2021: The Year Of Hydrogen-Powered Vehicles
[Aug. 21, 2020]
Let me clarify this article's title: 2021 is not the year of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Confused? Hang tight and I'll explain why it makes more sense than you think.
First, though, a digression.
For the last two decades, technology pundits have proclaimed that the coming year would be the year of Linux on the desktop. Linux, a free operating system that theoretically could take on the OS giants of Microsoft and Apple, was created in the early 1990s by Linus Torvalds and has spawned hundreds of distributions under the names Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, OpenSUSA, and more. Every year since probably 1998, some in the tech world have declared that the upcoming year would see massive desktop Linux adoption. And it never happened. Until it did. But when it did, it was incredibly different from the original vision.
Google’s Chrome OS is a version of Linux, as is the mobile phone OS Android. Linux is also the backbone of many network systems, and Linux is even integrated into Teslas. Linux is, fact be known, everywhere – even the likes of Microsoft Windows embraces the code.
The transition to Linux took place almost unnoticed because while pundits were eyeing the quintessential “desktop” endgame, technology shifted and the desktop itself lost relevance. In hindsight, the “desktop” terminology more accurately represented the main use case, not literal desktop computers. Today’s main technology use is not the desktop at all, and that’s why you can argue that we now live in the fabled “year of the Linux desktop” without being browbeaten by the fact.
To eventually get to the point, this is where hydrogen enters the story. Much in the same way we subtly achieved the year of Linux, hydrogen could very well follow a similar trajectory. Many currently view hydrogen-powered vehicles as offerings from the likes of Honda and Toyota in their Clarity and Mirai with hydrogen fuel cells on board vehicles to supply power to electric motors, but hydrogen-centric Nikola has the potential to flip that paradigm on its head with the concept of hydrogen being generated at fueling stations. Imagine if you will, Nikola's hydrogen concept eventually morphing into locally-created hydrogen powering generators that, in turn, power charging stations for BEVs. In fact, that’s a version of what some electric motorsports series are either currently doing or plan to do in the coming years.
In 2019, Toyota, Kenworth, the Port of Los Angeles, and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) partnered to build 10 hydrogen fuel cell big rigs, seen here transporting Toyota Mirai FCEVs. (Image courtesy Toyota)
That's not to say hydrogen FCEVs like those developed by BMW (the image at the top of this story is a BMW hydrogen fuel-cell system that holds 6kg of hydrogen and fuels in under five minutes) do not have a place in this imagining of the future. In the same way this story was written on an Android device, edited on Ubuntu, and then uploaded to the web via a Mac, there's going to be room in the road-going economy for multiple technologies living harmoniously. But if some of the current concepts of on-site hydrogen production come to fruition, it could be that no matter whether your vehicle has a fuel cell or contains a stack of batteries, hydrogen might be the fuel source.
And it should also be noted that we’re not waiting on Nikola for this hydrogen push. Indeed, Nikola has been dominating the hydrogen news cycle, but other sizable companies are also betting big on hydrogen, including Cummins.
Is 2021 the year of hydrogen-powered vehicles? Nah. But much like Linux in 1998, we're looking at something that may hold the key to building an incredible future – a future we might not realize is upon us until after it arrives because its form is unlike anything we’d imagined. And that will be the year of hydrogen-powered vehicles.
(Main image courtesy BMW)
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