Toyota Rolls Out Hydrogen Semi Ahead Of Tesla’s Electric Truck

Toyota Rolls Out Hydrogen Semi Ahead Of Tesla’s Electric Truck

A battle for the future of clean trucks is breaking out. A week after Elon Musk said an electric Tesla semi is coming, Toyota sped ahead of him in its own exhaust-free truck: a hydrogen-powered 18-wheeler created to haul cargo at the Port of Los Angeles.

The carmaker’s truck, dubbed “Project Portal,” fulfills a promise Toyota made in November to scale up the fuel cell system used in its Mirai sedan for a semi as part of a feasibility study. The Class 8 truck Toyota created using a Kenworth chassis, generates more than 670 horsepower from electricity generated by two Mirai fuel cell stacks — enough to pull a total of 80,000 pounds. The truck also uses a bigger motor and battery than that in its midsize sedan, and should average 200 miles per fueling of compressed hydrogen gas.

“The power is large enough and the drivability and performance, everything, has to meet the current diesel truck requirement,” Toyota Senior Executive Engineer Takehito Yokoo told Forbes. “Because we are using a hydrogen fuel cell and motor, this is an EV, but not a battery-powered EV. The exhaust emission is zero, only water vapor coming out.”

Daily operation of the truck at the port, hauling cargo offloaded from ships to rail distribution centers, will run for an indeterminate period. For now, this is only a test of the technology and Toyota hasn’t committed to turning the truck power system into a commercial program, Yokoo said.

Running the study at one of the country’s busiest cargo terminals is intentional owing to persistent air pollution generated there by a heavy concentration of diesel trucks. California has pushed automakers for years to sell more types of low- and no-exhaust vehicles – including Prius hybrids, Mirai fuel cell cars and Tesla’s battery-powered models  – and wants similar options for heavy commercial vehicles.

By bringing this heavy duty, zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell proof of concept truck to the Port, Toyota has planted a flag that we hope many others will follow,” Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, or CARB, said in a statement. “CARB will be following the progress of this feasibility study with interest as we look to develop the best mix of regulations and incentives to rapidly expand the market for the cleanest, most efficient big trucks to meet the need for dramatic change in the freight sector.”

Advocates of hydrogen see it as an abundant, clean alternative to petroleum that provides similar driving range and refueling time, versus hours for batteries. Tesla’s Musk is among its biggest critics, citing lower energy efficiency relative to batteries and storage challenges. He’s dubbed the technology “fool cells.”

Musk said Tesla would show its semi in September, but provided no details about the project, in terms of performance, price, range or when such a vehicle might go into production.

While batteries are storage devices for electricity, fuel cells make it in a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen that produces only water as a byproduct. For years, fuel cells themselves, because they used precious metals and exotic high-tech plastics, were both very costly and less durable than conventional gasoline engines.

But two decades of dogged development efforts by Toyota, Honda, General Motors and Hyundai are showing progress.

Toyota’s Mirai sedan, about the size of a Camry, sells in California for about $57,000, and Honda’s competing Clarity model is available to consumers in the state for lease only, at $369 a month. Both go more than 300 miles per fueling. Hyundai also leases a fuel cell version of its Tucson SUV in California and this month said it would have a new hydrogen SUV arriving in 2018 with at least 500 miles of range.

General Motors has created a hydrogen fuel cell version of its Colorado pickup truck that’s being evaluated by the U.S. Army, and it has partnership to produce fuel cells with Honda at a Michigan factory.

Hino, Toyota’s commercial vehicle unit, has hydrogen buses operating in Japan, while another subsidiary makes fuel cell forklifts.

Over the past year, Toyota engineers spent a great deal of time with trucking companies at the Southern California port to learn the daily requirements of the vehicles they use, according to Craig Scott, national manager for Toyota’s U.S. advanced technology group.

“They had done a lot of pilot programs with CNG and electric vehicles and they all had the same complaints: ‘It’s not really feasible. We can’t replace our diesel trucks with these because we can’t refuel quickly or the performance of the truck isn’t good enough,’” Scott told Forbes. “We thought great, the fuel cell handles both of those.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/04/19/toyota-rolls-out-hydrogen-semi-ahead-of-teslas-electric-truck/#2dfd4b3a582b