New initiative to kick start hydrogen vehicles but who will benefit?
The Government has recently announced grants of £2 million for businesses and local authorities to accelerate the uptake of hydrogen vehicles. Now call me cynical (I know many people do) but as I stated in my previous blog, I still can’t see a day when these vehicles will become mass market.
Firstly, the cars are just not being produced in large enough numbers to make a significant difference. According to Autocar there will be just 50 Toyota Mirai arriving in the UK in 2016 and global production for the car in 2017 is only 3,000. In a recent news report by USA Today, they forecast that global sales will amount to only 70,000 by 2027 which is only 0.1% of all new vehicles sold. These are hardly ground breaking figures.
Secondly, the price is expected to place hydrogen cars out of reach for most normal households or businesses. The expected price of the Toyota will be £60,000 (Autocar) and the Hyundai ix35 is slightly cheaper at £53,000. Based on these figures increasing uptake will be a challenge. In times of austerity, it will be interesting to see which local authority will be brave enough to put staff in a £63,000 car even if it is subsidised.
Most importantly, the final barrier will be the lack of refuelling stations. With hydrogen refuelling stations costing in excess of £2 million, it’s hardly surprising that there’s only plans to install a handful across the entire country. Currently London, Swindon and Rotherham are home to hydrogen refuelling stations and the UK Government has plans to bring the total up to 13 in the next year. However even with these 13, the nearest hydrogen refuelling station to ourselves in North East England will be Rotherham. Now that is a problem, since that’s a 268 mile trip for me. I would need 130 mile range in reserve just to fill up! There are plans to build a station in Levenmouth, Scotland but again that’s a 320 mile round trip or one tank. Therefore I simply could not use a hydrogen vehicle.
So for those living or operating in London, Swindon or Rotherham, then logistically you could drive a hydrogen vehicle right now but for the foreseeable future, the only way I can benefit is if I move. I can’t imagine the conversation with Mrs H about why we have to move home just so that I can purchase and drive a very expensive new car!
Supporters of hydrogen vehicles say that it’s the range and time to refuel that give the vehicles some key advantages over electric driving. I do admit that I have driven one and they are very good. However it will certainly be interesting to see where hydrogen fits with consumer acceptance. And there’s certainly a lot of challenges to overcome, in particular the cost aspect – both for the production of the vehicles and the filling stations as well as the cost of producing and delivering Hydrogen to the vehicle.
I know I for one will be sticking with my all-electric car for now.
Zero Carbon Futures is an electric vehicle consultancy which manages and delivers projects which help towns and cities increase EV uptake.
Colin,
You seem to have a ‘B(EV) in your bonnet’ over hydrogen….(no pun intended)
What’s the problem with having separate streams of development going forward? This way we can cover all technical possibilities and not rule things out before they get a chance to be proven (or otherwise)
If I were to drive from my home (London) to Newcastle right now in a BEV (I don’t have one) I would get to about Leicester and then I would face a gruelling 6 hour wait for a re-charge to get me as far as Rotherham etc. etc.
If I had a FCV (I don’t) it would easily get me to Rotherham – and ready for a 5 minute refill on my way to Newcastle.
For BEV’s to dominate the passenger car market this the range / charge time will need to drastically improve. This may be possible – but it wont be quick or easy.
In the meantime FCV can keep chugging along, and who knows what breakthroughs or cost improvements are down the line.
BEV, HEV, PHEV, FCV – they all have a part to play in moving us on from fossil fuels, GHG and choking urban pollution. Let’s not rule any of them out of bounds just yet.
Graham
Point 1 is that you don’t need a gruelling 6 hr wait at a service station as a rapid charger would charge you in 30 mins. You would need one charge to get hears if you left full. With my BEV I can charge anywhere with a 3 pin plug in the country. So with an FCV I cannot charge within 140 miles of my home even If I only wanted to drive locally. So once the delivery tank was empty the car would have to be abandoned.
The flaw with FCV is the energy required in the whole cycle to wheel which is 3 times that of BEV. Potentially this is why apart from a pot of EU money and some government money the investment in them is not large.
We have breakthrough technology that splits water into Hydrogen and Oxygen using our in-house created catalyst and the hydrogen produced is 99,5% pure. No electricity is used to split the water.
With regard to availability, just as people use a propane gas bottle to power their BBQ’s we shall be marketing our hydrogen in 4 inch diameter tubes which slot into a holder in the boot of a vehicle. Users can easily carry a spare hydrogen tube so that as one tube exhausts its energy they have an immediate spare to replace it. No more waiting around for hours on end for a battery to charge. We anticipate that empty cylinders will be exchanged for full ones at current fuel service stations. 02.2018.
The issue with Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles isn’t the distribution infrastructure. After all, when petrol cars first came on the scene the motor spirit that ran them had to be bought in cans from a chemist shop! The issue is more that of hydrogen production. The vast majority of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, negating all environmental benefits except those of local air pollution. Hydrolysis is horrendously inefficient, returning less than 20% of the electricity fed into the process when combined with a fuel cell. If hydrogen is ever to be mainstream, an environmentally friendly, efficient way of producing it has to be found and industrialised. The infrastructure and vehicles will then follow.
I agree.
Its been a long week as I have managed to spell my own name wrong twice!!