Bavarian automaker BMW has announced plans to convert the intralogistics fleet at its Regensburg plant from battery to hydrogen power, with FCEV forklift and tugger trucks set to replace the entirety of its existing fleet by 2030.
Despite sales of BMWโs battery electric starting to take off, the propeller company is still investing heavily in fuel cell development โย from its latest iX5 Hydrogen FCEV concept to, well, the intralogistics fleet at its Regensburg plant, where the company plans to employ hydrogen forklifts and tuggers in the press shop, body shop, and assembly lines.
BMWโs aggressive deployment timeline is, of course, loaded with problems. For starters, very little hydrogen is actually โgreen,โ and the majority of conventionally available hydrogen is created using fossil fuels โย making it both far less environmentally sustainable than you might think โฆ and a lot more expensive than either diesel fuel or battery capacity.
Then thereโs the outright misinformation, like this tidbit:
Switching production logistics from electricity to hydrogen will diversify our plantโs energy mix โ while optimizing logistics processes and saving valuable space. The advantage of hydrogen is that refueling is very fast โ just like with conventional fuels. The filling stations required for this will be installed directly within the different production areas and do not take up much space.
Project Manager, BMW Regensburg, Katharina Radtke
I donโt think this is a situation where Katharina is trying to spread misinformation โย but she does, like many hydrogen fans, seem to be misinformed.
See, when you fill up a storage tank with a gas like H or CNG, the gas heats up as itโs quickly forced into the tank, causing it to expand. That means the same amount of fuel takes up more physical space hot than it does cold โย and, as the gas in the tank gradually cools down, it contracts, leaving empty space in the tank.
That means you can โfast fillโ a hydrogen tank to 100% in a few minutes, but itโll eventually settle back down to about 75-80% full, even if you donโt drive anywhere. Youโll then have to โslow fillโ the remaining capacity to avoid a similar expansion โย and that can take hours.
You can see an example of this phenomenon, below, in this interactive infographic from the US Department of Energyโs Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC).
Electrekโs Take
In case you canโt read between the lines, filling a tank with hydrogen isnโt any faster than filling a battery with electricity, and even the most cryo-compressed hydrogen tanks canโt get too far past a 90% fast fill โฆ and they have other problems with boil off, leaks, etc. All of which sort of begs the question: why make the switch to hydrogen at all?
Back in January, MAN Trucksโ CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp, told reporters that it was, โimpossible for hydrogen to effectively compete with battery electric trucks.โ Vlaskamp added, โToday you cannot buy hydrogen for less than 13 or 14 euros โฆ and it is not green. And when we have green hydrogen it will be needed for the heavy industry of steel, cement, or plastic.โ
So โ if all thatโs true, why is MAN, like BMW, continuing to invest in hydrogen-powered vehicle programs? โOnly to test our hypothesis,โ says Vlaskamp (emphasis mine). โWe may use hydrogen for transportation in 2035, but only if there is enough green hydrogen at the right price and the necessary infrastructure is in place.โ
To ensure it has enough H, BMW will install a mile-long network of underground pipes, with six decentralized H filling stations, between now and Q1 of 2026. โOnce the conversion is completed, our annual hydrogen consumption will be around 150 tonnes,โ says Radtke.
Hereโs hoping BMW can get a better deal than 14 euros for dirty fuel by then.
SOURCE | IMAGES: BMW.
