During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the recent RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said that his company’s philosophy focuses first on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the automotive future must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the diversity of uses for motorized vehicles (check the video above to see the Pratt section).
Toyota, he said, recognizes the difference between decarbonization – which is the goal – and electrification, which is one means of reaching that goal. Toyota therefore is building hybrids, electric vehicles (EVs), and internal combustion engines that use hydrogen rather than gasoline or diesel as a fuel. In the developing world where electricity is in short supply, he added, the best choice may be low-carbon liquid fuels.
Prior to being recruited by Toyota to lead its research institute, Pratt had worked on robotics and neuromorphic computing at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, making machines that could help in disasters and computers that worked more like the human brain. There, he says, he learned that technological predictions are often unreliable and that we must expect to be surprised.
Today’s vehicles are so far advanced from those of just 20 years ago. Today, global positioning systems help guide drivers through both urban traffic and rural roads; we now have telephones and the internet in our vehicles; and today’s vehicular onboard computers are sophisticated enough to drive themselves safely with or without passengers.
But we have also concluded that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future. The “quick fix” of electrifying everything has proven to be a stubborn challenge, if only for the sheer magnitude of battery-EVs needed to replace 300 million American vehicles and a billion and a half worldwide, most of which operate on gasoline or diesel fuel.
To achieve a safe self-driving vehicle, Toyota opted for a diverse approach with a focus on saving lives sooner. The company’s approach to decarbonization has also focused on diverse 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 solve the global problem of climate change,” Pratt said in a 2021 Toyota Research Institute video.
“Different people,” he said then, “have different circumstances and different needs. Some live in areas with electric grids 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 cities where that is more difficult. Some are wealthy; most are not.”
One benefit of this strategy is the wiser use of available lithium, the critical element in today’s EV batteries. Pratt explained that Toyota’s strategy focuses on maximizing the carbon return on investment of every battery cell produced, which is defined as grams of carbon dioxide reduced divided by grams of lithium used.
With the average U.S. daily commute of 32 miles a day, hauling around a 320-mile-range electric battery yields a low carbon ROI. Allocating the same components of these large EV batteries into multiple hybrids multiplies the carbon ROI for these expensive battery components. One battery-EVs uses about 90 times the lithium as one hybrid. On the other hand, braking energy adds to the efficiency of battery-EVs in city traffic.
Toyota has found that hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles have similar lifetime carbon emissions as battery-EVs at a lower cost to the consumer. Fully EVs may still be the better option wherever there are ample fast-charging options and sufficient electricity capacity at affordable prices.
But this is hardly the case in the developing world, nor even across much of the U.S. landscape today. That’s one reason Toyota has a focus on hydrogen-powered vehicles, which also have zero carbon tailpipe emissions. While hydrogen is a gas that must be cooled to near absolute-zero or pressurized for use in motor vehicles, there are ample supplies. The petrochemical industry alone creates enough hydrogen to fuel millions of vehicles.
Hydrogen has been used in racecar internal combustion engines, but Toyota believes its “sweet spot” may be in 18-wheeler trucks, tanks, cranes, and other large vehicles that would otherwise require huge electric batteries that add weight and reduce load capacity. While intensifying its European operations via Hydrogen Factory Europe, Toyota is applying fuel cell technology to buses and trucks, railways, ocean and river shipping, and even baseload electricity generation.
A recent article notes that Toyota’s hydrogen combustion engines provide great performance while utilizing efficiency in engine features. These engines can provide up to 400 horsepower, equivalent to many piston Atkinson cycle gasoline engines, and can reach a thermal efficiency of up to 45%, equal to that of the best diesel engines. The only emissions from these engines are clean water vapor.
Another recent article explains that Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell system involves the chemical reaction of the hydrogen stored on the vehicle and the oxygen from the surrounding environment to produce electricity to the electric motor without the need for the heavy lithium-ion batteries utilized in battery-EVs.
Pratt compares the decision by Toyota to seek a multi-pathway approach to the automotive future to the old debate between VHS and Beta. Those who put all their eggs in the Beta basket ended up bankrupt as VHS proved more amenable to consumers than the technologically superior Beta. But, he says, in tomorrow’s automotive universe, battery-electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen powered vehicles may all play important roles.
The bottom line, though, is that the poor and middle class worldwide will continue to rely on gasoline- and diesel-powered internal combustion engines until these newer technologies can produce vehicles they can afford to buy and maintain and until fuel supplies (including ample electricity) are also conveniently available at affordable prices.
While the gasoline fuel hose and the electric charging cable area about the same size, the fuel hose today delivers ten times the power of the electric charger in a much shorter time frame. Multiply the charging time versus the liquid refueling time and you begin to see the magnitude of the challenge.
Texas-based Buc-ee’s just opened its largest station, with 120 pumps on a 75,000-square-foot lot. They would have to have 1,200 of today’s best chargers, covering perhaps 750,000 square feet, to service the same number of EVs today
With 80% of the EV chargers in the U.S. today being slow chargers, the transition even in the developed world may be slower than politicians and bureaucrats demand.
Duggan Flanakin (duggan@duggansdugout.com) is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
