Greentomatocars’ hydrogen car refuels at new station

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• Jonathan Sumpton - 03/03/2017 11:08

  There is one glaringly obvious reason why HFC cars will be adopted over purely electric cars. Imagine you own a petrol station ... you have 10m square to devote to either a recharging point for an electric car or an hydrogen pump. An hydrogen car refills in three minutes, an electric car in 90. Which will you choose? An Hydrogen pump will generate vastly better footfall through your payment kiosk than an electric car so you will sell more "meal deals", papers, magazines, packs of batteries with an HFC. Where is the UK going to find all the space that will need to disappear under tarmac to create purely EV charging deserts? Space is money ... you have to pay business rates on the site. In an island as overcrowded as the UK, either we switch to Hydrogen or we just carry on gassing ourselves.

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• Jonathan Sumpton - 03/03/2017 11:28

  and, I should add, creation isn't going to run out of hydrogen but the planet may run out of the cobalt and lithium needed to replace the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) powered cars ... quite apart from the inefficient weight to power ratios of EV cars ... the batteries are so heavy the chassis needs to be a more expensive, higher spec than on lighter HFC (Hydrogen Fuel Cell) powered vehicles. The batteries also only last for about 5 to 7 years. For me, the deal breaker is going to be the fuel stations ... how many existing fuel stations have the space to add charging bays capable of serving as many cars as 1 Hydrogen pump? If there's gridlock on the M25 and you're low on electric, what do you do? In areas where there is a very high density of cars, you need services for them. When a new runway at Heathrow means the demolition of a village, what are the chances space is going to be found to charge electric vehicles using the M25? It's the fact that hydrogen can be added more easily to the existing refuelling and services infrastructure that makes hydrogen vehicles less disruptive than purely electric vehicles. In parts of the world like Norway ... where they have lots of free, clean electricity and a very low density of population as well as a fair bit of wealth, electric cars and the charging bays they need make sense in some areas ... but not most of the UK.

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