BMW’s CEO Oliver Zipse has backed hydrogen as the next ‘hip’ trend in transport during an interview.
Speaking to US business outlet Bloomberg, Mr Zipse said even though electric cars have been on the rise for a decade, all hydrogen needs is a bit of infrastructure to take off.
“After the electric car, which has been going on for about 10 years and scaling up rapidly, the next trend will be hydrogen,” he said.
“When it’s more scalable, hydrogen will be the hippest thing to drive.”
While hydrogen transport only exists in Australia in the form of the Hyundai Nexo and Toyota Mirai – neither of which are available for private sale, nor here in significant quantity – European brands have been continually toying with the alternative fuel in a few forms for a while.
For BMW’s rival, Mercedes-Benz, hydrogen appears to be the answer to the heavy commercial transport problem. In recent years, Mercedes has invested hundreds of millions into a testing program for the Daimler Mercedes-Benz GenH2 Truck.
BMW on the other hand is looking at hydrogen SUVs in the form of its iX5 Hydrogen, something more suitable for long trips where electric cars might need a longer recharge or suffer from a shorter range.
Mr Zipse said it’s for this reason – diversity of needs – that there cannot just be a single transport solution.
“To say in the UK about 2030 or the UK and in Europe in 2035, there’s only one drivetrain, that is a dangerous thing,” Mr Zipse said.
“For the customers, for the industry, for employment, for the climate, from every angle you look at, that is a dangerous path to go to.
“There will [soon] be markets where you must drive emission-free, but you do not have access to public charging infrastructure.
“You could argue, well you also don’t have access to hydrogen infrastructure, but this is very simple to do: It’s a tank which you put in there like an old tank, and you recharge it every six months or 12 months.”
Therefore, it is understood that for shorter trips and in areas where the physical infrastructure for hydrogen is not yet ready, electric vehicles will play the major role for some time.
BMW’s position on the future of hydrogen isn’t a common one in the industry – Honda for example killed off its hydrogen-powered Clarity in 2021, and even Mercedes gave up on its GLC F-Cell to divert hydrogen development to commercial vehicles.
But the BMW approach extends to the ultra-luxe Rolls-Royce brand – a part of the BMW Group – which itself only today revealed its first electric car, the Spectre.
Speaking to media at Goodwood upon the reveal of the Spectre EV, Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös said the brand isn’t opposed to hydrogen as a future fuel source.
“To house, let’s say, fuel cell batteries: Why not? I would not rule that out… there is a belief in the group that this is maybe the long-term future.”
Keyword: 'Electric cars aren't the only future': BMW boss says hydrogen is here to stay alongside EVs - report