Did you know that the all new 2027 BMW X5 lineup will include internal combustion engines with 48V mild hybrid technology, a plug-in hybrid, the first all-electric BMW iX5, and, at a later stage, the BMW iX5 Hydrogen which is BMW’s first hydrogen-powered production vehicle.
One of the biggest current consumer purchase and acceptance barriers to wider Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFCV) adoption is to be the lack of infrastructural support for hydrogen refuelling, with this technically being a Catch-22 scenario from the lack of HFCVs available.
It should go without saying also that (most non-PHEV) HFCVs also do not have the possibility of charging at home, with the current rising fuel cost for hydrogen (due to rising operation costs and inflation) further hampering the attractiveness of HFCVs as a commercially-viable product.
From a technical perspective too, HFCVs have a couple of significant drawbacks relative to BEVs. The first of these is for HFCVs have a very low well-to-wheel efficiency, which sees it to consume about two to three times more electricity for the same distance than a BEV. This inefficiency comes from the many energy-intensive processes required to produce pure hydrogen (usually from chemically cracking it from a compound like methane, CH₄) and then converting it back to electricity in the fuel cell.
There is further the more practical point of HFCVs needing volumetrically-bulky high-pressure tanks to store said hydrogen, which in some cases may take up more space within a vehicle than what current batteries occupy under the floors of most BEVs.
Environmentalists would tend to point out as well that hydrogen production at present at least are not exactly the greenest around, as the most common method currently used today, steam methane reforming, uses fossil fuels in the form of natural gas and releases CO₂ as a byproduct.
Ecologically-sound production methods for H2 by using renewable energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen are nevertheless available, but the issue right now is for these methods to not be economically-feasible at present.
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