It's not that hydrogen hybrid's will do anything to EV sales, but hydrogen will be the fuel of the future once we run out of or ban oil because hydrogen can be extracted from water and thus is potentially very plentiful. It is no coincidence that Toyota, the hydrogen car leader is headquartered in Japan, an island nation with no oil. Also Toyota, like many other Japanese companies but unlike American companies, has a 100 year business model plan, so developing hydrogen as an oil alternative makes sense.
We’ve been using hydrogen in cars since 1860!
But it’s amazing what people will believe about Toyota. Like the press they put out about their 600mile solid state ev battery and everyone pees their pants. Never mind it’s vaporware. They even say 2026, and even then only thousands. But few look at the fine print. The Chinese just laugh.
Toyota have wasted 20 years chasing hydrogen cars, mostly fuell cell. No one wants them. They’re stupid. But this is the Toyota, and hydrogen, blinding effect. I mean people are screaming about range and charging for full electric. The same scrutiny isn’t applied to hydrogen powered. Hydrogen cars are useless outside of California and will be likely for quite some time. A hydrogen filling station can do about 50 cars before it needs….a truck to come in and refill. It takes like 15 hydrogen tankers to equal one diesel tanker truck.
Oil companies love hydrogen because the vast majority is made from natural gas, methane, CH4. The process releases large quantities of CO2. They love to talk about sequestering the CO2 but this is neither practical nor economic. It’s always a “someday”.
So we’re down to electrolyzers running on electricity. It’s far more efficient to just use the electricity directly. Maybe in 10 years if we have a vast oversupply of renewable energy, electrolyzers will make economic sense.
Toyota’s not wrong on hybrids, they’ve just been completely wrong on ev’s. I don’t doubt they can turn things around on that front though now that Akio Toyoda is not in charge.