One of the practical obstacles to the electric car is the slowness of recharging outside the home. Although in the car park at home, it doesn't matter if it takes 6 hours, stopping every hour or hour and a half for about 30 minutes is not to everyone's liking when traveling.
The hydrogen fuel cell electric car, or FCEV, for its acronym in English, takes 5 minutes to refuel and provides a real range of well over 400 km. However, the charging infrastructure is almost non-existent today and the price of cars is exorbitant.
So, although they have nothing in their favor, why are BMW, Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, and others, like Renault or Stellantis, insisting on investing in fuel cells?
All brands invest in the development of battery electric models. Some are (quite) more advanced than others in this field, but all invest in electricity. However, some industrial groups do not bet everything on electricity, some look towards e-fuels (essentially the Volkswagen Group, but also Mazda), and many others towards hydrogen.
Beyond limiting the risks by investing all in a single technology, promoters of the hydrogen fuel cell for passenger cars reckon that once it goes into mass production, the cost of the fuel cell could drop rapidly to bring the price closer. of an FCEV car at the level of that of an electric car. That is, they see business in the medium term.
Currently, the cost is around $22,000, but the most optimistic forecasts put the cost of an FCV system at $10,200 by 2030, while that of an equivalent lithium-ion battery would then be around $8,000.
A future shortage of raw materials could give hydrogen an advantage
It is likely that the approach or even parity in the price of both systems will happen sooner than expected, due to the increase in the cost of the battery. In 2022, a battery cost about $153 per kWh. The explosion in global demand and the time it takes to start up a mine at 100% (between 5 and 10 years) lead inexorably to a stressed lithium market, that is, with expensive lithium. In this case, it's not so much a lack of lithium, but the fact that manufacturers might not have it in time for 2030.
Betting everything on batteries is also not a good solution according to the Court of Auditors of the European Union, which in its report of June 19, 2023, stated that the EU's efforts to produce more batteries for electric cars would be useless due to a future shortage of raw materials, in the hands of foreign powers.
Hence the importance of continuing to work on alternative ways of storing electrical energy, such as hydrogen, as long as it is emission-free (via renewable and nuclear energies), or e-fuels.
It is cheaper to develop batteries and hydrogen than just one technology
Two studies (McKinsey for Clean Hydrogen Partnership 2022 and Comparative Analysis of Infrastructures for Germany, by FZ Jülich) agree that combining hydrogen with batteries is the key to decarbonizing transport faster and cheaper than using batteries alone.
According to the McKinsey study, at a European level, "an ecosystem 100% focused on batteries could cost between 3 and 5 billion euros [yes, billions] more until 2050 compared to a combined ecosystem of the two technologies."
For manufacturers, the fuel cell is a way to reduce their own dependence, and that of their respective countries, on imports of the raw materials needed by the battery (cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese, graphite). According to BMW, for the same performance, a hydrogen-powered car needs 100 kilograms less of these materials than its battery-powered equivalent.
The fuel cell uses another rare metal, platinum, in addition to aluminum and steel. But the fuel cell perfected by Toyota only uses a small amount of platinum, equivalent to what a gasoline car currently contains in its catalyst, they say. The cost there is not so problematic.
The cost of the fuel cell is not everything. Currently, the cost of green hydrogen is high, around 15 euros per kg, and a car like the experimental BMW iX5 Hydrogen needs about 6 kg for a range of 500 km. Filling the tank would cost 90 euros.
Compared to electricity, hydrogen is currently more expensive than recharging a 90 kWh battery outside the home. In the extreme case of Ionity (one of the most expensive operators), it would cost us just over 58 euros. Of course, the autonomies are not the same. The decrease in the cost of filling and the start-up of the infrastructures will come hand in hand with heavy industry and road transport.
To this day, no one knows what technology will prevail. And although the electric battery has an advantage, nothing is written. 10 years ago, there were hardly any chargers to plug in an electric car and they had a ridiculous autonomy. The progress made in such a short time is staggering. Who knows the advances that could be achieved with hydrogen in that same period of time.
0 Comments