The Munich-based company will initially produce 100 test vehicles with fuel cells – but are planning significantly larger ones.
(Photo: dpa)
Munich The BMW Group sees good opportunities for the introduction of the fuel cell. “We are examining a real series offer, the sooner the better,” said CEO Oliver Zipse on Wednesday in Munich. In addition to battery drives, cars fueled with hydrogen are “the last piece of the puzzle” on the way to sustainable mobility.
100 test vehicles of the X5 model, which Zipse presented together with Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder, make the start. According to corporate circles, however, plans are much further ahead. With the introduction of the “New Class”, BMW could launch cars with fuel cells in large numbers from 2026/27.
For years, industry has been researching fuel cells, in which hydrogen reacts with oxygen and generates energy. However, most manufacturers do not see the fuel cell as the successor to the combustion engine, but rather the battery. For BMW development board member Frank Weber, this is not a contradiction: “Both drives will coexist in the future,” he says.
Weber is banking on the expansion of the hydrogen infrastructure for long-distance transport, MAN, Daimler Trucks and Volvo have announced trucks with fuel cell drives because a battery is not worthwhile for very heavy trucks and long distances. “Hydrogen will find its way into mobility via heavy-duty traffic,” says Weber. “And when the infrastructure is created, we want to be at the forefront.”
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One station every 100 kilometers along the freeway would be enough for Weber, in cities one could live with four to five stations. Since you need far fewer filling stations for hydrogen than charging stations for electricity, the fuel cell is ideal for creating the last “twenty to thirty percent” of the energy transition in transport.
The decisive factor is the availability at the filling stations
Technically, too, BMW sees the hurdles falling. The new generation of fuel cells is twice as powerful as its predecessors. Unlike charging with electricity, a fuel cell car can be fully refueled in three minutes. The system was tested in northern Sweden in winter. Unlike cars with batteries, there is no loss of performance, “the fuel cell works even at minus 30 degrees,” promises Weber.
The past shows how difficult the task of fuel cells is.
(Photo: imago images/Jochen Eckel)
And unlike the battery, hardly any lithium, cobalt or other critical raw materials are needed to manufacture the fuel cell. Only expensive platinum is needed – but there is plenty of that in the catalytic converters of the old combustion engines at the scrap yard.
“There is a certain skepticism at BMW about a purely electric course,” says Stefan Bratzel, Director of the Center of Automotive Management. “The Board of Management therefore wants to keep an alternative to battery power open.”
But as a relatively small car manufacturer, it will be difficult to establish fuel cells on the market, warns Bratzel. This applies to the costs of the drive itself, but also to the availability of a nationwide tank network. “That’s why the fuel cell is a daring bet on the future, especially if no mass manufacturer like Toyota or Volkswagen joins in,” says Bratzel.
The VW Group has not yet followed suit
The past shows how difficult the task of fuel cells is. Around the turn of the millennium, it was above all the Daimler managers who raved about the mass use of “cold combustion”. In 2003, Mercedes even launched a small series with the A-Class, but it has remained small series and test fleets to this day. Mercedes is currently only working on a pre-series model of the GLC off-road vehicle, because the focus is “initially on the roll-out of battery-electric vehicles”.
>> Also read our guest comment: Emission-free, powerful, versatile – why the fuel cell has a future
VW managers in particular are skeptical about the fuel cell. Audi boss Markus Duesmann – himself a member of the BMW board of directors until 2018 – currently sees no “essential area of application” for the technology in cars. Above all, he does not see the availability of green hydrogen in the foreseeable future.
“So I don’t believe in hydrogen for use in cars,” says Duesmann, who is responsible for technology throughout the VW Group. Nevertheless, Audi continues to develop it.
The car has not yet made a breakthrough.
(Photo: imago images/CTK Photo)
So far, only Honda and Toyota have made serious attempts to get the fuel cell onto the market. At the end of 2014, Toyota presented the Mirai, the world’s first mass-produced vehicle. But this car did not make the breakthrough either.
The second edition of the “Mirai” was sold just 6,000 times last year. As with its competitors in Europe, China and the USA, the battery now has the right of way.
More: Emission-free, powerful, versatile – why the fuel cell has a future