I try LIVING with a HYDROGEN FUEL CELL car...

so apparently toyota is selling hydrogen fuel cell vehicles so i've come here to destination toyota burnaby to test drive one for myself now i don't care about the leather seats or the heated this or that i don't care about features i want to learn about the fuel cell technology how it compares to battery electric vehicles and how you refill the darn thing are there stations around i'm mike the channel's down here live let's get this car there we go oh fancy [Music] first thing i notice is it's a four seater there's no center seat that doesn't fold up only seats four people all right let's take it for a spin and see how it does whoa you saw that right that's pretty slick that's pretty cool i'm sure that's a feature that's common in most modern cars i just don't drive a modern car okay let's start this thing put on the brake power on put it into drive and there you go [Music] this is the toyota mirai and according to toyota it's the world's first mass-produced fuel cell electric vehicle now i want to find out how fuel cell electric vehicles work but also how they work in the real world with our regular lives and what it's like to live with first thing we have to do they gave it to us with less than a quarter tank full so we got to go fill it up let's look this up so according to google maps there are only four hydrogen fuel stations in the metro vancouver area but the nearest one to us is only a 16 minute drive let's go check it out so what you need to know about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is that they are electric vehicles in fact it runs off of a battery just like a tesla or another electric vehicle does the only thing is this has a hydrogen fuel cell and a hydrogen tank in the car as well and what the hydrogen fuel cell does is it converts the hydrogen into electricity into the battery to the electric motor now a lot of people say that is significantly less efficient than a standard battery electric vehicle now if we assume you got your electricity from sustainable electricity methods like solar power or wind power that electricity goes straight into the power grid plug it in straight to your battery very efficient system and we already have the power grid infrastructure in place so it makes a lot of sense but where traditional battery electric vehicles don't do well is with range and charging time and that's where fuel cells help and the benefit of hydrogen is it's lighter and more compact and easier to store than batteries batteries are big they're heavy whereas hydrogen is a gas and it can be compressed into a really small space which means for less space than it takes a battery you can drive much further on hydrogen is that it no no that's air where is the hydrogen pump no not there that's it hydrogen oh we're behind another one gonna beat us to the pump what's your name mike oh me too there you go i knew i liked him already this is perfect i was gonna fill up mike here was in front of me also in a toyota mirai so 1.28 so hydrogen is less expensive than gasoline at the moment how long have you had yours for uh about almost a year oh wow what do you like about it and what do you not like about it i love everything about it uh right now there's not a lot of stations with this car it gets about 500 kilometers i think it's about 400 kilometers to kelowna if i wanted to go down to the states it would restrict me right now washington and oregon don't have stations but california yeah california's got a ton so how come you chose a hydrogen electric vehicle instead of a battery electric vehicle just the the range and the fill up time right i mean i don't have to sit and wait for two three hours for full fill any downsides you've experienced yet [Music] no no no easy we'll take it we'll take his work i just met him this man is not paid mike here put some better wheels on his it looks good in the white too that's great thank you look at that making friends already all right our turn to try this there he goes hydrogen because it's not gasoline it's not just a hole you're not just pouring liquid into it it's a compressed gas up to 10 000 pounds of pressure so this is actually airplane grade metal here to ensure it doesn't pop off because that could be messed up dollar 28 look at the ice buildup on this thing so unlike a gasoline car you don't need to hold it it locks in because it's pressurized so it'll do it all automatically in fact it has sensors going into the tank to find out how much is in the tank and it will automatically stop well that didn't take any longer than a normal gasoline car film filling up from one quarter to full cost 46 dollars but the receipt from my car the other day of the same amount came out of 53 dollars so it's a little bit less to use hydrogen now one of the big questions you'll get all the time is where does the hydrogen come from well actually hydrogen is the most abundant element on the planet in fact in the universe look at this this is water obviously h2o hydrogen and oxygen so you get hydrogen through electrolysis which is essentially separating the elements of hydrogen and oxygen then you take the hydrogen put it into a compressed tank truck it to a gas station put it into the ground then you drive up in your car pump it into your car the fuel cell converts that hydrogen into electricity which then powers your electric motor now once it's done with that electricity it puts out the hydrogen out the back end but guess what it combines with oxygen again on the way out and turns back into water fresh water so a vehicle like this will have water pouring out of it down to the drains giving our fish fresh water now here's the reality of it and where the inefficiencies lie you need electricity to make electrolysis happen to convert the water into hydrogen which then makes the electricity for the car so the system isn't perfect yet but it will get better just like batteries will get better for battery electric vehicles hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells on the whole system will become more efficient at the moment it has all the benefits of an electric vehicle with all the advantages of a gas-powered vehicle in filling up quickly and having longer range now i'm not going to talk about the drivability of the mirai specifically because it's a toyota it runs great it's really easy to drive it's comfortable it's it's a luxurious toyota so we're going to skip over that and just stick to the tech that makes us the hydrogen fuel cell car people always want to know about the power how fast does it go well think of this as more of an eco car rather than a high performance car it has about 150 horsepower under this little hood here not the fastest but it'll do the job so while it's driving it kind of has three modes that it uses and you won't notice the difference between them but the first is off of battery power only so if you're creeping along or driving slowly it'll use battery electricity to power the electric motor but if you put your foot down the hydrogen fuel cell will then kick in a lot of electricity to the electric motor as well to give you more power and then of course if you take your foot off the accelerator it uses regenerative braking to create electricity from the wheels slowing down and puts it back into the battery pack very similar to the technology used in hybrid electric vehicles which is kind of what toyota's been known for for the last few years my one disappointment with the car is that it looks like every other car it runs on hydrogen it should look like a spaceship it doesn't look bad but it should look really cool so it's time to return it to my friends at destination toyota burnaby but i want to know what you think in the comments do you think it's cool tech or it's a waste of time batteries are good enough i'll tell you this i think the technology is really fascinating and i'm really curious to see what happens with this in the future and what other areas it goes into beyond cars and if you're new to the channel welcome i'm mike the channel is downey live adventure tech travel all sorts of things coming for 2021 you can subscribe by clicking on my face right here and if you want to watch when i test drove a three-wheeled electric vehicle that's made in canada you can watch that right there to be honest i don't know where i'm going next but i know i want you there with me see ya

Channel: DownieLive

Views: 742,470

Keywords: downielive, downie live, hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen car, hydrogen fuel cell car, toyota mirai, hydrogen toyota, hydrogen Toyota mirai, how to fill hydrogen fuel cell car, hydrogen station, hydrogen gas station

Id: BFswCrQL5xo

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021