Hydrogen cars are now a rarity. To build one gas station for hydrogen cars one will need to spend about 1 million euros. However, in the future, hydrogen cars may compete with electric cars in an ecological niche, reports “Investor”.
In Germany, a court decision has been put into effect that will prohibit entry of diesel cars into the center of the cities. However, the ban will only affect cars with a high content of nitrogen oxides in exhaust gases. Such cars are considered to comply with Euro-4 standards. Those that meet the Euro 5 standard might be included in this list no earlier than on September 1st, 2019. Euro 6 is not in the picture at all.
As a result, Germany started talking about a new kind of motor vehicle – hydrogen cars.
More than a century and a half ago, a British lawyer and physicist William Robert Grove wrote that “cold combustion” of oxygen and hydrogen generates an electric current. Modern hydrogen cars work in accordance with this principle. Electricity is produced in a block of fuel elements as a result of an interaction between oxygen and hydrogen. The reaction occurs without the combustion process. There is an “exhaust” of harmless water vapor.
The first hydrogen car is Toyota Mirai. It was first publicly presented in November 2013 at the Tokyo Motor Show. In mid-February 2017, around 2840 cars were sold in the world.
There are 803 hydrogen gas stations in the world. 41 of those are is in Germany. Hydrogen at the stations is measured not in liters but in kilograms. A kilo of hydrogen costs 9.5 euros, and filling a full tank (approximately 4.7 kg) will cost about 45 euros. Also, in Germany, there are about 300 hydrogen cars.
The main reason why hydrogen cars are not extremely popular is that the infrastructure is developing slowly. The construction of one hydrogen gas station will cost 1 million euros, and the cars themselves are pricey. One hydrogen car can cost about 65 thousand euros. However, experts predict that only when manufacturers of hydrogen cars will cope with technological difficulties, which will cheapen the cars and their service, this type of transport may push out both traditional cars and electric vehicles from the market.