In the future auto era where EV reigns, FCV’s business opportunities & developments seem to stagnate. Moreover, EV-related topics dominate the top three car markets worldwide: China, North America, and Europe. On the other hand, the largest and third largest auto groups -Toyota and Hyundai - are still developing fuel cell technologies. Besides, from an environmental perspective, the electricity-free FCV is more suitable for humanity’s long-term goals. While major countries and organizations (the UN and EU) are laying their plans for carbon neutrality, transportation remains an essential topic; and apparently, the popularization of EVs is not enough to catch up with net-zero’s timetable. As Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, mentioned, many countries cannot quickly deploy ample charging facilities for EVs. Although EV-related development is relatively straightforward for developed nations, countries with a short supply of electricity (including Taiwan) or little economic strength will not see the popularization of EVs for a long time. As stated above, parallel development for FCVs is closer than we think.
Similar to EVs, FCVs existed a hundred years ago, yet due to their high costs of storage and transportation and internal combustion engines’ rapid advancements, the technology lay dormant till its resurgence brought by Toyota’s 2014 Mirai, which remains the staple of FCV. Additionally, FCV’s refueling process is as fast as an ICE car, and the recently-announced Mercedes GenH2 heavy-duty truck utilized liquid hydrogen with mileage range of up to 1,000 km using 80 kg tank to solve the issue of gas hydrogen’s low energy density. It would seem like FCV is better suited for logistics industry than BEV and contributes more environmental benefits for the traditional diesel-engine-dominated truck industry. However, these are all ideal scenarios, for the liquid hydrogen’s manufacturing process and storage equipment ( needed to maintain at extremely low temperature of -252 Celsius ) needs advanced tech and high investment. It will take more than a few years for mass production and deployment of enough hydrogen refueling infrastructure. According to what Mercedes stated, GenH2 still requires five years of testing until mass production in 2027.
As for passenger cars, Toyota will enter the Chinese NEV market with Mirai, challenging the reigning Chinese self-owned EV brands. Moreover, Hyundai’s Nexo will also start testing water in the Chinese auto market. However, these two models’ pricing point is much higher than that of EVs ( both exceeding more than 500k RMB), and it may take a while to achieve economic equilibrium.