Toyota brought a slew of modified vehicles to SEMA this year including this dope Hydrogen powered Tundra that also makes Pizza. It’s cool but definitely not zero emissions.
This might be the coolest use of a truck’s rear bed in the history of modifying trucks. As per Toyota in an official press release they dropped earlier this week (Oct. 30,2018) their Toyota Motorsports Technical Center in Plano, Texas was whipping up something that the world’s never seen before, a truck with a robots making and serving up hot Pizza Hut Pizza.
Extra cup holders are cool. But can your truck make pizza? Introducing the @Toyota Tundra PIE Pro: https://t.co/Y1Eqehw2H3 #SEMA2018 pic.twitter.com/uK1kJz6cVu
— Pizza Hut (@pizzahut) October 30, 2018
The real kicker is that they’ve ripped out whatever engine was under the hood and replaced it with one from a Toyota Mirai. While this Toyota Press release claims this pizza making truck is zero emissions, that’s farther from the truth, especially if they built and fueled the thing in Plano, Texas, a location not really known for its renewable energy sources. I’ll get into that a bit later.
First, off the pizza making is a marvel of engineering, so I’m not going to discount that. Toyota is known for its quirky robots which have taken a back seat in recent times because it’s just not a responsible use of their money and effort. Automation today means preparing your car for autonomous driving, so, this bit of pie making is a welcome use of robotics.
The pizza making process is an interesting read,
“From start to finish, the pizza-making process takes between six and seven minutes. When the process begins, the first robotic arm opens the refrigerator and removes the selected pizza, places it on the oven conveyor, and returns to close the refrigerator door.
The pizza is then conveyed through a high-speed ventless oven. On the far side, a second robotic arm removes the finished pie, places it on the cutting board, divides it into six identical slices, boxes it up, and delivers it to the customer awaiting on the side of the Tundra.”
My only rub, as mentioned, is the zero-emissions part. Although it’s true that you could run this truck in the middle of your living room with the windows closed and you won’t suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning, to say it’s zero emissions is a bit disingenuous, the emissions already took place somewhere else.
Currently, the cheapest and most widely used way to make hydrogen is through steam-methane reforming that, as the name suggests, uses good ol’ fossil fuels.
Granted, there will come a time very soon where hydrogen production using renewable energy will be an economically feasible option, but now is not that time.
The fact that they could swap a Mirai powerplant in a truck is sort of impressive on its own merit, so for that, plus the pizza, I tip my hat off to Toyota for this build.
But to call it zero-emissions, don’t pander to us.
Source: Toyota
