human actions, global climate change, global human solutions
POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 19:38
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Hydrogen and Hybrids: Toyota CEO Defends Combustion Engines, Saying 'The Enemy Is Carbon'
This weekend Toyota's president drove a specially-equipped Corolla powered by an in-house hydrogen engine, reports Bloomberg. "Along with Mazda Motor Corp., Toyota showcased vehicles running on carbon-neutral propellants in a three-hour road race this weekend in Okayama."
Toyota's hydrogen-powered car underscores the automaker's belief that a wide variety of vehicle types — including hybrids and hydrogen-powered cars, in addition to electric vehicles — will play a role in decarbonizing its fleet over the coming decades. That puts the company in contrast to others, such as General Motors Co., Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo Car AB, which say they'll sell only EVs two decades from now. "The enemy is carbon, not internal combustion engines," Toyoda said at a briefing Saturday. "We need diverse solutions, that's the path toward challenging carbon neutrality."
Toyota says that that different emissions-reducing car technologies are needed for different regions of the world. EVs are a good option for places like Europe, where batteries can be charged with electricity derived largely from renewable sources, the automaker says. Other options, such as hydrogen or hybrids, may be a better fit in other regions.
The technology is separate from the company's other big bet on hydrogen — hydrogen fuel cells such as those that power the Mirai passenger car. While fuel cells use the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, which in turn runs a motor, the hydrogen engine burns the element just like gasoline. Traditional engines only need to be tweaked in minor ways, such as changing out the fuel supply and injection systems, to make them capable of running on hydrogen, Toyota Chief Engineer Naoyuki Sakamoto said in a briefing last month. That also makes the technology a way to save some of the hundreds of thousands of jobs making parts related to combustion engines that are predicted to disappear in Japan if the automotive sector makes a full shift to EVs, according to Toyoda.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/11/15/0220200/hydrogen-and-hybr
ids-toyota-ceo-defends-combustion-engines-saying-the-enemy-is-carbon
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You went there, but with less subtlety than Trump and the Republican Party: Climate Change is a Hoax.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Maybe if scientists didn't lie all the time people would believe them.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Climate+Change+is+a+Hoax
What does Trump actually believe on climate change?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51213003
There are 139 elected officials in the 117th Congress who still deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-117th-congres
s/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Do something about it then. You're the party with all the money.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:Billions of people know that dumping their CO2 into the air is the cheapest way to get rid of it. Not so long ago, billions of people knew that dumping their sewage into lakes and rivers was the cheapest way to get rid of it. There is a long story about why people stopped dumping their sewage into their drinking water and there will be a long story about why people eventually stop dumping their wastes into their breathing air.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Do something about it then. You're the party with all the money.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/big-green-push-get-rid-coal-had
-opposite-effect
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Hydrogen doesn't have anywhere near the energy density of methane, let alone gasoline.
LAST I SAW ...
Therefore, it must be stored at something like 10,000-15,000 psi in order to stuff enough into a container to get meaningful energy out.
In addition, hydrogen is incredibly "leaky" - it is a very small molecule that not only escapes thru fittings, it even escapes thru container material itself. At high pressures it seeps into metal and embrittles it, and (when the metal is coated inside) acts as a solvent and peels the coating off.
MAYBE FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
There have been various attempts to store hydrogen as a metal hydride (but then you'd need to haul a fuel tank around as heavy as the vehicle itself) or combining it with boron, or developing new container material. Perhaps some of these approaches have come to fruition. But given the difficulty of fueling with, and storing hydrogen, it doesn't seem like a suitable choice for vehicles, so I'm surprised at automakers commitment to it.
It would probably work better in stationary applications, where it can be produced in situ or nearby, and used as it's produced.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:The Toyota Mirai features 402 miles of driving range. You will also get free $15,000 hydrogen fuel for the first 3 years. (Complimentary fuel for up to six years or $15,000 per https://www.toyota.com/mirai/ )
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Hydrogen doesn't have anywhere near the energy density of methane, let alone gasoline.
The 2021 Mirai has a tank capacity of 5.6 kilos. The current 2021 price of hydrogen per kg is about $13 – $16. This high cost of hydrogen fuel may not be an immediate concern. Since this car gets 74 MPGe, this will effectively bring the cost down in half compared to an average sedan. In addition, you will get 3 years or $15,000 worth of free hydrogen when you purchase your 2021 Toyota Mirai. And the cost of hydrogen fuel after this time period is expected to be much lower.
Driving the 2021 Toyota Mirai too fast, particularly on curvy roads can lead to high consumption of hydrogen. Mirai’s fuel consumption is measured in Miles Per Gallon Equivalent (MPGe).
Its estimated fuel consumption is about 74 MPGe. However, driving too fast has been shown to drop the consumption to 40 MPGe. On very steep hills the MPGe tends to drop up to 20 MPGe, which can drastically affect the range.
The Price
The 2021 Toyota Mirai XLE is 20-percent cheaper than the 2020 model ($9,000). The price is about $49,500 or $499 on lease agreement. You will also get an APR credit of about $10,000 if you purchase your Mirai XLE before February 1, 2021.
https://www.toyota.com/mirai/
https://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/index.php/2021-toyota-mirai/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Many years ago there was a great self-heating catalyst that turned dirty-wet ethanol (and some if its water) into hydrogen to fuel fuel cells, at over 100% efficiency (due to it catalyzing some water). The previous limitations to that category of catalyst were that the catalyst had to be externally pre-heated to 500F operating temperature, and that the ethanol had to be analytically clean at the ppm/ ppb level and completely dry (ie, the kind you get from a specialty chemical manufacturer in small quantities. One of the biggest problems with dry ethanol is that it sucks water out of the air until it reaches roughly 95% ethanol concentration).
As a fuel source, ethanol handles well - far better than hydrogen. You store it and pump it at ambient temperatures and pressures. And while it burns, it's not toxic unless you ingest it in large quantities, and it doesn't explode like hydrogen. (In my own direct professional experience, I know what happens when a high-pressure hydrogen vehicle-refuel unit explodes nearby.)
Nothing ever came of that catalyst, which should have been a complete game-changer for direct-electric-drive vehicles.
It's not like there aren't better, less expensive, cheaper, easier answers than hydrogen.
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Quote:About 19.64 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) are produced from burning a gallon of gasoline that does not contain ethanol.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
It's not like there aren't better, less expensive, cheaper, easier answers than hydrogen.
About 12.72 pounds of CO2 are produced when a gallon of pure ethanol is combusted.
About 0 pounds of CO2 from hydrogen. That's why Toyota is burning hydrogen. If cheapest is the goal, then gasoline will always be the only possibility. By the way, gasoline can be made from coal. There is far more coal than petroleum in the world, if you are worried that cheap gasoline won't be available.
http://www.patagoniaalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/How-much-c
arbon-dioxide-is-produced-by-burning-gasoline-and-diesel-fuel-FAQ-U.S.-Energy-Information-Administration-EIA.pdf
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Today, the National Academy of Sciences released a new report about ways to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in the ocean.
The world emits about 35 gigatons of CO2 every year. This is the end result of an enormous global infrastructure dedicated to drilling, refining, shipping, pumping gasoline into cars, etc. As a rule of thumb, you can figure that removing CO2 is a project with a similar scale. Think about that. The NAS report estimates that we'll need to remove at least 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year, which means a global infrastructure about a third the size of the emission infrastructure.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/a-research-strategy-for-oce
an-carbon-dioxide-removal-and-sequestration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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"About 12.72 pounds of CO2 are produced when a gallon of pure ethanol is combusted."
But if that ethanol is made from plants - which pull carbon from the atmosphere rather than out of the ground - the net atmospheric ethanol CO2 contribution - is zero. All it does is cycle existing CO2 from the atmosphere, to usable fuel.
It doesn't pull additional carbon from underground fossil fuels, where it's been stored for millions of years, and dump it into the air.
Plant-based ethanol is just as good as hydrogen in terms of CO2, but it doesn't require dangerous high-pressure systems and a specially-built, entirely new, infrastructure to use it. Existing pipelines, underground fuel tanks, gas-stations and so on will do the job at normal environmental temperatures and pressures, without significant personal and environmental toxicity or risk.
Putting ethanol fuel into place - faster, better, cheaper - and less risky - than hydrogen.
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