Hyundai Making Big Hydrogen Push With Cheaper Fuel Cells For Trucks, Drones And Sports Car

Hyundai Motor, which is readying a brand new line of battery-powered autos, says hydrogen is important for reducing carbon emissions from transportation, particularly heavy-duty vans, and intends to roll out a less expensive, smaller gasoline cell system to energy each industrial automobile mannequin it makes—in addition to drones, emergency autos, houses, trains, ships and a sports activities automotive. 

The Korean industrial large, which has beforehand dedicated billions of {dollars} to commercialize hydrogen-powered vans, stated it is going to introduce a next-generation fuel cell system in 2023 that’s 50% cheaper, 30% smaller and twice as highly effective as the present model. Each truck, bus and industrial automobile it produces may also be supplied with a gasoline cell powertrain by 2028, and the corporate stated its hydrogen-power system will attain price parity with battery packs by 2030.

“International locations and firms are growing possible carbon-neutral options to assist fight international warming. Hyundai Motor Group’s answer to this drawback is to encourage a shift within the power paradigm to hydrogen,” Group Chairman Euisun Chung stated right this moment in a video presentation. “Hydrogen is a robust answer to combating local weather change.” 

Hyundai joins automotive and trucking rivals together with Toyota, Hino, Common Motors, Daimler, Volvo, Cummins and newer upstarts such Nikola and Hyzon in lining up behind hydrogen as a greater electric-vehicle possibility for heavy, long-range autos than batteries owing to weight financial savings and quicker refueling. But large challenges stay: the know-how has to beat excessive prices for gasoline cells stacks and hydrogen tanks that make the autos costlier than these powered by carbon-based fuels or batteries. Moreover, the provision of “inexperienced” hydrogen gasoline sourced from renewable power and water, or sourced from waste supplies, must broaden dramatically to make sure most carbon discount. 

Gas-cell and battery-powered autos are each electrical, sharing the identical motors and lots of different elements. The important thing distinction is batteries retailer electrical energy and gasoline cells make it onboard as wanted, in an electrochemical course of that extracts electrons from hydrogen pressured by way of fuel-cell membranes. Other than electrical energy, the one byproduct is water vapor. Past automobiles and vans, they’ve been utilized by NASA for many years, they work as stationary electrical energy turbines and are being developed to energy trains and even ships and ferries. 

Hyundai’s large hydrogen push follows plans by Toyota to begin making gasoline cell modules at its Georgetown, Kentucky, plant in 2023 to be used in industrial autos, and Nikola’s gasoline cell partnership with Bosch that features making the ability models on the firm’s new Arizona plant, additionally in 2023. Common Motors plans to make its “Hydrotec” gasoline cells for vans at a manufacturing unit in Michigan in a partnership that features Honda. 

Its new gasoline cell modules might be produced in 100- and 200-kilowatt variations. It additionally desires to make use of the know-how for “trams, trains, ships and concrete air mobility,” Chung stated and exploring choices to make use of hydrogen for non-transportation purposes together with dwelling and constructing energy techniques and in energy crops. Hyundai stated in late 2018 it will spend nearly $7 billion on efforts to commercialize hydrogen know-how, aiming to supply a whole bunch of 1000’s of autos powered by the gasoline yearly by 2030.

In the course of the video presentation, Chung confirmed off a hydrogen-powered, autonomous Trailer Drone, the corporate’s concept for a clear, robotic truck. Hyundai is engaged on ideas for emergency autos, a rescue drone and the Imaginative and prescient FK, a future high-performance, rear-wheel-drive sports activities automotive that accelerates from 0-60 mph in below 4 seconds. 

“Now we have lengthy understood the super potential of hydrogen power, so over the previous 20 years we have now devoted important sources and skills to growing hydrogen-based applied sciences,” Chung stated. “Our imaginative and prescient is to use hydrogen power in all areas of life and business.”