PART 3: HYDROGEN FUEL-CELL VEHICLES
Hyundai’s hydrogen fuel cell Nexo promises to be the EV that you can refuel at a bowser. In theory...
It’s the future. Which is why we can’t refuel it right now
N THE face of it, powering a car with a hydrogen fuel cell endows it with all sorts of benefits. Its only tailpipe emission is water, it has the same silent tractability of an EV and it overcomes the biggest headache of a batterypowered vehicle in that it can be ‘recharged’ in mere seconds at a bowser. What’s more, you’re not forced to carry hundreds of kilograms of batteries everywhere you go.
Then you consider the process for getting the liquid hydrogen into your vehicle and wonder whether it’s really such a smart idea. The fuel requires a lot of energy to produce, and in Australia, that means coal-fired power stations creating the electricity required to drive the process. Then it will be transported in a diesel truck to a servo, whereupon you drive it around in your car, converting this expensively-created hydrogen back to electricity once again. Until renewables like wind and solar contribute around 25 percent of the grid’s power – and in Australia it is hovering around 17 percent – it makes more environmental sense to put that energy to work replacing coal-fired capacity in the first place rather than using it to make liquid hydrogen. As it stands, it’s a poor displacement. Factor in the dollar cost of production and the fact that the only hydrogen bowser in Australia is, at present, located in Hyundai’s north Sydney HQ, and the tech looks like the most terminal of dead ends.
Drive Hyundai’s Nexo for five minutes, however, and you start trying to make the case for the hydrogen fuel cell. It feels like the future, a mobile motivational poster for overcoming all of the objections I’ve just mentioned. With some political gumption, they are all surmountable. We could go back and forth all we like about how the mining lobby skews the political agenda here, but at some point sooner than we think, Australia’s hand will be forced by international carbon dioxide obligations. When – not if – that happens, perhaps hydrogen-powered cars can step into the breach. Hyundai is already trying to subtly influence the decisions in Canberra, agreeing to supply 20 Nexos this year to the ACT Government as part of the Hornsdale Wind Farm project.
The Nexo is the Koreans’ second stab at a production FCEV (fuel cell electric vehicle). Its first was the ix35 FCEV, but since that car appeared in 2012 the technology has been refined, such that the Nexo now has a range of 800km, some 206km more than the old ix35 could manage on a tank. Power and acceleration have also improved. The fuel cell stack has been designed in-house by Hyundai, another example of the company’s formidable vertical integration. Another area where the Nexo moves the game on is in its cold start capability, admittedly of marginal benefit to most in this market. Of more interest is its hot weather ability that has also been improved, the car running reliably in temperatures exceeding 49 degrees Celsius.
At 4670mm long and 1860mm wide, the Nexo is almost as big as the seven-seat Santa Fe, but it sits lower and looks sleeker, shrugging off its generous sizing. Sit inside and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in a Lexus product given its button-heavy centre stack, muted colour palette, large LED displays and ostentatious speaker grilles. The infotainment system is unlike anything I’ve seen in a Hyundai and responds to both prodding the screen and rotating/clicking a console-mounted dial.
Unlike the old ix35 FCEV, the platform has been designed from scratch to accommodate the hydrogen