SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
At a car factory in this city named after Toyota, the usual robots with their swinging arms are missing. Instead, workers intently fit parts into place by hand with craftsmanship-like care.
The big moment on the assembly line comes when two bulbous yellow tanks of hydrogen are rolled over and delicately fitted into each car's underside.
While much of the world is going gung-ho for electric vehicles to help get rid of auto emissions and end reliance on fossil fuels, Japan's top automaker Toyota Motor Corp. is banking on hydrogen.
Toyota sells about 10 million vehicles a year around the world. It has sold only about 4,000 Mirai fuel cell vehicles since late 2014, roughly half of them outside Japan.
Is Toyota going to build the network of hydrogen-refueling stations to serve its hydrogen-powered cars?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2017, @03:52AM
Ok, I'll follow the money.
It's highly unlikely the oil companies will "step up" as you maintain.
Since hydrogen is such a small molecule, it requires components like stainless steel for everything the hydrogen comes into contact with.
Therefore, the installation of Hydrogen filling stations will require expensive infrastructure and investments that few companies will risk, even to supply several thousand hydrogen vehicles on the road throughout the country.
At best, it will become a regional roll out, and those poor consumers who own hydrogen powered cars, will be stuck unable to travel long distances without proper pre planning to find obscure hydrogen filling stations.
I promoted hydrogen as as fuel storage medium for years, but I eventually saw that it's not the way to go, for many quite valid reasons.