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Enrique Dans

On the effects of technology and innovation on people, companies and society (writing in Spanish at since 2003)

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Hydrogen in road transport: it’s not going to happen

Enrique Dans
Enrique Dans
Published in
3 min readFeb 6, 2022

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published by Germany’s in the journal Nature has killed expectations about the use of hydrogen to power vehicles and that the window for doing so has long since closed, and makes no sense compared to batteries.

The publication coincides with GM’s decision to stop manufacturing for cars, and instead , where it remains an option. .

The article in Nature says that hydrogen-based electric cars may have made some sense when batteries were only capable of a maximum range of around 150 kilometers and charging times were estimated at several hours, a phase that is now over. At that time, the energy density of compressed hydrogen, coupled with the possibility of filling a tank in an operation that took only a few minutes, seemed a reasonable value proposition. However, the reality today is that battery-powered vehicles already offer ranges of around 400 km and charging times of around 15 minutes, which makes hydrogen an uncompetitive option, especially considering the costs of deploying for such a small number of vehicles.

There are only about 25,000 hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars in circulation in the world, only two…

Enrique Dans
Enrique Dans

Published in Enrique Dans

On the effects of technology and innovation on people, companies and society (writing in Spanish at since 2003)

Enrique Dans
Enrique Dans

Written by Enrique Dans

Professor of Innovation at IE Business School and blogger (in English here and in Spanish at )

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