By Duggan Flanakin
July 18, 2024
During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said the company’s philosophy is focused on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the future of automotive must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the multiple uses of motor vehicles (check out the video above to see Pratt’s segment).
Toyota, he said, recognizes the difference between decarbonization – which is its goal – and electrification, which is one way to achieve that goal. That’s why Toyota makes hybrids, electric vehicles (EVs), and internal combustion engines that use hydrogen instead of gasoline or diesel as fuel. In developing countries with electricity shortages, he added, the best option is low-carbon liquid fuels.
Before being hired by Toyota to lead the research agency, Pratt had worked in robotics and neuromorphic computing at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, creating machines that could help in disasters and computers that worked like the human brain. There, he said, he learned that technological predictions are often unreliable and that we should be surprised.
Today’s vehicles are much more advanced than they were 20 years ago. Today, global positioning systems help guide drivers through city traffic and rural roads; now we have phones and internet in our vehicles; and vehicle onboard computers are now sophisticated enough to drive safely with or without passengers.
But we also conclude that the products of fossil fuel combustion exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future. The “quick fix” for electrifying everything has proven to be a stubborn challenge, if only for the sheer size of the battery-EVs needed to replace 300 million American vehicles and a billion and a half worldwide, most of which operate on gasoline or diesel. .
To achieve safe driving vehicles, Toyota chooses a multifaceted approach with a focus on saving lives faster. The company’s approach to decarbonization also focuses on a variety of solutions, including battery-EVs, plug-in hybrids, and fuel-cell EVs. “We want to give people around the world from all walks of life the best tools to tackle the global issue of climate change,” Pratt said in a Toyota Research Institute 2021 video.
“Different people,” he said, “different situations and different needs. Some live in areas with electricity networks powered by renewables; others live in areas that will be powered by fossil fuels for some time. Some have convenient charging stations at home; others live in more difficult cities. At least some don’t;
One of the benefits of this strategy is the more judicious use of lithium, a critical element in today’s EV batteries. Pratt explained that Toyota’s strategy focuses on maximizing the carbon return on investment of each battery cell produced, which is defined as grams of carbon dioxide reduced divided by grams of lithium used.
With an average US daily commute of 32 miles per day, hauling around a 320-mile electric battery yields a low carbon ROI. Distributing the same components from those large EV batteries into multiple hybrids increases the carbon ROI for these expensive battery components. One battery-EV uses about 90 times as much lithium as one hybrid. On the other hand, braking energy increases the efficiency of battery-EVs in city traffic.
Toyota found that hybrid and plug-in vehicles have the same lifetime carbon emissions as battery-EVs at a lower cost to consumers. A fully-fledged EV may be a better choice wherever there are plenty of fast charging options and sufficient electric capacity at an affordable price.
But this is hardly the case in the developing world, or even in many US landscapes today. This is one reason Toyota is focusing on hydrogen-powered vehicles, which also have zero tailpipe carbon emissions. While hydrogen is a gas that must be cooled to near absolute zero or compressed for use in motor vehicles, there is ample supply. The petrochemical industry alone makes enough hydrogen to fuel millions of vehicles.
Hydrogen is already used in racecar internal combustion engines, but Toyota believes the “sweet spot” may be in 18-wheel trucks, tanks, cranes, and other large vehicles that require large electric batteries that add weight and reduce payload capacity. While expanding its European operations through the European Hydrogen Plant, Toyota is using fuel cell technology for buses and trucks, trains, ships and rivers, and even generating baseload electricity.
A recent article notes that Toyota’s hydrogen combustion engine provides excellent performance while utilizing efficiency in engine features. The engine can provide up to 400 horsepower, the same as many piston Atkinson cycle gasoline engines, and can reach a thermal efficiency of up to 45%, the same as the best diesel engines. The only emission from the engine is clean water vapor.
Another recent article explains that Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell system involves the chemical reaction of hydrogen stored in the vehicle and oxygen from the surrounding environment to generate electricity for electric motors without the need for heavy lithium-ion batteries used in EV batteries. .
Pratt compared Toyota’s decision to pursue a multi-pathway approach to the automotive future to the age-old debate between VHS and Beta. Those who put all their eggs in the Beta basket ended up bankrupt because VHS proved more amenable to consumers than Beta’s superior technology. However, he said, in tomorrow’s automotive world, battery electric vehicles, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and hydrogen may play an important role.
The bottom line is that the poor and middle class around the world will continue to rely on gasoline and diesel internal combustion engines until these newer technologies produce affordable and maintainable vehicles and fuel supplies (including ample electricity). ) is also available at an affordable price.
While gasoline fuel hoses and electric charger cable areas are roughly the same size, fuel hoses now deliver ten times the power of an electric charger in a shorter amount of time. Multiply the charging time by the liquid fuel filling time and you begin to see the magnitude of the challenge.
Buc-ee’s Texas-based just opened the largest station, with 120 pumps in 75,000-mq. They would need to have 1,200 of today’s best chargers, covering 750,000 square feet, to service the same number of EVs they currently have.
With 80% of EV chargers in the US now being slow chargers, the transition even in developed countries may be slower than politicians and bureaucrats want.
Duggan Flanakin (duggan@duggansdugout.com) is a senior policy analyst at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a variety of public policy issues.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and is available via RealClearWire.
