by The shiny concepts on the Toyota and Lexus stands at this year’s Japan Motor Show ranged from huge monospace luxury vehicles, to SUV crossovers and sleek coupe models, but they all had one thing in common – they were all powered at battery.
This wouldn’t come as a surprise on any other manufacturer’s stand, but Toyota has, for years, been banging the drum for hydrogen power, pouring money and resources into pushing its cars with the fuel cells. The succession of Krüger FCEV prototypes started the Mirai, which, after the Honda Clarity (another company that has avoided hydrogen for battery power) was the most successful hydrogen saloon in the world. But at Toyota’s board level, the Mirai is now considered a failure.
The £63,500 Mirai has been sold to a handful around the world and although 500 will be on the streets of Paris during next year’s Olympics, this pioneering car has been a financial disaster, barely recouping its costs without comment on the high cost of custom development 700. bar hydrogen tanks, fuel cells and control systems.
No hydrogen success
Speaking at the show, Hiroki Nakajima, Toyota’s executive vice president and chief technical officer, said the Mirai was not a success at all. “We have already tried with the Mirai,” he says, “but unfortunately it didn’t work because of the attitude of the hydrogen filling station, few people… Therefore, our strategy has changed from passenger cars to commercials. “
The hydrogen industry initially described the introduction of hydrogen cars and trucks as a “chicken and egg situation”. The chicken (refueling infrastructure) was as important as the egg (fuel cell vehicles) and both would have to be developed at the same time. They were not. Now the chicken is the cause of the egg’s decay.
Fuel-cell development will continue but Toyota now sees heavy haulage, marine, bus and coach and rail applications as a natural fit for the technology, although it remains committed to hydrogen collection and bonding with BMW.
Nakajima says its fuel-cell packs will still be shaped and sized so they can be fitted to a passenger car if needed, and we were shown a set of 10,000psi molded pressure tanks that Toyota is working on. They are flat heads, which can be fitted in place of a battery in an electric vehicle, and saddle-shaped items, which sit on either side of a propeller shaft in a rear-drive car or pickup. Engineers say they aim to have a lifespan as long as the current round’s items which, in Japan, are 15 years by law (although Toyota is pushing authorities to allow longer lifespans).
We also saw prototypes of the latest third-generation fuel cell, which is now half the size of the previous unit that was the equivalent of an airline carry-on case. It also has stainless steel separators instead of the cell’s old titanium ones, so it costs much less to manufacture. Overall, fuel cell costs are said to have been cut in half, with a 20 percent longer cruising range (which means they’re more efficient) and a 2.5 times reduction in maintenance requirements.
New battery strategy
But at this year’s show, it was the battery strategy that Toyota was promoting. There’s a lot of ground to make up, as Toyota has been lagging behind in battery technology for years, mistrusting lithium-ion chemistry and hoping the world would adopt its petrol-electric hybrid technology as an eco-standard. Some might say that Toyota is entering the market just as its competitors are beginning to question their headlong flight down the battery-electric route.
However, Toyota claims that its new Gen-3 batteries will start to be introduced from 2026/2027 and will set new standards, giving longer driving range, faster charging and lower cost.
Lexus, the company’s luxury division, will become an all-EV brand by 2030, and the Toyota marque will continue to offer a range of alternative drivetrain technology including hybrids and plug-in hybrids, but will sell between 30 and 40 percent EVs respectively. 2030. Gazoo Racing will continue with combustion engines but will use CO2-free liquid fuels such as hydrogen and e-fuels.
This strategy will introduce Toyota EVs in the next ten years with three different battery technologies, including demanding ones in solid-state battery technology. But this summer, Toyota chief executive Koji Sato admitted that solid-state research was not going well and could take longer than planned, so the schedule could be new for introduction far into the future as accurately as predicting next year’s weather.
Today, however, the reduction in battery height with cells just 100mm high and power take-off on the side rather than the top is a key part of the new architecture, as it allows the new generation of EVs to be more lower with more wind trap shapes. Toyota works with Panasonic on its cell design but is, along with BYD, one of the few car manufacturers to build its own battery cells. These proposed new cells, fitted in Toyota and Lexus concept models at the Japan Mobility Show, will be put into production in a new factory in 2026.
The cells will be fitted to 1.7 million of the 3.5 million annual battery electric vehicles (BEVs) that Toyota hopes to sell worldwide by 2030. As well as improving the ruggedness and serviceability of the cells – EVs are often destroyed after after relatively small bumps. internal short circuits, which increases the cost of insurance – savings are also made in manufacturing the cells, which can be expensive and time-consuming to produce.
Evolution not revolution
Like Rolls-Royce, Toyota tends to improve what already exists and so it creates with batteries. The first ‘Performance’ battery slated for 2026/7 will use tweaked lithium-ion chemistry with more nickel in the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cathode material and a tweaked electrolyte to increase the range to around 497 miles. It will also allow a 20-minute fast charge capability from 10 to 80 percent, and a 20 percent reduction in cost compared to Toyota’s current battery model, the bZ4x.
The ‘Republic’ battery will be Toyota’s lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry. LFP is a cheaper and more robust technology favored by Chinese car and battery manufacturers, such as BYD and Catl, but has the disadvantage of not being as energy dense as lithium-ion and has therefore been the preferred choice of applications. bus and coach already when. more space to put them. With later developments, however, they were successfully used in passenger battery cars. The Toyota version will cost 40 percent less than the cells in the bZ4x and have a quick 30-minute charge time for a 10 to 80 percent charge.
There is also a ‘High Performance’ battery, based on NMC lithium-ion chemistry, but with even greater nickel content in the cathodes and bipolar construction. The projection of driving range for this new battery is 621 miles, with a 10 percent reduction in cost compared to the Performance battery and 20 minutes between 10 and 80 percent of fast charging time. They are expected to be on the market by 2027 and 2028, although cost claims are highly dependent on volatile raw material markets, and nickel-enriched cathodes can be a risky business as the metal is less thermally stable than replacing the cobalt and burning at a. very high temperature.
When asked about this, Nakajima said Toyota’s batteries have different and inherently safer “internal arrangements” to other cells and will offset some of the cost savings in added battery safety. “The most important thing is how we keep it [the new battery chemistry] safe Safety is the most important issue and if we find out we can’t ensure safety,” he said, “we won’t do it”.
The fourth is solid state chemistry; The holy grail of the car industry, where the ions in each cell move through a solid medium rather than the less stable liquid electrolyte of current vehicle battery technologies. The advantages here are stability and faster charging, but there are still issues with the safety and longevity of solid-state batteries. The former issue is dendrites, which grow from the cathode like calcium stalagmites and threaten to puncture separators and cause a short circuit and fire. Toyota engineers say this problem affects all batteries and they fixed it. The short life issue, however, is still a work in progress and Toyota says it has a lab solution but is working on scaling it for mass production.
Claims are that solid-state battery technology will be ready in 2028 with a driving range of 621 miles, and fast charging in 10 minutes for a 10 to 80 percent charge, but there is no cost estimate.
So that’s it…
Fuel-cell cars were once part of a wider utopian hydrogen future. It seemed such an elegant solution, with beautiful and simple engineering (water to water, and the same machine used to create electricity and then used in reverse to create the hydrogen). Sure, it wasn’t as efficient as an electric battery, but that kind of missed the point if you generated electricity using the sun or wind, there might be times when you couldn’t use the electricity that was created and hydrogen could be used as an energy buffer. . That problem remains, as does saving carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change and global temperature rises.
Still, it was good while it lasted, although I can’t help but quote Beth Dawson, of Fuel Cell Systems, on the subject of saving hydrogen refueling for certain types of users: “Once you’ve got the hydrogen there , you can do smart things with it.”
