Hydrogen Discoveries company blog

(Note #1: This is Hydrogen Fact #10 from “Twelve Hydrogen Facts” which is part of the Hydrogen Manhattan Project.)

(Note #2: I am personally outraged with the lack of leadership and focus on solving the energy crisis despite all of the problems that are a result of our reliance on oil such as high fuel prices, wars, global warming, air pollution, etc.

My feeling is that it is time to stop expecting politicians and corporations to lead.  Instead, we should all become leaders and start a revolution of our own to solve this problem.  YOU must be a catalyst for positive change.

The Hydrogen Manhattan Project is “A movement led by individual Americans to support corporations and elected officials that work towards the goal of having every car on the road in the U.S. powered by hydrogen produced from clean sources of energy by the end of 2020.”  The first step to achieving this goal is to get the government to help build the initial hydrogen fueling stations that the car companies have been pleading for.

The problem is that very few people are even aware of all that is happening with hydrogen cars and how hydrogen can solve the problems we are now facing.  Therefore, I have started a grassroots campaign to spread the word about hydrogen.  If you would like to be added to the e-mail distribution list for the Hydrogen Manhattan Project grassroots campaign, please e-mail me at gblencoe@hydrogendiscoveries.com.)

Hydrogen Fact #10

The ability to store enough hydrogen on-board to achieve the 300-mile driving range that customers demand has been an issue with hydrogen cars in the past.  However, although few people are currently aware of this (even in the hydrogen community), the hydrogen storage problem is no longer an issue.

Toyota has a mid-size SUV powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that has a driving range of 480 miles.  The vehicle is the newest version of the Toyota FCHV (Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle) which is basically a Highlander Hybrid with a hydrogen fuel cell that can hold six kilograms of hydrogen stored at 10,000 psi (pounds per square inch).

Toyota is getting 480 miles of range (actually, Toyota says in the following article that the FCHV will “achieve a single-fueling cruising distance of approximately 780 km” which equals 484.67 miles) without playing the game of using a really small car that does not weigh very much.  Out of all of the cars, light trucks, and SUVs on the road, the Toyota FCHV is likely as big as at least half of them.  And it weighs 1880 kg or 4136 pounds.

Furthermore, the Toyota FCHV recently went 436 miles from Las Vegas to San Diego on 5.6 kilograms which is slightly less than the six kilogram tank capacity.  This is a whopping 77.86 miles per kilogram.  The trip included going from 110 feet below sea level in Brawley, California to 3353 feet above sea level in Boulevard, California.  And at one point they encountered headwinds “with gusts up to 50 mph.”

These were definitely real-world driving conditions.

In the past, two concerns with high-pressure hydrogen tanks were:

1)  The tanks taking up too much passenger or trunk space; and

2)  Safety

Regarding having enough passenger and trunk space, I have gotten an up-close view of the newest version of the Toyota FCHV.  There is no passenger space lost and only about five inches of trunk space lost due to the hydrogen tanks.  And the FCHV was not built from the ground up specifically to be a hydrogen vehicle.

The safety issue is covered in Hydrogen Fact #3.

Furthermore, Toyota engineers took an editor from Road & Track magazine along on a trip last September in the Toyota FCHV over seven days and 2319 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska to Vancouver, British Columbia.

The best news was no news: nothing went wrong.

The official Toyota press release for the trip noted that:

“Whether sharing the road with an unimpressed group of buffalo or sailing along a vast open stretch of tundra at 90 miles an hour, the Highlander FCHV performed without a glitch for seven days and 2300 miles.

Bob Carter, Toyota Division group vice president and general manager, said in the release that:

“Beyond the single-tank range capability, this new system was developed to deal with two major challenges to the refinement of fuel-cell powertrains.  That is, starting and operating in cold temperatures and standing up to the vibration and harshness of rough road conditions…over a long distance…over a long time.”

“Equally important was to show how the development of Toyota’s hydrogen fuel-cell powertrains continue to move forward and mature at an impressive pace, far in advance of an infrastructure that will be necessary to support them.”

Here is a YouTube video of the trip with the Toyota FCHV: