BMW confirms the development of new experimental hydrogen vehicles

Last month, internal sources at BMW told the British magazine Autocar that the brand is working on a new hydrogen-powered model to compete with its rivals’ offerings. This week, the manufacturer’s sales and marketing director, Ian Robertson, officially confirmed to that publication that they will soon put this new technology to the test.

The executive added that, as the earlier sources mentioned, this propulsion system is being developed together with Toyota and that significant progress has been made in the design of the fuel cell and in the technique for storing hydrogen. BMW plans to build a small number of experimental cars in the near future to verify that everything works.

The 2006 Hydrogen 7 had a 256 CV V12 engine that could run on either petrol or hydrogen.

The problem, Robertson pointed out, is whether the hydrogen refuelling infrastructure will have reached the right level of cost-to-profitability ratio. His statements show a certain scepticism toward hydrogen on the part of BMW, which, for now, sees more of a future in electric mobility.

The reasons Robertson gives are based, on the one hand, on how expensive it still is to produce and distribute hydrogen and, on the other, on the progress being made in lithium-ion batteries. If they continue at this pace, Robertson predicts that within ten years consumers’ fears about the range offered by electric cars and the time needed to recharge them will have dissipated.

If it materialises, the next hydrogen vehicle from BMW will share technology with the Toyota Mirai.

It is not yet clear that BMW will bring a model equipped with a hydrogen fuel cell to market. However promising it sounds, the project it has in hand, apparently related to the Toyota Mirai, remains far from receiving the green light from the manufacturer’s top management, who had already experimented with hydrogen in 2006 when they conceived the Hydrogen 7.

Via | Autocar