Will These Make Hydrogen-Powered Cars Easier to Own?

• Toyota reveals prototype portable hydrogen canisters at Japan Mobility Show Bizweek 2024 in Chiba prefecture, Japan, showcasing a hydrogen FCEV charging concept for vehicles and appliances.

• The hydrogen canisters could be used to refill FCEVs at home, extending their range and offering greater convenience.

• The hydrogen canisters could be provided as part of a home delivery service and are light enough to be carried by a person, but plenty of practical and safety-related issues remain to be addressed.

Hydrogen fuel-cell cars might promise the best of both worlds: Avoiding emissions and avoiding spending hours recharging a battery. But this bargain comes with a heavy price when it comes to practicality, as hydrogen stations are a little hard to find in most countries, and hydrogen doesn't flow into your home from a special faucet.

But what if the hydrogen could, in fact, come to you?

That's what Toyota is working on at the moment, having revealed a prototype hydrogen canister that is small enough to be carried by a person, including in a special backpack.

"The technology Toyota has cultivated in the development of FCEVs is used to reduce the size and weight of hydrogen tanks, which were previously large and difficult to carry, to a size that can be carried by hand," the automaker said. "They are designed to make hydrogen a familiar and safe energy source that can be used in a variety of everyday situations."

However, Toyota hasn't indicated just where one would be able to procure these cylinders to fill up your car at home, or how many it would take to fill up something like a Mirai. There are also some safety considerations to take into account, as hydrogen in FCEVs is stored under some unique requirements that make its transportation expensive.

"The hydrogen that powers the Mirai is stored at a high pressure of 700 bar in two compact, lightweight tanks," the automaker notes. "We have been working on their design in-house since 2000 and are more than satisfied with their strength and safety levels."

Similar safety considerations have gone into the engineering of the portable canisters, but the volumes the two types of tanks can hold are expected to be different.

One thing is clear: Such cylinders could readily solve the issue of running out of hydrogen at home or in the middle of nowhere, allowing one to avoid the Tow Truck of Shame.

A few of these could be brought on a longer trip to boost an FCEV's range, at least in a universe where the transportation of certain hazardous materials is not regulated.

But the idea of buying refillable hydrogen gas cylinders for your car, like propane tanks for a grill, perhaps makes owning an EV look like a much easier overall experience.

Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are, at their core, also EVs. Bringing hydrogen gas cylinders to your house, perhaps by driving the same FCEV or another car, seems like missing the point of the wide and easy availability of electricity.

Then there's still the issue of the so-called carbon footprint of hydrogen production and delivery.

The hydrogen has to be produced somewhere and also safely delivered to your home, making this operation analogous to a gasoline delivery service, raising issues of price.

A number of automakers, including BMW, are still keen on making hydrogen happen as a ZEV power source, even as they work on boosting their EV lineups. So Toyota is hardly alone in this field, even if scale remains elusive for infrastructure reasons.

Time will tell if Toyota will be able to make portable hydrogen cartridges a commonplace item, but it's clear the automaker isn't giving up on the idea of FCEVs, even if the hydrogen infrastructure hasn't made quite as much progress over the past decade as expected.

Can portable hydrogen canisters take off as a technology, or are their drawbacks too great to be practical? Let us know what you think in the comments below.