Hydrogen help plea

Governments around the world should be doing far more to encourage alternative-powered vehicles, says a BMW expert in hydrogen technology.

BMW's director of clean energy, Jochen Schmalholz, believes more help is needed to push research and development and to increase the showroom appeal of alternative-powered vehicles.

The top-level BMW engineer has just been spruiking BMW's hydrogen message in Melbourne, where the company displayed four hydrogen-powered 7 Series sedans. BMW has built 100 hydrogen-powered 7 Series for research and global promotion, and to push hydrogen as a viable fuel alternative.

Schmalholz says tax breaks or other incentives are not new.

“It has been done before around the world when we changed from regular petrol to lead-free petrol,” he says.

But he says many governments are not aware of future technologies and some are concentrating only on short-term goals.

“Basically, they are short-term focused to the next election,” Schmalholz says.

“They don't really think about the future."

“Even for BMW, we started 30 years ago on this project, knowing it's another 20 to 30 years before we see these cars. But we were convinced that if we didn't we would be out of business.”

Schmalholz is encouraged after a meeting with the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Penny Wong, that emission trading and future transport issues are high on the Australian government's agenda.

BMW has spent millions developing the hydrogen-fuelled cars even though the first mass-produced cars are not expected to be on roads until about 2040.

It has received no monetary assistance from the German government to help its research.

Each 7 Series uses a direct-injection dual-mode 6.0-litre V12 engine, which develops 191kW/390Nm and can run on either petrol or hydrogen.

Using only hydrogen, the car has a touring range of 240km and emits two glasses of water every 100km from its 8kg tank of liquid hydrogen.

BMW aims to have a mass-produced hydrogen car the size of a 3 and 5 Series that can travel 500km between refills.

But hydrogen remains an expensive long-term proposition because of storage and infrastructure requirements. About 80 per cent of the world's hydrogen supply comes from natural gas or oil, Schmalholz says.

This means CO2 emissions are produced, offset by the fact that CO2 emissions are reduced through the use of hydrogen as a power source for vehicles.

The stainless-steel tank containing the hydrogen also needs to be super insulated to keep the contents at -250C.

The benefits of hydrogen are obvious, with only water vapour and air coming out of the exhaust pipe cleaner than the air we breathe.

It also uses the existing internal combustion engine.

Honda, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz are also researching applications of hydrogen as fuel.

Governments are short-term focused to the next election. They don't think about the future, BMW's director clean energy, Jochen Schmalholz says.