Are hydrogen fuel cells an actual threat to battery electric vehicles?

With so many EVs on the road, should H2 even be a consideration anymore?

Nobody with any reliable information at all would tell you that hydrogen fuel cells are the leading technology when it comes to zero emission passenger vehicles at the moment.

H2 simply doesn’t have the numbers on the roads

It would be ridiculous to pretend that the world as a whole is even ready to suddenly flood its roads with passenger cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. There are far too many barriers in the way – first and foremost, a place to refuel.  While the same could be said about battery electric cars, there has certainly been a more widespread rollout of recharging infrastructure for those vehicles in the passenger market than has been the case for H2. Does that mean H2 is dead? According to many companies invested in the technology, not at all. While there was a trend in which many automakers that had been developing hydrogen fuel cell technologies decided to back out entirely or switch gears to the commercial or industrial markets, some are starting to turn around again and look at what H2 now has to offer.

A lot has changed in hydrogen fuel cells

With so much research going on into hydrogen fuel cells, the situation today simply isn’t the same as what it was a couple of years ago, let alone five or more.  Furthermore, alongside these advancements has come new technologies in producing clean H2 and ways to bring the costs down. This has opened some new doors, and investors and companies are both taking notice, including some that had previously looked away. As was recently published by Hydrogen Fuel News, Toyota and BMW have formed a powerful new partnership for developing and launching new H2-powered passenger vehicle models.  BMW will be rolling out its own model first, but the technology they create together will also be implemented into a future Toyota model, according to their plans.

It’s not there yet, but it’s moving forward

Would anyone really say that hydrogen fuel cells are a threat to battery electric vehicles right now? Definitely not.  Will H2 overcome EVs in the future? It’s far too early to say.  However, what is most likely is that the two technologies will each play their own role on future roads, as was the case for gasoline and diesel for the last many decades.