Korean automaker and electrical car chief Hyundai group has used the expertise convention CES 2024 in Las Vegas to showcase an enlargement in its controversial hydrogen technique.
The corporate has been pushing hydrogen as a substitute for batteries for the reason that launch of its hydrogen gas cell system in 2020, saying that it now has the very best market share in hydrogen-powered car gross sales.
Nonetheless, this may increasingly backfire, as most specialists agree that inexperienced hydrogen has misplaced the race to fossil gas free automobiles, and can extra doubtless be used solely in a couple of fringe instances similar to heavy vans and aviation.
“At Hyundai, we consider that science and humanity are two sides of the identical coin; that superior expertise must also make folks’s lives higher,” mentioned Jay Chang, President and CEO of Hyundai Motor Firm.
“Clear hydrogen must be for everybody, powering every part, and out there in all places.”
Hyundai introduced the enlargement of HTWO – an abbreviation of ‘Hydrogen’ and ‘Humanity’ – it’s model of gas cell system into the bigger hydrogen worth chain enterprise model. The corporate says this can embody manufacturing, storage, transportation and utilization, as oppose to simply utilization.
The corporate initiatives it should off-take 3 million tonnes of hydrogen per yr by 2035. Nonetheless, it notes that this won’t be used simply in hydrogen automobiles, as an alternative suggesting its use throughout inexperienced metal manufacturing, energy technology and clear logistics.
Additionally they introduced using Waste to Hydrogen and Plastic to Hydrogen initiatives. Waste to Hydrogen makes use of biogas to type hydrogen, whereas Plastic to Hydrogen melts plastic at extraordinarily excessive temperatures to provide graphene and hydrogen gasoline. This plastic to hydrogen course of is on show on the convention, whereas the waste to hydrogen system is being trialed in Indonesia.
Neither of those strategies are zero emissions, and because of the small quantity of hydrogen that may be collected, these initiatives are unlikely to make up the majority of Hyundai’s hydrogen.
Hyundai is wanting additional than simply automobiles to their hydrogen hopes, doubtlessly as a result of hydrogen is unlikely to be the gas we use in our automobiles sooner or later.
The difficulty is a minimum of partially attributable to efficiencies. A UK trial final yr discovered that creating inexperienced hydrogen through electrolysis, compressing and storing it, then utilizing it in a gas cell to energy a car has an effectivity of 23 per cent, in comparison with 69 per cent for an EV.
This implies you’d require thrice extra land space for wind or photo voltaic to generate the identical quantity of vitality in your automotive.
Late final yr, Hyundai partnered with Toyota (one other firm that has rejected EVs prior to now) to broaden the variety of hydrogen refuelling stations in Australia.
These two corporations are the one ones who’ve launched hydrogen automobiles in Australia, with low adoption of the automobiles attributable to simply 10 hydrogen stations located across the nation.