The Hydrogen-Powered Car’s Big Setbackhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/the-hydrogen-powered-car-s-big-setbackA two-year trial to offer cars that consume Earth’s most common element and emit only water will end over high costs.
If a green ride-sharing service were to flourish anywhere it would be in Munich, where you can rent no-emission cars on just about any city-center street. And yet Linde AG is about to shut its two-year experiment with hydrogen.
It’s another setback for fuel cell-powered cars against those that run on batteries.
But the dirty little secret about clean cars is that a decade after Tesla Inc. left hydrogen technology in the dust by putting its first all-electric sedan on the road, automobile executives still think cars that emit only water are the way of the future.---
---While they’ll be stuck at less than 2 percent of automobile sales through 2030, fuel-cell cars will eventually be vindicated, according to forecasts of the European Climate Foundation, reaching 10 percent by 2035, 19 percent by 2040 and 26 percent by 2050.
That’s why many carmakers are keeping a toe in the H2O. At the consumer electronics show in January, Hyundai unveiled a fuel-cell powered SUV, the Nexo, which it says can run for up to 800 kilometers—40 percent more maximum range than Tesla’s Model X.
“If you want to have a million electric vehicles on the road, fuel cells are going to have to be a part of it,†said Andreas Broecker, head of innovation at Linde. “The public still doesn’t really know that fuel-cell technology is part of electromobility. That should be made clearer.â€
