A road trip on the hydrogen highway | The Vergecast
The Verge’s William Poor, Andrew Marino, and Alex Parkin head to California to figure out why hydrogen fuel cell technology, once a super-promising successor to gasoline, lost out to battery electric cars. They also put the embattled tech to the test with a road trip across California’s “hydrogen highway.”
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00:00Welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of Hydrogen Futures. I'm your friend David Pierce,
00:04and I am trying to redecorate a bit. So if you watch The Verge Cast on YouTube,
00:11you've noticed that we just recently got a really awesome new studio in our New York office. You may
00:16have also noticed that Neely got a really awesome new studio in his house. So I'm very jealous of
00:21all of this, which has really led me to spend, I would say, an inappropriate and unnecessary
00:25amount of time trying to figure out my own background. I feel like everyone went through
00:30this, like in 2020, when we all started being home more often, you started to be aware of
00:35kind of how your space looks on camera. I make a podcast on camera now, and so I notice it more
00:41than is probably healthy or reasonable. And I've just been trying to figure out how do I make this
00:46look a little nicer, a little more studio-ish and less like the basement slash home office
00:52slash guest room slash child play place that it actually is. So I suggested this to Liam,
00:58our producer, that maybe I want to do some stuff. He sent me a long list of things to do.
01:02He wants me to put blinds on the window. He wants me to move the guitar that's over here,
01:07but I think I actually just need to get rid of it because I don't play it enough or well enough
01:11for it to feel honest to have a guitar in the shot. I already put some books up that I think
01:15look nicer than the mugs that were there. The mugs are now up there. There's just a lot going on.
01:20Will I eventually put some cool purple lights and go full YouTuber? Probably. It's going to happen.
01:25I'm excited about it. If you have ideas for my home studio, please hit me up. Ideally,
01:29if they don't cost a million dollars and won't make my wife very angry. Anyway, we have an
01:34awesome show coming up for you today. We're doing something a little different on the show today.
01:38Will Poore, our producer, got very interested in what I would call an alternate future for
01:44transportation. Right now, we're in the middle of this incredible revolution in EVs. We're
01:50rethinking the way that charging networks work. They're being built out all over the place.
01:53There's huge money being put into it. Lots of companies, every car company is suddenly in on
01:58what if the future of cars is batteries, but that's not the only future that we could have
02:03had. In fact, there was a minute where it looked like that wasn't going to be the future that we
02:08did have. Will and a couple of other folks on our team went out to California and went on a road
02:14trip to see what that future might have looked like and what we missed. All that is coming up
02:19in just a sec. But first, I have to move this stuff behind me because now I notice all the
02:24clutter and I hate it and I got to fix it. This is the Verge cast. We'll be right back.
02:3620 years ago, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California
02:40announced that it was time to rethink the car. Thank you very much for a nice introduction.
02:45He argued that gasoline and other petroleum fuels were polluting the air and keeping us
02:50hooked on foreign oil. California was ready to get serious about a post-petroleum future.
02:57And the best technology to get it there was hydrogen. We will not just dream about the
03:02hydrogen highway. We will not just dream about the hydrogen fueling stations. We will not just
03:07dream about the hydrogen cars. We will build it. This was 2004, years before Tesla got everyone
03:15jazzed about battery-powered electric cars. Batteries were promising, but another technology
03:21was farther along. Hydrogen fuel cells could power an electric motor using only hydrogen gas.
03:28The cars produced no emissions or byproducts except pure water. Governor Schwarzenegger got
03:35very excited about fuel cells, and he proposed an elaborate hydrogen highway to support them.
03:41The government would help fund a network of fuel stations, which would encourage automakers to
03:46build cars. More cars would lead to more stations. And by 2010, the plan went, every Californian would
03:54have access to hydrogen fuel. From there, advocates predicted a nationwide expansion.
04:00It could spell the end of the petroleum era in America.
04:06That is not what happened.
04:08San Jose, Snell Avenue, under maintenance.
04:11Oh, offline?
04:12Since this morning at 10.50, the station is offline for repair.
04:2020 years later, I found myself driving across California in a fuel cell car, a Toyota Mirai.
04:26Rolling again.
04:28I was there to find out what became of that grand green vision of the future.
04:33We are 23 minutes away from the closest station.
04:37Today, there are hydrogen-powered cars you can buy in California,
04:41and some stations to fill them up at. But the statewide network never materialized,
04:47let alone a national one. And those stations are failing.
04:51Maybe one pump worked for months at a time. Sometimes none of them worked.
04:55The cost of fuel is skyrocketing.
04:58$36 a kilo. It's insane.
05:01And car sales are plummeting.
05:03I'm trying to take it back to Toyota.
05:06The hydrogen experiment is teetering on the brink.
05:11Right now, the auto industry is making this huge seismic shift to battery-powered cars.
05:17Why not hydrogen? Why didn't that version of history win out?
05:22Who's still fighting for hydrogen today?
05:24And what's happening to the thousands of drivers still sticking it out with their cars?
05:29This all felt like a lot of questions that only a road trip could answer.
05:34So in June, I roped in fellow producer Andrew and our video director Alex.
05:39The three of us flew to San Francisco, rented a Mirai on Turo,
05:43and charted a course from the Bay Area to Los Angeles,
05:47along whatever was left of the hydrogen highway.
05:50Near to here, we are going there.
06:11We picked up our Mirai in the parking lot of a mini golf course
06:14outside San Jose, just south of San Francisco.
06:18It's a very ordinary-looking sedan.
06:21If it weren't for the little fuel cell badge on the back,
06:24you wouldn't know there was anything unusual about it.
06:30Under the hood, a Mirai and a Tesla are surprisingly similar.
06:34They're both powered by electric motors.
06:36And a fuel cell is basically a battery.
06:39Just instead of pumping in electricity to store and use later,
06:43you're pumping in hydrogen to react with oxygen and generate electricity on the fly.
06:49In other words, a Mirai's hydrogen tank and a Tesla's battery
06:53are just two different ways of storing energy until it's needed to power the car.
06:57Oh, there's one other difference.
06:59The fuel cell creates a decent amount of water as a byproduct.
07:03In the Mirai, it's almost a cup per mile traveled.
07:06So the car does need to pee.
07:14As the Mirai drives, it occasionally shoots water out a little hole underneath the car.
07:19You can also make it pee on command by hitting a button on the dashboard.
07:29The guy we rented from, Salman, gave us a quick tour of the car.
07:38The Mirai has a classy interior and a flashy nav system with a gazillion cameras.
07:43The only oddity is this hump in the back row of seats.
07:46The main hydrogen tank sits underneath it.
07:49It makes sitting in the middle kind of awkward.
07:52Salman told us we'd love the car, but he wasn't sure about our travel plans.
07:56When I came to know you were in LA, I was like, wait a second.
07:59I was a little uncomfortable.
08:02The problem is most of the fuel stations in California
08:06are clustered around the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
08:09There's just one pump on Interstate 5 in between.
08:12It's at a place called Harris Ranch.
08:14We kind of need to refuel there.
08:17The drive to LA is about 325 miles, which is right at the max range of this car.
08:23But we also need luck.
08:25Because apparently, hydrogen stations just don't work sometimes.
08:38Which makes our stop at Harris Ranch very high stakes.
08:42Pump is down.
08:43Yeah.
08:44Then you're stuck.
08:45You've never driven down to—
08:47No, not yet.
08:47Yeah.
08:48I didn't want to take a chance yet.
08:50Not exactly a pep talk.
08:52Oh, and there was one other FYI.
08:54The price of hydrogen.
08:56Two years ago, it used to cost like $50 or $60 to fill the whole tank.
09:00Yeah.
09:01Right now, it's like $180, $190 to fill the tank.
09:04So that is killing everybody right now.
09:06$180 to fill up a sedan.
09:09Yeah, I don't think we budgeted enough money for the fuel for this trip.
09:12So that's why I got disappointed.
09:14I said, you know what?
09:14I'll just put on Tiro.
09:16Yeah.
09:16And live with it like that.
09:18And with that, there was nothing left to do but hit the road.
09:21Excited and suddenly very nervous.
09:27Thank you, Siri.
09:28Our first goal was to visit as many fuel stations as we could find in the Bay Area.
09:33On paper, there are about 17.
09:36But according to the station finder apps we downloaded,
09:39lots of them were offline or under some kind of maintenance.
09:42All right, we're coming up on it.
09:44I never know.
09:45You never know what kind of gas station it's going to be.
09:47Almost all the stations here are operated by a startup called First Element Fuel.
09:52But they're co-located at Chevron or Shell or other gas stations.
09:56First Element leases the space from station owners.
10:00The pumps themselves are bright blue with these eye-catching awnings.
10:04Some of them are slotted right in between gas pumps.
10:06Others are set apart in their own little pads and parking lots.
10:11Well, let's try to figure this out.
10:14The mechanics of filling up a hydrogen tank are familiar enough.
10:18Insert a credit card, select fuel, connect pump to car, hang out for five minutes.
10:24But unlike gasoline, these pumps are moving around a compressed, freezing cold gas.
10:30So there are locks and sensors to keep everything safe and reliable.
10:35The nozzle is a heavy metal cylinder with a collar that keeps the hose in place.
10:40It's all a bit of a learning curve.
10:42It says, uh, hide the yellow mark.
10:45I don't see a yellow mark.
10:47But I think pulling this sleeve down locks it.
10:51So we just push it in and then lock it.
10:56Oh, okay, we're filling up.
11:00We tried fueling at most of the stations we visited.
11:04And we always got fuel.
11:05But we hit a glitch or two in just about every part of the process.
11:09The screens are both wigging out a little bit, but it seems like it's fine.
11:15I don't know what door sensor means, but...
11:18Oh, I think it timed out or something.
11:21I gotta run my cart again.
11:23One constant struggle?
11:25The nozzle kept sticking to the car after we were done filling.
11:30I hate that.
11:31I hate yanking that hard on anything.
11:36But that was just our experience.
11:38We also talked with every Mirai driver we ran into.
11:41Hey, excuse me.
11:43Do you have time while you fuel to chat with us for our story?
11:47And their stories were more extreme.
11:50This is the third station we are right now, we came.
11:53Oh, you tried to go to two others?
11:54Yeah, there's one station in Sunnyvale, one in San Jose, and this is one in Cupertino.
11:58Half of the time, these don't work here.
12:00Yeah.
12:01So they're either out of gas, or there's a problem with the machine.
12:04And even sometimes it shows you to insert card, when you insert the card,
12:07it says transaction cancelled, and it doesn't give you anything out.
12:10It just doesn't work.
12:10No, it just doesn't work.
12:12Menadeep and Rupesh have been driving their Mirai for about four months,
12:16which for them has been a non-stop hunt for working stations.
12:20I had no idea just how frequently they run out of fuel, or glitch,
12:25or lose pressure and can't fill tanks completely.
12:28And it's always a pressure on you mentally,
12:31because you never know which one's gonna work, which one's not gonna work.
12:35Fuel has been so hard to find that these guys have been stretching every kilogram.
12:40That's how hydrogen is measured.
12:42When they drive, they accelerate and brake carefully,
12:45they avoid air conditioning because it uses more fuel,
12:48and when the car says it still has 100 miles left in the tank, they look for a station.
12:54Boy, so you have to really think about how you're driving the car.
12:57You have to focus on the road and also on your mileage.
13:02Menadeep bought the car because of a huge incentive from Toyota.
13:05Every new or certified used Mirai comes with a $15,000 preloaded fuel card.
13:12Toyota told us it's there to absorb any volatility in fuel prices.
13:16And that's not the only big promotion out there.
13:19So this car I got for $15,000, hard to beat, right?
13:24Rebecca said she went shopping for a battery electric car,
13:28but she couldn't find anything for less than $40,000.
13:31But then, a Toyota dealership offered her that killer deal on a 2022 Mirai
13:36with only 23,000 miles on it.
13:38Toyota's also been offering big discounts on new Mirais.
13:42Earlier this year, you could get $40,000 off some models.
13:47That's a 60% discount.
13:49That said, I'm paying a fortune in hydrogen,
13:51but it'll take something like 13 years. I did my math.
13:56It'll take 13 years before this vehicle will cost me more
14:01than if I were to buy a 40,000-something electric vehicle.
14:06Rebecca loves her Mirai, so she's content for now.
14:09I'm going to stick with my Mirai as long as I'm in California.
14:15Menadeep and Rupesh, not so much.
14:17I don't think, to be very honest with you,
14:20after the gas cut is finished, it's not worth maintaining this car.
14:23Menadeep left us with some words of caution about our trip,
14:27which, believe me, we took to heart when we said goodbye to the bay
14:31and headed south for Los Angeles.
14:33No A.C., go easy on the pedal.
14:35Yeah.
14:36Always know where the next station is.
14:38Yeah.
14:39Call the stations.
14:39Stick to the speed limit.
14:40Stick to the speed limit.
14:42If possible, go below the speed limit, try to be in the rightmost lane.
14:46This is not the road trip that we were looking forward to having, you know.
14:51I'm really sorry for spoiling your road trip.
14:57We can start with the windows down.
15:00Also, how fast do you think I should drive?
15:02We should play with the settings on the car to see
15:05it tells you how efficiently you're driving.
15:09On the road to L.A., I had a lot of downtime to think about everything I'd seen,
15:14and most of my questions boiled down to,
15:17how did we get here?
15:18Which you can think about in two ways.
15:20There's the big broad version,
15:22how did hydrogen cars start out so promising but stumble so badly?
15:27And then there's the more specific,
15:29why is it so hard to get fuel for your car?
15:33So as we cruise down I-5, let's start with the big how did we get here.
15:38For that, I called up Keith Wipke.
15:40He's an industry veteran from the National Renewable Energy Lab.
15:43You did come to the right person.
15:45I've been involved in hydrogen technologies for over 20 years.
15:49Keith took me all the way back to 2004 again.
15:52Back then, fewer people were talking about climate change the way we all are today.
15:57But California had a smog problem.
16:00They had the worst air quality, especially in the Los Angeles basin.
16:04And so they had a strong driver to clean up local air quality.
16:07Battery electric cars existed,
16:10but they were not the obvious air apparent to gasoline.
16:13In fact, as a storage medium to power a car, batteries kind of sucked.
16:18Batteries were not good at the time.
16:20It was lead acid batteries.
16:22And nickel metal hybrid was the up and coming thing,
16:25which of course is what Toyota launched their Prius hybrid with,
16:28was nickel metal hydride batteries.
16:30That was a challenge for batteries at the time.
16:3280, 90 mile range, very heavy,
16:35a lot of compromises on the vehicle itself to get reasonable performance.
16:39So hydrogen kind of was being born into that era.
16:45Meanwhile, hydrogen was showing a lot of promise.
16:48You could get all the emissions benefits of a battery electric car without the battery.
16:53Plus, fueling was a faster and more familiar process for drivers.
16:57It looked like a great successor to gasoline.
17:00And California got on board.
17:02I'm going to encourage the building of a hydrogen highway
17:05to take us to the environmental future.
17:09The original plan called for at least 150 stations by 2010,
17:14but that never happened.
17:16Around 10 demo stations came and went,
17:18which were co-funded by a federal program.
17:21Everyone learned a lot, but it was an R&D exercise.
17:25By the end of the decade, lots of people were asking,
17:28where is this hydrogen highway?
17:31But in 2013, California reset and recommitted.
17:35It put up $20 million a year for stations.
17:39And between 2015 and 2020, at least 37 new stations came online.
17:44I do think that I and a lot of other people thought
17:47it was just going to be a bunch of dominoes falling.
17:50That the hydrogen stations were going to go 50, 100, 200 stations in California.
17:55The Northeast market would launch and take off there.
17:59And then people like me in Colorado would maybe get a backbone across interstates,
18:04and we would be able to drive a hydrogen car as part of our daily commute.
18:09The car companies played their part too.
18:11In 2008, Honda began leasing a fuel cell sedan called the Clarity.
18:16Toyota made a big splash with the Mirai in 2015.
18:20This isn't just another car.
18:22This is an opportunity to really make a difference.
18:27The name we've given to our new car is Mirai,
18:31which in Japanese means future.
18:34The other fuel cell car you can buy today, the Hyundai Nexo, hit the U.S. in 2018.
18:40So I've seen and witnessed various launches.
18:42And for me, each one of them felt like, OK, this is it.
18:47Now we just need more of that car.
18:49We need more fueling stations.
18:51And then we see the other companies launch.
18:53OK, that's further validation that this is going in the right direction.
18:57The fuel cell market has come a long way in 20 years.
19:01But along the way, something else happened too.
19:05Batteries got good, good enough to power cars.
19:09And in the race to replace gasoline, batteries had some big advantages over hydrogen.
19:15I called up the Verge's transportation editor, Andy Hawkins, to explain.
19:19And he started with the fact that we already have a power grid.
19:22With EV charging, it's pretty simple.
19:24You install the charging station, you plug it into the grid,
19:28and barring any software problems or anything else like that, it's good to go.
19:32It should work.
19:33That was a huge advantage in the early days of battery EVs.
19:36Drivers could just plug in at home.
19:38It's a different story with hydrogen.
19:41There needs to be a supply chain.
19:42You need to truck the hydrogen in for where it's being produced to the filling stations,
19:46fill up those tanks at the filling stations,
19:49Now, granted, it's taken years for a public EV charging network to mature.
19:54In fact, it's been a mess of competing standards and flaky charging ports.
19:59But it's getting better.
20:01And the reason reveals another huge difference between hydrogen and batteries.
20:06The hydrogen car industry, as it were, didn't have a Tesla.
20:11It didn't have a Tesla.
20:12It didn't have a Tesla.
20:14Tesla hit the scene in 2008 with the $100,000 Roadster,
20:18and it has utterly defined the battery electric business ever since.
20:23Over the past 15 years, its cars have steadily gotten cheaper and more ubiquitous.
20:28And along the way, it also built a huge charging network.
20:32It's a huge network of charging stations.
20:34It's a huge network of charging stations.
20:36It's a huge network of charging stations.
20:38It's a huge network of charging stations.
20:40It also built a huge charging network,
20:43which is so good that pretty much every other automaker in the US
20:47is now signing on to Tesla's standard.
20:50We're getting the entire industry realizing that Tesla has the best charging network.
20:53They have the best chargers, the most reliable.
20:56We're all going to just end up using Tesla's,
20:58as we probably could have realized a lot sooner.
21:01In other words, say what you will about Elon Musk,
21:04and on this podcast, we surely do.
21:07But Tesla gets a lot of credit for dragging the battery electric market into existence,
21:12which is something that hydrogen just never had.
21:16There was no Tesla startup company that was out there innovating,
21:21taking its lumps, losing millions and millions of dollars in the process,
21:26but also generating lots of buzz, generating lots of hype and speculation
21:31amongst investors and on Wall Street and the government as well,
21:34and sort of proving eventually, ultimately,
21:37that there was going to be this huge untapped market for battery electric vehicles.
21:42In the end, the numbers tell the story.
21:45Battery electric cars and charging stations exploded across the country.
21:50Today, there are roughly 43,000 public charging ports in California alone,
21:55whereas hydrogen seems to be backsliding.
21:59There still is this plan that exists, like state grants to companies to build out stations.
22:04The only problem is, the companies that have agreed to do so
22:07are now backtracking on those plans.
22:09Like, for example, Shell said that it was going to create
22:12a huge network of hydrogen stations in the state,
22:15but then they saw sort of like the writing on the wall
22:18and decided to start backing out of that plan.
22:21They declined a $40 million state grant to build like an extra 50 stations,
22:26and then they went ahead and just closed practically all of their stations in California.
22:30Gotcha. So basically, there's money out there,
22:32and there just aren't takers for it right now.
22:35There's a pretty strong belief right now,
22:38and sort of in California and elsewhere, that battery electric vehicles, they won.
22:42Hydrogen could have, you know, surpassed EVs at some point,
22:46but over the last like 15 or 20 years,
22:49it's very clear that battery electric vehicles
22:51are the preferred alternate technology for private vehicles,
22:55and hydrogen is kind of becoming a bit of a footnote.
23:01So there's the big picture, how'd we get here?
23:04But that doesn't fully explain what we saw.
23:07Glitchy stations, the price of fuel, the shortages.
23:11To understand those problems, I needed to talk to First Element,
23:15the company that runs almost three quarters of the stations in California.
23:19So I called up one of the co-founders, Shane Stevens,
23:22who was pretty candid with me.
23:24We've been doing some, I would say, field testing on customers
23:29to get this equipment kind of commercial ready to where it needs to be, right?
23:32And it's, you know, we didn't mean to do that, right?
23:35But we've sort of were forced into that situation
23:37because as we started operating these stations,
23:40we just uncorked all sorts of issues that needed to be addressed.
23:43Here's what happened.
23:44Back in 2013, the year California announced new funding for hydrogen stations,
23:50Shane was working at the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine.
23:54He watched the wave of interest in hydrogen build again,
23:57and he saw an opportunity on the fueling side of things.
24:00So that same year, he and two partners founded First Element.
24:04From there, we actually got some initial financing from Toyota and Honda,
24:09and we were able to leverage that private financing and go get California state grants.
24:13We won 19 stations, and we were able to develop the initial network of hydrogen stations.
24:19First Element made a big push right out of the gates,
24:22and it got around 15 stations up and running by the end of 2016.
24:27That speed was a calculated risk.
24:29They built more, smaller, cheaper stations to prove out the network
24:33and encourage automakers to start selling cars.
24:37And the plan worked a little too well.
24:40The cars came more quickly, the stations were overwhelmed more quickly,
24:43and the customers drove the cars more than we anticipated early on.
24:47What became obvious to us is that this technology for hydrogen stations
24:51was actually not really ready for prime time commercially.
24:54The equipment that we're using in the field today,
24:57it hasn't gone through sort of hours of testing to make sure the robustness is there,
25:02to make sure that, you know, little design kinks or design flaws have been worked out.
25:06And then when it's used, you know, regularly every day on hundreds of customers,
25:12all of a sudden you start to see that it maybe doesn't hold up as well
25:15because it's never been tested under those conditions.
25:17Which lines up with our experience at the pumps.
25:20Lots of little quirks and rough edges.
25:22We had a lot of hiccups on uptime, we had performance issues,
25:26we had logistics issues on supplying the fuel,
25:29and we actually had a lot of fuel runouts to the station.
25:32First Element has spent years trying to fix that first big mistake.
25:36Its newer stations are bigger, more expensive, and more robust.
25:40They can store more fuel and dispense more at a time.
25:44They actually store hydrogen as a liquid now rather than a gas, which has been a lot easier.
25:49And, you know, the reliability is getting much better than what it was as well.
25:53I don't think we're all the way where we could be,
25:57but we're now at a point where we see a commercially viable product.
26:01That also tracks with what we saw.
26:03We just had fewer hiccups using the newer stations,
26:05and drivers told us they were more reliable.
26:08But those older, flimsier stations are still there.
26:12They account for nearly half the overall network.
26:15And they're not going anywhere.
26:17We've invested quite a bit of money into permanent infrastructure that's in the ground.
26:22To upgrade the station is not really an option.
26:25And the other thing is we don't want to leave customers hanging
26:28that may be depending on that station, even if it's an older generation.
26:32So drivers are stuck with temperamental hardware,
26:35and First Element is stuck maintaining it.
26:37So right now we're charging considerably more for hydrogen
26:41than what we'd like to be and what we think we should be.
26:44And that's not the only cause of expensive fuel.
26:46First Element and others have had a hard time competing for hydrogen
26:50against much bigger industries like oil refining and agriculture.
26:54There just isn't enough to go around.
26:56There have also been supply chain problems and other market issues.
27:00The war in Ukraine is even playing a role.
27:03So prices have been spiking, and not enough hydrogen is making it to drivers.
27:08But unfortunately, that's the reality of the landscape today.
27:12First Element is now staring down the barrel of a vicious cycle.
27:16The more the fuel network struggles, the less viable the cars look.
27:20It's the exact opposite of what they were trying to do
27:23by opening all those stations in the first place.
27:25Our transportation editor Andy said it best.
27:28Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like enmeshed in like the worst chicken and egg scenario
27:33that you could possibly imagine.
27:34You know, like people aren't going to buy hydrogen cars
27:37because there's just there's no way to fuel them, right?
27:40And then you're not going to have anyone building any fueling stations
27:43because so few people own the hydrogen cars.
27:46So you're just kind of like trapped in this limbo state.
27:49It's just not making the right kind of argument
27:52to people who are out shopping for these types of vehicles.
27:58We got to take a short break.
28:06Support for The Verge cast comes from Life 360.
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29:02That's tile.com, code VERGE.
29:12It's four o'clock.
29:16We've been driving for about three hours
29:18and we're somewhere in central California.
29:22Our tank is half empty and it's time to start looking for Harris Ranch,
29:26our hydrogen oasis.
29:28So far, we see a lot of parched farmland.
29:31Andrew, what is your weather app telling you?
29:36See, right now it says 70.
29:38Oh, I just don't have service right now.
29:40Okay, now updated weather.
29:42Kalinga 101.
29:45Excessive heat warning until eight o'clock tonight.
29:48A few more miles of nothing and then an exit sign.
29:52There it is.
29:54You see it?
29:54Oh, Harris Ranch.
29:56All right.
29:58Harris Ranch is perfectly spaced between San Francisco and LA,
30:03so it's a waypoint for all kinds of drivers.
30:06There's a Shell gas station
30:07and what is currently the largest bank of Tesla superchargers in the world.
30:12Over the years, though, the owners of Harris Ranch have made it a destination unto itself.
30:18They've built a massive Spanish hacienda-style hotel,
30:22multiple restaurants,
30:23and the only gift shop I've ever seen with a butcher counter.
30:27All right, there's the Shell station.
30:29We drive past all of this,
30:31past palm trees,
30:33past a barbecue pit slash convenience store,
30:36past an under-construction RV park,
30:39and there, off on a lonely plot of concrete,
30:42is one first element hydrogen pump.
30:45This is a very weird place.
30:48There's a couple flies in the car.
30:51Well, should we gas up?
30:53Let's do it.
30:55We pull up to the pump, get out,
30:57and my god, the heat.
31:01It just hits you.
31:03I better not take seven tries to get hydrated.
31:08The buttons are hot.
31:12Unfortunately, the pump doesn't care how hot we are.
31:15All right, it's done.
31:17That doesn't feel like a full tank's worth,
31:20but we'll see when we turn the car back on.
31:24Please seek attendant.
31:26We got fuel.
31:28I don't think there's an attendant here.
31:30I hope I didn't just break it for everybody else.
31:33Did you get a full tank?
31:35Well, let's see.
31:39236 miles.
31:41No, we didn't get a full tank.
31:44We start the process all over again.
31:46This time, the pin pad freezes,
31:48then gives us an input error,
31:50but then it resets and fuel starts flowing.
31:53Dispenser is...
31:54Okay, we're getting more hydrogen.
31:57We finally get our full tank,
31:59but then the nozzle gets stuck to the car.
32:01Again, 101 degrees, no shade, dwindling patience.
32:06I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
32:12Look, I know I'm harping a lot on these finicky pumps,
32:15and I know normal gas stations don't work perfectly either,
32:18but it's shocking how much trouble we've had
32:21in just a couple days of driving.
32:23And it's not hard to imagine frustrations like these
32:27dragging down the whole idea of hydrogen.
32:30Anyway, the nozzle finally comes free.
32:33We retreat to a picnic table under a tree
32:36and wait for other fuel cell drivers to show up.
32:42We wait for an hour, two hours, three hours.
32:48We watch cars come and go from the Shell station,
32:51the Tesla chargers, the convenience store.
32:54We get dinner at the barbecue pit,
32:56and we eat it while staring across the parking lot of the pump.
32:59We dub this, of course, the stakeout.
33:03It's a nice break from the road and the heat,
33:05but we are beat,
33:06and I am pretty sick of loitering at gas stations.
33:12Finally, around 8 p.m., as dusk is falling,
33:16Is that a Mirai?
33:17I sprint over like a lunatic.
33:20The driver, Billy, is happy to chat,
33:23and he wants to know if the pump is working.
33:25Did you guys just fill up or?
33:26It was earlier today.
33:27No, we've been here for a few hours.
33:30Have you seen anybody else?
33:31Nope.
33:32Oh, really?
33:32No, no one else.
33:33Do you ever, do you see people when you stop here?
33:37Sometimes, sometimes.
33:39Yeah.
33:39But yeah, it's, you don't really see that many people.
33:43It's, you know, Harry's age.
33:44Billy lives in L.A.,
33:46and he's gone up to San Francisco a few times.
33:48He even tips us off to a second route.
33:51There's a station in Santa Barbara
33:53a couple hours up the coast from L.A.
33:55It's far enough north that from there,
33:58you can get all the way up to San Jose along Highway 101,
34:02as long as you drive conservatively
34:04and don't hit any detours.
34:06It's a more scenic drive.
34:07But does it feel a little scary?
34:09At the same time, yeah, you get a little bit anxious
34:12because by the time you get to the next station,
34:15you have like 50 miles left.
34:17You have to plan it out.
34:18If you don't plan it out, it becomes a nightmare.
34:20Yeah.
34:21Have you never run out of gas?
34:23Almost, almost.
34:24But I mean, Toyota gives you the service
34:27where you can, they'll tow it for free.
34:30Yes, that is another real perk that Toyota offers,
34:34free towing.
34:35I have not used that at all.
34:36Yeah.
34:37So luckily.
34:38Yeah, yeah.
34:41And that was the end of the stakeout.
34:43Billy filled up and left.
34:44It was fully dark out, and we were wiped.
34:48So we called it quits and found our hotel.
34:51The next morning, we shoved off for LA.
35:04Cruising through a very hot and dry central California,
35:08it was hard not to think about the broader environmental
35:11mission behind this car.
35:13The hydrogen highway might have been created to fight smog,
35:16but today it's promoted more as a tool to fight climate change.
35:21And in that light, hydrogen is pretty controversial.
35:25You have this supposedly green fuel
35:27that's actually made in a very, in a not very green way.
35:32Justine Kalma covers all things energy and climate
35:35here at The Verge.
35:36I called her up somewhere along I-5.
35:38I wasn't driving.
35:39So tell me why this does not make sense for cars.
35:42Why should we not be in this hydrogen fuel cell car right now?
35:46Okay, so there are a lot of reasons.
35:48So first of all, the majority of the hydrogen that we have today,
35:52even though it doesn't emit carbon dioxide,
35:56you know, when it's used to power a car in a fuel cell,
35:59that hydrogen was most likely made from gas.
36:0495% of the hydrogen made today comes from a process
36:07called steam methane reforming,
36:10which produces carbon dioxide emissions.
36:12It also depends on a supply chain that tends to leak methane.
36:16Those are two gases we're desperately trying
36:19to keep out of the atmosphere right now.
36:21Methane is a greenhouse gas pollutant
36:24that is even more potent in the short term
36:27than carbon dioxide.
36:29And so a majority of hydrogen today
36:32is what you call gray hydrogen.
36:34Meaning basically dirty.
36:37Now there is such a thing as green hydrogen,
36:40fuel that's clean and climate friendly.
36:42So the way that green hydrogen is made
36:44is typically using renewable energy
36:48to power electrolysis,
36:49which is splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
36:54Right now, electrolyzers are pretty expensive.
36:57And green hydrogen is something like
36:59four times the cost of gray hydrogen right now.
37:02So costs have to come way down.
37:05To be fair, lots of power that's used to charge batteries
37:08isn't green either.
37:10About 60% of the electricity in the US
37:13comes from gas and coal.
37:15And to pull off a clean battery electric future,
37:18we're gonna need a lot more green energy
37:20and big upgrades to the grid.
37:23None of that is going to be easy or cheap.
37:25But even in an ideal future
37:28that's flush with green electricity,
37:30hydrogen is still less efficient.
37:33A passenger vehicle can much more easily
37:35plug into the grid and run on a battery
37:38that you juice up with renewable energy.
37:41So with hydrogen,
37:43you're adding another step to that, right?
37:44You're basically using renewable electricity
37:48to create the hydrogen to then run the vehicle
37:51versus you could also just run the vehicle
37:56on renewable electricity in the first place.
37:59So if the question is,
38:00where do we spend the hydrogen we're making?
38:03The answer might be things that are harder
38:05to plug into the power grid.
38:07There's more hype around it for industrial uses.
38:11For aviation.
38:12For shipping.
38:14Because it's much harder to get a plane off the ground
38:19or to have a ship that is battery powered.
38:23Passenger vehicles are just so low down on the list.
38:29What did it say, turn right?
38:30Turn right.
38:37After another long stretch of Highway 5,
38:39we pulled into LA.
38:40All right, here's the palm trees.
38:421000 feet, turn right onto San Fernando Mission Boulevard.
38:47We were excited to check out the scene.
38:49There are more fuel cell cars and stations here
38:51than anywhere else in the state.
38:53But we'd also read about a months-long hydrogen shortage.
38:57And our fuel map showed a lot of offline stations.
39:01I see it.
39:01It's glowing those blue awnings.
39:03It's nice looking.
39:04Are those?
39:05A little futuristic looking.
39:07They're a little snazzier.
39:09We found lots of fuel cell drivers really quickly.
39:12And, well, here's your vibe check.
39:16It's been awful, to be completely honest.
39:19I'm trying to trade it in for a regular car, like a gasoline car.
39:22We bought this with the idea of saving the earth or whatever.
39:26And, of course, saving for the gas.
39:29But it never happened.
39:30Have you ever run out?
39:31Oh, of course.
39:32Yeah.
39:32Oh, yeah.
39:32You get towed?
39:33You get towed.
39:34We heard lots of familiar things.
39:37Love for the cars.
39:38Frustration around fueling.
39:40Flaky stations.
39:41Brutal prices.
39:42Range anxiety.
39:44Regrets.
39:45We also saw one Hyundai Nexo.
39:47The owner, Tigran, actually solved a mystery for us.
39:51He told us why fuel nozzles kept sticking to our car.
39:54So I've been standing here for five minutes trying to yank it off.
39:57Yeah.
39:58And sometimes it just...
40:00Okay.
40:01Like right now is a good example.
40:02Okay, this has happened to me.
40:03So it gets like really cold.
40:05Like you could tell there's like ice.
40:07Oh, okay.
40:07So that's, it is just like...
40:09Yeah.
40:09Freezing.
40:10It turns out that the more the pumps get used,
40:13the colder the hardware gets from all the cooled hydrogen moving through.
40:16So the nozzle can freeze to the car.
40:19Oh, wow.
40:19It's, yeah, my finger almost stuck to it.
40:22Not bad.
40:22It took about 10 seconds.
40:24But other times I've literally sat, waited five minutes...
40:27Yeah.
40:28...for it to loosen up, but...
40:30Oh, we thought we were pulling on that handle wrong or something.
40:33We thought there was some trick that we didn't know.
40:35And it's the freezing.
40:36It's just the freezing, yeah.
40:38I later realized that Shane from First Element had warned me about this.
40:42I even found a video from Toyota about it.
40:45At times, the nozzle may become temporarily frozen
40:48and unable to disconnect from the vehicle for several minutes.
40:52Do not try to remove it forcibly,
40:54or you could cause damage to the nozzle, vehicle, or dispenser.
40:59Shane had told me the problem was largely resolved,
41:02which doesn't seem to be the case.
41:04I met people here.
41:05They're like, oh, I carry a bottle of water with me,
41:07and I just kind of pour a little bit just to loosen it up a bit.
41:11Do not pour water or spray chemicals on the nozzle.
41:14All in all, Tigran is at the end of his rope.
41:17Does it feel like you're just in this kind of pilot program?
41:20Yes.
41:21Yeah.
41:21But it wasn't sold like that.
41:23When I got it...
41:24Okay.
41:24...it was like, oh, you just go to...
41:26It's like filling up your gas at a regular station.
41:28Right.
41:28You just go, put it in, and you're done.
41:30And when it's working, it's fine.
41:33That's generally true.
41:34But...
41:34Yeah.
41:35...most days, it doesn't just work.
41:36So what do you think you're going to do with the car long-term?
41:40The resale value is very bad.
41:43Oh, God.
41:44You're just really stuck.
41:45Yep.
41:45I looked to trade it in for a Tesla,
41:47and Tesla's like, we'll give you $10,000.
41:49Yeah.
41:49I owe $30,000 on it.
41:51That feeling of a bait-and-switch?
41:53We've heard that a lot.
41:54One Mirai driver, Denise,
41:56says the dealer misled him about the value of the car.
41:59At the time of closing, they told me the actual value,
42:03this car was $20,000, about $23,000.
42:06OK.
42:06After I closed, they told me its actual value is $7,000.
42:10What happened?
42:12So I think what they do, they try to factor in
42:15the fact that they give you a fuel card for $15,000.
42:18Oh, they consider that part of the value of the car?
42:20Yeah, they consider that part of the deal.
42:22Gotcha.
42:23OK.
42:24So now the resale value of the car is not what you thought it was?
42:27No, it's not.
42:27It's not what I thought it was.
42:29I asked Toyota about this, and they declined to comment on it.
42:32But they did confirm that the fuel cards are not transferable.
42:36Altogether, these stories started to paint a picture
42:39about how these cars were sold to lots of people.
42:43Over and over, drivers told us that they were shopping for a battery electric car.
42:47But someone, a friend, a salesman, the internet,
42:51talked them into a Mirai.
42:53It was a new, zero-emission, luxury car.
42:56It's like driving a Lexus or BMW.
42:59And it was priced like a Toyota Camry.
43:01It was a win-win.
43:03Except it wasn't.
43:04Here's one more Mirai driver, Jonathan.
43:06What do you think you're going to do with it long term?
43:08Get rid of it.
43:09Yeah.
43:10Yeah, for sure.
43:10Yeah, I will.
43:12But I do like the newer models.
43:13Don't get me wrong, they're very beautiful.
43:15But it doesn't matter what model of the car comes out.
43:18It's just this.
43:20Yeah, if you can't drive it.
43:20If you can't drive it.
43:24Talking to these drivers made me think back to a very clarifying moment at Harris Ranch.
43:29During our stakeout, we got bored and wandered over to the Tesla area.
43:34And after hours spent listening to fuel cell drivers talk about hanging in there,
43:39meeting Tesla owners was a shock.
43:42Where are you coming from?
43:43Where are you going to?
43:44We live in Matica.
43:45We're headed to Anaheim to go to Disneyland.
43:47Super reliable and super easy to get charging everywhere.
43:52Yeah.
43:53I'm excited, yeah.
43:54Road trips are amazing when you have a Tesla and you have the whole thing.
43:58They were all just so unburdened.
44:01That's the best end state for any new technology.
44:04You forget about it and just use it.
44:06And right now, hydrogen just isn't there.
44:15After everything we saw on this trip, there's one player I can't quite figure out.
44:20Toyota.
44:22Why is Toyota still so committed to the Mirai?
44:25In the first half of this year, about 322 fuel cell cars were sold in California.
44:32Total.
44:33For reference, during that same period, maybe 200,000 battery EVs were sold.
44:39In California alone.
44:41And yet, Toyota is still marketing Mirais and pushing them at huge discounts.
44:47During the Paris Olympics this summer,
44:49Toyota provided 500 Mirais to shuttle around athletes and bolster the green credentials
44:55of the Olympics, which actually upset a lot of environmentalists.
44:59So what's Toyota's angle here?
45:01I spoke with Craig Scott, the general manager of fuel cell solutions.
45:06Craig said that hydrogen has been a big hedge.
45:09It's back to the foundational things of what are we trying to accomplish?
45:13We're trying to remove carbon to the tailpipe.
45:15And the only way to do that really in a complete way, in a zero emission way,
45:19is there are two competing technologies, batteries and fuel cells.
45:23And so we wanted to make sure we had a good foothold in both.
45:27Toyota continues to hedge more than most major automakers.
45:31It made hybrids a huge success with the Prius, but it's dragged its feet on full battery EVs.
45:38Today, the company sells just one battery-powered Toyota and one model
45:42Lexus, compared to more than a dozen hybrids and the Mirai.
45:47Critics have spent years dinging Toyota for this.
45:50And the company does have a lot more battery models in the works,
45:53but it hasn't abandoned the Mirai.
45:56I put this question to our transportation editor, Andy.
45:59Why is Toyota sticking with the Mirai?
46:01He's mystified too, but he argued that it's not just about the Mirai.
46:06These companies have this technology.
46:08They want to use it in some way.
46:10They spent a lot of money.
46:11They've invested in it, and they want to get something out of it.
46:14So they're all sort of casting about and looking for ways in which
46:17this fuel source can be useful for future applications.
46:21Toyota is working on powering buses, trucks, and trains with its fuel cells.
46:26It's developing stationary generators.
46:29And Honda, Hyundai, and other companies are doing similar work.
46:33First Element is investing in truck refueling.
46:36This is what our environment reporter Justine was talking about.
46:39There are other places that fuel cells might make more sense.
46:43It's the next step in that hedge.
46:46If any of those industries go all in on hydrogen, Toyota and others will be there.
46:51And the Mirai?
46:53Its success or failure might not matter so much.
47:01This is the big, this is the big one.
47:03We got to see what the final price tag is.
47:06It's the end of our road trip, and we're at a gas station.
47:09Back in the Bay Area.
47:11Our rental was not point-to-point.
47:14So after we were done in LA, we had to turn around and drive back across California.
47:19We ended up taking the more scenic, high-risk, high-reward route along the 101,
47:24the route Billy from Harris Ranch told us about.
47:27It gave us one last hit of range anxiety.
47:30If the first station is out of order for any reason,
47:33then it's another 10 miles to the next station.
47:36Which we have budgeted in.
47:38Yep, and if that's out of order, it's another 10 miles.
47:42So it like, I could see this getting a little hairy, but so far, we're okay.
47:48We pulled into San Jose with 40 miles left in the tank.
47:52All in, we put about 875 miles on the car in a little more than three days.
47:58We also had to return the Mirai with a full tank.
48:00So we were treated to one last shock.
48:03120 bucks?
48:05130?
48:06What do we think?
48:07It's gotta be more than the most.
48:09Okay, 4.605 kilograms, $165.78.
48:16That's a big finish for the road trip.
48:19If we'd been driving, say, a Toyota Camry, we'd have spent about 30 bucks on gas.
48:25Road trip complete.
48:26It's a good, uh, doable souvenir.
48:29The most expensive tank I've ever purchased.
48:37In the back of my head throughout this story, I've thought a lot about
48:42Laserdiscs, of all things.
48:44The failed competitor to DVDs.
48:46I've wondered, is that what this is?
48:49Is this just an alternate history story?
48:51A why the world went this way instead of that way kind of thing?
48:56After taking this trip, I don't think that's quite right.
48:59Batteries won, but I think that there's still some part of the future that's up for grabs.
49:04Hydrogen is still more portable than batteries, and it's a much faster way to move energy around.
49:10And there are still lots of hydrogen believers out there.
49:14California is funding new stations.
49:17First Element alone is trying to build 34 more right now.
49:20Honda just launched a plug-in battery-slash-fuel-cell hybrid car.
49:26The federal government is pouring money into green hydrogen production.
49:30My point is, that if-you-build-it-they-will-come energy is still out there.
49:35So, fuel cells may yet find their niche.
49:38Maybe the hydrogen highway will be full of semi-trucks.
49:41Or maybe it'll be a hydrogen waterway, or an airway.
49:45I don't know.
49:47Here's one last thing that I do know.
49:49In spite of everything, it was weirdly fun to be part of the fuel cell club.
49:54Most of the drivers I talked to were so open and open-minded.
49:58Most of the drivers I talked to were so open and honest and helpful.
50:02It was great to swap tips and stories with everybody.
50:05I got the sense there was a community here, even if it was based on shared grievance.
50:10That's probably not the way that Toyota or First Element wants drivers bonding,
50:15but I got a kick out of it.
50:17Case in point, after we filled up at the final gas station,
50:21I happened to see another Mirai driver wandering from pump to pump,
50:25looking at all the little screens.
50:28I asked him what was up, and he said he couldn't get his pump to work.
50:31The screen was frozen.
50:33I told him the pump we used was fine, and he pulled over to that one.
50:38And just like that, I was a fuel cell driver too.
50:58This episode of The Verge Cast was produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poore.
51:02It was edited and mixed by Andrew Marino.
51:04Fact-checked by Jasmine Ariel Ting.
51:07If you want more hydrogen in your life, we have lots more for you.
51:10There's a video version of this story, which you can find on The Verge's YouTube channel.
51:14We also have a fun story on the website,
51:16and there's a really cool interactive map on the site
51:19where you can click around the route and see some extra videos and photos.
51:23All of that is on the website, theverge.com.
51:25We'll make sure we link it in the show notes too.
51:27The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
51:30If you have questions, comments, feelings, or hydrogen facts you want to share with us,
51:34you can always reach out at vergecasts at theverge.com,
51:37or call the hotline 866-VERGE-11.
51:39We love hearing from you.
51:40Nilay, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about all things tech news.
51:44We'll see you then.
51:45Rock and roll.