Let me make one thing absolutely clear right from the start. Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology is incredibly cool. Even the name is cool - a "fuel cell" sounds like something from Star Trek. The tech in the cars themselves is an impressive feat of engineering and there are companies who are building really easy to deploy filling station solutions that can literally be dropped off the back of a lorry. So why do I believe hydrogen electric vehicles (HEVs) will lose out to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the long run?
Let's start with the assumption that to beat BEVs, HEVs need to offer a clear advantage to the customer. That's not a terribly safe assumption as there have been examples in the past of superior technology losing to another that's clearly inferior - the epic battle between Sony's Betamax video tape format vs VHS being the most notable example, but I think it's fair in the case of EVs. HEVs appear to have just one clear advantage over BEVs, their "refuelling" time. Refilling an HEV is a very similar process to filling a fossil fuelled car - you pull up at the pump, attach the hose, press a button and a few minutes later you can pay and drive away.
But wait, that's a huge advantage, isn't it? If you asked people what car they'd rather have, one that refuelled in a few minutes or one that might take an hour or more, aren't they all going to choose the one that does it in minutes? However, my argument is that this advantage is not as large as it might seem, and here's why.
If you ask the question of current drivers, they will all think about the way they refuel their fossil fuelled car. Everyone must visit a filling station to refuel, and if you drive a lot, that could be 5 or even 10 times a month. Most people will probably regularly be in a situation where they're tight for time but are forced to stop to refuel. So it's easy to see why, if you simply swap those fossil fuelling stops for BEV charging, the hour long wait can seem like an enormous pain.
"Seriously? I'm already late for that meeting and now I've got to wait for an hour for my car to charge?"
"What? I'm going to have to spend 10 hours a month waiting around for my car to fill up? Not gonna happen."
The reality is though that BEV charging is very different from fossil refuelling. Simply put, a BEV can charge anywhere there's a power socket. They can charge at home, at the office, at the shopping centre, a friend's house, a hotel, even a farm in the middle of nowhere (with the owner's permission!). This means that for the majority of BEV owners, refuelling is something that happens while they're doing something else. Many will refuel while they're asleep, while they're working at the office, shopping, etc. Imagine if your fossil-fuel tank was magically filled to the brim every night. How often would you need to visit a filling station? I drive about 15,000 miles a year and I can say with some confidence, for me the answer would be possibly never. Even if I did have to do so occasionally, the "occasionally" changes the impact of that HEV refuelling advantage. It's seen as a huge advantage only when you think like a fossil fuel user. If you think like a BEV owner, it's really no advantage at all.
There are other problems with hydrogen refuelling. There are people making some great solutions for this, but it's not cheap and it's not easy. Fitting a BEV charging point at its simplest is no more than wiring. Even a more complex charging station is relatively straightforward compared to supplying a hydrogen station. So availability is going to be a problem. If you're an independent filling station looking to provide services for green vehicles, right now which technology are you going to choose to support? A BEV charging point, capable of providing that service to any of the 80 or so BEVs and PHEVs available to buy today, or a hydrogen station able to service the, er, 2 currently available cars? At the time of writing, there are 4532 electric charging locations in the UK and they're being fitted at the rate of between 50 and 100 per month. There are 15, fifteen, hydrogen charging stations.
Availability is key. Remember the Sony Betamax vs VHS battle? That was won by VHS pretty much purely because of availability, the Betamax technology was superior by any reasonable measure, but VHS won.
There's more. Major manufacturers are right now faced with tough decisions about the direction their propulsion units are going to take. Volvo, just this morning, have announced they intend to sell only EVs or PHEVs from 2019, just two years from now. Just like the filling station owner, these manufacturers are going to have to choose between BEV and HEV. It's not practical or financially sensible to produce both a BEV and an HEV (in the longer term) because they require fundamentally different chassis designs (if you're going to make the best BEV or HEV you can, rather than a compromise). If you were BMW, would you choose HEV or BEV right now, especially when you already have several BEVs and PHEVs on sale?
It's possible HEVs will see a brief period of popularity, but I firmly believe BEVs will end up the winners in this electric race.
