It didn’t catch on because it’s stupid on multiple levels, from infrastructure engineering to realpolitik. Japan as a nation is just desperate for energy independence and pretending the hydrogen will be sourced from the expensive electrolysis and not cheap natural gas refinement was a way to get free government money.
They convinced themselves that all the petrostates, which includes America and Russia, would just abandon their current economic advantage to pay them billions of dollars to rebuild their entire vehicle fuel infrastructure, since they would be the industry leaders and the only major source of engineering knowhow.
Well I’d like to add that Ford did too indirectly and it works. I personally rode both a fuel cell bus and one with a Ford Hydrogen combustion engine and both worked wonderfully. The hydrogen was sourced from electrolysis at a wind turbine. It was a proof of concept. And most relevantly… Toyota is at this again. It actually never quit because it is a smart move. Hydrogen can be easily had from natural gas or water and natural gas or oil is already the normal fuel. So you start at normal, then you switch when normal is gone. It’s expensive but let’s remember, Japan is an island with no oil deposits and a ton of smart people. Ofcourse they would try to figure it out.
It didn’t catch on because it’s stupid on multiple levels, from infrastructure engineering to realpolitik. Japan as a nation is just desperate for energy independence and pretending the hydrogen will be sourced from the expensive electrolysis and not cheap natural gas refinement was a way to get free government money.
They convinced themselves that all the petrostates, which includes America and Russia, would just abandon their current economic advantage to pay them billions of dollars to rebuild their entire vehicle fuel infrastructure, since they would be the industry leaders and the only major source of engineering knowhow.
Well I’d like to add that Ford did too indirectly and it works. I personally rode both a fuel cell bus and one with a Ford Hydrogen combustion engine and both worked wonderfully. The hydrogen was sourced from electrolysis at a wind turbine. It was a proof of concept. And most relevantly… Toyota is at this again. It actually never quit because it is a smart move. Hydrogen can be easily had from natural gas or water and natural gas or oil is already the normal fuel. So you start at normal, then you switch when normal is gone. It’s expensive but let’s remember, Japan is an island with no oil deposits and a ton of smart people. Ofcourse they would try to figure it out.