Toyota New Zealand doubles down on hydrogen
Tuesday, 8 February 2022
Toyota New Zealand is pushing harder towards a hydrogen future, without diverting from battery-electric, by expanding its local efforts to advance development here in New Zealand.
As we continue to focus on increasing electrification in our light vehicle fleet, we are looking to explore the applications of hydrogen technology outside of the automotive industry,” said Neeraj Lala, Toyota New Zealand’s CEO.
“This is not a distraction from battery-electric vehicle application in our light vehicle fleet, it is to ensure our ongoing business resiliency beyond just mobility through alternative business opportunities.”
The local arm has support from Toyota HQ in Japan to explore a range of commercial partnerships for hydrogen technology in New Zealand. These include working with Team New Zealand in creating hydrogen-powered foiling chase boats, as well as “a number of projects that are in the early phases.”
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Presumably, these projects will use Toyota’s Fuel Cell System module, which is a modular system developed to work in various commercial applications. It comprises the fuel cell stack and related components that handle air supply, hydrogen supply, cooling, and power control.
Packaging these components into a single module integrates and decreases the number of locations that need to be connected to the device, Toyota says.
Toyota isn’t the only one working on hydrogen. Hyundai is gunning for the tech too, with the Nexo in the country and Xcient fuel-cell trucks on the roads as well.
The South Korean company says that hydrogen technology is better suited than battery electric trucks as a heavy-duty, reliable, future cost-effective replacement for diesel trucks, as the use of hydrogen rather than weighty batteries means they have longer range, shorter refuelling time and greater payload.
New Zealand is ideal for hydrogen adoption, testing and production, in particular green hydrogen, the cleanest way to create and store hydrogen.
Companies like Hiringa Energy are installing electrolysers to create green hydrogen in New Zealand, which basically means hydrogen is created without any environmental impact, by using the likes of wind, solar or hydro energy to fund the hydrogen creation process.
Compare this to brown and grey hydrogen, which is created by using fossil fuels or natural gasses (energy that costs the planet) and expends waste CO2 into the atmosphere, or blue hydrogen, which is also made from fossil fuels but stores the waste CO2 in tanks underground.
Generally, this is done with electrolysers, which operate effectively like a backwards fuel cell. Electricity and water are fed in and ‘green’ hydrogen and oxygen come out safely ejected into the atmosphere.
Fuel cells used in cars split hydrogen into an electron and a proton. The electron is ferried off to become electricity for energy while the proton is fed through a membrane to reach oxygen, reclaim an electron and form water.
Electrolysis does still use platinum, which is a rare earth metal and in shorter supply than lithium,
The Government hopes that by figuring out the production and storage side of things, New Zealand could export hydrogen to countries such as Japan and Singapore.
Toyota wants to be part of that too, with Lala saying: “As New Zealand looks to be a major player in green hydrogen, we are keen to work with the New Zealand Hydrogen Council, our other partners such as Mitsui, and energy supply partners, Hiringa and Obayashi Corporation to continue the advancement of hydrogen technology.”