Can we stop talking about hydrogen-powered (light-duty) vehicles?

A few of weeks ago, David van Westrop and I were at a future strategy and scenario planning workshop called SME Navigator, hosted by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies . There was another company attending the workshop that made monitoring devices for large, industrial factories. When we explained what Monta did, their old-school Danish CEO immediately perked up. To be fair, their whole team took quite an interest in our business (the woman leading the workshop even uses Monta at home), as many of them owned EVs and had some strong opinions to share about their experiences. But it was the CEO who said “Have you guys thought about the grid at all? With all the EVs being sold, the grid won’t be able to handle the load. We need hydrogen vehicles. You watch, hydrogen is going to be very important.”

I asked David to look up how many hydrogen refueling stations there are in Denmark. There are seven. Not seven thousand. Not seven hundred. Seven. Total. Contrast that number with 14k+ EV charging stations, with more than 1k DC fast charging stations. Call me a skeptic, but I don’t see hydrogen-powered vehicles making up a significant part of the vehicle mix in Denmark - or other countries - for a long time.

Fuel cell vehicles, powered by hydrogen, have been on the market since the early 2000s. There are only two carmakers that have made a meaningful effort at producing hydrogen-powered passenger vehicles: Hyundai and Toyota. And what do they have to show for their efforts? Not a lot: FCVs accounted for only 0.02% of global passenger vehicle sales last year. That’s 15,391 total hydrogen-powered passenger vehicles sold in 2022. The number of hydrogen vehicles sold in Japan - where Toyota has bizarrely been hedging their bets against EVs - shrank in 2022 from 2,440 to 840. Even in the one market where they are actually trying to facilitate adoption, hydrogen isn't catching on.

When it comes to light-duty vehicles - your personal cars - there is one clear winner: electric vehicles. It is not close. Electric cars are expected to account for 18% of global sales in 2023. Year after year, industry prognosticators have to revise their electric vehicle adoption predictions upward. If there are still people out there making hydrogen vehicle predictions, I hope they are revising them downward (although it’s hard to go much lower than 0.02%). Thankfully, Hyundai wisely realized years ago that hydrogen was not going to be a winner and they are making a huge bet on EVs, investing $28 billion in the next decade and churning out impressive vehicles. Toyota and whatever the hell they are doing with EVs is another story for another time.

Now, hydrogen may yet have a role to play in greening transportation. In heavy trucking for example, there are some promising signs. California has some pilot projects, like the NorCAL Zero project that will have 30 hydrogen semis moving goods between the Port of Oakland and inland destinations such as Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, and Fresno. If the right infrastructure is put in place, hydrogen trucks would have an advantage over their electric counterparts, with shorter refueling times that are critical to keeping goods on the move. As long as it is green hydrogen. There are apparently many different hues of hydrogen: green, blue, grey, brown, black, turquoise, and pink ??

But not everybody agrees that a hydrogen-powered trucking industry is our future. The CEO of the 2nd largest truck manufacturer in Europe, MAN, told Austrian newspaper Der Standard, “E-mobility is coming now. The technology is mature and most efficient. In our estimation, 80[%] or even 90% of logistics trucks will be electrically driven.” Why? Hydrogen may offer a quicker way to refuel trucks, but green hydrogen remains far too expensive to produce.

Another example from the Netherlands clearly demonstrates the skepticism towards hydrogen vehicles and strong preference for electric rigs. They opened up a scheme to subsidize heavy vehicles in the country - both electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles - and had to close the application within 24 hours due to high demand. Spoiler alert: it was not due to high demand for big hydrogen trucks. It was revealed that all 1,600 applications for support of €17,800-€131,900 per vehicle were for battery-electric trucks. There was not a single request to subsidize a hydrogen fuel-cell unit, according to figures from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). That is a pretty clear signal from market participants about the direction of the sector.

That is not to say that heavy duty vehicles are turning electric overnight. It is probably the hardest and slowest transportation sector to electrify, given the size of vehicles, distances covered, and charging challenges. Serious infrastructure still needs to be constructed to support the unique needs of heavy vehicles and trucking companies. A semi that has to sit and wait for an open charger is costing somebody money. They need to fuel up quickly and hit the road. Milence is probably the furthest along in building out European-wide heavy-vehicle charging infrastructure, but there remains a lot of work to be done.

Given the challenges of electrifying the trucking industry, I would love hydrogen to play a role in transitioning away from carbon-powered trucks in an “all-of-the-above” approach. But can we please all acknowledge that light-duty vehicles in the 2020’s are a bit like air (balloon) travel in the 1930’s: hydrogen is clearly not going to be the fuel of the future.