The world has been abuzz about the recent Toyota (NYSE: TM) announcement that the company
opened up licensing of its 5,680 HFCV patents (although only until 2020.) By taking a page from the Tesla playbook, Toyota is hoping to encourage an ecosystem of fuel cell suppliers and hydrogen fueling stations.
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1) Hydrogen is not an energy source.
Many industry insiders talk about hydrogen as if it were an energy source. For instance, they might compare it with, say, petroleum products like gasoline and diesel, and say that H2 produces no emissions. Hydrogen is not an energy source. It’s an energy carrier. It’s a form of storage. You need
primary energy sources like the sun, coal, natural gas, or uranium to generate the power needed to extract Hydrogen from a source material like natural gas or water.
2) Electric Vehicles are at least three times more energy efficient than Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Assuming that at some point fuel-cells will be cheap and Hydrogen production will reach critical mass, it will still be at least three times more expensive to power an HFCV car than an EV. This figure from fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains how wasteful an HFCV is compared to electric vehicles. (Source:
Why a hydrogen economy doesn't make sense)
3) You need to build a multi-trillion dollar hydrogen delivery infrastructure.
To build a so-called “Hydrogen Economy” you need to build a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure with large factories/refineries, pipelines, trucks, storage facilities, compressors, hydrogen gas stations, and so on. If you haven’t noticed, this mirrors the existing oil & gas infrastructure. (Source:
Hydrogen Delivery | Department of Energy)
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