SKEPTICS, LISTEN TO CHINA’S FATHER OF EV MOVEMENT
When Gang preaches a hydrogen future, Musk should be all ears, says David Booth.
Wan Gang is China’s father of the electric vehicle movement, the man credited with putting more than two million electric vehicles on the road in the world’s most populous country.
If one believes all the accolades he has received, this German-trained engineer single-handedly launched his country’s EV subsidy program, bent automakers local and foreign to his vision of reducing emissions, and perhaps more importantly, convinced the Chinese government 20 years ago that the then-untested electric car was the technology that would liberate China from its dependence on imported oil.
And now he thinks the future is hydrogen.
Wan does not think that fuel-cell vehicles will supplant battery-powered EVS; he believes they will happily coexist. Wan told Bloomberg that electric and fuel-cell cars are both important.
“In cities, people prefer to drive electric cars, while intercity, people prefer fuel-cell cars,” he said.
Wan is not alone in rejecting Elon Musk’s battery-or-bust low-emissions future. A KPMG study found that 78 per cent of senior automotive executives polled think “FCEVS will be the breakthrough for electric mobility.” Interestingly, 62 per cent of these same execs think “BEVS will fail due to infrastructure challenges.” Their reasoning is simple, according to KPMG: FCEVS will solve the recharging and infrastructure issue BEVS face today, “making recharging times of 25 to 45 minutes for BEVS seem unreasonable.”
There are obstacles to Wan’s proposed hydrogen future, foremost being the cost of adopting hydrogen as an alternative fuel. FCEV technology is horribly expensive. Like BEVS in their infancy, FCEVS are so expensive that automakers must subvent their leasing to make them even remotely affordable. And, while the “supercharger” stations required to recharge EVS are not cheap, their implementation can be rolled out gradually, outlets able to incrementally install units that cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 as the market demands. A hydrogen refuelling station requires a commitment of millions of dollars just to get off the ground.
That huge upfront investment makes refuelling a fuel-cell vehicle comparatively expensive. In the U.S. the price of hydrogen is around US$15 a kilogram. That’s equivalent to about a six-buck gallon of gasoline. In other words, an FCEV will cost about US$80 to go 500 kilometres, compared with a conventional car that costs about half as much in gasoline.
However, that may soon change. Shane Stephens, principal and chief development officer at Firstelement Fuel — which runs 19 of California’s 39 hydrogen refuelling stations — tells CNBC that his company’s near-term target is $10/kg, roughly the equivalent of a US$4 gallon of gas.
The catalyst for widespread adoption of hydrogen as a transportation fuel will be long-haul trucks. While battery-powered semis may prove effective for short-range haulage, lithium-ion is simply impractical for longhaul trucking. Not only will effective payloads be reduced
— by as much as seven tons per trailer — the recharging times are simply business-busting. A truck with a one megawatt-hour battery will need two hours plugged into a 450-kilowatt charger — a technology not yet rolled out — for a full dose of electrons.
Compare that with the 10 to 15 minutes required to refuel a diesel rig and the 20 minutes estimated to re-gas a Nikola semi, and the reason for the trucking industry’s skepticism surrounding batteries becomes obvious.
This brings us to the other roadblock to widespread adoption of FCEVS: Elon Musk himself. The Tesla chief executive has famously labelled hydrogen-powered vehicles “fool’s cells,” saying their success “is simply not possible.”
Wan predicts there will be one million FCEVS on Chinese roads by 2030, inner city commuters probably still preferring the plug-at-home convenience of an EV while those who prowl intercity highways gravitating to the quicker refuelling of hydrogen. And when the “father of the electric car movement” speaks, even skeptics — are you listening, Elon? — need to pay attention.