Hydrogen Fuel Cells have been tried and tested in passenger cars for many years, but why aren’t they as numerous as their battery-powered counterparts yet? Both use an electric motor; the only real, technical difference is in the source of their onboard electricity. That difference is either a battery or a fuel cell.
Using hydrogen for passenger cars looks a lot like a play from the Oil & Gas Industry or Car Manufacturers. Going from fossil fuel to hydrogen will still require a vast network of stations aimed at refuelling, instead of charging at home with an EV for example. But are they the only reason that hydrogen is still pursued, despite its lag on battery-powered EV’s?
History: Powering our Cars
The first generation of cars used batteries quite early on. Next, this gave way to the Internal Combustion Engine, or ICE. Hydrogen Fuel Cells came much later to the game.
Research & Development
Research on Fuel Cells has kept up since they first appeared, even though compared to the ICE market, they were only playing a marginal role. Research in battery technology almost stopped after the ICE became the main source of power for a passenger car. Batteries were, for example, used in fork-lifts, but that never warranted a large influx of research and other resources for development. When laptops and mobile devices required lighter, more power-dense batteries ever, Lithium entered the stage. This development, in turn, has led to most battery-powered Electric Vehicles that we now.
Economies of “Giga-Factory”-Scale
With so many batteries required for electric vehicles, production ramped up. Spurring things the world had not seen before: Giga Factories. With what seems a few of them opening up every year now, global battery production has exploded.
For hydrogen such strong incentives seem to be missing, there are no Hydrogen Giga Factories that I know of yet. The absence of Giga Factories put hydrogen at a disadvantage, both cost- and scale-wise. Both technologies are subject of research, developed and refined further, but I do not see hydrogen overtaking this lead for passenger cars any time soon. If ever.
Hydrogen: Opportunities or not?
So yes, it is possible to have a fuel cell car running on hydrogen. But looking at the scale of developments, it seems that for passenger cars batteries will ‘win the race’.
Medium Opportunities
Hydrogen fuel cells might stand a chance in trucks or trains, though even in these heavy domains batteries are making progress. If the battery production volume becomes so abundant, producing cells so cheap, people will ‘just’ put in more batteries.
Hydrogen Potential
A few areas where I still see the potential for hydrogen is in massive industrial facilities. Where in their chemical process they have access to hydrogen as a by-product, or where they require high-temperature heating such as steel mills. The last area would be rocket-fuel, where for example NASA used large volumes of liquid hydrogen to launch their space shuttles into space.
