Rotherham to Rainham with no emissions: it’s a gas

The Times October 11 2016,

HG Wells may not have chosen the road from Rotherham to Rainham for his time machine. However, the zero-emission hydrogen car of the future completed its first long-distance public outing yesterday from a wind-powered electricity-to-gas refuelling station in South Yorkshire, arriving 180 miles and three and a half hours later just east of Dagenham, to be recharged on solar power. It was a good job the day was breezy and sunny.

Today is the official opening of Britain’s 15th hydrogen fuelling station, at Rainham, on the site of the old Ford car factory.

Toyota, Hyundai and Honda have bet that hydrogen, piped into fuel cells where it reacts with oxygen in the air to drive electric motors and emit waste steam, is the long-term replacement for the internal combustion engine.

Graham Cooley says that cars running on electricity have a two-speed future: short-range inner city cars that run on electricity stored in batteries; and long-range electric cars powered by fuel cells that already can run 350 miles on a 5kg fill-up of high-pressure hydrogen gas.

Dr Cooley is chief executive of ITM Power, an AIM-quoted company that owns and operates fuel-cell refuelling forecourts. It opened the most northerly station in Rotherham off the M1 last year, another public station in Teddington, west London, this year, and now Rainham. They use electricity off the grid to make hydrogen, replacing the power they use with renewable energy, in Rainham’s case from solar panels.

ITM will install its first hydrogen pump at a conventional filling station at the Shell’s Cobham services on the M25 in Surrey. “It is important that we have a major retailer involved and this will make it feel more real,” Dr Cooley said.

Hydrogen is going through the same pains as battery electric vehicles: not enough recharging infrastructure to persuade manufacturers to build the cars or to persuade the consumers to buy them; and the cost, which for hydrogen includes the fuel.

Toyota’s Mirai costs more than £60,000 and gas costs £10 a kilo, which means £50 to fill up, equating to about 60 miles per gallon in conventional terms. You may think you are saving the planet, but they are not much cheaper to run than a fuel-efficient petrol or diesel.

Simon Bourne, co-founder of ITM and its chief technology officer, says the price per unit comes down when refuelling stations are dealing with dozens of visits a day rather than the present handful per week.

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