In the era of electric vehicles, Toyota Motor Corp. has come under the most criticism, with many viewing the Japanese automaker's insistence on using internal combustion engines as outdated and ecologically unsound.
But if there is a technology that can make future engines not only produce no carbon emissions, but also inhale carbon dioxide during driving, will Toyota's insistence still be criticized?
Now, Toyota Motor Corp. is demonstrating such a technology - the Carbon Capture Engine, which installs a new type of carbon capture filtration device for vehicle engines. Toyota tested the system on the GR Corolla race car in 2023.
The GR Corolla is equipped with a hydrogen fuel engine that emits only a trace amount of carbon dioxide, and the filter device can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every time it runs.
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New wine in old bottles
Pictured: A Toyota GR Corolla racing car tests an engine equipped with a carbon capture filter produced by the company.
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"Carbon capture technology is developing rapidly in the infrastructure industry," said Naoaki Ito, general manager of GR's automotive development projects, "but as far as we know, Toyota is the first company to test this technology in a car."
Toyota has long advocated exploring new uses for old technology.
The company says internal combustion engines still have the potential to do their part to become carbon neutral, while retaining jobs and the roar and driving feel that fans so fondly remember. Toyota announced a new round of research and development plans for advanced internal combustion engines in January this year as part of the automaker's multi-path green vehicle development strategy.
Toyota's diversified development strategy advocated by Akio Toyoda was once criticized by investors, environmentalists and electric vehicle enthusiasts, who demanded that Toyota switch to electric vehicles faster.
But Toyota is starting to gain vindication as profits and sales of its hybrid vehicles hit record highs and optimism about a rapid shift to electric vehicles cools. Investors have boosted Toyota's stock price by 80% over the past year and are up about 30% since January 1.
The automaker's market capitalization exceeded the 50 trillion yen (approximately RMB 2,391.35 billion) mark in February, becoming the first Japanese company to surpass this milestone.
In 2023, global sales of Toyota's standard hybrid vehicles surged 31% to 3.4 million units. Their share of global deliveries will rise from 27% in 2022 to 33%. Toyota's main focus is still expected to be on devices that can make hybrid cars cleaner.
But hydrogen-fueled engines and carbon capture offer a new direction.
Toyota's rookie racing team debuted carbon capture technology last summer in a GR Corolla during a five-hour endurance race in southwestern Japan.
explains how the company's absorbers absorb carbon dioxide by directly capturing the air.
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Toyota's Gazoo Racing motorsport and performance arm uses experimental cars to test hydrogen combustion and other new technologies.
The carbon capture system consists of two circular filters to capture carbon dioxide in the air and a liquid container to absorb and store carbon dioxide in the filter.
Importantly, the system requires no additional energy to remove carbon dioxide; the engine's own heat releases the carbon from the filter into the liquid. In the liquid, the carbon is absorbed and combined with the alkylamine solution, which is then processed.
The key is that the ceramic catalyst in the filter is coated with a carbon dioxide absorber developed by Kawasaki Heavy Industries. The technology is similar to that used in general exhaust pipes.
There are two filters. An air inlet installed on the air purifier can suck in 60 liters of outside air per second. The other is mounted at the front of the engine compartment and absorbs carbon dioxide along the path of the oil.
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still far away
However, there are still many obstacles to the commercialization of this technology.
In tests, the technology was able to remove only a small amount of carbon dioxide from the air, even less than the amount conventional vehicles produce during normal operation. The test car only captured 20 grams of carbon dioxide every 20 laps. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a traditional gasoline engine emits an average of 8,887 grams of carbon dioxide for every 1 gallon (approximately 3.785 liters) consumed.
Additionally, on Toyota's race cars, the filter needs to be changed manually at every pit stop. How to safely handle absorbent fluids is still controversial.
Therefore, more needs to be done to be commercially viable.
Steps to achieve results
Koji Endo, senior automotive analyst at SBI Securities in Tokyo, said Toyota's experiment may never be applied to passenger cars and may end up being just a patented pilot project. Even if commercialized, he said, carbon capture technology may be better suited for heavy-duty trucks or industrial-grade land transport vehicles that can accommodate larger filters.
But at least this idea shows that Toyota is serious about clean combustion as it moves towards carbon neutrality.
"They still need engines as a bridge to pure electric vehicles," Endo said. "They should continue to improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines so that when combined with hybrid systems, they can even compete with electric vehicles in terms of lifetime emissions assessment." Comparable to cars."
Larger filters undoubtedly capture more carbon, but they also cost more and take up space. Changing the filter also must be automated in some way, Toyota's Ito said.
The attempt would be like the first time Toyota installed solar panels on its Prius plug-in hybrid. At first, the technology seemed like a gimmick. But later, through continuous development and improvement, it started to increase in value.
"The amount of carbon dioxide recovered is small compared to the amount of carbon dioxide produced globally," Ito admitted, but pointed out that every new idea starts from a small size.
He said: "The development of carbon dioxide capture technology is still in its early stages, but we are using motorsport to accelerate development. We think this technology has great potential and will continue to develop it."
