With battery production costs dropping rapidly, the focus on alternative fuels is looking to be very much set on electric vehicles in the near future, but hydrogen hasn’t been forgotten, where Daimler is concerned.
The automaker is still chugging along on the fuel-cell path, albeit in the background. It recently announced that the country’s network of hydrogen (H2) filling stations has now grown to 32 with the commissioning of two new locations in Sindelfingen and Pforzheim.
The filling stations were built by Daimler and are located within existing Shell service stations, with tech company Linde providing the H2 filling technology. The trio are partners in the H2 Mobility joint venture, which is working to expanding the hydrogen infrastructure in the country.
The Sindelfingen station is located near the company’s R&D centre, which is overseeing the development of the Mercedes-Benz GLC F-Cell plug-in, of which a production series version is expected to debut later this year.
The refuelling process takes between three and five minutes to complete, and the Sindelfingen and Pforzheim stations each have the capacity to serve 40 hydrogen-powered cars per day.
Later this year, new stations are set to open in Wendlingen, Karlsruhe, Munich, Bremen and Kassel. By 2018, the H2 Mobility partnership plans to have 100 H2 filling stations up and running across the country, and by 2023 the numbers are projected to increase to around 400.
Euro 2 petrol gud enuff
Good. We can turn existing petrol station to sell hydrogen as well. This could rapidly expand hydrogen station in the future. Why would we need 1-hour ‘quick’ charge when we can fill up in less than 5 minutes (with potentially even less in the future)?
Hydrogen more volatile than petrol or NGV/LPG
This is the best alternative oil with not scarifying a car pure sound. An electric car only for RC car.
Hydrogen is cheap, this is the future
Producing H2 is energy intensive and storing it is not cheap.