HyWeb, 2009-12-17: It appears that hydrogen used as fuel is not the darling of public opinion at this moment, even less that of the published opinion. It is strange that experts and their companies have a quite different view of the situation. The German Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (DWV) thinks that it is necessary to point out a few simple facts in order to put the whole picture back in perspective.
Fuel cells and batteries
DWV has repeatedly stated that there is neither a contradiction nor a competition between fuel cell and battery electric cars. The latter is a meaningful complement for the first in the context of an environmentally friendly and sustainable mobility which extends far beyond the simple exchange of conventional for other vehicles. Fuel cell vehicles need a battery as well, by the way.
Making the battery electric car the universal vehicle for mass use would require to enhance the range by an order of magnitude and to shorten charging times by the same order. Neither is foreseeable for the 15 years to come, and it would also collide with physical limits. So the domain of the battery for the foreseeable future will be the small car for transport in or around the city or as part of fleet operations.
Industry keeps working on hydrogen
All big car makers are working in the field of electro-mobility, but none of them sees the battery alone as the foundation of the future mobility. Usually it is considered as complement for certain fields of application. It may also help to comply with current political demands for emission reduction. Most important companies from Europe, Asia, and North America keep working with full power to develop hydrogen fuelled vehicles and to introduce them into the market. Just a few weeks ago leading car manufacturers committed themselves to this objective by signing a joint Letter of Understanding for commercialisation of fuel cell vehicles starting in 2015.
During an event celebrating the end of the international fuel cell bus project HyFLEET:CUTE last month in Hamburg representatives of the industry said that they would have answered in a very evasive way if they had been asked for the market chances of the technology at the start of the project five years ago. Now they are certain, they said: this is the future. There is no reason to assume that the situation in the car market is very much different.
BMW does not quit
BMW has announced that the company keeps working on hydrogen technology. Recent press reports had created a wrong impression. Many years ago BMW decided to follow the particular path combustion engine + cryogenic liquid storage; in this context a few development steps must be made now which can be performed better in the laboratory than with demonstration fleets. As soon as this has been achieved we may expect a decision whether or not we will again see demonstration vehicles from Munich on the roads of the world.
Cost problems are solvable and are being solved
It is quite natural that hydrogen fuelled cars are today still too expensive to be offered to the customer in large numbers. But during the past ten years the costs have been reduced by at least two orders of magnitude, and most important manufacturers have firm plans for the market entry at different times in the decade to come. The real big cost cuts are by mass production. The costs for platinum necessary as catalyst in the fuel cell, an argument reliably recurring, have been and are being reduced in a particularly dramatic way by reducing the amounts needed; at the end they will probably be less than for a conventional gasoline car which uses platinum as well in its exhaust gas catalyst. The recycling rate is above 97 %.
Hydrogen infrastructure is feasible and is being installed
A comprehensive hydrogen fuel infrastructure for Germany would require a network of some 1500 stations which would cost not more than 2.5 - 3 billion €. While this is by no means negligible it is not an insurmountable problem either. The amount is of the same order of magnitude as the costs for the maintenance and modernisation of the existing network for conventional fuels. Last September a number of important companies, supported by the German federal ministry for transport, have declared their firm intention to start setting up the infrastructure for hydrogen.
Battery charging stations are not cheaper either
It is a big mistake, albeit a common one, to assume that installing a network of battery charging stations would be much easier. The costs would be of the same order of magnitude. With increasing number of stations the costs would even rise more than proportionally, while in the case of hydrogen filling stations there would be a saturation effect.
Hydrogen must be green – and so must electricity
Hydrogen for itself does not solve any environmental problem because it can never be more ecological than the primary energy and the raw materials it has been made from. We must go towards generation from sustainable sources. But he same holds for the electricity which is used to charge batteries. It is obviously much easier to get hydrogen from environmentally friendly sources than to base our energy mix on sustainable foundations.
So…
Neither the general economical crisis nor the particular technical problems have decelerated the development towards hydrogen fuel. The increasing problems of climate protection and resource depletion rather provide new arguments for still higher speed on this way every morning. Politics and industry all over the world have heard and understood the message
.
The alleged crisis of hydrogen as fuel is quite simply a journalistic artefact. In ten years from now most people in Germany will accept the view of a hydrogen filling station as something completely normal. No heads will turn for a hydrogen car in the street – and not only because they will look just the same.
DWV