Pod Insights The Vergecast A road trip on the hydrogen highway About this episode Today on the flagship podcast of hydrogen futures:
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.”
Further reading:
Check out the interactive map of our trip here, and the video version of the story here.
Read Andrew Hawkins’ story about the future of hydrogen fuel cell tech here.
Read Justine Calma’s coverage of federal green hydrogen programs here.
Go deep into California zero emission transportation policy here.
Credits:
Fact Check by Jasmine Arielle Ting
Thanks to:
Bill Elrick, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership
Michael McCurdy, California State Library
Archival footage courtesy of Global ImageWorks, LLC
Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you.
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Transcript 9,149 words · 29 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 David Pierce? Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Hydrogen Futures. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am trying to redecorate a bit. So if you watch The Vergecast on YouTube, you've noticed that we just recently got a really awesome new studio in our New York office. You may have also noticed that Neelai got a really awesome new studio in his house. So I'm very jealous of all of this, which has really led me to spend, I would say, an inappropriate and unnecessary amount of time trying to figure out my own background. I feel like everyone went through this, like in 2020, when we all started being home more often, you started to be aware of kind of how your space looks on camera. I make a podcast on camera now, and so I notice it more than is probably healthy or reasonable.
0:46 David Pierce? And I've just been trying to figure out, how do I make this look a little nicer, a little more studio-ish and less like the basement slash home office slash guest room slash child play place that it actually is. So I suggested this to Liam, our producer, that maybe I wanted to do some stuff. He sent me a long list of things to do. He wants me to put blinds on the window. He wants me to move the guitar that's over here, but I think I actually just need to get rid of it because I don't play it enough or well enough for it to feel honest to have a guitar in the shot. I already put some books up that I think look nicer than the mugs that were there. The mugs are now up there. There's just a lot going on. Will I eventually put some like cool purple lights and go full YouTuber? Probably. It's gonna happen. I'm excited about it.
1:28 David Pierce? If you have ideas for my home studio, please hit me up, ideally if they don't cost a million dollars and won't make my wife very angry. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We're doing something a little different on the show today. Will Poor, our producer, got very interested in what I would call an alternate future for transportation. Right now, we're in the middle of this incredible revolution in EVs. We're rethinking the way that charging networks work. They're being built out all over the place. There's huge money being put into it. Lots of companies, every car company is suddenly in on, what if the future of cars is batteries? But that's not the only future that we could have had. And in fact, there was a minute where it looked like that wasn't going to be the future that we did have.
2:10 David Pierce? So Will and a couple of other folks on our team went out to California and went on a road trip to see what that future might have looked like and what we missed. All that is coming up in just a sec, but first I have to move this stuff behind me because now I notice all the clutter and I hate it and I gotta fix it. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.
2:31 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.
3:00 Speaker 02 This episode is brought to you by Subaru. You know that place your mind always wanders to? The lake, the mountains, the homes of the people you love most? The completely redesigned 2026 Subaru Outback is built to help you get there with legendary capabilities, standard symmetrical all wheel drive, and the confidence to go further. The 2026 Subaru Outback. Love never looked so good. Visit subaru.com/outback to learn more.
3:33 Speaker 03 20 years ago, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California announced that it was time to rethink the car.
3:39 Speaker 04 Thank you very much for a nice introduction.
3:42 Speaker 03 He argued that gasoline and other petroleum fuels were polluting the air and keeping us hooked on foreign oil. California was ready to get serious about a post petroleum future. And the best technology to get it there was hydrogen.
3:57 Speaker 04 We will not just dream about the hydrogen highway. We will not just dream about the hydrogen fueling stations. We will not just dream about the hydrogen cars. We will build it.
4:08 Speaker 03 This was 2004, years before Tesla got everyone jazzed about battery-powered electric cars. Batteries were promising, but another technology was farther along. Hydrogen fuel cells could power an electric motor using only hydrogen gas. The cars produced no emissions or byproducts, except pure water. Governor Schwarzenegger got very excited about fuel cells, and he proposed an elaborate hydrogen highway to support them. The government would help fund a network of fuel stations, which would encourage automakers to build cars. More cars would lead to more stations, and by 2010, the plan went, every Californian would have access to hydrogen fuel.
4:52 Speaker 03 From there, advocates predicted a nationwide expansion. It could spell the end of the petroleum era in America. That is not what happened.
5:05 Speaker 05 San Jose, Snell Avenue, under maintenance.
5:08 Speaker 03 Oh, offline?
5:09 Speaker 05 Since this morning at 10:50.
5:11 Speaker 03 Oh, jeez.
5:12 Speaker 05 The station is offline for repair.
5:17 Speaker 03 20 years later, I found myself driving across California in a fuel cell car, a Toyota Mirai.
5:23 Speaker 05 Rolling again.
5:25 Speaker 03 I was there to find out what became of that grand green vision of the future.
5:30 Speaker 06 We are 23 minutes away from the closest station.
5:33 Speaker 03 Today, there are hydrogen-powered cars you can buy in California and some stations to fill them up at. But the statewide network never materialized, let alone a national one. And those stations are failing.
5:47 Speaker 06 Maybe one pump worked for months at a time. Sometimes, none of them worked.
5:52 Speaker 03 The cost of fuel is skyrocketing. $36 a kilo, and it's insane. And car sales are plummeting. I'm trying to take it back to Toyota. The hydrogen experiment is teetering on the brink.
6:07 Speaker 03 Right now, the auto industry is making this huge seismic shift to battery-powered cars. Why not hydrogen? Why didn't that version of history win out? Who's still fighting for hydrogen today? And what's happening to the thousands of drivers still sticking it out with their cars? This all felt like a lot of questions that only a road trip could answer. So in June, I roped in fellow producer Andrew and our video director Alex. The three of us flew to San Francisco, rented a Mirai Antoro, and charted a course from the Bay Area to Los Angeles along whatever was left of the hydrogen highway. Here to here, we are going there.
7:07 Speaker 03 We picked up our Mirai in the parking lot of a mini golf course outside San Jose, just south of San Francisco. It's a very ordinary-looking sedan. If it weren't for the little fuel cell badge on the back, you wouldn't know there was anything unusual about it.
7:26 Speaker 03 Under the hood, a Mirai and a Tesla are surprisingly similar. They're both powered by electric motors. And a fuel cell is basically a battery. Just instead of pumping in electricity to store and use later, you're pumping in hydrogen to react with oxygen and generate electricity on the fly. In other words, a Mirai's hydrogen tank and a Tesla's battery are just two different ways of storing energy until it's needed to power the car. Oh, there's one other difference. The fuel cell creates a decent amount of water as a byproduct. In the Mirai, it's almost a cup per mile traveled. So the car does need to pee.
8:11 Speaker 03 As the Mirai drives, it occasionally shoots water out a little hole underneath the car. You can also make it pee on command by hitting a button on the dashboard.
8:21 Speaker 07 Yeah, go ahead and start the car. The remote is in the middle, you saw it? The remote?
8:26 Speaker 03 The guy we rented from, Salman, gave us a quick tour of the car.
8:30 Speaker 07 It's a luxury car. It drives beautiful, actually. Once you drive this, you'll feel it.
8:35 Speaker 03 The Mirai has a classy interior and a flashy nav system with a gazillion cameras. The only oddity is this hump in the back row of seats. The main hydrogen tank sits underneath it. It makes sitting in the middle kind of awkward. Salman told us we'd love the car, but he wasn't sure about our travel plans.
8:53 Speaker 07 When I came to know you were in LA, I was like, wait a second. I was a little uncomfortable.
8:58 Speaker 03 The problem is, most of the fuel stations in California are clustered around the Bay Area and Los Angeles. There's just one pump on Interstate 5 in between. It's at a place called Harris Ranch. We kind of need to refuel there. The drive to LA is about 325 miles, which is right at the max range of this car. But we also need luck, because apparently, hydrogen stations just don't work sometimes.
9:27 Speaker 07 There's always a credit card issue sometimes. The card system is down, sometimes the pump itself is down. Sometime there is not enough hydrogen.
9:34 Speaker 03 Which makes our stop at Harris Ranch very high stakes.
9:38 Speaker 07 If that pump is down...
9:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:40 Speaker 07 Then, you're stuck.
9:42 Speaker 03 You've never driven down to...
9:43 Speaker 07 No, not yet. Yeah, I didn't want to take a chance yet.
9:46 Speaker 03 Not exactly a pep talk. Oh, and there was one other FYI: the price of hydrogen.
9:52 Speaker 07 Two years ago, it used to cost like $50 or $60 to fill the whole tank.
9:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:57 Speaker 07 Right now, it's like $180, $190 to fill the tank. So that is killing everybody right now.
10:02 Speaker 03 $180 to fill up a sedan. Yeah, I don't think we budgeted enough money for the fuel for this trip.
10:09 Speaker 07 So that's why I got disappointed. I said, you know what, I'll just put on Tirol.
10:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:12 Speaker 07 And live with it like that.
10:14 Speaker 03 And with that, there was nothing left to do but hit the road. Excited and suddenly very nervous.
10:23 Speaker 03 Thank you, Siri. Our first goal was to visit as many fuel stations as we could find in the Bay Area. On paper, there are about 17, but according to the Station Finder apps we downloaded, lots of them were offline or under some kind of maintenance.
10:39 Speaker 08 All right, we're coming up on it. I never know. You never know what kind of gas station it's gonna be.
10:43 Speaker 03 Almost all the stations here are operated by a startup called First Element Fuel, but they're co-located at Chevron, or Shell, or other gas stations. First Element leases the space from station owners. The pumps themselves are bright blue with these eye-catching awnings. Some of them are slotted right in between gas pumps. Others are set apart in their own little pads in parking lots.
11:08 Speaker 03 Well, let's try to figure this out.
11:11 Speaker 03 The mechanics of filling up a hydrogen tank are familiar enough. Insert a credit card, select fuel, connect pump to car, hang out for five minutes. But unlike gasoline, these pumps are moving around a compressed, freezing cold gas, so there are locks and sensors to keep everything safe and reliable. The nozzle is a heavy metal cylinder with a collar that keeps the hose in place. It's all a bit of a learning curve. It says, "Hide the yellow mark." I don't see a yellow mark, but I think pulling this sleeve down locks it. So we just push it in and then lock it? Ooh!
11:53 Speaker 08 There it goes, the yellow.
11:54 Speaker 03 Okay, we're filling up. We tried fueling at most of the stations we visited, and we always got fuel, but we hit a glitch or two in just about every part of the process. The screens are both wigging out a little bit, but it seems like it's fine.
12:12 Speaker 03 I don't know what door sensor means, but oh, I think it timed out or something. I gotta run my card again. One constant struggle: the nozzle kept sticking to the car after we were done filling. I hate that. I hate yanking that hard on anything. But that was just our experience. We also talked with every Mirai driver we ran into. Hey, excuse me. Do you have time while you feel to chat with us for our story? And their stories were more extreme.
12:46 Speaker 09 This is the third station we are right now. We came.
12:49 Speaker 03 Oh, you tried to go to two others?
12:51 Speaker 09 Yeah, there's one station in Sunnywell, one in San Jose, and this is the one in Cuyahoga.
12:55 Speaker 10 Half the time, these don't work here.
12:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:58 Speaker 10 So they're either out of gas, or there's the problem with the machine.
13:00 Speaker 09 And even sometimes, it shows you to insert card. When you insert the card, it says "transaction canceled," and it doesn't give you anything out.
13:07 Speaker 03 It just doesn't work?
13:08 Speaker 09 No, it just doesn't work.
13:09 Speaker 03 Manadeep and Rupesh have been driving their Mirai for about four months, which for them has been a nonstop hunt for working stations. I had no idea just how frequently they run out of fuel, or glitch, or lose pressure and can't fill tanks completely.
13:25 Speaker 10 And it's always a pressure on you mentally, because you never know which one's gonna work, which one's not gonna work.
13:31 Speaker 03 Fuel has been so hard to find that these guys have been stretching every kilogram. That's how hydrogen is measured. When they drive, they accelerate and brake carefully, they avoid air conditioning because it uses more fuel, and when the car says it still has 100 miles left in the tank, they look for a station. Boy, so you have to really think about how you're driving the car.
13:54 Speaker 09 You have to focus on the road and also on your mileage here.
13:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. Manadeep bought the car because of a huge incentive from Toyota. Every new or certified used Mirai comes with a $15,000 preloaded fuel card. Toyota told us it's there to absorb any volatility in fuel prices. And that's not the only big promotion out there.
14:15 Speaker 08 So this car I got for $15,000, hard to beat, right?
14:21 Speaker 03 Rebecca said she went shopping for a battery electric car, but she couldn't find anything for less than $40,000. But then, a Toyota dealership offered her that killer deal on a 2022 Murai with only 23,000 miles on it. Toyota's also been offering big discounts on new Murais. Earlier this year, you could get $40,000 off some models. That's a 60% discount.
14:45 Speaker 08 That's it. I'm paying a fortune in hydrogen, but it'll take something like 13 years. I did my math.
14:52 Speaker 03 Okay.
14:53 Speaker 08 It'll take 13 years before this vehicle will cost me more than if I were to buy a 40,000-something electric vehicle.
15:02 Speaker 03 Rebecca loves her Murai, so she's content for now.
15:06 Speaker 08 I'm gonna stick with my Murai as long as I'm in California.
15:11 Speaker 03 Menadeep and Rupesh, not so much.
15:14 Speaker 09 I don't think, to be very honest with you, after the gas cut is finished, it's not worth maintaining this car.
15:20 Speaker 03 Menadeep left us with some words of caution about our trip, which, believe me, we took to heart when we said goodbye to the bay and headed south for Los Angeles. No AC, go easy on the pedal.
15:32 Speaker 05 Yeah.
15:33 Speaker 03 Always know where the next station is.
15:34 Speaker 05 Yeah.
15:35 Speaker 03 Call the stations. Stick to the speed limit. Stick to the speed limit.
15:38 Speaker 09 If possible, go below the speed limit. Try to be in the rightmost lane.
15:42 Speaker 03 This is not the road trip that we were looking forward to having, you know?
15:48 Speaker 09 I'm really sorry for spoiling your road.
15:54 Speaker 03 We can start with the windows down.
15:55 Speaker 11 Windows down.
15:56 Speaker 03 Also, how fast do you think I should drive? We should play with the settings on the car to see. It tells you how efficiently you're driving.
16:06 Speaker 03 On the road to LA, I had a lot of downtime to think about everything I'd seen. And most of my questions boiled down to, how did we get here? Which you can think about in two ways. There's the big, broad version. How did hydrogen cars start out so promising but stumble so badly? And then there's the more specific, why is it so hard to get fuel for your car?
16:30 Speaker 03 So as we cruise down I-5, let's start with the big "how did we get here?" For that, I called up Keith Whipke. He's an industry veteran from the National Renewable Energy Lab.
16:40 Speaker 12 You did come to the right person. I've been involved in hydrogen technologies for over 20 years.
16:46 Speaker 03 Keith took me all the way back to 2004 again. Back then, fewer people were talking about climate change the way we all are today, but California had a smog problem.
16:56 Speaker 12 They had the worst air quality, especially in the Los Angeles basin. And so they had a strong driver to clean up local air quality.
17:04 Speaker 03 Battery electric cars existed, but they were not the obvious air apparent to gasoline. In fact, as a storage medium to power a car, batteries kind of sucked.
17:14 Speaker 12 Batteries were not good at the time. It was lead-acid batteries, and nickel metal hybrid was the up-and-coming thing, which of course is what Toyota launched their Prius hybrid with, was nickel metal hybrid batteries. That was a challenge for batteries at the time. 80, 90-mile range, very heavy, a lot of compromises on the vehicle itself to get reasonable performance. So hydrogen kind of was being born into that era.
17:41 Speaker 03 Meanwhile, hydrogen was showing a lot of promise. You could get all the emissions benefits of a battery electric car without the battery. Plus, fueling was a faster and more familiar process for drivers. It looked like a great successor to gasoline, and California got on board.
17:58 Speaker 04 I'm going to encourage the building of a hydrogen highway to take us to the environmental future.
18:06 Speaker 03 The original plan called for at least 150 stations by 2010, but that never happened. Around 10 demo stations came and went, which were co-funded by a federal program. Everyone learned a lot, but it was an R&D exercise. By the end of the decade, lots of people were asking, "Where is this hydrogen highway?" But in 2013, California reset and recommitted. It put up $20 million a year for stations. And between 2015 and 2020, at least 37 new stations came online.
18:40 Speaker 12 I do think that I and a lot of other people thought it was just going to be a bunch of dominoes falling, that the hydrogen stations were going to go 50, 100, 200 stations in California, the Northeast market would launch and take off there, and then people like me in Colorado would maybe get a backbone across interstates and we would be able to drive a hydrogen car as part of our daily commute.
19:06 Speaker 03 The car companies played their part, too. In 2008, Honda began leasing a fuel cell sedan called the Clarity. Toyota made a big splash with the Mirai in 2015.
19:16 Speaker 13 This isn't just another car. This is an opportunity to really make a difference. The name we've given to our new car is Mirai, which in Japanese means "future."
19:30 Speaker 03 The other fuel cell car you can buy today, the Hyundai Nexo, hit the US in 2018.
19:36 Speaker 12 So I've seen and witnessed various launches, and for me, each one of them felt like, okay, this is it. Now we just need more of that car. We need more fueling stations. And then we see the other companies launch. Okay, that's further validation that this is going in the right direction.
19:57 Speaker 03 The fuel cell market has come a long way in 20 years. But along the way, something else happened, too. Batteries got good, good enough to power cars. And in the race to replace gasoline, batteries had some big advantages over hydrogen. I called up The Verge's transportation editor, Andy Hawkins, to explain. And he started with the fact that we already have a power grid.
20:22 Speaker 14 With EV charging, it's pretty simple. You install the charging station, you plug it into the grid and barring any software problems or anything else like that, it's good to go. It should work.
20:33 Speaker 03 That was a huge advantage in the early days of battery EVs. Drivers could just plug in at home.
20:38 Speaker 14 It's a different story with hydrogen. There needs to be a supply chain. You need to truck the hydrogen in for where it's being produced to the filling stations, fill up those tanks at the filling stations. And then, once the hydrogen has been depleted, the whole process starts all over again.
20:54 Speaker 03 Now, granted, it's taken years for a public EV charging network to mature. In fact, it's been a mess of competing standards and flaky charging ports, but it's getting better. And the reason reveals another huge difference between hydrogen and batteries.
21:11 Speaker 14 The hydrogen car industry, as it were, didn't have a Tesla. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elon Musk.
21:21 Speaker 03 Tesla hit the scene in 2008 with the $100,000 Roadster, and it has utterly defined the battery electric business ever since. Over the past 15 years, its cars have steadily gotten cheaper and more ubiquitous. And along the way, it also built a huge charging network, which is so good that pretty much every other automaker in the US is now signing on to Tesla's standard.
21:46 Speaker 14 We're getting the entire industry realizing that Tesla has the best charging network. They have the best chargers, the most reliable. We're all going to just end up using Teslas, as we probably could have realized a lot sooner.
21:57 Speaker 03 In other words, say what you will about Elon Musk, and on this podcast, we surely do, but Tesla gets a lot of credit for dragging the battery electric market into existence, which is something that hydrogen just never had.
22:12 Speaker 14 There was no Tesla startup company that was out there innovating, taking its lumps, losing millions and millions of dollars in the process, but also generating lots of buzz, generating lots of hype and speculation amongst investors and on Wall Street and the government as well, and sort of proving eventually, ultimately, that there was going to be this huge untapped market for battery electric vehicles.
22:39 Speaker 03 In the end, the numbers tell the story. Battery electric cars and charging stations exploded across the country. Today, there are roughly 43,000 public charging ports in California alone, whereas hydrogen seems to be backsliding.
22:55 Speaker 14 There still is this plan that exists, like state grants, to companies to build out stations. The only problem is the companies that have agreed to do so are now backtracking on those plans. Like, for example, Shell said that it was going to create a huge network of hydrogen stations in the state, but then they saw sort of like the writing on the wall and decided to start backing out of that plan. They declined a $40 million state grant to build like an extra 50 stations, and then they went ahead and just closed practically all of their stations in California.
23:26 Speaker 03 Gotcha. So basically, there's money out there and there just aren't takers for it right now.
23:31 Speaker 14 There's a pretty strong belief right now and sort of in California and elsewhere that battery electric vehicles, they won. Hydrogen could have surpassed EVs at some point, but over the last like 15 or 20 years, it's very clear that battery electric vehicles are the preferred alternate technology for private vehicles, and hydrogen is kind of becoming a bit of a footnote.
23:58 Speaker 03 So there's the big picture. How did we get here? But that doesn't fully explain what we saw. Glitchy stations, the price of fuel, the shortages. To understand those problems, I needed to talk to First Element, the company that runs almost three quarters of the stations in California. So I called up one of the co-founders, Shane Stevens, who was pretty candid with me.
24:22 Speaker 15 We've been doing some, I would say, field testing on customers to get this equipment kind of commercial ready to where it needs to be, right? And it's, you know, we didn't mean to do that, right? But we've sort of were forced into that situation because as we started operating these stations, we just uncorked all sorts of issues that needed to be addressed.
24:40 Speaker 03 Here's what happened. Back in 2013, the year California announced new funding for hydrogen stations, Shane was working at the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine. He watched the wave of interest in hydrogen build again, and he saw an opportunity on the fueling side of things. So that same year, he and two partners founded First Element.
25:00 Speaker 15 From there, we actually got some initial financing from Toyota and Honda, and we were able to leverage that private financing and go get California state grants. We won 19 stations and we were able to develop the initial network of hydrogen stations.
25:15 Speaker 03 First Element made a big push right out of the gates, and it got around 15 stations up and running by the end of 2016. That speed was a calculated risk. They built more, smaller, cheaper stations to prove out the network and encourage automakers to start selling cars. And the plan worked, a little too well.
25:36 Speaker 15 The cars came more quickly, the stations were overwhelmed more quickly, and the customers drove the cars more than we anticipated early on. What became obvious to us is that this technology for hydrogen stations was actually not really ready for prime time commercially. The equipment that we're using in the field today, it hasn't gone through hours of testing to make sure the robustness is there, to make sure that little design kinks or design flaws have been worked out. And then when it's used regularly every day on hundreds of customers, all of a sudden you start to see that it maybe doesn't hold up as well because it's never been tested under those conditions.
26:13 Speaker 03 Which lines up with our experience at the pumps. Lots of little quirks and rough edges.
26:18 Speaker 15 We had a lot of hiccups on uptime, we had performance issues, we had logistics issues on supplying the fuel, and we actually had a lot of fuel runouts to the station.
26:28 Speaker 03 First Element has spent years trying to fix that first big mistake. Its newer stations are bigger, more expensive, and more robust. They can store more fuel and dispense more at a time. They actually store hydrogen as a liquid now rather than a gas, which has been a lot easier.
26:45 Speaker 15 And the reliability is getting much better than what it was as well. I don't think we're all the way where we could be, but we're now at a point where we see a commercially viable product.
26:57 Speaker 03 That also tracks with what we saw. We just had fewer hiccups using the newer stations and drivers told us they were more reliable. But those older, flimsier stations are still there. They account for nearly half the overall network and they're not going anywhere.
27:13 Speaker 15 We've invested quite a bit of money into permanent infrastructure that's in the ground. To upgrade the station is not really an option. And the other thing is, we don't want to leave customers hanging that may be depending on that station, even if it's an older generation.
27:28 Speaker 03 So drivers are stuck with temperamental hardware and First Element is stuck maintaining it.
27:34 Speaker 15 So right now, we're charging considerably more for hydrogen than what we'd like to be and what we think we should be.
27:40 Speaker 03 And that's not the only cause of expensive fuel. First Element and others have had a hard time competing for hydrogen against much bigger industries like oil refining and agriculture. There just isn't enough to go around. There have also been supply chain problems and other market issues. The war in Ukraine is even playing a role. So prices have been spiking and not enough hydrogen is making it to drivers.
28:05 Speaker 15 But unfortunately, that's the reality of the landscape today.
28:08 Speaker 03 First Element is now staring down the barrel of a vicious cycle. The more the fuel network struggles, the less viable the cars look. It's the exact opposite of what they were trying to do by opening all those stations in the first place. Our transportation editor, Andy, said it best.
28:25 Speaker 14 Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like enmeshed in like the worst chicken and egg scenario that you could possibly imagine. You know, like, people aren't going to buy hydrogen cars because there's just, there's nowhere to fuel them, right? And then you're not going to have anyone building any fueling stations because so few people own the hydrogen cars. So you're just kind of like trapped in this limbo state. It's just not making the right kind of argument to people who are out shopping for these types of vehicles.
28:55 Speaker 03 We got to take a short break. We'll be right back.
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30:32 Speaker 05 Because I was the one who had a foot in charging case all day? Oh, okay.
30:37 Speaker 03 It's four o'clock. We've been driving for about three hours, and we're somewhere in central California. Our tank is half-empty, and it's time to start looking for Harris Ranch, our hydrogen oasis. So far, we see a lot of parched farmland. Andrew, what is your weather app telling you?
30:58 Speaker 05 See, right now it says 70. Oh, I just don't have service right now. Okay, now, updated weather. Colinga 101. Excessive heat warning until 8 o'clock tonight.
31:11 Speaker 03 A few more miles of nothing, and then, an exit sign.
31:15 Speaker 05 There it is.
31:16 Speaker 03 You see it? Oh, Harris Ranch. All right.
31:21 Speaker 03 Harris Ranch is perfectly spaced between San Francisco and LA, so it's a waypoint for all kinds of drivers. There's a Shell gas station and what is currently the largest bank of Tesla superchargers in the world. Over the years, though, the owners of Harris Ranch have made it a destination unto itself. They've built a massive Spanish hacienda-style hotel, multiple restaurants, and the only gift shop I've ever seen with a butcher counter. All right, there's the Shell station. We drive past all of this: past palm trees, past a barbecue pit/convenience store, past an under-construction RV park.
32:01 Speaker 03 And there, off on a lonely plot of concrete, is one First Element hydrogen pump. This is a very weird place.
32:10 Speaker 05 There's a couple flies in the car.
32:13 Speaker 03 Well, should we gas up?
32:15 Speaker 05 Let's do it.
32:17 Speaker 03 We pull up to the pump, get out, and my god, the heat. Ah, it just hits you. Better not take seven tries to get hydrogen. The buttons are hot. [bleep]. Unfortunately, the pump doesn't care how hot we are. All right, it's done. That doesn't feel like a full tank's worth, but we'll see when we turn the car back on. Please seek attendant. We got fuel. I don't think there's an attendant here. I hope I didn't just break it for everybody else.
32:55 Speaker 05 Did you get a full tank?
32:57 Speaker 03 Well, let's see. 236 miles. No, we didn't get a full tank. We start the process all over again. This time, the pinpad freezes, then gives us an input error. But then it resets and fuel starts flowing. Dispenser is... Okay, we're getting more hydrogen. We finally get our full tank, but then the nozzle gets stuck to the car. Again, 101 degrees, no shade, dwindling patience. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
33:34 Speaker 03 Look, I know I'm harping a lot on these finicky pumps. And I know normal gas stations don't work perfectly either. But it's shocking how much trouble we've had in just a couple days of driving. And it's not hard to imagine frustrations like these dragging down the whole idea of hydrogen. Anyway, the nozzle finally comes free. We retreat to a picnic table under a tree and wait for other fuel cell drivers to show up. We wait for an hour, two hours, three hours. We watch cars come and go from the Shell station, the Tesla chargers, the convenience store.
34:16 Speaker 03 We get dinner at the barbecue pit and we eat it while staring across the parking lot of the pump. We dub this, of course, the stakeout. It's a nice break from the road and the heat, but we are beat and I am pretty sick of loitering at gas stations. Finally, around 8:00 PM, as dusk is falling... Is that a marai? I sprint over like a lunatic. The driver, Billy, is happy to chat and he wants to know if the pump is working.
34:47 Speaker 18 Did you guys just fill up?
34:49 Speaker 03 It was earlier today. No, we've been here for a few hours.
34:52 Speaker 18 Have you seen anybody else?
34:54 Speaker 03 Nope.
34:54 Speaker 18 Oh, really?
34:55 Speaker 03 No, no one else. Do you ever, do you see people when you stop here?
34:58 Speaker 18 Uh, sometimes, sometimes. But yeah, you don't really see that many people. It's, you know, hair is anxious.
35:07 Speaker 03 Billy lives in LA and he's gone up to San Francisco a few times. He even tips us off to a second route. There's a station in Santa Barbara, a couple hours up the coast from LA. It's far enough north that from there, you can get all the way up to San Jose along Highway 101, as long as you drive conservatively and don't hit any detours.
35:28 Speaker 18 It's more scenic driving.
35:29 Speaker 03 But does it feel...
35:31 Speaker 18 At the same time, you, yeah, you get a little bit anxious because by the time you get to the next station, you have like 50 miles left. You have to plan it out. If you don't plan it out, it becomes a nightmare.
35:42 Speaker 03 Yeah. Have you never run out of gas?
35:45 Speaker 18 Uh, almost, almost. But, I mean, Toyota gives you the service where you can, they'll tow it for free.
35:53 Speaker 03 Yes, that is another real perk that Toyota offers: free towing.
35:57 Speaker 18 I have not used that at all.
35:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:59 Speaker 18 So luckily.
36:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
36:01 Speaker 18 Not going with.
36:03 Speaker 03 And that was the end of the stakeout. Billy filled up and left. It was fully dark out and we were wiped. So we called it quits and found our hotel. The next morning, we shoved off for LA.
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37:53 Speaker 03 Cruising through a very hot and dry central California, it was hard not to think about the broader environmental mission behind this car. The hydrogen highway might have been created to fight smog, but today it's promoted more as a tool to fight climate change. And in that light, hydrogen is pretty controversial.
38:14 Speaker 20 You have this supposedly green fuel that's actually made in a very, in a not very green way.
38:20 Speaker 03 Justine Kalma covers all things energy and climate here at The Verge. I called her up somewhere along I-5. I wasn't driving. So tell me why this does not make sense for cars. Why should we not be in this hydrogen fuel cell car right now?
38:35 Speaker 20 Okay, so there are a lot of reasons. So first of all, the majority of the hydrogen that we have today, even though it doesn't emit carbon dioxide, you know, when it's, it's used to power a car in a fuel cell, that hydrogen was most likely made from gas.
38:52 Speaker 03 95% of the hydrogen made today comes from a process called steam methane reforming, which produces carbon dioxide emissions. It also depends on a supply chain that tends to leak methane. Those are two gases we're desperately trying to keep out of the atmosphere right now.
39:10 Speaker 20 Methane is a greenhouse gas pollutant that is even more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide. And so a majority of hydrogen today is, is what you call gray hydrogen.
39:23 Speaker 03 Meaning basically dirty. Now, there is such a thing as green hydrogen, fuel that's clean and climate friendly.
39:31 Speaker 20 So the way that green hydrogen is made is typically using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which is splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. Right now, electrolyzers are pretty expensive and green hydrogen is something like four times the cost of gray hydrogen right now. So costs have to come way down.
39:53 Speaker 03 To be fair, lots of power that's used to charge batteries isn't green either. About 60% of the electricity in the US comes from gas and coal. And to pull off a clean battery electric future, we're going to need a lot more green energy and big upgrades to the grid. None of that is going to be easy or cheap. But even in an ideal future that's flush with green electricity, hydrogen is still less efficient.
40:21 Speaker 20 A passenger vehicle can much more easily plug into the grid and run on a battery that you juice up with renewable energy. So with hydrogen, you're adding another step to that, right? You're basically using renewable electricity to create the hydrogen to then run the vehicle versus you could also just run the vehicle on renewable electricity in the first place.
40:47 Speaker 03 So if the question is where do we spend the hydrogen we're making, the answer might be things that are harder to plug into the power grid.
40:55 Speaker 20 There's more hype around it for industrial uses, for aviation, for shipping, because it's much harder to get a plane off the ground or to have a ship that is battery powered. Passenger vehicles are just so low down on the list.
41:17 Speaker 05 What does it say? Turn right?
41:19 Speaker 03 Turn right.
41:25 Speaker 03 After another long stretch of Highway 5, we pulled into LA.
41:29 Speaker 05 All right, here's the palm trees.
41:35 Speaker 03 We were excited to check out the scene. There are more fuel cell cars and stations here than anywhere else in the state. But we'd also read about a month's long hydrogen shortage, and our fuel map showed a lot of offline stations. I see it. It's glowing, those blue awnings.
41:51 Speaker 05 Oh, it's nice looking.
41:53 Speaker 03 Are those?
41:53 Speaker 05 A little futuristic looking.
41:55 Speaker 03 They're a little snazzier. We found lots of fuel cell drivers really quickly. And, well, here's your vibe check.
42:04 Speaker 21 It's been awful, to be completely honest. I'm trying to trade it in for a regular car, like a gasoline car.
42:11 Speaker 11 We bought this with the idea of saving the earth or whatever, and of course, saving for the gas, but it never happened.
42:18 Speaker 03 Have you ever run out?
42:20 Speaker 22 Oh, of course.
42:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:21 Speaker 22 Oh, yeah.
42:21 Speaker 03 You get towed or?
42:22 Speaker 22 Get towed.
42:23 Speaker 03 We heard lots of familiar things. Love for the cars, frustration around fueling, flaky stations, brutal prices, range anxiety, regrets. We also saw one Hyundai Nexo. The owner, Tigran, actually solved a mystery for us. He told us why fuel nozzles kept sticking to our car.
42:43 Speaker 06 So I've been standing here for five minutes trying to yank it off.
42:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:46 Speaker 06 And sometimes it just...
42:49 Speaker 06 Okay, like right now is a good example. Okay, this has happened to me. So it gets like really cold, like you could tell there's like ice. Oh, okay, so that's, it is just like freezing.
42:59 Speaker 03 It turns out that the more the pumps get used, the colder the hardware gets from all the cooled hydrogen moving through. So the nozzle can freeze to the car.
43:07 Speaker 06 Oh wow, it's, yeah, my finger almost stuck to it. Not bad, it took about 10 seconds, but other times I've literally sat, waited five minutes for it to loosen up, but. Oh, we thought we were pulling on that handle wrong or something. We thought there was some trick that we didn't know and it's the freezing. It's just the freezing, yeah.
43:26 Speaker 03 I later realized that Shane from First Element had warned me about this. I even found a video from Toyota about it.
43:33 Speaker 23 At times, the nozzle may become temporarily frozen and unable to disconnect from the vehicle for several minutes. Do not try to remove it forcibly, or you could cause damage to the nozzle, vehicle, or dispenser.
43:47 Speaker 03 Shane had told me the problem was largely resolved, which doesn't seem to be the case.
43:53 Speaker 06 I met people here, they're like, "Oh, I carry a bottle of water with me and I just kind of pour a little bit, just loosening it up a bit."
43:59 Speaker 23 Do not pour water or spray chemicals on the nozzle.
44:03 Speaker 03 All in all, Tickeron is at the end of his rope.
44:06 Speaker 06 Does it feel like you're just in this kind of pilot program? Yes. Yeah. But it wasn't sold like that. When I got it, it was like, oh, you just go to, it's like filling up your gas at a regular station. Right. You just go, put it in and you're done. Yeah. And when it's working, it's fine, that's generally true, but most days it doesn't just work. So what do you think you're gonna do with the car long-term? Um, the resale value's very bad. Oh god, you're just really stuck. Yep. I looked to trade it in for a Tesla and Tesla's like, "We'll give you 10,000." Yeah. I owe 30 on it.
44:40 Speaker 03 That feeling of a bait and switch? We've heard that a lot. One Murai driver, Denise, says the dealer misled him about the value of the car.
44:48 Speaker 21 At the time of closing, they told me the actual value, this car was about 23,000.
44:55 Speaker 03 Okay.
44:55 Speaker 21 After I closed, they told me its actual value is $7,000.
44:59 Speaker 03 What happened?
45:00 Speaker 21 So I think what they do, they try to factor in the fact that they give you a fuel card for $15,000.
45:07 Speaker 03 Oh, they consider that part of the value of the car?
45:10 Speaker 21 Yeah, they consider that part of the deal.
45:11 Speaker 03 Gotcha. Okay, so now the resale value of the car is not what you thought it was?
45:15 Speaker 21 No, it's not what I thought it was.
45:18 Speaker 03 I asked Toyota about this, and they declined to comment on it. But they did confirm that the fuel cards are not transferable. Altogether, these stories started to paint a picture about how these cars were sold to lots of people. Over and over, drivers told us that they were shopping for a battery electric car, but someone, a friend, a salesman, the internet, talked them into a Murai. It was a new, zero-emission, luxury car. It's like driving a Lexus or BMW. And it was priced like a Toyota Camry. It was a win-win, except it wasn't. Here's one more Murai driver, Jonathan. What do you think you're gonna do with it long-term?
45:57 Speaker 22 Get rid of it.
45:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:58 Speaker 22 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I will. But I do like the newer models. Don't get me wrong, they're very beautiful, but it doesn't matter what model of the car comes out, it's just this.
46:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, if you can't drive it.
46:09 Speaker 22 If you can't drive it.
46:12 Speaker 03 Talking to these drivers made me think back to a very clarifying moment at Harris Ranch. During our stakeout, we got bored and wandered over to the Tesla area. And after hours spent listening to fuel cell drivers talk about hanging in there, meeting Tesla owners was a shock. Where are you coming from? Where are you going to?
46:32 Speaker 24 We live in Metica, and we're headed to Anaheim to go to Disneyland.
46:36 Speaker 25 Super reliable and super easy to get charging everywhere.
46:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:41 Speaker 25 So I'm excited, yeah. Road trips are amazing when you have a Tesla and you have the whole thing.
46:47 Speaker 03 They were all just so unburdened. That's the best end state for any new technology. You forget about it and just use it. And right now, hydrogen just isn't there.
47:03 Speaker 03 After everything we saw on this trip, there's one player I can't quite figure out: Toyota. Why is Toyota still so committed to the Murai? In the first half of this year, about 322 fuel cell cars were sold in California, total. For reference, during that same period, maybe 200,000 battery EVs were sold, in California alone. And yet, Toyota is still marketing Murais and pushing them at huge discounts. During the Paris Olympics this summer, Toyota provided 500 Murais to shuttle around athletes and bolster the green credentials of the Olympics,
47:45 Speaker 03 which actually upset a lot of environmentalists. So what's Toyota's angle here? I spoke with Craig Scott, the general manager of Fuel Cell Solutions. Craig said that hydrogen has been a big hedge.
47:58 Speaker 26 It's back to the foundational things of what are we trying to accomplish, which under move carbon to the tailpipe. And the only way to do that, really, in a complete way, in a zero emission way is, you know, there are two competing technologies, batteries and fuel cells. And so, you know, we wanted to make sure we had a good foothold in both.
48:16 Speaker 03 Toyota continues to hedge more than most major automakers. It made hybrids a huge success with the Prius, but it's dragged its feet on full battery EVs. Today, the company sells just one battery-powered Toyota and one model Lexus, compared to more than a dozen hybrids. And the Murai. Critics have spent years dinging Toyota for this, and the company does have a lot more battery models in the works, but it hasn't abandoned the Murai. I put this question to our transportation editor, Andy. Why is Toyota sticking with the Murai? He's mystified too, but he argued that it's not just about the Murai.
48:55 Speaker 14 These companies have this technology. They want to use it in some way. They've spent a lot of money. They've invested in it, and they want to get something out of it. So they're all sort of casting about and looking for ways in which this fuel source can be useful for future applications.
49:11 Speaker 03 Unpowering buses, trucks and trains with its fuel cells. It's developing stationary generators. And Honda, Hyundai and other companies are doing similar work. First Element is investing in truck refueling. This is what our environment reporter Justine was talking about. There are other places that fuel cells might make more sense. It's the next step in that hedge. If any of those industries go all in on hydrogen, Toyota and others will be there. And the Mirai? Its success or failure might not matter so much.
49:50 Speaker 03 This is the big, this is the big one. We gotta see what the final price tag is. It's the end of our road trip and we're at a gas station back in the Bay Area. Our rental was not point to point. So after we were done in LA, we had to turn around and drive back across California. We ended up taking the more scenic, high risk, high reward route along the 101, the route Billy from Harris Ranch told us about. It gave us one last hit of range anxiety. If the, the first station is out of order for any reason, then it's another 10 miles to the next station. Which we have budgeted in. Yep. And if that's out of order, it's another 10 miles. So it like,
50:32 Speaker 03 I could see this getting a little hairy, but so far, we're okay. We pulled into San Jose with 40 miles left in the tank. All in, we put about 875 miles on the car in a little more than three days. We also had to return the Mirai with a full tank. So we were treated to one last shock. 120 bucks? 130? What do we think? It's gotta be more than the most. Okay. 4.605 kilograms, $165.78. That's a big finish for the road trip. If we'd been driving, say, a Toyota Camry, we'd have spent about 30 bucks on gas. Road trip complete. It's a good, uh, doable souvenir.
51:18 Speaker 03 The most expensive tank I've ever purchased.
51:29 Speaker 03 In the back of my head throughout this story, I've thought a lot about LaserDiscs of all things, the failed competitor to DVDs. I've wondered, is that what this is? Is this just an alternate history story? A why the world went this way instead of that way kind of thing? After taking this trip, I don't think that's quite right. Batteries won, but I think that there's still some part of the future that's up for grabs. Hydrogen is still more portable than batteries, and it's a much faster way to move energy around. And there are still lots of hydrogen believers out there. California is funding new stations. First Element alone is trying to build 34 more right now.
52:12 Speaker 03 Honda just launched a plug-in battery/fuel cell hybrid car. The federal government is pouring money into green hydrogen production. My point is, that "if you build it, they will come" energy is still out there. So, fuel cells may yet find their niche. Maybe the hydrogen highway will be full of semi-trucks. Or maybe it'll be a hydrogen waterway, or an airway. I don't know. Here's one last thing that I do know. In spite of everything, it was weirdly fun to be part of the fuel cell club. Most of the drivers I talked to were so open and honest and helpful, it was great to swap tips and stories with everybody. I got the sense there was a community here,
52:56 Speaker 03 even if it was based on shared grievance. That's probably not the way that Toyota or First Element wants drivers bonding, but I got a kick out of it. Case in point. After we filled up at the final gas station, I happened to see another Marai driver wandering from pump to pump, looking at all the little screens. I asked him what was up, and he said he couldn't get his pump to work. The screen was frozen. I told him the pump we used was fine, and he pulled over to that one. And just like that, I was a fuel cell driver too.
53:49 David Pierce? This episode of The Vergecast was produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poor. It was edited and mixed by Andrew Marino, fact-checked by Jasmine Ariel Ting. If you want more hydrogen in your life, we have lots more for you. There's a video version of this story, which you can find on The Verge's YouTube channel. We also have a fun story on the website, and there's a really cool, interactive map on the site where you can click around the route and see some extra videos and photos. All of that is on the website, theverge.com. We'll make sure we link it in the show notes, too. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have questions, comments, feelings, or hydrogen facts you want to share with us, you can always reach out at [email protected] or call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We love hearing
54:30 David Pierce? from you. Neely, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about all things tech news. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.
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