Elon Musk has taken his share of hits in the media for his Twitter rants and behavior that is just plain weird for a CEO. We don’t know how Tesla Inc. is going to fare now that competition from Jaguar, Audi and Mercedes is here or soon will be. If Tesla doesn’t make it because of mismanagement and misbehavior by Musk, and if the company goes down in flames like DeLorean, Bricklin and Tucker, there is at least one Musk legacy that is undeniably brilliant: Tesla’s nationwide network of Supercharger charging stations. Tesla’s Supercharger network, I think, is the template for automakers gearing up to launch fuel cell vehicles. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and General Motors are on the cutting edge of fuel cell technology, with some vehicles already available for lease and new, more efficient fuel cell stacks — the component that creates electricity from gaseous hydrogen — on the way.
Musk answered the chicken-and-egg question with electric vehicles by investing more than $1 billion in a nationwide charging network specifically for Tesla cars. He short-circuited drivers’ biggest fear of owning an EV: range anxiety.
That same strategy will be necessary for fuel cell vehicles to have wide appeal. Fuel cells, you’ll recall, are EVs. But instead of storing electricity in a battery pack that weighs hundreds of pounds, electricity is produced from gaseous hydrogen stored on the vehicle under high pressure. A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle can be refilled in minutes, just like a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle — and the short time to refill the hydrogen tank is one of the key advantages fuel cell vehicles have over battery-powered EVs.
California leads the nation in the number of fuel cell filling stations, many built by FirstElement Fuel Inc., a company headed by auto industry veteran Joel Ewanick. He agrees a Tesla-like nationwide network of hydrogen fueling stations could help reduce the time it will take for fuel cell vehicles to become economically viable to manufacture.
“All the car companies are trying to find a path to [production of] 30,000 cars. That’s where you start to see real efficiencies in your production, parts and suppliers. Anything below that, it’s a challenge to make these cars at a reasonable price. We are getting to that tipping point in 2020 and 2021,” Ewanick said.
Beijing city authority has allotted 11 more roads in Fangshan district for the testing of autonomous vehicles to push the speedy development of self-driving technology.
But he also recognizes that automakers want to build cars, not the fueling infrastructure. And yet they may have no choice if they want to sell hydrogen fuel cell vehicles nationwide. Toyota and Honda have chipped in more than $20 million so far, helping FirstElement build 19 of 31 planned hydrogen fuel stations in California.
Ewanick says costs are coming down — from between $2.2 million and $2.5 million per station — while the number of vehicles each station can handle is increasing. He sees the company eventually expanding beyond California, perhaps by building a hydrogen fuel filling station “bridge” across the country.
“We don’t need the network that we have with gasoline stations,” he said. “We just need to make sure they (hydrogen filling stations) are in convenient locations to serve our customers.”
The federal government under the Trump administration likely isn’t going to do much to help create a nationwide hydrogen fuel network, so it may be a project for automakers and refiners such as Shell — which is installing hydrogen pumps at some California stations — and GM.
GM should take the lead here by creating an entity that brings together suppliers of hydrogen fueling equipment, companies such as FirstElement that build the stations, refiners that produce hydrogen and other car companies to fund and quickly roll out hydrogen stations in every major market.
GM and Honda have reduced the size and cost of the fuel cell stack, and the electronics are proven. Hydrogen fuel cars will be part of the mix. The question now is what will automakers be willing to do to seed the technology and overcome customers’ doubt and fear over range. For that answer, all they need to do is look at Tesla’s Supercharger network. That’s how you introduce alternative fuel vehicles in a market.
“As I have heard my entire career, automakers make cars and they don’t do infrastructure,” said Ewanick. “They don’t want to be in the business of building gas stations and roads and bridges. Their job is make cars and do a really good job of that.”
If that doesn’t change, fuel cells might just remain in the tiniest of niches.
