INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Asian car markers lead the hydrogen car market
It's a question
I couldn't avoid as I drove across central England in a borrowed car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.The Hyundai ix35 was fast, eerily quiet
- they've installed a little electronic jingle so you can tell when you've switched it on - and there was a reassuring 230 miles (370 km)
left on the clock.And best of all, I drove with the smug knowledge that when a vehicle is powered by hydrogen, the only exhaust product is
water.Quite a difference from my own 13-year-old, one-litre petrol engine: noisy, slow and undeniably dirty.So why, I wondered, is this
clean, green technology lagging far behind the hybrid and all-electric sectors?The relatively small hydrogen market is dominated by the
Asian giants: Toyota, Honda and Hyundai.Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Toyota's hydrogen-powered car - the
Mirai
In early October in Tokyo amid great razzmatazz, Toyota unveiled its latest fuel cell Mirai saloon, which it hopes to
launch in late 2020.European brands including BMW and Audi are also fine-tuning their own hydrogen vehicles.But this is a sector in which
the upstart start-up can claim a modest place too.Outside Llandrindod Wells, a small market town in central Wales, Riversimple aims to
lease, not sell, its futuristic hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to a strictly local market.They have just two cars on the road so far, with
Numbers 3 and 4 under construction in Riversimple's meticulously clean production facility."The car's called the Rasa - as in tabula rasa,
or clean slate," says the company's founder and chief executive, Hugo Spowers.Image copyrightRiversimpleImage caption
Riversimple's fuel cell was originally designed for fork-lift trucks
"We're using fuel cells off the shelf: ours was made
for fork-lifts for Walmart warehouses."The Rasa will do a tidy 60mph (100km/h) and has a range of around 300 miles (480km) on a single 1.5
kg hydrogen tank."In purely calorific terms," Spowers concludes, "our car is doing the equivalent of 250 miles to the gallon."That sounds
impressive - so how do hydrogen powered cars work?At the heart of the car is a fuel cell, where hydrogen and oxygen are combined to generate
an electric current, and the only by-product is water
There are no moving parts, so they are more efficient and reliable than a conventional combustion engine.While the cars themselves do not
generate any gases that contribute to global warming, the process of making hydrogen requires energy - often from fossil fuel sources
So hydrogen's green credentials are under question.Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Using hydrogen and fuel
cells is a very clean tech
And then there is the question of safety
Hydrogen is a notoriously explosive gas.That's why manufacturers disclose plenty of reassuring detail on their websites.The Toyota Mirai,
for example, boasts triple-layer hydrogen tanks capable, the company says, of absorbing five times as much crash energy as a steel petrol
tank.The twin hydrogen tanks in the Honda Clarity are similarly robust featuring layers of aluminium and carbon fibre and designed to resist
both extreme pressure and extreme heat.Still, not everyone is convinced.EuroTunnel does not allow "vehicles powered by any flammable
gasses", including hydrogen, to use the link between the UK and France.Image copyrightRiversimpleImage caption
Riversimple cars have a range of about 300 miles
The Riversimple business model - a three-year fixed price lease aimed at
short-distance local drivers - is designed to negate the biggest problem affecting hydrogen cars: range anxiety.With just 17 pumps across
Britain, refuelling is a challenge, so the industry is stuck.The public won't commit if they can't guarantee a refill wherever they need to
drive, but hydrogen production companies are reluctant to install expensive pumps unless there's likely to be a consistent take-up.More
Technology of BusinessAccording to Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, secretary-general of the pro-hydrogen group H2Europe, a country like Germany has
around 75 hydrogen fuelling stations - but there aren't enough drivers.He blames car markers for being slow to produce hydrogen-powered cars
He points out that BMW isn't launching one until 2022 and BMW in 2025
"This is definitely quite late," he says.Mr Chatzimarkakis wants to prioritise a pan-European network of 20 to 30 pumps aligned along a
"north-south corridor" to enable hydrogen-powered vehicles - especially larger freight-bearing lorries - to travel freely where business
needs dictate.The Hydrogen4ClimateAction conference in Brussels in mid-October led to investment pledges by European governments of more
than €50bn (£43bn; $56bn) in hydrogen research and infrastructure."We at H2Europe are match-makers because this is a co-operative job -
it cannot be done by industry alone; it cannot be done by politics alone," Mr Chatzimarkakis says.Image copyrightJohnson MattheyImage
caption
A lack of fuel stations is holding back hydrogen vehicles
That collaboration is evident in
California, which is experiencing the flip-side of the car/pump imbalance: there are queues at filling stations.If you visit the website of
the Alternative Fuels Data Center, part of the US Department of Energy, and click on "fuelling station locations", you'll get 42 results -
all in California."We are laser-focused on building out an infrastructure to refill zero-emission vehicles," says Patricia Monahan, science
and engineering specialist on the California Energy Commission (CEC).As importantly, California is committed to incentives for both
producers and consumers in the fuel cell sector, she says.Anyone buying a new hydrogen car will get an incentive of $2,500, with similar
subsidies from both the CEC and the state's Air Resources Board aimed at persuading heavy-duty vehicle companies to look into zero-emission
alternatives."We are really testing out for the world," Ms Monahan says, "how to develop an infrastructure to refuel these vehicles, and
policies to incentivise their production."Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Chinese firms have been investing
heavily in hydrogen-powered cars
In fact, even California may be behind the curve.According to Andy Walker, technical
marketing director at Johnson Matthey Fuel Cell in the UK - itself a sector pioneer since 2003 - several Asian nations are making dramatic
commitments to hydrogen."The Chinese government has a target of more than a million fuel cell vehicles on Chinese roads by 2020, serviced by
over a thousand hydrogen refuelling stations," he says.To that end, Beijing has reduced subsidies to the battery sector and, in 2018 alone,
invested $12.5bn on fuel cell technology and related subsidies.South Korea aims to go even further, with a target of 1.5 million fuel cell
vehicles.And while Japan's commitment is relatively modest - a mere 800,000 new hydrogen vehicles - we can expect to see a big showcase of
hydrogen technology at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.If these ambitions are even half-way realised, the rest of the world will be playing
