Can hydrogen fuel ever move beyond the hype cycle?

“Hyundai Motor Group’s vision is to apply hydrogen energy in all areas of life and industry such as our homes, workplaces and factories. The goal is to make hydrogen readily used for everyone, everything, and everywhere. We want to offer practical solutions for the sustainable development of humanity, and with these breakthroughs we aim to help foster a worldwide hydrogen society by 2040.”

Those are the words of Euisun Chung, chairman of Hyundai’s board of directors, and they carry weight. Hyundai is not just the company that makes your neighbour’s new Tucson, it’s a gigantic global conglomerate taking in not only another major car maker – Kia – but also steel production, shipbuilding, chemicals and more. Hyundai is one of the few companies involved in car-making that could make the steel to make the cars, then make the cars, and then make the hydrogen to potentially fuel them.

In theory hydrogen is a much, much better solution to the demands of modern, zero-carbon motoring than electric power. It’s more or less endlessly abundant, the only emission you generate from burning it is water, and a hydrogen fuel tank can be refilled in a couple of minutes, rather than the 40-min-minimum it takes to charge up an electric car battery. So why aren’t we all driving hydrogen cars already?

“During the early 2000s there was a widespread assumption by many energy experts that renewables and batteries would remain expensive, natural gas and oil supplies were in decline, and there was abundant time to develop strategies for global warming abatement” says a research paper from the Columbia University Centre on Global Energy Policy. “All these assumptions proved wrong. Oil and gas production exploded due to innovations in unconventional oil and gas recovery, with the US emerging as the world’s largest producer and a major liquefied natural gas exporter. Technology innovation, industrial policy, and climate policy commitments led to swift and profound reductions in renewable power costs, with wind and solar emerging as the cheapest source of electricity in many markets.”

Basically using hydrogen fuel is a way of putting electricity into your car in a manner that’s easier and more convenient – for you – than putting in just electricity. All of the difficulties switch to the supply end. Hydrogen is everywhere, more or less, but that also means that chemically it’s difficult to extract, capture, store and transport. We can do all of those things but they’re not easy. It’s much easier, really, to ask us to plug our electric cars in than to create a whole extraction-supply-and-fuelling infrastructure for hydrogen. That at least is the argument of those who advocate electric car-use over hydrogen development.

Those advocates also point out that you need energy to do all of the hydrogen extraction, storage, transport etc and if that’s not fully “green” renewable energy then you’re just wasting your time and effort.

However, there are those for whom hydrogen power for cars, for trucks, for ships, for aircraft, and even for the heating boiler in your house is still a viable idea, and one that’s worth working on. Hyundai is just one of them.

“Hydrogen energy will account for 18 per cent of global energy demand by 2050, with a market size of $2.5 trillion. The popularisation of hydrogen energy will also help cut CO2 emissions by more than six billion tons a year, while creating over 30 million new jobs” said Hyundai in a statement.

Hyundai is going to build the vehicles to capitalise on that supposed “hydrogen wave” too – by 2028 the Korean giant has pledged to have hydrogen fuel cell versions of all of its large commercial vehicles available. It has also pledged to develop hydrogen fuel and power for “high-performance vehicles, urban air mobility, robots, aircrafts and large ships”.

If it was just Hyundai saying all this then maybe it could be waved off as just one voice against a hurricane of battery-electric advancement. It’s not, though. Other major car-makers are rapidly patting down their pockets and trying to find their tickets for the hydrogen gravy train.

Toyota has really never wavered from its fondness for hydrogen. It’s just put the second generation Mirai hydrogen car on sale in Europe (a vast improvement on its awkward, angular predecessor) and has plans for more H2 models in the future. It is also building an entire city – that’s not a typo – called the Woven City, just outside Tokyo, which will be the first urban centre designed entirely around hydrogen power.

The Mirai, in common with other hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, chemically combines hydrogen with oxygen from the outside air to produce an electrical current. A hydrogen fuel cell, then, is basically a big battery that you simply have to refill with hydrogen when it runs dry.

Toyota’s on to another potential future for hydrogen, though – as a fuel for the millions of cars already on the world’s roads. You see with the right modifications almost any combustion engine could run on hydrogen, and Toyota is now working on a hydrogen-fuelled four-cylinder engine that will run in a Toyota Corolla Sport racing car in the Japanese Super Taikyu Series touring car championship.

“Toward achieving carbon neutrality, Toyota has been strengthening its efforts such as by aiming to promote the use of hydrogen through the popularisation of fuel cell vehicles and numerous other fuel-cell-powered products. By further refining its hydrogen-engine technologies through motorsports, Toyota intends to aim for the realisation of an even better hydrogen-based society,” said the company.

BMW has also not given up on hydrogen power. It recently showed off a hydrogen powered X5 SUV, which it intends to put on sale in the next two years. There’s even an armour-plated version, for sale through BMW’s diplomatic vehicles operations, and the Munich company even went as far as lobbing some hand grenades at a prototype to prove the sheer strength of the hydrogen tanks (no one wants a vehicular Hindenburg, after all.)

“Filling up the hydrogen tanks only takes three to four minutes – so there are no limits on using the BMW iX5 Hydrogen for long distances, with just a few, short stops in-between,” said Juergen Guldner, BMW’s head of hydrogen projects. “With its high-performance fuel cell and optimised power battery, the BMW iX5 Hydrogen’s drive system is unique in the world.”

Even Audi, which in theory is not supposed to be working on hydrogen cars at all (VW Group boss Herbert Diess rather harshly said earlier this year that “the hydrogen car has proven NOT to be the solution to climate change. Sham debates are a waste of time”), admitted to Reuters that it has more than 100 engineers working on hydrogen-fuelled prototypes just in case the fuel suddenly breaks through and becomes more significant. Mercedes, having wound down production of its only on-sale hydrogen car – the GLC F-Cell SUV – has said something similar.

So, can hydrogen make that break through? Only with a lot of effort.

“Today 98 per cent of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels with no CO2 emissions control and is responsible for 830 Mt of CO2 each year” says Columbia University. “Increased production of low-carbon hydrogen faces substantial challenges: technical concerns, cost and economics, infrastructure needs, and absence of manufacturing capability for key equipment and sufficient market-aligning policies.

“Producing green hydrogen in geographies with cheaper renewable energy at less than $30/MWh, with a 90 per cent capacity factor, can lead to significant cost reduction, as will investment in producing more efficient and cheaper electrolysers. Countries such as the United Kingdom are currently investing in hydrogen production hubs to reduce storage, ports, and electricity grid infrastructure needs. Additional financial policy support to attract private financing and investment is required to develop large hydrogen projects.”