Are Hydrogen Cars The Future? We Drive BMW's Hydrogen iX5 (plus what this means for South Africa)

[@mrhowmuch]

Looking at our current situation , we still have a long way to go in integrating electric cars and making them accessible for everyday South Africans , but Hydrogen seems a lil more doable considering it can be incorporated to existing fuel stations.

[@louishenn3028]

It's a very good looking car, but there's a reason automakers haven't made them. ICE: cheap to buy, expensive to fuel. EV: expensive to buy, cheap to fuel. HFCEV: expensive to buy, expensive to fuel. Fun fact: a hydrogen refueling dispenser (that can fill your car in 5 mins) is about R30m to commission. An ultra-fast DC charger (that takes 20 mins) costs about R2m. 15x the price to save customers a few minutes on refueling is a tough sell for infrastructure providers.

[@Sushi_219]

Definitely shoudnt let the government take the lead, need a private company to start the hydrogen production in south africa for it to be a success.

[@BubblesTheCat1]

The government shouldn't take the lead in anything in South Africa. Look how they've stuffed up everything already.

[@TheWfurst]

Sounds a lot more attainable, infrustructure-wise, than electric vehicles for the South African market. I'd be very interested... if I could afford to buy such a vehicle.

[@atlegangletsoge6165]

"...Like a politician in really cold weather" 10:00🤣🤣. This a great informative video 👑

[@oskidocolor3065]

It's interesting that we're revisiting hydrogen tech once again, decades later. Hopefully this time around it works out sort of like how Electric cars are now, which were also explored in the past. Fingers crossed indeed.

[@buyanifakudze3489]

Yaaa... It's good to see the industry being more open to different ideas.

[@giofyocars8581]

Sounds like hydrogen might be a viable fuel source given its sustainable characteristics, thanks for the video. With South Africa having a multitude of filling stations as mentioned it might just be streamlined and be an alternative fuel source for motorists in the country. Also need to consider the regulation of hydrogen production, how much will be exported.

[@chrisengelbrecht1839]

The ONLY reason, legacy car companies will push for H2 is because oil companies will continue to control the energy. You never mentioned the cost to fill with H2 vs charge a battery. Not to mention you cant make your own H2 at home, but you can install solar panels on your home. Batteries for road transport is the future, if you dont think so, look at how china is progressing with trucks/mining/busses and cars. H2 might have a place in certain markets but for every 1kwh used to charge an electric car, H2 will only effectively get 33% of that power dur to losses, thus financially very difficult

[@dawidbosman5786]

A significant benefit if this technology, and battery EV's, is that it can dramatically improve air quality in inner city environments. Bring it on!

[@marcushaw4851]

I'm just pleased that hydrogen is being looked at seriously again. It has seemed to me that battery EVs were being pushed by politicians as the only way to go more than the manufacturers. This always points to a problematic future. There is a lot against battery EVs imo mainly the mining involved and the transportation of the mined products. I would have liked to see more concentrated investigation into hydrogen and other alternative fuels over the past few decades than the possible knee jerk fall back on to battery EVs that has happened.

[@BubblesTheCat1]

Battery powered cars are not a solution at all. The batteries in an electric car weighs about 500 kg. To make a car battery of this type, you need to process 10 tons of salt for the required lithium, 15 tonnes of ore for the required cobalt, two tonnes of ore to get enough nickel, and 12 tonnes of copper ore. In total you have to process 200 tons of soil to make a single battery. And if this wasn't enough, this pollutes more than a petrol/diesel car does in 20 years of normal consumption. The mines in South America that mine these minerals also make use of forced child labour to work the mines. Think twice before you buy an electric car.

[@Bossstar750]

Lol 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

[@simmadotyeni2614]

Geez 😬 electric cars are as horribly bad 👎 😳 then, I say down to electric cars in South Africa 🇿🇦 ...mmh thanks it really does make no difference

[@BubblesTheCat1]

People should stop falling for this farce that electric cars are the future, and that they're better for the environment. They're NOT. They're far worse for the environment than internal combustion engines , environmentally speaking. Besides forgetting where the electricity to charge them comes from, how dirty that could be, there's also the following to consider: The batteries in an electric car weighs about 500 kg. To make a car battery of this type, you need to process 10 tons of salt for the required lithium, 15 tonnes of ore for the required cobalt, two tonnes of ore to get enough nickel, and 12 tonnes of copper ore. In total you have to process 200 tons of soil to make a single battery. And if this wasn't enough, this pollutes more than a petrol/diesel car does in 20 years of normal consumption. The mines in South America that mine these minerals also make use of forced child labour to work the mines. One electric car may go through three batteries in it's lifetime, making the pollution equal to 60 years of driving an internal combustion car. Think twice before you buy an electric car, it's a scam that uninformed people fall for.

[@cdutoit62]

Totally agree. Perhaps if a sustainable way of producing hydrogen for hydrogen only powered vehicles were possible. The instant batteries form part of the solution viability in terms of feasible economics, & harm to the environment is lost. Based on current battery technology, on any realistic scale, harm to the environment would be nothing less than catastrophic. It is disappointing to see how easily the realities of the scaled implementation of EV's are so casually overlooked by these car review channels. The popularity of the idea & perhaps the technological charm seems to drain all critical thought out of the reviews.

[@miguel--jesus]

Picture the many holiday makers travelling down to Durban, and having to stop at Harrismith to get their EV's recharged. How long would they have to wait for their batteries to fill up? I can only imagine long queues... Hydrogen powered vehicles on the other hand would make more sense, especially if they are saying it is going to only take 5 minutes to fill up.

[@markcuttler]

In the SA context, I do believe that that electricity generated at or near a coal powered power station, where the coal is transported a short distance via conveyer belt or local train and immediately burnt in the power station, is less carbon emitting than oil, pumped out of the ground, thousands of km away, shipped in huge carbon emitting super tankers to SA, then heated up and refined (with associated losses) and finally transported to Gauteng, where I stay and eventually pumped into an ICE car. Factor in the 30% efficiency of a petrol powered car to the 80-90% efficiency of my little BMWi3 and I’ll choose not to feel too guilty about my electric car, even if it is coal powered. (ps. No forex required to purchase local coal) Yes, I drive a 2016 BMW i3 with a range of 120 km and that range isn’t useful for many drivers. But, as a city runabout that costs 1/3 of the cost of a similarly sized ICE car to run… Loadshedding has not proven to be an insurmountable issue either.

[@keyoolin]

Maybe we should have trusted Toyota in their pursuit of Hydrogen cars for years now. Should we find ourselves on this path, Toyota's investments in Hydrogen engines are going to pay off quite well for them.

[@soothsayer5743]

Sustainability...the magic word....for every expense there must be a recovery in the form of income....

[@mrmusic1880]

Incredibly cool!

[@mikemachiane6610]

So far the prices aren't that bad....and as you say it will get better as soon as SA start's producing the H2...👌

[@NATE.M]

The future is synthetic fuels

[@djknoxxsa]

You "took a quick trick" very impressive 👏 👌 😅

[@Revenger_2014]

The BMW looks good Hydrogen doesn't seem like the solution at the moment nor in the near future My economies of scale might be off but the hydrogen fuel should cost more with greater demand How do we buy the merch Ciro?

[@pieterrossouw8596]

The only refilling station is in Potchefstroom of all places? Must be at the university.

[@theopauw2830]

Cool video! I figure the future lies in the combination of battery electric for urban runabouts and hydrogen for 4x4s and heavy trucks. And hopefully synthetic fuel for those of us who would like to keep some old ICE cars in a shed...

[@Carscoza]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@BubblesTheCat1]

The batteries in an electric car weighs about 500 kg. To make a car battery of this type, you need to process 10 tons of salt for the required lithium, 15 tonnes of ore for the required cobalt, two tonnes of ore to get enough nickel, and 12 tonnes of copper ore. In total you have to process 200 tons of soil to make a single battery. And if this wasn't enough, this pollutes more than a petrol/diesel car does in 20 years of normal consumption. The mines in South America that mine these minerals also make use of forced child labour to work the mines. Think twice before you buy an electric car.

[@theopauw2830]

@@BubblesTheCat1 Not sure where you are getting the 20 years. Not an expert but from what I have read: if we are talking carbon emissions, it is very much dependent on battery pack size and the source of the electricity. 20 years is pretty much if you take a luxury Tesla with a massive battery pack, run it purely on coal and then compare it to a Kia Picanto. If you are talking smaller EV's running on mixed electricity they will probably pay off their emissions debt in comparison to equivalent small ICE cars in 3-4 years - well within the life of the battery pack. Maybe not in SA with all our coal though... I will grant you also that not enough attention is being paid to the fact that a lot of the areas being mined for EV components are previously pristine areas. On the other hand, crude oil is not only mined by sticking a pipe in between some Middle Eastern dunes - much of it comes from damaging activity in the ocean or other areas like Nigeria or Alaska. What gets me though is it is super difficult for normal people to quantify this - few of the online comparisons go further than just carbon accounting. My own take: as someone who drives around 10000 km's a year and likes going as far away from main roads as possible, I will stick with my old CR-V for a while still. But I wouldn't have minded an i3 as a second car if I had a use for it.

[@aid786gp]

Grey H2...by product of gas production...cost to produce less than EUR2 / kg....Green H2 currently around EUR5 -6/kg and largely due to capital costs than input costs...

[@taylorns84]

1. The water to wheel efficiency of a HFCV is worse than a petrol/diesel vehicle. In other words for every kWh of energy you need to produce 1 kg of H2 you will only get at best 0.29kWh. The losses are due to conversion of water to H2 compression and very difficult to contain H2. 2. The Anglo truck hasn’t been load tested yet. It can drive around with an empty load bin. 3. Ask the Europeans how often their H2 refueling nozzles freeze up when filling their cars due to the expansion of Liquid hydrogen to gaseous. As many educated research papers have highlighted a H2 based transportation economy doesn’t make practical sense.

[@alcorza3567]

If it's green energy then it's not really a problem to create the H2. It's also far better on the environment compared to pure EVs as it likely uses far less lithium, cobalt and other materials which need to be mined. Mind you, it is actually possible to run an ICE engine on H2 with fairly minimal modifications. Agreed on the point of hydrogen storage. It's an extremely combustible gas, it leeches through most containers. I have read about tech that can store the hydrogen in a kind of suspended solid state (if memory serves... It used carbon/graphene nano structures).

[@zameerosman8265]

Petrol diesel/petrol 35% efficient after all process, hydrogen 38% efficient after all processes. Negligible differencw

[@Paterson_from_Joburg]

@@alcorza3567 Hydrocarbons are also pretty volatile… Appropriate tech development is correlated with adoption.

[@musamathevula9139]

To be honest I am so confused I am still trying to work out the EV now hydrogen is being introduced

[@BubblesTheCat1]

700 BAR! Imagine the explosion in a big crash😨😨

[@griffinmaree6605]

The whole point of batteries being expensive is the rare minerals they require. But hydrogen is gas, isn't the storage for gas just a glorified gas tank? How can hydrogen cars justify being just as expensive as battery electric cars?

[@alcorza3567]

Economies of scale. Facilities aren't tooled to mass manufacture so cost per unit is naturally higher. H2 isn't an easy gas to store due to its incredibly low density. Look at hydrogen on the periodic table. It's literally small enough to squeeze its way through virtually any containment vessel made of materials using "bigger elements". It is the most abundant element in the universe though so there's no shortage of it.

[@buyanifakudze3489]

Good question. The fuel issue, whether hydrogen or synthetic or even EVs needs to shift to the overall price of cars. Manufacturers shouldn't capitalize and use this energy issue to justify exorbitant prices

[@alcorza3567]

@@buyanifakudze3489 well said! Although, to be fair, the input costs for EVs are a TON higher than regular ICE-powered cars. Having said that, you did hit on an interesting subject, synthetic fuels. To me, a carbon neutral synth fuel would be a good idea. I personally hate the idea of loosing ICE engines purely because if you love driving as I do, the sound and experience is what makes part of driving so engaging and visceral. EVs loose that in the experience (sure, they gain in other ways). As with everything, pros and cons.

[@stefegiliomee]

Will be interesting to find out if all the water vapour, from the exhaust of hydrogen vehicles, would impact the weather. Anyone smart enough to answer that?

[@barrymasindi7801]

I know that SASOL is already looking into its viability

[@rasboshoff8401]

Sounds good. It could be a huge thing for the SA economy. Just need to get the government out of the way.

[@BubblesTheCat1]

We need to get the current government out of the way in every respect, not only for hydrogen!

[@sloasadney8066]

What about a huge accident how dangerous is it

[@alcorza3567]

Hydrogen, oxygen... You'd end up with instant rain clouds 🤣

[@mhb3088]

Where's the mugs Ciro???

[@Carscoza]

We're busy sorting out the production, coming soon! www.cars.co.za/shop

[@CaliforniaMISC]

Yes

[@Vyantri]

I do think that hydrogen is a better long term option that electric cars both conceptually and practically though my opinion is not terribly informed at this point. I've never been a fan of EVs and that I will admit is just personal bias. I think hydrogen does have the potential to be the answer that EVs try to be, especially in poorer countries like SA where building so much new infrastructure just wouldn't happen and also as you said, all of our power comes from coal still. Personally though I would never spend such a large amount of money on an EV or a hydrogen car at this point in time. Even if I had the money, I'd stick to the trusty Toyota or better yet buy a Lexus, despite the current ridiculous price of petrol which I do suspect will only increase with time. I just think ICE cars are cool but that is just a personal opinion and I certainly hope that huge advancements are made in HV technology as fast as possible. I do think they have the potential to be much better than EVs and more feasible as cars.

[@siphamandlamsomi3464]

As an ICE Guy. No need for all of this. My take on it, all these technology are draining the life out of a vehicle. Call me whatever you want. Cars are suppose to be fun, have a characters. For some of us, its all about the drive, good or bad. That's why I am sad that almost every year there are lesser and lesser MT being realesed. Can we please go basics? Nothing is wrong with the ICE, petrol ICE that is.

[@alcorza3567]

Except the part about hydrocarbon fuel sources killing the planet... And consequently us you mean? Apart from that... Sure. Petrol is a ton of fun... Until we're all extinct. Jokes aside... Technically it is possible to run ICEs on hydrogen.

[@lawrencesithole2953]

I'm worried about the consequences after a hydrogen car accident and hydrogen flame is invisible. Hydrogen and spark or fire does not mix at all and the results will be Kaboom🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨. The most powerful bomb called Tsar bomb was made of hydrogen.

[@alcorza3567]

Hydrogen is extremely combustible yes... But you've forgotten one key thing. Hydrogen fuel cell powered devices do not include multi-stage trigger systems which include uranium or plutonium. You'd get a bang for sure, but nothing near a thermonuclear weapon.

[@alcorza3567]

@@lawrencesithole2953 but then why bring a thermonuclear weapon into the discussion? It's definitely not an apples v apples comparison is it? There's a huge difference between hydrogen igniting and hydrogen being exposed to the process of nuclear fission and fusion in a bomb. It's not even remotely the same thing. A hydrogen explosion will kill you just as dead as an LP gas explosion as a petrol explosion.

[@adrianqinisani7883]

Those hydrogen cells will be a big problem in an accident as they would easily explode

[@troothhertz6297]

Eden carbon solutions converts CO2 back into refined liquid fuel.. if Eskom installed this system on its power station smoke stacks we will be exporting liquid fuel.

[@troothhertz6297]

There is. Hydrogen farm coming to SA. Planning to produce 25 mill tons of H2 per year by the yard 2030 .and a a cost of 2$ per kg that's there target . Solar farm that will cover 500 hectare .. it's going to happen if government get their act together ...and do something and not talk about it.

[@Galaxyeyez]

I personally belive Hydrogen power is the direction we should be going. James May even made a good case for it back on old Top Gear when he tested the Honda Clarity he still belives its the way forward even now. I just hope our government considers it

[@bleh4352]

This seems like a worse version of the Kuga

[@zjd8560]

Hydrogen cars been on the roads of east for some time already, its not as dangerous you would think, except this also needs infrastructure just like electric cars. So electric cars are still the future. Hydrogen cars came and its going as its losing market to EV. World is going towards EV, just having hydrogen cars in SA because of SA’s issues, doesn’t mean we’re going to the future, just falling behind. Instead of sticking to hydrogen cars made by 5 companies, will stick to EV which will be supplied by 50 companies.

[@BubblesTheCat1]

Read my comment above. Electric cars are worse for the future than fossil fuel cars.

[@siamparagon9250]

Future?? No

[@mbusonzimande7717]

I think hydrogen will make sense to most once they figure out how to make it operate in a normal ICE configuration. that way it will save the petrol powered cars and engines to be enjoyed by future generations.

[@nedyahyakcam]

Hydrogen will run in ice pretty easily. Its just incredibly inefficient. Fuel cell is a much better option

[@patshes1951]

Definatly an option.

[@Formula1-Dave]

This news bulletin style review is horrible. Please, the car is what we want to see not the reporter's cute face.