Toyota is making a big bet on hydrogen fuel cars. Like Elon Musk with Tesla Toyota is opening up its patents to its competitors to encourage hydrogen fuel technology. So – it’s a showdown between hydrogen fuel and electric cars. Which one will win?

Hydrogen seems like a clean fuel. When you burn it you get water. So let’s compare hydrogen to electricity and see who has the advantage.

The Toyota hydrogen car has more range (300 miles) than the current Tesla cars (250 miles) but the range is similar. They definitely beat the little electric cars like the Nissan leaf. (80 miles). Toyota envisions hydrogen gas stations everywhere in the future but today you’re not going any distance from a hydrogen fueling station. Electricity is more common by not as common today as gasoline.

Electric cars have long charge times compared to gasoline. Even at a Tesla super charging station you’re looking at over an hour for a full charge. Like gasoline, hydrogen fills in minutes. Tesla however has demonstrated a swapable battery pack in an automated station that can slap in a fully charged battery pack in 90 seconds, half the time to fill the tank with gas or hydrogen. Right now however for refueling speed – hydrogen wins.

Tesla has made his charging stations free for the life of the car. so on the cost side you don’t get any cheaper than free. If you have solar panels at home you can fill the car for free at home too. But even if you pay for the power electricity offers refil at home option. Gas and hydrogen require you go to the fueling station to fill up.

The Toyota car is priced around $50,000. This is less than the current Tesla S ($80,000) but more than the planned Tesla 3  ($35,000). Since the Toyota isn’t on the market yet it compares more to the Tesla 3 that also isn’t on the market. The prices are therefore similar.

How do these cars work?

Let take a look at the way the cars work. We all know how a gasoline car works. We burn gas and that moves pistons that turn the wheels. Electric cars have batteries and an electric motor. Hydrogen is very similar to electric cars in that it uses a fuel cell to turn hydrogen into electricity and the electricity runs an electric motor. So the easy way to understand the hydrogen car is to think of it as an electric car with a hydrogen driven battery. But instead of recharging the battery, you refill it with hydrogen. Instead of a battery pack you have hydrogen tanks and a fuel cell.

I don’t know how the safety systems compare but if I were in a serious collision I would rather be in a car filled with batteries than an explosive gas.

But – the real issue – where does the fuel come from?

Let’s start with hydrogen. Hydrogen isn’t just there, you have to make it out of something. There are basically 2 sources of hydrogen – methane (natural gas) and electricity. Hydrogen is made from natural gas in a process known as reforming. So to get hydrogen you need to start with methane. The way I see it you are just as well off burning the methane because the carbon dioxide is still produced – it’s just not produced in the car. This is what the skeptics of both hydrogen and electricity call “the long tail pipe”.

The other source of hydrogen is using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. No carbon in this process unless you look at where the electricity comes from, which I will address later. But it raises the question. Why turn electricity into hydrogen and then back into electricity when you can just use electricity to begin with? When you turn electricity into hydrogen and then back into electricity – you lose a lot of electricity than if you just make the car electric in the first place.

So – regardless of where the electricity comes from – hydrogen uses around twice the electricity as electric cars – making them twice as dirty.

So lets talk about the electricity in both fuels. If you are burning coal, you might ask, aren’t both the hydrogen and electric cars just running on coal? The answer is – yes!

But – power plants that use both coal and natural gas are very efficient. When your energy plant isn’t on wheels you can build a plant that is extremely efficient. On the order of 3 to 4 time as efficient as a gasoline car. To give you an example – the Tesla model S which goes 250 miles on a charge has the same amount of energy as 2 gallons of gasoline. If you burned gasoline in a power plant it would be far more efficient than burning it in your car. So technically coal in an efficient power plant – making electricity to run a Tesla is cleaner than gasoline. If you add the two steps of turning it into hydrogen and back to electricity – maybe not.

And – of course – there are cleaner electricity sources than coal. Many coal plants are being scrapped for natural gas which is at least twice as clean. And then there hydroelectric, win, nuclear, and solar. Solar is getting cheaper every year and will likely replace most other forms of power. So if your electricity comes from solar, wind, or hydroelectric then both electric cars and hydrogen cars are totally clean. But the electric car requires half the solar panels as the hydrogen car.

Conclusion

So in my opinion – Tesla is going to beat Toyota in the who has the right technology category. Both are essentially electric cars, but hydrogen adds 2 unnecessary steps to the process. The hydrogen either has to be trucked in or made at the station from electricity or natural gas. Electricity is more efficient to move because you move it on wires rather that trucks. if you are getting your hydrogen from methane then you might as well run the car on methane. So the bottom line is that compared to electricity – hydrogen is fatally flawed.

The only real advantage hydrogen has over most electric cars is range and speed of refueling. Since the Toyota is a Tesla priced car its range is similar. And then you have to look at the future. Turning methane or electricity into hydrogen isn’t going to change much in the future. This is basic chemistry. However battery technology is getting better every year. the original Tesla Roadster only had a 200 mile range when it was originally made. The new batteries which are the same size gives the roadster a 400 mile range. We can expect the range of electric cars to increase over time as batteries store more energy. A hydrogen car will never have a range increase unless to have bigger tanks because you can only stuff so much hydrogen in a tank. And as battery technology evolves the charging rate will increase as well. And the swapable battery makes refueling faster than hydrogen or gas as you can see in this video.

My opinion – Tesla wins – Toyota loses.

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