The mobility sector is facing one of the most relevant moments in its entire history. Governments and citizens themselves are increasingly aware and are already moving to abandon the use of fossil fuels , since they generate billions of tons of CO2 that begin to negatively affect the planet on which we live. Electric cars appear there, such as hybrids, but also hydrogen cars, although these are more difficult to see. Why is this so if they are a good mobility option?
Hydrogen cars, a real alternative
As electric cars are not enough, hydrogen vehicles are essential for “fulfilling climate neutrality objectives”. The words are from the Anfac manufacturers’ association, which has long proposed relying on them to decarbonize mobility.
Their main advantage is that they do not pollute, like battery-powered models, but are hydrogen cars a real alternative ? The answer is yes, and a very good one, too. However, it is quite likely that at the moment you will not see them on the roads or on the streets, and that is something that is made to look like something that they are not yet at their maximum.
Despite this approach, the commercial offer in Spain is reduced, at the moment, to the Toyota Mirai and the Hyundai Nexo, two of the most important vehicles in their class. Something that contrasts with its advantages and that leads us to the challenges that hydrogen cars must overcome to compete with electric cars in the future.
Electric is more popular, but not better
To make it easy; The hydrogen vehicle uses the chemical reaction that occurs between hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity. This passes to a battery and, later, a motor uses this stored electricity to move the wheels of the vehicle. On the way, only water vapor and nitrogen are expelled.
There are several brands that have been betting heavily on the fuel cell for years. Toyota has been working on this type of mechanics since 2002 until the materialization of the Mirai, while the first brand to introduce a hydrogen model on the market was Honda with the FCX Clarity in 2008. The Japanese Mazda has also flirted with hydrogen with the RX8, which ran on both gasoline and hydrogen and ultimately did not make it to production.
In any case, the truth is that this is a technology that is hidden behind the electric car, despite the fact that the current one does not offer a clear real benefit over the latest generation gasoline cars, as the Swedish Volvo points out: building a electric car pollutes 70% more than the same gasoline model.
They lack facilities
It is a gigantic difference that is recovered during the entire useful life of the first, if the origin of the electricity is renewable. If it is not, the theoretical green advantage of electric is almost completely eliminated, this is without taking into account factors such as the limited life of the batteries (which must be replaced every five or seven years, incurring another 70% of extra CO2 that does not produce the electric).
Thus, those that are hydrogen cars are, on paper, better than electric ones, because they do not pollute either, they usually offer greater average autonomy (the Mirai allows you to travel up to 600 km with a single recharge and the Nexo for 800) and they are refueled in three or four minutes, almost like a traditional gasoline or diesel model. Although of course, its commercialization is scarce.
With many of the advantages of electric cars, those powered by hydrogen also lack some of their drawbacks. The main one comes when it comes to recharging the tanks , since it is an operation that does not take more than five minutes, unlike the long periods of recharging the batteries of electric vehicles.
In the future it will be more comfortable than electrification, but today it is not feasible
In those, his big problem comes when it comes to finding a place where he can do it. Hydrogen must be stored at a pressure of no less than 350 bars, which also makes it a highly flammable element. As a result, the necessary technology is expensive and the number of potential customers is low. Currently, there are just 375 hydrogen plants in the world, 119 in Europe, and only six of them are located in Spain.
This disparity in European territory is curious, since Germany accumulates 70% of the hydrogen plants in all of Europe. And it is no coincidence, because the German government proposed that any citizen have a hydroelectric plant less than 100 kilometers from their home.
As we say, filling the tank of a hydrogen car takes just five minutes, but the cost is similar to filling a tank with gasoline. If we take the Hyundai Nexo and its 11-kilo tank as an example, it would cost approximately 70 euros to fully fill its hydrogen tank. Therefore, charging an electric car is much cheaper at the moment.
And so, hydrogen cars are interesting from a theoretical point of view, but they still have a long way to go to be profitable, which is why in practice they do not see as many as could happen with pure electric or hybrid cars. If that happens in the future, then we will be facing a more comfortable zero mobility alternative than electrification.