- What's the fuel of the future?
It's the most plentiful
stuff in the universe.
(electronic music)
Hey guys, here I am, CES 2015.
I'm at the Toyota press
conference and my mind
has been blown once again by
fuel cell vehicle technology.
Now you remember I was crazy
about this stuff a year ago.
I'm still crazy now.
I know, Toyota is our sponsor,
but I love this technology.
I'd be talking about this no matter what,
because this is what
the future is all about.
It is forward thinking.
Now some of us might
not be familiar with how
a fuel cell vehicle works.
That's why I talked to Matt McClory,
an engineer with Toyota
who is here today at CES.
- Well, at a very high level,
it's an electro-chemical
engine where you can
directly convert energy
into electricity, right?
In this case, we use hydrogen as a fuel
combined with oxygen from air,
and we directly convert that
in an electro-chemical
cell into electricity
that allows us to drive the
electric motor for the wheels.
- Alright, now correct me
if I've got this wrong,
but as I recall, when you
combine hydrogen and oxygen,
besides the generation of electricity,
you end up with water.
- Exactly, so the way a membrane works
is that you get hydrogen from
one side onto the fuel side
and that gets split up on
the side of the membrane
into a proton and an electron.
But the membrane is an electron barrier,
but a proton carrier.
And so the proton can
go through the membrane
to the other side, but
the electron has to take
an external path.
When it takes that external
path, it goes through
the traction motor that
allows you to drive the car.
When the electron comes back
the other side on the air side,
it combines with a proton
and the oxygen from air,
and it makes water.
- So that's it.
You've got hydrogen on one
side, oxygen on the other,
and you end up with
electricity and water vapor.
No carbon emissions like gasoline
or diesel-powered vehicles.
That's pretty phenomenal.
But that's not the biggest news of all.
Toyota is going to share
its intellectual property.
It holds more than 5,000 patents worldwide
on fuel cell technology.
Everything from fuel cell
stacks to the way that hydrogen
power stations can be built.
And now they're sharing
that information for free.
Why?
Well, I asked Craig Scott of
Toyota that same question.
He had an interesting answer.
- Well, I mean, imagine you're
changing everything, right?
From soup to nuts, right?
We're completely revolutionizing
an entire energy system.
From the car to the station
to consumer's mindsets,
all of these things need
to be, I don't say changed,
but they need to be altered,
and we need to find ways
to educate people.
A big part of what today is
about sharing what we've learned
over the last 22 years of
building this technology,
but also finding a way to come together
and build new things.
- While this may seem like a
revolutionary idea to people,
there's something about
sharing intellectual property,
which often we view as being so important.
That's the biggest revolution, I think.
- Many of our careers we've
spent developing this car
and this technology, and now
we want to see what others
can bring to it.
And it's a great time to be
part of the hydrogen world.
- It's the sharing of this
information that allows
for collaboration as well as competition
and ultimately can bring about
a hydrogen-based economy.
Now this is a big idea, and
some pretty big thinkers
have weighed in on it,
including some right at the
Toyota press conference.
I gotta show you a couple of highlights.
- We're talking about a game changer,
game changer that's gonna
change the landscape.
Not just of our lives, but
perhaps the world of politics,
the world of energy, and
energy is at the very basis
of all of modern society.
What I'm saying today is we
are present at the creation.
- Today's announcements on
our patents has less to do
with hydrogen fuel cell
cars than it does about
the cultural growth of a hydrogen society.
It's obvious that there can
be a higher societal value
in openly sharing our I.P.
We can speed the metabolism of everyone's
research and development and
move into a future of mobility
quicker, more effectively,
and more economically.
- You're talking about
changing a century-old paradigm
with a brand new infrastructure,
a hydrogen economy.
We've been talking about
it since 1970 and today
may be the day we point back and say
that's when it really started.
I can't think of anything more
forward thinking than that,
but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
What do you think about fuel cells?
What do you think is the future of cars?
Let me know in the comments below.
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