Hydrogen Has a Future in the Automotive Industry, But We Have to Decide What It Is

That bet shows that Hyundai, Toyota, NamX, and Riversimple are not the only companies that believe hydrogen has a role to play in decarbonizing personal transportation. Several others have studied fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), but only those I mentioned went beyond just evaluating how viable these vehicles were. There are several propositions and challenges, but the deal is that there are only two ways to power electric motors in cars: with batteries or with fuel cells. That said, hydrogen clearly makes part of the automotive industry's future. We just have yet to decide which part it will have.

Take the concept of an EREV with a fuel cell instead of a combustion engine. It would have saved the Toyota Mirai or the Hyundai Nexo from the dead-end alley in which they currently are. After all, they would not depend on hydrogen to move, only if they needed to travel further than daily needs usually demand. Toyota and Hyundai were more ambitious than they should be when they put them into production lines. These poor FCEVs had the responsibility of being popular enough to drive the creation of a hydrogen refueling network. In the end, their sales numbers were restricted because people could not find hydrogen stations everywhere they wanted to go. Those willing to use them every day had to live close to a hydrogen station, restricting its potential buyers even more.

When Tesla decided BEVs were the way to go, it did not wait for the infrastructure to be created. It came up with Superchargers and started building them everywhere it could. The same happened with NIO and its battery-swapping stations in China. If Toyota and Hyundai were so convinced that FCEVs were a good call, they should have done the same with hydrogen. And they know it. If that didn't happen, that's probably because it would be hard to convince shareholders that it would eventually pay off. Fuel cell trucks should help to fix that because they are a much better carbon-neutral solution than battery electric trucks (BETs), but Toyota has an alternative plan to give hydrogen a chance.

The Japanese giant intends to use an idea that NamX proposed in March 2022: swappable hydrogen capsules. The French startup disclosed vehicles designed by Pininfarina that could get fuel anywhere that sold these capsules. The idea was to sell them through CapX stores, which are nothing more than vending machines for these hydrogen bottles. Sadly, NamX is just getting started, which prevents it from scaling up the solution. On top of that, it also chose a doomed path when it announced around ten months ago its vehicles would use a 6.2-liter V8 instead of fuel cells.

I wrote about internal combustion engines (ICEs) powered by hydrogen in February 2022, when news of such engines started to pop up. It was a lame proposition for a series of factors, including efficiency. Jason Fenske also made a video about that a few months later, in October 2022, focusing on hydrogen's biggest problem: storage. To offer a pretty average range of 300 miles (483 kilometers), it would need massive hydrogen tanks. Watch his video below; it is worth it.

Sadly for NamX, there is no way the hydrogen capsules will help it achieve its goals with a V8. According to the French startup, the car has a 5-kilogram (11-pound) tank complemented by six removable hydrogen bottles. They give the car 3 kg (6.6 lb) more hydrogen. That means each capsule holds 500 grams (1.1 lb) of the gas. The total 8 kg gave this car an 800-km (497-mile) range when it had fuel cells. The 6.2-liter V8 will be a lot worse than that.

If we take the 2005 BMW Hydrogen 7, Wikipedia says it carried 170 liters (45 gallons) of liquid hydrogen to drive only 201 kilometers (125 miles). A 6-liter V12 powered the car. I tried to find the car's original press release, and it tells a slightly different story. According to BMW, the hydrogen tank holds "approximately 8 kilos or 17.6 lb of liquid hydrogen." There's no reference to how many liters the tank can carry, but that is easy to calculate. A liter of liquid hydrogen weighs 71 grams (0.16 lb). If it really had 170 liters, it would hold 12 kg of hydrogen, not 8 kg. That's 112.7 liters (29.8 gallons) of the gas. As you can see, it has the same capacity as the NamX vehicle. BMW said it really could drive only 125 miles – or 201 km. That means it burned 56 liters of hydrogen every 100 km (4.2 MPG).

Although it had more cylinders, it had a smaller capacity than the 6.2-liter V8 NamX intends to use, so it is fair to assume it will have a similar fuel economy. In other words, the French vehicle should only drive around 200 km (125 miles) when fully loaded with hydrogen. Remember: the fuel cells allowed it to travel 800 km (497 miles). If that were reasonable, it would drive hydrogen bottle demand through the roof, but it clearly is not the case. Nobody will want to refuel that often, even with the noble goal of lowering carbon emissions. That said, Toyota should stick to the fuel cells it has been developing over decades.

Although NamX presented its hydrogen capsules in March 2022, the Japanese carmaker showed its version of the idea in June 2022, only three months later. That means it was probably conceived much earlier. We'll never know who thought of hydrogen cartridges first, only who introduced it before anyone else. Toyota talked about them again in 2024, at the Japan Mobility Show Bizweek 2024, but did not add much information to what we already knew. Some outlets wrote about it as if it were big news, but the only interesting piece of information came from an attentive reader in one of these articles.

The images Toyota disclosed show each gray cartridge holds 4.7 liters of hydrogen at 525 bar and weighs 5 kg. The red hydrogen capsules have the same capacity but are heavier: 8.5 kg. Is it because it works with liquid hydrogen? Even if it were, 4.7 liters of liquid hydrogen are equivalent to 333.7 g (0.74 lb), a bit closer to what NamX says its capsules can hold. However, holding liquid hydrogen would require a different (and probably heavier) structure. The red cartridge info does not clarify that, so only Toyota knows for sure.

According to the Stargate Hydrogen Calculator, the grey Toyota hydrogen capsules can hold only 152 g at 20ºC (68ºF). That's half of what the red cartridge can theoretically hold and even less than what NamX said its capsules can retain. Instead of six bottles to have 3 kg of hydrogen, a Toyota vehicle would need close to 20 grey bottles or 10 red capsules to have the same quantity of this gas. Either they become more efficient at storing hydrogen or will not help that much.

A potential solution for the storage problem is to use renewable fuels as hydrogen carriers. Reformers would break the fuel into carbon and hydrogen. Toyota is using that idea in Brazil, where ethanol is converted into hydrogen directly in a refueling station. Roland Gumpert designed the Nathalie, a sports car with fuel cells and a reformer, but it did not reach production lines. The last time I checked, the German entrepreneur was working on the Gumpert Power Cell, which combines a fuel cell and a reformer. Although that would allow it to refuel as an ICE car, it would also make it more expensive to repair. On the other hand, changing fuel stations to include a reformer will demand time and money. Carmakers and fuel distribution networks would have to discuss who would pay the bill and which solution would be better for the customers.

Whether on bottles, pumps, or renewable fuels, hydrogen must be easier to find than it currently is. While its refueling network develops, EREVs may help increase the demand for this gas. Fuel cells also need to be more robust or cheap to replace. If we are worried about expensive battery packs, a 2016 Hyundai ix35 FCEV needed a fuel cell replacement in Germany in 2023. His owner got a €103,764.17 ($112,984) estimate to do that. The car was only seven years old.

Every natural disaster we face nowadays comes with a climate change effect label – even if it has nothing to do with it. This lazy approach to these situations would suggest that decarbonizing the economy was urgent, but what we see is people defending what they prefer the world to have, not all possible options to make the future electric with clean energy. These guys demonized nuclear energy to burn Russian gas. They threw soup into paintings and glued themselves to dealerships without realizing they were not protesting against the major carbon emission players. Methane emissions can also cause global warming. Curiously, hydrogen can be produced precisely from this other gas, which would help decarbonize personal transport and also control climate change. Exclusively cheering for Team Battery only causes several people to miss the point of the entire effort.