Northern New Jersey has an important stake in the eventual success of using hydrogen for an automotive fuel instead of gasoline, with water vapor as the only tailpipe emission.
That’s because Woodcliff Lake, N.J., is home to BMW of North America LLC, the German automaker’s U.S. sales and marketing subsidiary, and BMW is a leader in hydrogen technology.
In fact, BMW is building one of only a handful of hydrogen refueling stations in the United States at its U.S. headquarters, and the only one in the Northeast, to service a test fleet of hydrogen-powered cars.
Zero pollution sounds too good to be true, but hydrogen-powered cars really do work. Unlike other automakers, BMW uses hydrogen in an internal combustion engine that can also run on gasoline. BMW’s Hydrogen 7 car, for example, has a V-12 engine that runs off a tank of liquid hydrogen.
For most other automakers, including GM, Ford and Toyota, the use of hydrogen is synonymous with fuel cells. That’s an entirely different technology from BMW’s hydrogen-powered engine.
The heart of a fuel cell is a chemical membrane that serves to encourage oxygen in the air to combine with hydrogen from a car’s onboard storage tank. That reaction generates heat, electricity and water. The electricity, which is stored in a battery, is what propels a fuel-cell car.
The tank for a fuel cell is filled with compressed, gaseous hydrogen. BMW uses much denser, liquefied hydrogen, which is stored at much higher pressure and lower temperature. BMW argues that its technology offers a greater range between fill-ups.
Whichever technology is used, the nation is a long, long way from a hydrogen refueling infrastructure capable of generating, distributing and retailing hydrogen in a consumer-friendly way. The experimental drivetrains are also fiendishly expensive, unless and until they can be produced in greater numbers. It’s going to be many years before BMW or its U.S. base can benefit from widespread consumer demand for hydrogen.
“For the last 20 years, hydrogen has been ‘five years away.’ We can be here 20 years from now, and it’ll still be five years away,” said Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, the biggest auto dealer chain in the United States, at an auto industry forum last month, sponsored by J.D. Power and Associates.
Photo Credit: BMW
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