Toyota Unveils Zero-Emissions Hydrogen Fuel-Cell ‘Car Of The Future’ For Sale Next Year

[BlueStreak]

2. Just to be clear, this is only "zero emissions" if the hydrogen is produced

from excess energy that would otherwise be lost from solar and wind farms.

This Toyota announcement is fantastic news, because it means that a solid group of companies, including the leading car company, have found a path to make fuel cells economical. This is everything that electric cars never could be. Basically: fast refuel time and 300 mile range. The fueling infrastructure is a problem today, but that is equally true of EVs. If they have really mastered the price point, this will for a critical mass of hydrogen infrastructure.

One of the problems with wind and solar power is that when they generate power, it is really cheap (practically free from a variable cost standpoint), but the power is not dependable. Therefore, you need one or the following: a) a super-scale storage system that doesn't really exist today, b) excess capacity that you are willing to just throw away (i.e. idling turbines when there isn't enough demand for electricity, or c) political arrangements where oil/gas power plants are willing to go radically up and down to accommodate the fluctuations of solar/wind.

None of those three is an attractive solution today. But installing surplus wind/solar capacity is, if you also build out the technology to use the excess energy to create hydrogen and store it for vehicle use.

It seems to me this is the future. We won't be there in 2015 or even 2020. But countries like Germany and Spain are already pretty far down that path, and the emergence of fuel cells just adds to that momentum.

I think this is really exciting. I didn't really expect to see consumer sales of FCVs until 2020 or later.