Hydrogen storage demands purpose-built facilities, which can’t simply be pluged into the national grid like a battery charging point – and the current cost to build one hydrogen station is estimated to be £2 million. More electric charging points are being added each day (though many say not enough for the 2030 deadline) but should you have a fuel cell car the amount of hydrogen refuelling stops is woeful. As for public chargers, according to Zap Map, at the end of December 2022, there were more than 37,000 electric vehicle charging points across the UK, across 22,000 charging locations. The battery electric car’s supreme advantage is being able to ‘refuel’ at every place there is an electricity supply, even if a charge at home is still measured in hours. Data collected by JATO Dynamics in 2021 stated that global sales of hydrogen fuel-cell cars totalled 15,500 units around the world. Globally, hydrogen cars aren’t really happening. Mercedes gave up on its entire hydrogen car programme in 2020 but went into partnership with Volvo to developed fuel cell heavy goods vehicles. BMW has just started small scale manufacture of iX5 Hydrogen SUVs in Germany but only for a worldwide test fleet, with no talk of UK sales. Other car makers are dabbling with fuel cells or have given up. Take out the cars that Hyundai UK would keep for its own needs and not that many have actually gone to customers. We weren’t able to establish how many have been sold, although How Many Left, a UK registration database estimates that a grand total of 29 cars have been registered. The Nexo is still listed on the UK website, but with no price and has been reported as being only available for business customers. ![]() Hyundai claimed that after attaching the hydrogen 700 bar nozzle to the car and locking it shut refuelling would be completed in approximately five minutes when the hydrogen tanks were full for up to 413 miles of driving range. In 2021 it was £65K including the now-discontinued Plug-In Car Grant. Hyundai launched its second-generation fuel cell car, the Nexo, in the UK in 2019. Toyota is also leading a consortium to develop a prototype hydrogen fuel cell-powered version of its Hilux pick-up at the company’s UK vehicle plant in Burnaston, Derbyshire. A total of about 160 Mirais have been registered in the UK across both generations, although 45 of those have already been declared SORN (in other words, they are currently not registered and cannot be used on public roads). ![]() Since 2020, Toyota has sold 60 in the UK and global cumulative sales since launch stand at about 20,000 (to the end of October 2022). Two versions can currently be ordered at £54K and £65K respectively, and two leasing deals are on offer. The current Mirai has three tanks and a claimed real-world driving range of 400 miles. Toyota introduced its first Mirai (Japanese for ‘future’) in 2015, which was replaced by a second generation from 2020. There are currently only two hydrogen fuel cell cars in the UK: the Toyota Mirai saloon and the Hyundai Nexo SUV. The government claims there are over 300 hydrogen vehicles on UK roads, mostly passenger cars and buses, but the buses far outnumber the cars. A second generation appeared in 2016, but that was never available in the UK either and ended production in 2021. ![]() However, it was made in tiny numbers and only available to lease in Japan and California. In 2008, the Honda FCX Clarity was the first full production fuel cell-powered car in the world. They can withstand double their normal operating pressures and are surrounded by sensors. ![]() They typically have a carbon fibre shell surrounded by a glass fibre layer. Modern hydrogen fuel tanks are just as safe, if not safer, than petrol tanks (petrol being another highly explosive product we are quite happy living with on a daily basis). However, that was 86 years ago and a lot has changed about how hydrogen is used and stored. That also means hydrogen is highly explosive if it leaks, which is why you inevitably read and see references to the 1937 Hindenberg airship explosion anytime anyone mentions hydrogen-powered cars. Hydrogen is used because it’s a great energy carrier, meaning a small amount can release a lot of energy to drive the vehicle. The fuel cell generates electricity by forcing hydrogen to react with oxygen. The stack is made up of individual cells which each produce less than one volt of electricity, so hundreds of them are connected together to produce the necessary voltage to power the electric motor. In simple terms, a fuel cell car consists of several pressurised fuel tanks which supply what is known as a fuel cell stack.
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