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Speaking to Australian media at a preview event for its iX5 hydrogen prototype car, the head of BMW’s hydrogen program Jurgen Guldner, explained why the brand has faith in hydrogen fuel cell technology, despite not having a commercial vehicle division.
Hydrogen as a fuel – which can be burned or used in a fuel cell to produce electricity – is often seen as a promising replacement for diesel in commercial applications.
This is because a fuel cell electric system weighs only slightly more than a large diesel engine and provides a similar range and refuelling time. This is in stark contrast to battery electric systems for commercial vehicles, which are prohibitively expensive and eat into payloads with their excessive weight using current battery chemistries.
Deployment costs for hydrogen refuelling locations are also lofty, as the fuel requires extremely high pressures and extremely low temperatures to be stable enough for the refuelling process.
For these reasons, the industry’s current leaders in the technology, Toyota and Hyundai, both say the tech will be led by their commercial divisions.
But BMW doesn’t have a commercial division – so why is the brand interested?
Explaining, Guldner said the hydrogen ecosystem is much larger than cars, but cars need to play a role.
“Hydrogen is not just for our vehicles, but for our factory, our logistics, forklifts, buses.”
“Electricity cannot be stored over long periods of time – if you want to save some from summer to winter – there is no way to do that with batteries. You can move electricity with power lines, but you can’t trade it or move it further.”
He explained Japan and South Korea were projecting a need to import energy in the coming decades, and the only way to do that with renewable sources was to use them to generate hydrogen via electrolysis, bottle it up, and ship it in much the same way that natural gas is currently traded.
Specifically to cars, however, Guldner said BEVs and FCEVs have to complement each other, and that they are not competing technologies.
“We think offering options – being technology open, being technology agnostic – is the best way to engage with our customers. To give everybody the right powertrain and the right vehicle for their individual needs.”
Particularly, hydrogen has natural benefits for larger vehicles, owners who frequently need to tow, and those who frequently travel long distances, as is often the case in Australia.
To this end, Guldner showed slides with data from the EU’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership that said adding FCEVs as part of the model mix, even pessimistically, shaved 20 per cent off the decarbonisation costs compared to battery electric only. In a more optimistic scenario, FCEVs saved 34 per cent of the cost.
This is said to be for two reasons: firstly that the infrastructure cost for electric vehicles is initially low but increases forever as the network spreads, while building more infrastructure for hydrogen is predicted to continually make the technology more affordable.
This is because hydrogen has many uses beyond just the ground vehicle transport sector, with opportunities for both energy storage and in larger commercial applications, like shipping and scale power generation.
When it comes to light transport, Guldner noted significant advantages when it comes to the life cycle emissions impact of each vehicle. While battery electric vehicles, like the iX, start at a massive carbon disadvantage thanks to the amount of raw materials required for battery packs, there are significantly less rare materials required for the iX5 Hydrogen.
He says the number of rarer materials used in the fuel cell is just “10 per cent” of that used in the battery EV.
There is a snag, though. In Australia, there are currently only a handful of refuelling stations, with our progress on hydrogen production and distribution notably far behind other nations like Germany, China, and South Korea according to a CSIRO report on the topic in 2023. The report earmarked a lack of standards and regulations, as well as a lack of emissions reductions targets on much of the industry having an impact, as well as the “prohibitive” upfront costs required.
The iX5 hydrogen is part of BMW’s “pilot series” of vehicles designed to showcase the “everyday usability” of the technology in a familiar format.
It carries six kilograms of hydrogen, allowing it to travel 504km on a single fill, according to the WLTP cycle. It uses a Toyota-developed and BMW-refined hydrogen stack, with power driven to a rear motor unit it shares with the iX electric SUV.
The brand says it could be the first of a diverse range of future production hydrogen-powered vehicles in many different shapes and sizes, as it looks to replicate the same strategy which it used for spreading electric vehicles successfully across its range.
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