The battles lines have been drawn between two "green" alternatives – pure battery cars like the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S and fuel cell rides like Toyota's Mirai and Hyundai's fuel cell Tucson.
Toyota is taking the boldest stance, which is shocking for the company that made partial battery cars - gasoline-electric hybrids - mainstream and rode them to an earth-friendly image. No, Toyota does not see a brilliant zero-emissions future for the Model S and its ilk.
The cost and limitations of battery technology – lengthy charging times, limited or unpredictable range – are huge, but the bigger problem, says Mirai chief engineer Yoshikazu Tanaka, is the grid. Using it to juice up a Leaf or a Model S isn't ecologically sound.
"If you were to charge a car in 12 minutes for a range of 500 km, for example, you're probably using up electricity required to power 1,000 houses. That totally goes against the need to stabilize electricity use on the grid," Tanaka told Reuters.
Toyota views battery cars as useful city runabouts best re-juiced in the middle of the night. Battery car zealots like Tesla's Elon Musk, of course, bristle.
The Model S, he told a conference in Detroit earlier this year, is no golf cart. "We had to show people that electric cars could be fast, sexy, handle well, (have) long range and be a great car," he said. But unless you have a supercharger handy, you'll need hours to re-fill your Tesla.
Fuel cell cars, which employ a chemical reaction to turn hydrogen into electricity, are the better transportation solution, says Toyota. They can be topped up on hydrogen as easily as a gasoline car. Yes, FCVs (fuel cell vehicles) require massive investments in a refueling infrastructure, Tanaka concedes, but hydrogen is abundant, portable and easily stored.
For those reasons and more, Toyota has pushed a massive chunk of R & D money into fuel cells. Consumers unwilling to compromise on price, convenience and functionality will be better off with a fuel cell than a battery.
Musk pooh-poohs the idea. Battery cars are the best alternative to the internal combustion engine. What he's called "fools cells" are "extremely silly." They demand an entirely new and massively expensive fueling infrastructure, while EVs simply need an everyday power outlet. Grid issues can be handled by storage units such as the Tesla Powerwall home battery unit. It can store energy from renewables such as solar.
Toyota argues that the long view favours fuel cells. To speed their development and reduce costs, Toyota Motor is making all its roughly 5,680 patents related to fuel cell technology available for free. Toyota hopes to fuel the spread of hydrogen technology to other car makers and energy companies inclined to consider building networks of hydrogen stations. Tesla has done the same with its EV patents.
Shockingly, Toyota's tongue-in-cheek message for critics like Musk, who say FCV backers are full of it, is to point out that the Mirai in fact drives "down the road, running on bulls&*t." Hydrogen fuel to power the Mirai can be made from solar energy, wind, biogas, or even piles of cow manure processed into hydrogen fuel.
Toyota's "Fueled by Everything" video series makes the point that hydrogen to power the Mirai can be created by all sorts of waste materials, with the Mirai's only emission being water vapour from the tailpipe.
Somewhere in the middle is Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, who argues that EVs are the most powerful current technology for meeting emissions targets. But even they have struggled to gain acceptance due to infrastructure problems.
Fuel cell technology "is very promising. Except when I see the problems with the lack of infrastructure for electric cars, you can imagine fuel cells. Where are the hydrogen stations? And a hydrogen station is much more expensive," he says.
Ghosn believes FCVs are coming, though Toyota's wholesale commitment seems premature. Thus, the Leaf is the bridge to an FCV future.
"There are plenty of things to be sold before it (fuel cell technology) becomes mainstream," he says. Musk obviously agrees and is betting a company on it. Toyota's future and reputation rest on FCVs in the here and now.
Game on.
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