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By Michael Bettencourt
Because its not really technology holding back hydrogen vehicles
The new BMW Hydrogen 7 is the most advanced , green and expensive BMW anywhere . And the company is leasing it out for free . The 7 goes on the market this spring, but only to a select few “buyers” around the world. These target consumers hold something much more valuable to BMW than the half a million or so Canadian dollars each vehicle costs to produce: influence, and thus the power to shape the future. The Hydrogen 7 is virtually identical visually to the top-of-theline BMW 760Li ultra-luxury full-size sedan, complete with a massive 12-cylinder engine and all manner of amenities. You’d think anyone undaunted by the 760Li’s $175,000 asking price would have plenty of influence in the world already. But no, with only 100 Hydrogen 7s to be distributed in North America, Europe and Asia, even an overflowing money clip won’t get you a sniff of the six-month “leases” BMW will offer to carefully chosen politicians, scientists, business leaders, media reps and celebrities. Hydrogen is the long-term darling of all alternative fuels because it is the only vehicle power source with the potential to become completely pollution-free. Its only emission is water vapour. Major companies like GM and Honda have vowed to release their own hydrogen-powered vehicles next year, both using fuel cells, with others likely to offer similarly advanced but extremely limited production models in the next five years.
The 2012 Promise
The new BMW Hydrogen 7 is the most advanced , green and expensive BMW anywhere . And the company is leasing it out for free . The 7 goes on the market this spring, but only to a select few “buyers” around the world. These target consumers hold something much more valuable to BMW than the half a million or so Canadian dollars each vehicle costs to produce: influence, and thus the power to shape the future. The Hydrogen 7 is virtually identical visually to the top-of-theline BMW 760Li ultra-luxury full-size sedan, complete with a massive 12-cylinder engine and all manner of amenities. You’d think anyone undaunted by the 760Li’s $175,000 asking price would have plenty of influence in the world already. But no, with only 100 Hydrogen 7s to be distributed in North America, Europe and Asia, even an overflowing money clip won’t get you a sniff of the six-month “leases” BMW will offer to carefully chosen politicians, scientists, business leaders, media reps and celebrities. Hydrogen is the long-term darling of all alternative fuels because it is the only vehicle power source with the potential to become completely pollution-free. Its only emission is water vapour. Major companies like GM and Honda have vowed to release their own hydrogen-powered vehicles next year, both using fuel cells, with others likely to offer similarly advanced but extremely limited production models in the next five years. Unlike hybrids, or most alternative fuel (biodiesel, E85, natural gas, etc.) vehicles, the Hydrogen 7 emits only water vapour while running in hydrogen mode, with the backup ability to run on gasoline using its regular internal combustion engine that can be filled with high octane fuel anywhere so its driver won’t get stranded. Both tanks combined will provide a total range of 700km—200km of those on hydrogen—which is more than a gas-only 760Li. This is where BMW’s approach to hydrogen- powered vehicles is unique in the auto industry: get the cutting-edge technology out there as soon as possible to act as a key bridge to a distant zero-emissions future, but include logistical links to the current gasoline infrastructure that makes the car easy to adopt. Most other companies working toward zero-emissions vehicles are leaning toward hydrogen- powered fuel cells, including current market leaders GM and Honda. One key difference between the others and BMW is that fuel cells turn a small amount of hydrogen gas into electricity to power the vehicle, while the Hydrogen 7 pushes liquid hydrogen through a regular internal combustion engine. So BMW is the green maverick for opting for liquid hydrogen, swimming upstream while tackling the storage, refuelling and transportation issues that arise with minus- 253-degree-Celsius liquid hydrogen.
Building "Gas" Stations
Pierre Gauthier is hydrogen director for Air Liquide, the French energy giant that sells hydrogen in both Canada and the U.S. for mainly industrial uses. The firm is pushing fuel retailers in both countries to take the lead from their European counterparts and open a hydrogen aisle in as many stations as possible. “The availability of fuelling is really an issue of retailer refuelling,” said Gauthier, who added his company is ready to provide hydrogen in whatever form—gaseous or liquid— retailers want. Right now, he said retailers are leaning to hydrogen gas. “BMW is using liquid, but the other (manufacturers) are on board with gas,” Gauthier said from his Montreal office. “As far as we’re concerned, both can be done.” Ryan Smith also sees a definite preference for installing hydrogen gas tanks among retailers, although neither option is particularly appealing to any fuel retailer when there are no fuel-cell vehicles on the road. “You can burn a lot of money debating the so-called chicken-egg quandary,” said the manager of the Hydrogen Village project, a public/private partnership with the goal of expanding consumer uses for hydrogen, funded by the Canadian Ministry of National Resources and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. “Toronto is quite a leader in developing the hydrogen economy,” he said. His group just completed its first hydrogen station installation next to the old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, where it will power four forklifts and a specially outfitted Purolator delivery van. “But there’s no liquid infrastructure in Toronto, it’s all gaseous.” Whichever form it takes, Smith is confident hydrogen will be the gasoline of the future. “Thirty to 50 years from now, we’ll have to be using hydrogen,” Smith said, noting that rising oil prices will help make hydrogen less expensive, while tightening environmental standards will lead to zero-emission vehicles. “You can take wind, solar and electric energy and store it as hydrogen energy, so whatever the primary power source is, hydrogen will be the common denominator.” The difficult part is making the leap from near future to far future, as it requires a series of bold and expensive moves by auto manufacturers, fuel companies (they won’t be oil companies in 100 years), governments around the world and, of course, the car-buying public.
Ryan Smith.
Waiting on Demand The biggest barriers to adopting hydrogen, Smith said, are public awareness and acceptance, availability of products that run on hydrogen, and the refuelling infrastructure. “It’s like a three-legged stool: if one is missing, the others won’t work.” Terry Kimmel, executive director of the Canadian Hydrogen Association, said that as of right now, the biggest barrier to hydrogen use in Canada is the lack of “first movers” who will get the fuel out of laboratories and into practical use, especially with such a wellestablished petroleum-based system. “There is really no driver for changing from the incumbent technology, since we don’t tax emissions, and the consumer so far does not have a problem with the price of gasoline.” Lawmakers in California have taken the lead on cleaning up environmental emissions through legislation, although it has often delayed aggressive clean vehicle targets (including zero-emissions goals) because auto companies couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with the required technology. Canadian governments have taken the opposite tack, and have no enforceable environmental regulations on the books at all, instead adopting the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines for manufacturers. The Conservative government has made a push to enshrine the aligned EPA measures into law by 2010 in its Clean Air Act, instead of the current memorandum of understanding held between the federal government and the Canadian auto industry. But Hydrogen Village’s Smith said there has to be a commercial pull element to the hydrogen market, not only a governmental push. “It’s like push-starting a car—the government incentives can start it, but the market has to keep it going.” There are still some technical issues to be overcome. The most significant with BMW’s Hydrogen 7, and company officials admit it’s a big one, is what’s called fuel boil off. Since the liquid hydrogen must be stored on board the vehicle at very cold temperatures, there’s no way any system can maintain that temperature while the car is shut off and parked for long periods. In the Hydrogen 7’s case, it burns off half a tank of liquid hydrogen per week. “So if you’re parked for two weeks’ vacation,” Gauthier said, “when you come back you won’t have any hydrogen left.” Still, both Gauthier and BMW say there are viable ways to reduce boil off, just like other manufacturers are working to get the costs, size and weight of their hydrogen fuel cell vehicles down. But progress on the technical issues is easy compared to the perceptual issues that we’re still a long way off from the hydrogen age. So how far exactly? “Everyone is saying 2015 to 2020,” Gauthier said. Smith suspects it will progress in stages: niche programs like those by BMW, GM and Honda in the next five years, more mainstream ones in the next five to 12, followed by major infrastructure upgrades 15 years from now. The technology is ready for the hydrogen age; now it’s just waiting for us to catch up.
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