At a time when Toyota Motor Europe is trying to ramp up its hydrogen activity — launching the Hydrogen Factory Europe in an effort to promote a wide roll-out of eco-systems and infrastructure across the Old Continent — we talked with Thiebault Pâquet, Toyota Motor Europe Vice President and Head of the Fuel Cell Business, about the forthcoming generation of the Toyota Mirai and the hurdles and opportunities regarding the fuel cell technology.
We assume that you agree the multi focus on petrol, hybrid, battery electric and fuel cell vehicles is the most efficient strategy for Toyota. Do you have big discussions internally between the Petrol Heads, the Joule Jesters and the H2 dreamers?
Thiebault Pâquet: I’m a diesel engineer, can you imagine that… (smiles) That is my background. There is no future there. But we never had any diesel problems with Toyota vehicles… We shouldn’t not talk more about it…
I’ve worked on hybrid [systems] and now I’m really very much into into the fuel cell area. Of course there’s a bit of healthy competition. And I think this is also what we should expect.
I think battery technology will continue to evolve. Hydrogen technology will continue to evolve. And all the teams have the intention to create the best proposition for a certain type of customer. I don’t think the hydrogen solution will cover all the customers, but we have a segment where we think this would really be one of the best solutions.
I’m actually also responsible on the battery side in Europe. So I need to balance everything.
Achieving a 20% increase in driving range and cost reduction in the next generation of fuel cells is a very significant step. We know that implies very hard work and preparation on the engineering and production side. How realistic are these targets and what factors might pose challenges to achieve them?
TP: They are realistic because Generation 2 system is now on the market since 2015. Everybody has been working on Gen 3, and we’re now at a position where we are really fixing the specification. And the data is based on tests that we have done with pre-development, with prototypes and so on. So we believe we can achieve that with the design changes that were made.
We are planning actually to to propose not just one solution, because we’re providing our system for heavy duty applications and for passenger cars. These two solutions are not necessarily exactly the same. Because if I drive a Mirai (I have a Mirai), 3000 hours is like the maximum you will use it. But if you use it on a truck, you need 30,000 hours of lifetime minimum. So we’re looking at two two different cells, for instance, where we will develop a solution for high durability and another for high performance. We are continuously developing and improving, to see how can we build a system that will match the specific customers.
We have driven both the current Mirai and the Hyundai Nexo and they do not compare positively when you think about battery electric vehicles of similar size and capabilities, regarding performance and acceleration. BEVs have easily double the power and they are much faster. Where is the bottleneck for the performance of fuel cells and how can you solve it?
TP: Purely looking at the technical side, the fuel cell in the in the Mirai is capable of 128 kilowatt as a peak. And then it has a 1 kWh battery because it’s actually quite fuel cell rich. The difference with the battery, let’s say, if you take a Tesla [with], I don’t know, 100 kWh hour battery or more, it allows a very big discharge of current. You can put a lot of power out of that battery for a very short time. The only way for the fuel cell to compensate that is to make a bigger fuel cell. A big battery has a huge amount of energy.
The cells are not exactly small…
TP: Yes, I do agree. Let’s say on the maximum performance side, we would need to increase the power density on the cell, which is part of the improvement. And then you can create as much power as you want, if you add cells. First we have to decide on the design optimization, you say: I want to have that kind of vehicle. It needs to be able to comply to this and this and this. And then you try to optimize that with cost and we decide on the number of cells that we think fits to the concept of the vehicle. If we want to make a fuel cell super sportscar, I know some colleagues who can put a lot of cells [together] and you can get a lot of power. But the question is whether that fits the product image. So it’s not going to be easy. But it’ll be interesting to to see that being developed.
Regarding reliability and maintenance of a fuel cell vehicle, do you have an assessment of the maintenance costs of the Mirai compared to a petrol engine and also a battery electric vehicle?
TP: If I just look at the Mirai, the maintenance of the fuel cell system is not so complicated. There is some fundamental tests that are being done on the Mirai to see that everything is okay. We do need to change an air cleaner on this kind of vehicle and there is a so called ion exchanger, because the coolant is going through the catalyst. It can pick up some ions and you don’t want to have that conductivity. So there’s a filter that collects them. And this is being replaced on a regular interval. I think it’s maybe 15,000 km. Those are the two special maintenance needs. For the rest, it is not so different from from a gasoline car. The car brakes and, at the moment, there will be some validation of all the electric components. My car is going to go on maintenance in two weeks, but it just takes the same time. Nothing special.
And the price of that filter for ions. You have an idea? Roughly?
TP: No. To be honest, it’s a company car… (smiles). I would need to check
Considering the challenges, let’s say, regarding the hydrogen infrastructure and availability, how do fuel cell passenger vehicles fit into the broader European context of sustainable transportation?
TP: I think we we will not solve the transport issue with just one technology. And even [regarding] the infrastructure, we did some study if, let’s say all the trucks would be 10% fuel cell and 90% would be battery, and we would put the infrastructure to refill those 10%, it will be cheaper than to try to do everything by electric. Why? Because it’s a kind of 80 over 20 rule. If you try to really make the grid okay for those very last, it takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of electricity grid and investment. So there are studies that show if you have a kind of a mix, you can actually optimize the cost. This is one thing just from an infrastructure point of view, because if you have 50 trucks on a side road that need to be recharged, they will use like the equivalent of I think it’s 17, 18, 19 MW. It’s they’re going to use what 25,000 households are using. I’m living here in Belgium. This is a transit for trucks. I don’t see where we’re going to put all this kind of stuff here.
Maybe that’s going to be [possible] in other countries. But there is a big challenge still with the infrastructure. And I’m not even looking at the outskirts of Europe. But you’re talking trucks. And I see that happening, that problem. Passenger cars it’s a little bit different. Passenger car in itself will not be able to 100% sustain the infrastructure just by themselves. We need we need to have a combination of fleets like [what is happening] in Paris, where we will have 1500 taxis running there during the Olympic Games. We have a joint venture with Hysetco. This joint venture is actually offering the hydrogen supply. And at the same time also offer the taxi licenses and the maintenance of the car. That kind of activity is perfectly profitable.
It is profitable if they don’t pay for the hydrogen…
TP: They actually buy the hydrogen from Air Liquide, but it’s not green hydrogen. It will be green, because in Paris they will build a very big electrolyzer in the neighborhood of Paris. Once you have an electrolyzer that is using surplus energy in such a kind of location, it’s cheaper than what you get from the grid.
But it’s not green. It might be green someday, but it’s not at the moment…
TP: At the moment no. But if you look at all the investments, the electrolysers that are now being built and set up and that is the 10 million ton that I was talking about, and that will be 40, 42% in 2030. There is no choice. It has to be green. If it’s not, I don’t know, compensations, whatever. But that is the target. That is what we need to achieve.
When you’re talking about those recharging points, they produce hydrogen locally and supply it to the cars or they will work like in Paris, buying from a supplier somewhere that produces hydrogen?
TP: I think you have a mix at the moment. Most of them will actually get the hydrogen, from some kind of port by a tube trailer truck. But the point is, the investments that are happening now [are going] to change that. For instance, in the Hysetco case, I do know that they’re going to build a very big electrolyzer and that electrolyzer will supply the Paris region.
They have now they have at least three, and they’re building a fourth one, as far as I understand. So they are really expanding. It is not happening overnight. It will take two, three, four or five years. But there are plans, there is a vision, there is investment. People are working on it. There is investment on pipelines. There are contracts being made with Canada. There’s contracts being made in Africa, contracts being made with Argentina. Germany is very active in trying to secure hydrogen supply on a worldwide basis. Saudi Arabia has a lot of excess renewable. They really want to make a lot of renewable hydrogen. It will take time because these are big industrial systems. But in the end, it will be there. And anyway we have to, we need hydrogen. Without hydrogen there is no no cement, no steel.
But not exactly for mobility. We need it for a lot of things then, so we are creating perhaps a the necessity of more hydrogen when we already have a hydrogen problem to solve.
TP: But where I think transport is going to help. If you look today in the cement industry, in the steel industry, they buy hydrogen at 2 dollars per kilogram.
Sure, yes. From steam reform, burning gas.
In transportation, we are willing to pay more because we can make a positive TCO at a higher price. So, let’s say, if we go to $8 or $9 or whatever, we can make a positive TCO. Transportation can actually support the investments that need to be done in the hydrogen infrastructure. And in the end, we believe: yes, it will take time, but we believe that the amount of hydrogen [available] will continue growing and at some point it will not be used only for industry and for cement. It will be used for transportation, maybe to some kind of heating related activity. Hydrogen has been growing every year 3% year on year. Okay, mainly industrial, but it is a commodity that is continuously growing in volume. I don’t see why, at some point in time, we cannot continue to grow green hydrogen up to a commodity where it can be used for industry, for transport, potentially partially for heating, not to burn it, but in those sectors.
The European Commission’s strategy includes the use of blue hydrogen [steam reform using natural gas combined with carbon capture technology] as a transitional phase, raising concerns about the environmental impact of this production, which is not yet available. How does Toyota view the viability and sustainability of blue hydrogen in the transition to a decarbonized economy?
TP: I don’t know if we have an official position on that. It would just be my personal opinion. But I think as a transition, it can be helpful because in any way, if you use it you will already reduce CO2 quite substantially.
If you do it right…
TP: If you do it right, of course. I fully agree. Also today there are a lot of challenges with carbon capture, but if you can do it, even if you don’t do it and you use it in a fuel cell, you still have less CO2 emissions. So if you do it in the right way, I think it can be a good transition. If that technology really achieves a very high level of maturity, then I would say maybe, why not? If it really achieves very high maturity and if it does not take too much energy, it can be a step in the right direction. But I do think that, in the long term, we will hav green hydrogen. We will have to go to very high levels of green hydrogen [production].
