Toyota shocked the world with a brand new V8 hydrogen combustion engine that could
destroy the EV industry and keep the internal combustion engine alive this one actually
kind of interesting because unlike the Mirai that has a fuel cell that converts hydrogen into
electricity and Powers an electric motor this thing is an internal combustion engine like we
mentioned V8 that means four cylinders on either side and all the combustion Bits And Glory so
all the fury and sounds of a gas car without the batteries or emissions sound too good to be true
well Toyota doesn't think so so today let's talk about the hydrogen combustion engine and if they
can really challenge battery EVS for the future of Mobility I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
foreign this video is brought to you by delete me we've covered hydrogen several times on this
channel and for good reason it's the most abundant element in the universe it's the
most energy dense feel we know behind nuclear fuels and doesn't produce any carbon emissions
when burned or used to make electricity this is why many Herald hydrogen as the energy of
storage solution for the future and is part of the reason why Japan is hell-bent on developing
its hydrogen economy but for every hydrogen lever you'll find a hater because hydrogen
is plagued with as many limitations as it offers it benefits all of which apply to
Toyota's new Venture Toyota's hydrogen combustion engine is a normal internal
combustion engine modified to work with hydrogen there's a couple of reinforcements like stronger
connecting rods harder Valves and valve seats and gas fuel injectors but apart from that it
looks and works almost exactly like a normal gasoline ice a hydrogen fuel air mixture is
burned inside a cylinder moving a piston the Piston moves a crankshaft that spins
ultimately powering the vehicle the engine was actually designed and developed by
Toyota in collaboration with Yamaha we've worked on it for five years it was unveiled in November
2021 and it's a 5.0 liter V8 based on the Lexus RCF Coupe engine this is an engine for muscle car
lovers it pumps out an impressive 450 horsepower at 6800 RPM and 398 foot-pounds of torque almost
identical to the 2023 Ford Mustang GT engine it also features an awesome eight in one top mount
exhaust manifold that produces an amazing high frequency sound profile the engine also offers
a smooth and responsive driving experience all of it with almost zero carbon emissions okay I know
what you're thinking almost zero emissions there's no carbon in hydrogen I know and we'll get back to
that here in a minute overall hydrogen combustion engines sound pretty promising although it made
headlines in 2021 this is the first Hydrogen ice not even by Toyota BMW produced the 750
HL in 2002 and the hydrogen 7 Series in 2005 but then scrapped both Toyota also made a couple of
H2 ice prototype 2021 including a modified gr Yaris H2 concept it sported a turbocharged 1.6
liter three-cylinder engine and came in fourth in its category in the Super taiq Series in
2021 a bath the hydrogen combustion never became mainstream you see in the Quest for cleaner and
more sustainable Transportation there are several alternative powertrain Technologies competing for
attention the most important ones are battery EVS hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles or fcevs and
hydrogen combustion vehicles or H2 ice who wins boils down to the pros and cons of each let's
start by comparing hydrogen cars in general with EVS starting with their Pros the key advantage to
hydrogen cars over EVS is that you don't have to wait 30 minutes or several hours to charge
a hydrogen car you can fill up a 142 liter tank in under 5 minutes whereas a battery pack with a
similar range would easily take around 30 minutes or so at least today range anxiety is a known
issue that holds many people back from adopting EVS I know I felt it before I got my first test
so that's something you don't usually have to worry about with a hydrogen car since hydrogen
has a 33.6 kilowatt hours per kilogram energy density which is almost 70 times higher than
the current record-breaking holder for Batteries by Empress Technologies at 500 watt hours per
kilogram this means you can pack a lot more range in a hydrogen tank than in a battery of the same
weight that said you may still suffer from range anxiety with a hydrogen car since hydrogen fueling
stations are almost non-existent in the U.S you'll only find them in California and Hawaii really so
no road trips down Route 66 in a hydrogen car at least for now also once you get used to your EVS
range the anxiety really does wear off and that's really overstated before we get into that let's
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me links in description huge thanks to delete me and you for supporting the show another key
aspect of h2ices is that their range isn't heavily impacted by ambient temperature so
if your car has a 400 mile range it'll be more or less 400 miles in winter or summer a Tesla Model
3 Performance on the other hand will see its range roughly half depending on how cold it is
from 400 miles to 200 miles in the same condition which can be a problem for a particularly cold
a key trait of hydrogen Vehicles is that the hydrogen combustion process itself produces no
CO2 emissions making them a more environmentally friendly option than traditional gasoline engines
but there's a catch the engine overall does met a small amount of carbon into the atmosphere mainly
from lubricant sleeping into the combustion chamber it also produces other pollutants I'll
mention when we cover the cons this doesn't happen with EVS or even fuel cell EVS another
benefit of the combustion hydrogen engine is that it requires a lot less rare earth materials for
example in EVS you need nickel lithium some still use Cobalt also in fuel cell EVS you need platinum
as a catalyst for the H2 and oxygen reaction a lot of that stuff is simplified dramatically in
the case of a combustion hydrogen engine so real quick let's break this down there is the energy
storage and then the powertrain system in the case of gasoline gasoline is Android storage and
internal combustion engine is the powertrain the part that converts that fuel and moves you forward
in the case of battery electric car cars you have batteries for the energy storage and electric
motors in the case of hydrogen fuel cells you have hydrogen fuel as the storage and you have a fuel
cell that produces electricity and electric motor still now this is hydrogen as an energy storage
medium but hydrogen combustion engines as the powertrain no electronics and no electric motors
at play that's the fundamental difference here another key Advantage is that hydrogen combustion
engines are much cheaper up front than battery EVs and they're way cheaper than hydrogen fuel
cell vehicles for example the average price of a Tesla Model 3 Performance with a 300 mile battery
pack costs around fifty three thousand dollars while the Honda Clarity fuel cell starts at 59
000 and the Toyota Mirai fuel cell cost around fifty thousand to sixty six thousand a H2 ice is
expected to cost around 30 to 40 000. this could technically mean that hydrogen combustion cars
are a more accessible option for most consumers at least for now but for some EVS are missing a key
part of the driving experience with sound and feel of an internal combustion engine revving
up to multiple thousand RPMs and all the Sound and Fury even though they're not very efficient
hydrogen combustion engines work bestman operated under heavy load this gives H2 ice an edge over
fuel cell cars and EVs and applications like heavy machinery and trucks another thing about
hydrogen that tends to be overlooked is that's fact the hydrogen stations work just like regular
gasoline stations only with more specialized and expensive equipment they can get the hydrogen via
pipes or trucks just like normal gas stations or they could even generate it on site via renewable
sources you can make as many stations as wanted based on your budget so it's a scalable solution
so those are some pros and I got through that list but don't think that I'm an advocate for it just
yet but as in all things in engineering hydrogen engines have major trade-offs and in this case
there's plenty of them hydrogen Ice's biggest drawback is efficiency and it starts with the
fuel source hydrogen is clingy so you have to spend lots of energy prying it apart from other
elements before you can even use it there are many ways to make hydrogen but in the best cases you'll
lose around 10 percent of the energy you put in to produce it but you need to compress or liquefy
it to store it and that also uses energy hydrogen compression efficiency is around 55 to 80 percent
and at the end you have to turn hydrogen back into energy by burning it in the engine which is only
about 40 to 50 percent efficient to losing the rest as heat remember earlier when I mentioned
that hydrogen combustion engines don't suffer as much of a range penalty when it's called out well
that's why 50 of the energy is wasted as heat so that means all you have to do is pipe that heat
into the cabin for heating you don't need to run any other extra heaters whereas battery EVs and
fuel cells are so efficient they produce so little heat you have to actually produce the heat in the
end you get an overall efficiency of 36 percent and the very best cases if you compare that in
the US to lithium on battery that's almost 100 percent efficient in the end you get an overall
efficiency of 36 percent in the very best case if you compare that to lithium on battery round
trip which is almost 80 percent 85 efficient that means that you get almost three times as
much energy out of a battery as you do out of the same amount of hydrogen using a combustion
engine EVS are the clear winners here by a long shot and this is probably nothing new this is why
EVS are being invested into so much fuel cells are also much more efficient than ice ranging
from 60 to 87 for a maximum total efficiency of 63 almost twice that of the hydrogen combustion
engine that said with adequate maintenance the internal combustion efficiency doesn't really
degrade significantly over time and if it does it can be repaired with a engine overhaul whereas
battery capacity degrades irreversibly and so does fuel cell efficiency in the US there is currently
a very limited network of hydrogen refueling stations in California Hawaii that's it this is
a huge chicken or the egg problem because until there's more hydrogen cars who's going to build
hydrogen stations that aren't going to get used and until there's more hydrogen stations who's
going to buy the hydrogen car it's one of those things where one company has to just jump out and
build it like what Tesla did with charging and batteries remember when I told you the hydrogen
combustion engines are almost emission free well that's because they emit noxes or nitrous oxides
you see whenever there's air temperature above 1371 degrees Celsius there's going to be Knox
formation and H2 Burns at 2182 degrees Celsius so it would be a myth to say that hydrogen engines
only produce water vapor as a byproduct tailpipe emissions include traces of carbon gases from the
lubricants and different nitrogen oxides making these engines unsuitable for indoor use the cost
of hydrogen fuel can be higher than traditional petrol depending on the production method and
location producing story and transporting hydrogen can be complex and energy intensive potentially
offsetting some of the environmental benefits of hydrogen combustion engines also depending on how
we produce it hydrogen may end up being dirtier than fossil fuels for it to make sense we need
to ensure that we're using clean hydrogen made from renewable sources like sun and wind green
hydrogen or other Technologies Japan is famous for its red hydrogen initiative to produce hydrogen
gas through a thermochemical process that uses waste heat from high temperature nuclear reactors
we made a video about this you can check out here traditional ice have many moving parts
and require regular oil changes and Replacements due to wear and tear hydrogen internal combustion
engines have even higher maintenance costs since the H2 tanks and injection systems are even more
complex consequently maintenance and repair costs for an EV are about 40 percent cheaper than for a
hydrogen combustion engine car one of the biggest concerns most people have regarding hydrogen cars
is the thought of a Hindenburg style explosion if there were ever in a crash or if there's a leak in
the hydrogen tank in the garage hydrogen is one of the smallest gases around and it does leak out of
almost every container but rest assured There is almost no risk to it hydrogen tanks are armored
high pressure vessels designed to withstand even the toughest crash there are tons of videos of
crash tests involving the Hydra Mirai which uses the same type of hydrogen tanks that the new H2
ice would use also hydrogen has a much higher self ignite temperature than most other fuels
including gasoline and natural gas making it harder to ignite and explode plus it's a light
gas that tends to rise in the atmosphere unlike gasoline Vapor which accumulates near the ground
so the risk is actually less than with a gasoline car also if you've seen these videos from Toyota
they've done shot tests where they'll fire rounds into a hydrogen tank and these systems are built
with pressure relief valves that can blow off the hydrogen up into the atmosphere and other
venting systems so these things are well thought out and fair really safe so okay that's in the car
situation what if there's a leak in the tank while I'm parked in my garage am I going to blow up not
likely leakage rates for normal tanks that higher than nominal pressures we're talking like 10 000
PSI and above is only about 2.3 percent annually a team of researchers locked up a Toyota Mirai with
a full 122 liter tank of hydrogen at 10 000 PSI in a small sealed container and measured hydrogen
leak to be between 2.14 and 6.43 milliliters of hydrogen per minute for a parked car it
would take a little over a month for hydrogen to concentrate to reach a dangerous threshold
of one percent of air by volume in a completely sealed and Tiny garage at the end of the day the
reason why we made this video is because this is a different approach to hydrogen we've always seen
hydrogen electric cars but this is a hydrogen combustion car but as we've laid out it has all
the same problems of traditional hydrogen cars which is really low efficiency and there's not
much in the way of a charge Network why companies like Toyota continue to invest in these sorts of
things is a bit of a head scratcher especially because they were so quick to make the Prius and
they had wild success and they realized very early on that if you want to make a car more efficient
add more electricity to it now I know securing a battery supply chain and building battery EVS is
no small feat but we've seen a huge Resurgence and it's hard to imagine exactly why this makes sense
in a lot of ways you're keeping all the negatives of an internal combustion engine all the camshafts
and springs and seals and all the high pressure igniters and everything else while not retaining
any of the benefits of electric cars you don't have instant torque with a hydrogen internal
combustion engine car by the way not like you do with a battery EV so all the benefits of EVS not
there all the baggage of internal combustion very much there it's a hard thing to understand and
why I think Toyota is kind of losing their way a bit with this investment one thing about Toyota
you can tell a lot about is how they partner with companies to do things they don't really
believe in I'll give you some examples the first is the Toyota AE86 or the Subaru BRZ that was a
joint venture with Subaru because they didn't really believe that they'd have enough sales
to justify building a car and doing all the research development costs themselves another
example Toyota Supra which they partner with BMW the car is largely a BMW Z4 with a little bit of
a different body shape but the engine is BMW and so is everything else when Twitter really believes
in something they do it themselves and when they don't they do this partnership deal like
with Yamaha for this engine for example but the future of this engine really holds is hard to say
but to think that this is going to be some kind of a Magic Bullet it is anything but I'd love to
know what you think let us know in the comments if you think this is a car design or technology
that you would be interested in and if you think this is wild you got to watch this video next