Toyota stays focused on hydrogen despite EV popularity

With fuel efficiency standards now just around the corner, Australia's most popular carmaker is pushing vehicles fuelled by hydrogen.

Transcript

00:00 This might look like a petrol pump but actually it is full of hydrogen.

00:07 It was made here at this facility using power from solar panels that are over there and

00:12 power from the grid, making the hydrogen in this close to so-called green energy.

00:18 It takes around five minutes to fill up a car like this and that will get you around

00:26 650 kilometres.

00:30 So the technology under the hood looks a little bit similar to an internal combustion engine

00:35 that runs on petrol or diesel but technically this is not an engine.

00:42 The hydrogen is going into this fuel cell that then generates electricity which runs

00:49 this motor.

00:51 They run pretty quiet and are actually really similar to a pure electric battery vehicle.

00:57 Just like an EV there is no tailpipe on this car.

01:01 Toyota says that all that's emitted is water vapour which comes out somewhere under here

01:08 and apparently is so clean you could water the garden with it or even as some people

01:13 have done, you could drink it.

01:16 These cars are still really expensive to run and there is not many places in Australia

01:22 to refuel them.

01:24 Just six hydrogen cars were sold into the Australian market last year.

01:29 That compares to 87,000 electric cars and even more hybrids.

01:34 The number is still quite small and that's on the basis that the refuelling infrastructure

01:38 is limited.

01:39 Toyota says that these sorts of cars are still a really good option for people who don't

01:46 want to have to wait to charge up their battery electric cars but there are lots of sceptics

01:52 like the Grattan Institute who says that we shouldn't be wasting our energy on these sorts

01:57 of cars.

01:58 You need to be able to make electricity to make the hydrogen really, really, really cheap

02:04 and the thing is that when electricity gets really cheap it becomes even cheaper to run

02:08 your electric car.

02:09 [BLANK_AUDIO]