Rolls-Royce has just released its first electric car, the Spectre, a coupe that is close to 5.5 meters long and weighs three tons that uses a huge battery to approve more than 500 km of autonomy.
It is the first of the electric Rolls-Royce that will arrive in the future, but the British firm may later stop using giant batteries to bet on the hydrogen fuel cell.
Hydrogen infrastructure pending
More and more manufacturers are including hydrogen in their plans for the future, but there are some companies that have been developing technology for many years to bring, in one way or another, hydrogen to their production cars.
BMW is one of the brands that has been investing in hydrogen for the longest time, in fact, in 2007 it manufactured a small run of the hydrogen BMW 7 Series (note, with a V12 hydrogen combustion engine, not a fuel cell) and the year past led to the production of the new hydrogen-powered BMW iX5. But it seems that the German company's commitment to hydrogen is going to go much further in the future.
And it is that Rolls-Royce, the luxury firm of the BMW Group, has just joined the list of car manufacturers that contemplate using this energy in the future. It has done so through its CEO, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, in an interview that the manager has given to Autocar.
According to the British media, Rolls-Royce is considering manufacturing fuel cell electric cars instead of battery electric models, such as the Rolls-Royce Spectre, which has just become the first zero-emission production of the English firm.
The Specter is one of the electric cars with the largest battery on the European market. This 5.45 meter long, 576 PS coupe uses a 120 kWh capacity lithium-ion battery (110 kWh net capacity) to certify a WLTP combined cycle range of 520 km.
What is the problem? The weight. The British model weighs 2,975 kg, that is, 240 kg more than the gigantic Rolls-Royce Cullinan, an SUV with a V12 gasoline engine. Even so, Rolls-Royce claims that the Specter accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds, but almost 3 tons is a very high figure for any car, especially one with a certain sporty focus, no matter how luxurious it is...
The point is that today, the only way to get more autonomy in an electric car is to increase the size of its battery. But hydrogen may change this in the future, in addition to offering other advantages over battery electrics, such as refueling faster than any type of charge.
We must emphasize the "can" because the fuel cell is in full development, in the same way as the infrastructure to refuel hydrogen, which, for now, is only decent in Japan and Korea.
What is clear is that more and more manufacturers are including this energy in their plans and Rolls-Royce is the first luxury car to speak openly about it.
Of course, according to Autocar, Torsten Müller-Ötvös is not in favor of one of the ways that are being investigated to take advantage of this energy, the hydrogen combustion engine, but is committed to the hydrogen fuel cell.
“I think that a hydrogen combustion engine is nothing that I would consider in any way because it has already been tested years ago,” said Müller-Ötvös, referring to a BMW 7 Series with a hydrogen combustion engine that the firm tested. of the propeller in the first decade of the 2000s.
“This is not the most efficient way to use hydrogen. If hydrogen is used in the future it will be with fuel cells. And fuel cells are no different from a battery. This is how you get the energy. When the time is right for us when the technology is advanced, I would say “Why not? We could put batteries aside and focus on the fuel cell”, says the CEO of Rolls-Royce.
The head of the Goodwood firm is also aware of the advantages of battery electric cars over fuel cell ones, at least his cars. He mentions that all his clients usually have large garages where it is easy to install charging points, but it is not so easy to have a hydrogen generator at home.
That is why Rolls-Royce is "watching closely" the development of hydrogen refueling infrastructure to assess the feasibility of hydrogen cars. Meanwhile, it is another manufacturer that does not rule it out for the future, in the same way as BMW, Toyota, Hyundai, Stellantis, Honda, or Yamaha.
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