Here we are in 2022 and you and I probably
both know that gas powered cars and internal combustion engines are kind of on their way out,
and they're being replaced by electric vehicles. We're seeing this trend across markets, from
sedans, pickup trucks, motorcycles, planes, and even into the commercial market with semi
trucks. Really, it's only a matter of time until the internal combustion engine just dies,
or at least that's what I thought until Yamaha and Toyota dropped some news the other day, which
is their co-development of a 5.0L V8 engine. But, what made this particular 5.0L V8 engine special,
was the fact that it was powered by hydrogen, rather than gasoline or diesel. Which
means it has zero emissions output at all. And better yet, it sounds absolutely
amazing and makes a ton of power. So, sit down, relax, and get comfy, because
today I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about this new 5.0L
hydrogen-powered V8 from Toyota and Yamaha. So, to start this off, I want to make it
perfectly clear that Toyota really did not do this on their own and they had to rely heavily
on Yamaha for this. Now, you might be wondering "Yamaha, why them of all companies?" Yamaha,
it's the company that sells everything. Like, "hey I want to buy a piano. Oh I can help you with
that. Oh, I also want to buy a motorcycle do you know where I can buy one? You're not going to
believe this, but I can help you with that too." It sounds kind of crazy, but it actually makes
sense because Toyota and Yamaha actually have a long-standing relationship. They've worked
together numerous times over the last few decades. Some of you might remember the LFA, which
is Lexus' supercar that really never took off and cost Toyota so much money to develop that each
one was sold at a net loss rather than a profit. Yamaha helped Toyota with the development of the
V10 under the hood of the LFA. But, if you go back even further, you'll see that Yamaha and Toyota
work together on the 1JZ. Now, there's people all over the internet that claim that the 2JZ was
also co-developed between Yamaha and Toyota, but there's no actual proof of this claim anywhere,
although the 2JZ head is very similar to the 1JZ head that Yamaha was involved with. Anyways, you
can actually go back even further than that all the way to the 1960s, when Toyota and Yamaha
worked together on the 2000GT. This isn't a video about their long-standing relationship, so
I won't go into more detail. But, simply put, they have worked together a bunch and it made sense in
this context. Although this new 5.0L engine made a ton of news and it's very interesting and cool,
it's not actually a new concept for Toyota, at all. In fact, they've been playing with hydrogen
engines for quite a while now. In fact, you can rewind the clock a little bit to 2021, when Toyota
announced it was building a hydrogen engine to be showcased in the GR Yaris. Of course, the GR Yaris
was kind of the perfect application to show that hydrogen engines aren't just for weenies that love
great fuel economy and saving the environment, but also for people who love going fast and love the
sound of internal combustion engines. The engine in the GR Yaris showcase car was basically just
a G16E-GTS, which we've made a video on recently, I'd highly recommend you go check that out.
They pretty much just took that engine and modified the injection system for hydrogen fuel,
rather than gasoline. In fact, the experimental hydrogen-powered Coralla Sport had already been
competing in the Super Taiku race series in Japan since earlier in 2021 under the rookie racing arm
of Toyota Gazoo Racing. So, Toyota was getting pretty experienced with hydrogen engines from
using them in a few race cars, so it was time to scale it up to a larger engine, which is where the
new hydrogen-powered 5.0L V8 comes into play. And, much like the smaller hydrogen-powered
3-cylinder G16E-GTS that we just talked about, this 5.0L V8 is based almost entirely on an
existing Toyota engine, which is the 2UR-FSE. Now, a lot of the news reports were saying that this
hydrogen-powered engine was the RC-F engine, but I think it's actually worth noting that the
2UR-GSE is actually used on a lot more than just the RC-F. You'll find it in the IS-F, the
GS-F, the LC500, the IS500. Like, it's more than just the RC-F engine, it is Toyota's performance
5.0L V8 that's in multiple applications. The 2US is an all-aluminum, dual overhead cam V8, with 4
valves per cylinder. Funny enough, the heads are actually designed by Yamaha and have some pretty
cool features including titanium intake valves, high lift cams, a dual length intake manifold
system, dual VVTi-E, and D4s gas injection, which is simply port and direct injection combined
together. The base engine in the RC-F outputs 467 horsepower and 389 pound-feet of torque, which is
pretty impressive for a naturally aspirated V8. For reference, Ford's 5.0L Coyote V8 engine in the
Mustang produces 450 horsepower and 410 pound-feet of torque, in its current configuration in 2022.
Of course, with this new hydrogen-powered version of this engine, they had to make some changes.
Most notably, they made changes to the injectors, heads, and intake manifold. The strangest change
to me is that they reversed the flow of the heads. In all these photos shown by Toyota, this engine
has a hot V design, meaning the exhaust manifold is in the V of the engine, rather than the
intake manifold being there. Which means this engine will have two intake manifolds: one
per side. Now, the showcase piece and the thing that everybody is talking about is the Yamaha
designed exhaust manifold, which is an eight to one exhaust manifold, and it's supposed to produce
an incredible exhaust note. But, unfortunately, I can't show you that, because they have actually
yet to show this engine in video or sound, so we'll just have to wait and see how good
it actually sounds. In terms of performance, they're claiming 455 horsepower at 6800RPM and
398 pound-feet of torque at 3600RPM. So, it's a little bit down compared to the 2UR-FSE that it's
based on, but it's still a crazy amount of power naturally aspirated, especially considering it's
outputting zero emissions. You might be wondering why is Toyota even bothering with this? Like, why
bother investing in it? Why bother pushing this? Why bother marketing this, when electric already
has a substantial lead? Like, is hydrogen actually feasible? And the answer is no, but we'll get that
in a little bit, but Toyota has publicly stated that they're committed to the internal combustion
engine and it's something that they want to pursue long term, rather than electrifying their
entire lineup like other manufacturers. And, it's actually not just Toyota and Yamaha.
It's also Mazda, Kawasaki, and Subaru, who have all pledged to continue investing in
combustion engines and expanding fuel options beyond gasoline or diesel. Yamaha's president
is pretty vocal about his belief in hydrogen and the combustion engine itself long term. He said:
"hydrogen engines house the potential to be carbon neutral while keeping our passion for the
internal combustion engine alive at the same time. Teaming up with companies with different corporate
cultures and areas of expertise, as well as growing the number of partners we have, is how we
want to lead the way into the future." "Hydrogen engines have an innately friendly feel that makes
them easy to use without resorting to electronic driving aids. Everyone who came to test drive the
prototype car would start off somewhat skeptical, but emerged from the car with a big smile on their
face at the end." This is all part of becoming net neutral on carbon, or at least they say, by 2050.
But, the thing is, will this ever come to market? Maybe. Will it ever sell? No. If you look at
previous attempts at hydrogen-powered cars, they did not end well. There is literally
no demand for these cars at all. In fact, if you really want to disrupt the automobile
industry, like if you look at Tesla, for example. If you want to change up what people
are buying, you have to offer them a product that is superior in every single way to what you're
currently offering. Hydrogen engines are not objectively better in almost every way compared to
gas engines. They make a similar amount of power, they sound the same, and they have the same
maintenance schedule. Like, they're very very similar. You're just changing the fuel type,
so there's no real reason to go buy hydrogen, especially considering the lack of infrastructure.
So, if you wanted to get fuel, unless you're in like southern California or some parts of Europe,
there's basically nowhere to get hydrogen fuel. So, there's very few people who can actually fuel
up these cars. So, there's zero demand whatsoever. Electric, on the other hand≤ is almost silent,
makes a ton of power, it's easy to drive, eliminates all maintenance costs, and more. As
much as you and I both love tinkering on cars, fixing them, making them faster, breaking them,
and then repeating the process, at the end of the day, electric cars are simply better. Electric
cars might not be objectively better in every single way right now in 2022, but they will be
in the near future. Really, the only thing that's stopping electric cars from being vastly better
in every way is range and how long it takes to recharge them, but that's quickly changing and
five or ten years from now I have a hard time imagining that electric cars won't take over
as the most popular cars being built and sold. So, although it's really awesome to see Toyota and
Yamaha investing in this, building this engine, you know they did the G16E-GTS, the hydrogen
powered version of that it sounds incredible, it's really cool and I'm sure this 5.0L V8
will sound incredible, and it's very cool, there's almost no scenarios that I can
think of where this will actually sell. It's really not that much better than their
existing gasoline products, other than the fact that it outputs zero emissions. But, most
consumers truly actually don't care about that. They just want a good product, they want it to
be fast, they want it to be reliable, and they want it to be cheap. Hydrogen is none of those
things. But, I want to know what you guys think! Let me know down in the comments below, do
you think hydrogen is a viable alternative to gasoline or electric powered engines? Do you think
Toyota's kind of crazy for pursuing this and just not letting the combustion engine die and
going full electric like almost every other manufacturer is doing? Let me know down
in the comments. While you're down there, smash thumbs up button. It really helps out the
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out the other videos on the channel, we have a ton of videos out there I'm sure you'll love all
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