The new BMW X6 and X7 will be powered by hydrogen

BMW’s head of research and development, Klaus Froehlich, has revealed that the German carmaker will eventually sell versions of the popular BMW X6 and BMW X7 SUVs with hydrogen fuel cells.

Speaking with a number of sources on a wide range of topics, particularly electrification, Froehlich has assured that the latest hydrogen fuel cell technologies that BMW is developing with Toyota will make the business case for such powertrains much stronger.

According to Froehlich, a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain costs approximately 10 times more than the system of a battery electric vehicle (BEV). “We plan to match those costs by 2025 with the third generation of our scalable hydrogen fuel cell system, which could generate volumes in the hundreds of thousands,” he noted.

BMW’s most immediate plans will require the “pilot production” of the second-generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicles from the brand, including the aforementioned BMW X6 and BMW X7, to begin soon. It remains to be seen how far these vehicles might be from production.

BMW X6 and X7 could now be available with a hydrogen fuel cell

Froehlich believes that the current timeline for hydrogen fuel cell development means they “could be the most suitable solution for passenger cars by 2025.” The company also believes hydrogen fuel cells will be very important for light and heavy commercial trucks.

“We foresee hydrogen fuel cells as a viable solution for light and heavy commercial trucks, which face very difficult CO2 reduction targets and already use very efficient diesel engines, so the next step could only be electrification. But you cannot electrify a heavy truck with batteries, because reducing the payload from 6 tonnes to 7 tonnes is absolute nonsense,” he assured. “With a single refuelling station, you can refuel a fleet of 100 hydrogen-powered light trucks overnight.”

Electrification will come, but the speed of adoption will vary greatly. That is why BMW’s R&D chief, Klaus Froehlich, believes future vehicle architectures will need to be flexible enough to quickly adapt to stricter global emissions standards, as well as changing customer tastes. Except for the fully electric i3, BMW only uses flexible architectures that can accommodate internal combustion, plug-in hybrid and battery electric powertrains.

For Froehlich, “a flexible architecture is the best solution for the next five to 10 years, but clearly if the world becomes fully electric, we will develop dedicated architectures.”

“Ten years ago, when we developed the CLAR architecture that debuted in 2015 with the 7 Series, we would have had to add 800 kg to 900 kg of batteries to offer a BEV variant. This would have killed the architecture, not to mention the pure driving pleasure we intend to offer with every car we make. We expected that over a decade battery density could increase 2.5 times. By 2020, we will be close to 2.7 times. Therefore, in 2021 we will update the CLAR architecture with a new central floor that can house higher-density batteries. This will allow our plug-in hybrids to travel 80, 100 to 120 km in fully electric mode, and will also allow us to install a larger fuel tank than the one we have in our current plug-in hybrids.”

What will happen in Europe?

In Europe there is reluctance to jump directly to BEVs, so plug-in hybrids are the right solution. They will be used as BEVs during the week and run on petrol at weekends or on long trips. We expect plug-in hybrids to account for up to 25 percent of European sales, petrol and diesel will have more than 50 percent, and the rest will be BEVs.

“Regulations on internal combustion engines are accelerating and becoming more diverse around the world. We have to update our engines every year, especially for China. Because this costs a lot of money, we have to rationalise our offers. On the diesel side, production of the entry-level 1.5-litre three-cylinder engine will end and the 400 CV six-cylinder will not be replaced because it is too expensive and complicated to build with its four turbos. However, our four- and six-cylinder diesel engines will remain for at least another 20 years and our petrol units for at least 30 years.”

“The V-12 engine may have no future given that we only produce a few thousand units each year and the several thousand euros of additional cost needed to meet stricter emissions standards. When it comes to the V-8 engine, it is already difficult to build a solid business case for keeping it alive, given that we have a high-output six-cylinder plug-in hybrid unit that delivers 441 kilowatts of power and enough torque to destroy many gearboxes.

Technical specifications of the cars in this article

CrossoverBMW X64 versions · from 103,400 €

Off-RoadBMW X73 versions · from 123,050 €