emissions unlike fossil fuel sources this means less pollution and improved air quality when you combine hydrogen fuel with oxygen these fuel cells produce plenty of electric power while emitting pure water as waste exhaust for these reasons governments around the world are starting to rally behind hydrogen as an important part of their plan for adjusting climate change this isn't just in the transportation sector but across the entire energy grid in 2020 joe biden announced a two trillion dollar clean energy plan which included renewable hydrogen technology innovation boris johnson prime minister of the uk announced 446 million in funding to help lower greenhouse gas emissions this effort includes the development of hydrogen fuel china also recently announced their goal to have over a million hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road by 2030. did you know that nasa also uses fuel cells the exhaust is so clean that astronauts actually drink the water produced by fuel cells on a space shuttle unlike coal natural gas and nuclear power hydrogen is a non-toxic fuel source that has many possible uses not just for cars who knows what else might power in the future now if you're the kind of person whose neighbors get angry when you rev up your engine then this might be the car for you hydrogen cars don't produce any noise like electric cars hydrogen powered cars are much quieter than those powered by gasoline and diesel engines so does this all mean that elon musk was completely wrong about hydrogen cars not exactly at the moment there are more negatives to hydrogen cars than positives first off hydrogen fuel is expensive to fill up we're talking 80 bucks for a full tank compare that to 50 for tank of gasoline you can see where the issues start it also isn't easy to extract hydrogen it's true hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe but the thing is on earth hydrogen is found mostly in water this means it needs to be extracted from water by using electricity to separate the hydrogen and oxygen particles this is called electrolysis another hydrogen extraction option is to extract it from natural gas this is called reforming neither of these processes are easy or cheap and both require a significant amount of energy then there's the issue of transporting fuel to move oil around just send it through pipeline to move coal around just put it in the back of a truck but moving hydrogen around is a different story just moving even small amounts of hydrogen is very expensive wondering how all this hydrogen is going to be stored hydrogen can be stored either as gas or high pressure tanks or as liquid and cryogenic temperatures unfortunately both methods of hydrogen and storage involve quite a bit of loss of energy when you compress hydrogen that requires about 13 percent of the total energy content of the hydrogen itself and if you decide to liquefy the hydrogen it loses about 40 percent of the total energy hydrogen isn't exactly completely green yes it's clean when it's being used in your hydrogen car but the sheer amount of energy it takes to get hydrogen into the fuel pumps is pretty large ironically most of the current production is done using fossil fuels so it's more bad news for the environment producing this fuel is expensive in carbon and dollars another problem with hydrogen cars the infrastructure sure it might not be as easy to find an electric car charging port compared to gas stations but they're likely to be relatively close by unfortunately because of the low volume of hydrogen cars on the roads today there aren't as many hydrogen pumps as there are electric charging stations so if you're driving through a small city with your brand new hydrogen car need to fill it up it looks like you'll be stuck there for a while despite all this let's say you still decide to get a hydrogen car well the bad news is there aren't a lot of choices at the moment right now there's only two hydrogen cars publicly available in select markets which are the toyota mirai and the hyundai nexo started in almost 50 grand the toyota mirai has some downfields itself first of all it only outputs 182 horsepower and second if you live in the u.s the hydrogen fuel cell station infrastructure for the mariah is pretty much limited to california right now it looks like donai you'd have to live in california there are a handful of other countries that offer the mirai but not many so hydrogen-powered cars aren't as perfect and ideal as everyone wants it to be but it does have a lot of potential something to think about is how far hydrogen could have gone if more resources were put into it did you know that a few years ago toyota announced it would grant royalty-free licenses to its 24 000 patents on ev technology including its hydrogen technology why would a major car maker want to open up its secrets to competitors actually the goal was to accelerate the development of alternative fuel car technology to promote the widespread use of any type of electric vehicles if you ask me that bold move was a brilliant strategy but let's rewind to 2004. the governor of california time arnold schwarzenegger announced his vision for a revolutionary new california highway the plan a clean and modern hydrogen highway filled with zero emission hydrogen-fueled cars buses and trucks unfortunately this never panned out today hydrogen technology is still in its infancy kind of like where electric cars were 10 years ago only time will tell if hydrogen will succeed or fail but now you tell me do you agree with elon musk or are you more optimistic would you ever drive a hydrogen car let me know in the comments below and if you like this video please like and subscribe thanks for your support

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 1,228,609

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, hydrogen, hydrogen car, toyota, toyota mirai, new car, new hydrogen car, here's why, here's why toyota's hydrogen engine is genius, hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen vs electric, hydrogen vs electric cars, electric car, tesla, toyota new hydrogen car, hydrogen cars, future cars, the future, future tech, tesla vs toyota, tesla or toyota, engine, new engine, hydrogen engine

Id: C5Z4_kgT8sI

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022