By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
The cost of hydrogen mobility is “sky-high” and “far from being affordable”, the CEO of the world’s third-largest automaker Stellantis told an online event yesterday — a little over two months since his company introduced eight new fuel-cell vans to the market.
“Of course, hydrogen is bringing much more convenience because it’s much faster to charge [than battery electric vehicles]… but once you benefit from this convenience, and once you make the assumption that the energy you are using to produce hydrogen is clean, you still have the enormous challenge of cost,” Carlos Tavares told the Freedom of Mobility Forum, for which he is co-chairman of the advisory board.
“Right now, we see that the technology for hydrogen-based mobility is twice as expensive as the electric vehicles, which then means that we are very far from conventional [fossil-fuel] technology, so I’m afraid that for the time being affordability is going to be a major showstopper for hydrogen.”
Twice as expensive may be something of an underestimate, depending on the market, with Hydrogen Insight writing in September last year that it was almost 14 times more expensive to drive a Toyota fuel-cell car than a comparable Tesla EV.
Tavares added that hydrogen vehicles could be suitable for “big corporations”, but not “normal citizens”.
“Possibly for the fleets that come to the garage every day we can justify the investment of one hydrogen charging unit for big corporations, but still it’s going to be far from being affordable, but it is much more convenient as you can charge a tank of hydrogen in approximately three to four. So its convenience is better; cost is sky-high.
“And I think for the near future, it’s going to be a solution for fleets of big corporations, but certainly not for the normal citizens.”
Stellantis — which owns brands such as Chrysler, Citroën, Fiat, Peugeot and Vauxhall — said at the end of January it was introducing hydrogen versions of eight of its current battery-electric van models in a bid to “cement [its] standing as the undisputed leader in zero-emission propulsion in commercial vehicles in Europe”.
It cited the fast refuelling time as the main advantage for fuel-cell vans over battery models — for “intensive customer use”
Tavares’ point “once you make the assumption that the energy you are using to produce hydrogen is clean” is of course not sustainable. Nearly all hydrogen is made by steam reforming gas. It will be years before any significant amounts come from electrolysis, and these are likely to be used on site, rather than distributed.
The fact that hydrogen cars don’t take as long to charge up as EVs is hardly a selling point either!
Hydrogen may have a future in heavy transport, but it looks increasingly like a dead end technology for cars.
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Author: Paul Homewood
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