“Nothing can compete:” Finkel concedes battery electric beats hydrogen cars

Alan Finkel, the former chief scientist and author of Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy, has admitted that hydrogen cars are unlikely to be sold in great numbers because they simply can’t match the convenience and performance of the battery electric car.

Finkel is uniquely placed to make such a judgement, as the author of the landmark hydrogen strategy, and as an owner of both an EV, and one of the few owners in Australia of a hydrogen electric car: He drives a Toyota Mirai.

In an interview this week with the Energy Insiders podcast, on The Driven’s sister site RenewEconomy, Finkel says it is now clear that hydrogen will not be used in reticulated gas systems for home heating or home cooking, because of its expensive and because of the difficulty, and the slowness with which the industry has moved.

He also notes that the electricity substitution industry, through technologies such as heat pumps and induction stoves, are “kicking goals”.

“So the efficiency argues for electricity for those purposes,” he says, and add that that is the same with passenger cars.

“I can tell you with experience. I have an electric car … and I am one of the few people who owns and drives a hydrogen electric car,” Finkel told the podcast.

“Now when I need to recharge the battery electric car – because it uses a low current three phase charger, I can plug it in (at home), even if it’s nearly empty in the evening, and in the morning when I get up the battery is fully charged.

“And the effort to do that as you get out of the car, you reach out with your left hand, you plug the plug into the car, and you go into the house … it’s really easy.”

That’s not the case with the hydrogen car, which relies on a centralised distribution system. And there are not many in Australia.

“The hydrogen car, it only takes three or four minutes to fill. But filling it is a 63 minute experience because there’s only one refuelling station in Melbourne, there’s only one in Victoria, there’s only a handful in Australia.

“So it’s a 63 minute experience, which is 30 minutes to drive to Altona from where I live in South Yarra, it’s three minutes to fill it up and 30 minutes to drive back.

“Nothing can compete with the extraordinary convenience and performance of a battery electric car, so I’m pretty sure that all passenger vehicles, not all but the vast majority of passenger vehicles and most small commercial vehicles will be battery electric.”

The National Hydrogen Strategy predicted that in some countries – such as Japan, South Korea, China, and the United States – there would be”millions of hydrogen vehicles on their roads.”

But Finkel’s assessment supports the growing realisation that this will not be the case.

And that the big Japanese and Korean car makers, who have nearly bet the house on hydrogen cars rather than EVs, have got it wrong. Sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been negligible, and it is only now starting to dawn on the big car makers, such as Toyota, that they need to catch up with battery electrics.

Finkel, however, says there is still an opportunity for hydrogen in long and heavy haulage vehicles – possibly with big trucks, and with trains.

“The transport opportunity for hydrogen is, as often been said to long distance heavy haul. So we’re starting to see in Europe now, and finally in Canada, hydrogen powered trains being used on non electrified railroads instead of diesel.

“And that makes a lot of sense. The logistics are easy, because they only really need to have a hydrogen refuelling station at one or both ends of the train line.”

To hear more of the interview with Alan Finkel, and his views on where hydrogen will find a place in the economy, and on Australia’s potential as an “electro-state”, please go to the Energy Insiders podcast page.