Clean machines

Mark Dixon’s review of the Toyota Mirai in Octane 197

rubbed me up the wrong way. I read it as claiming that hydrogen is superior to battery electric – but hydrogen is not going to be the solution for the climate emergency. It isn’t cleaner than, nor as practical as, battery electric.

Yes, a hydrogen car has zero harmful tailpipe emissions, but currently 98% of hydrogen produced is from fossil fuels. Hydrogen can be produced from water using electrolysis but it takes a lot of electricity to do so, so it only makes sense as a useful way of utilising excess renewable electricity production capacity.

As it stands, a battery-electric vehicle is 73% efficient, fuel-cell electric is 22% and internal combustion engine 13% (source: Transport & Environment), so clean hydrogen beats ICE but is a long way from renewable energy being charged into a battery and converted to movement.

Hydrogen will hopefully have its place in clean transport but the inefficiency of current technologies means that it doesn’t yet stack up as a viable alternative for battery-electric passenger cars. The uses for clean hydrogen will probably be in haulage, shipping and very long-distance passenger cars, even planes.

With the right mix of rapid charging, destination and on-street (Ubitricity’s lamppost charging, for example) or at-home charging, the convenience of fossil-fuel cars can not only be matched but improved upon. There are certainly value chain issues regarding batteries, from mining to production, that need to be cleaned up, but when a battery is no longer usable in a car it will still have decades of service left as storage, so they are far from disposable items.

Electrifying classic cars [above] also presents massive opportunities and will keep our pieces of industrial art on the road for future generations. Rolle Nieminem, Surrey