Ghosn Echos Musk in Questioning Viability of Fuel Cell Cars

[RegGuheert]

From Bloomberg:Ghosn Echos Musk in Questioning Viability of Fuel Cell Vehicles

Nissan is pushing back its plans for fuel-cell cars as the same issue that has dogged electric vehicles will also work against hydrogen cars, with consumers waiting for facilities to be built and investors wanting the cars to be more widespread, Ghosn said at the Tokyo Motor Show yesterday.

“I would be very curious and interested to see competitors who say they are going to mass market the car in 2015,” said Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of Nissan Motor Co., an early proponent of electric vehicles who also heads Renault SA. “Where is the infrastructure? Who’s going to build it?”

Of course this issue of infrastructure is FAR worse for hydrogen cars than for EVs. With a hydrogen car, without infrastructure, you cannot sell the cars at all. With an EV, you can still sell the car and the owners can refuel at home. Additionally, refueling infrastructure for hydrogen cars runs at about $20,000 per vehicle sold while for EVs it runs about $500 per vehicle sold.

In other words, FCEVs CANNOT be sold until ridiculously expensive infrastructure is in place. Once that happens, you can drive to a hydrogen filling station and pay more per mile for fuel than you used to pay to refuel your gasoline vehicle. (That is, unless the hydrogen fuel is highly subsidized by your government or your vehicle manufacturer.)

 

[dm33]

It doesn't make sense to me because of the large amount of energy needed to create the hydrogen, transport and keep it stored. Seems like a non-starter. I don't understand why the manufacturers are wasting any time on it. Maybe they're narrowly focused on a specific goal and missing the broader picture. They might be only focused on reducing emissions from the vehicle while maintaining the quick reload and long range ICE vehicles have today. All while ignoring the impracticality of ever producing, transporting and storing the hydrogen. From the broad view, it seems obvious that hydrogen is not an improvement.