In fact, the market is similar to the battlefield, and the common point is that whoever can seize the opportunity can lay the foundation for victory. In recent years, in the development of the automotive industry, this problem can be described as extremely prominent, I believe that many people have found that many new energy car companies, are gradually catching up with the traditional fuel car companies, this phenomenon makes many traditional old car companies very headache, including the global auto giant Toyota.
It stands to reason that Toyota, as one of the world's top car manufacturers, should have the best grasp of the current situation, but in terms of the transformation of new energy vehicles, to be precise, it should be pure electric vehicle layout, but it is a bit confusing. Toyota's "big boss" Akio Toyoda has bombarded pure electric vehicles in public more than once, insisting on the development of hydrogen energy, and Toyota's new CEO Tsuneji Sato has also said that after taking charge of Toyota, he will also pursue Akio Toyoda's hydrogen energy strategy. At a time when the world is developing pure electric vehicles, why is Toyota so fond of hydrogen energy?
To put it bluntly, Toyota has an absolute technical advantage in hydrogen energy vehicles, after all, the premise of wanting to do well must be able to do it, you must know that Toyota has invested in research and development of hydrogen energy vehicles for more than 20 years, and has mastered a large number of technical patents. Because if it really becomes hydrogen energy, other car companies will either have to pay a lot of patent protection fees to Toyota, or they can only bypass these patents and develop other ones themselves.
This is why most car companies now choose to bypass hydrogen energy and choose pure electricity, of course, this is actually thanks to the opening of Tesla's technology, which may not have been thought of by Toyota before, and there is a feeling of being "cut off" by others. But even if everyone bypasses hydrogen energy to develop pure electricity, Toyota can't watch its decades of efforts go down the drain, so Toyota has always opposed pure electric models and advocated hydrogen energy vehicles, which is nothing more than wanting to bring his hydrogen electric vehicles to the market and continue to play his advantages.
In addition, this is also due to Japan's national conditions, Japan is surrounded by the sea, there is no oil and coal reserves, so what Japan uses to make batteries, is a big problem, the most important thing is that if Japan uses all pure electric vehicles, then the Japanese power grid is unaffordable, if the use of electricity imports, then it will also have a certain impact on Japan's economy.
So which is more environmentally friendly than hydrogen vehicles or pure electric vehicles? Many people think that hydrogen energy vehicles are more environmentally friendly than pure electricity, after all, electricity is not environmentally friendly in the final analysis, and the vast majority of electricity in the mainland still relies on thermal power generation. But you must know that hydrogen energy is not environmentally friendly, and it is not much different from pure electric vehicles, why do you say that? Because we all know that there is no hydrogen readily available in nature, if you want to use hydrogen, you need to produce it with industrial equipment, or you can use electricity generated from power plants like electric vehicles.
The electric vehicle is the electricity sent by the power plant to the charging pile, and the charging pile is then charged to the lithium battery, and the lithium battery then supplies power to the car motor to drive the vehicle; Hydrogen electric vehicles are used to produce hydrogen from the electricity generated by the power plant, and then hydrogen is added to the vehicle, and then the hydrogen fuel cell is used to charge the lithium battery, and the battery provides electricity to the motor to drive the vehicle. To put it bluntly, it is all about using the electricity generated by the power plant.
In the past, most of Japan's power generation came from thermal power generation, hydroelectric power, natural gas power generation and 55 nuclear power plants, but after the Fukushima incident, most of the nuclear power plants have been shut down so far, so Japan is still mainly relying on fossil energy for power generation, and there will still be a lot of pollution in the process of power generation. However, the process of generating electricity and the process of producing hydrogen are also polluting. Even if hydrogen is produced without electricity, and natural gas is used to produce hydrogen from coal, coal and natural gas will also produce a large amount of carbon dioxide in the process of producing hydrogen, which is not environmentally friendly, nor is it considered energy conservation and emission reduction.
In short, whether it is pure electricity or hydrogen electricity, if you really want to go to environmental protection, to put it bluntly, the key is to get rid of the dependence of power generation on fossil raw materials, and use power generation methods similar to wind, solar, and nuclear energy as much as possible, which is the road to environmental protection in the true sense. And in addition to Toyota, many other car brands have not given up on the direction of hydrogen energy, such as Audi H-tron and Land Rover Defender hydrogen energy version are good proof.
It's just that Toyota's focus on hydrogen energy has led to a slow development in the field of pure electric vehicles, and many models have lost their competitiveness. In fact, if Toyota was generous at the beginning and shared hydrogen energy technology with various countries as early as possible, then perhaps Toyota is already a big man in hydrogen energy vehicles, because Toyota is too secret about hydrogen energy technology, so that many countries around the world can only retreat to the second best thing to develop electric vehicles.