The miraculous versatility of the hydrogen fuel cell
Hydrogen fuel cells are the automotive equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife. They can power everything from planes, to trains, to automobiles, with only breaking a little trickle of H2O sweat out of the exhaust pipe.
One minute, they can be humming away in a sleek hydrogen saloon car, the next, shoving a 20-tonne lorry up a mountain pass.
Try doing that with a poxy little 1.0-litre petrol engine and see how far you get.
What can a hydrogen fuel cell do
Internal combustion engines have a strict pecking order. The 1.5-litre lump in a hatchback is fine for nipping around town, but you wouldn’t stick it in an intercity coach unless you fancied getting overtaken by joggers.
Hydrogen fuel cells, however, don’t suffer from such inadequacies. The very same fuel cell system that powers cars such as Toyota’s Mirai – a car built for polite urban wafting – also finds itself in the Toyota Sora, a massive great big hydrogen-powered bus ferrying passengers around Tokyo.
No massive engineering overhaul, no dramatic redesign. Just a bigger hydrogen tank and the same stack doing its thing.
Hyundai follows the same logic. The fuel cell in its Nexo SUV is fundamentally the same technology used in the Xcient truck, a proper heavy-duty lorry designed to shift goods across Europe without churning out a single gram of CO2.
Try shoving a standard 2.0-litre diesel engine from a Tucson into a 34-tonne HGV and see how far it gets before wheezing like an asthmatic at altitude.
Stationary, but still useful
Hydrogen fuel cells don’t just stop at vehicles. The same technology is popping up in stationary power solutions, backing up data centres, providing emergency electricity, and replacing dirty old diesel generators.
Some are even powering EV chargers in places where you can’t get a grid connection, or during natural disasters.
And again, the fuel cell stack itself? Barely changed. Companies like Plug Power and Ballard Power Systems are rolling out fuel cell-powered backup generators and industrial power solutions that work on the same principles as those found under the bonnet of a hydrogen car.
The infrastructure conundrum
Of course, the obvious counterpoint is infrastructure. Hydrogen refuelling stations are still thin on the ground compared to plug sockets, and making clean hydrogen at scale is still an expensive business.
But before anyone gets too smug about battery-electric cars, let’s not forget that BEV charging networks aren’t exactly flawless either.
A world where hydrogen refuelling is as common as petrol stations isn’t a far-fetched fantasy – it just needs investment, and that’s starting to happen.
Hydrogen fuel cells do what internal combustion engines and batteries can’t: scale up without major surgery.
The same core stack that gives a car a 400-mile range can be bolted into a bus, a truck, or even a stationary power supply without needing a complete rethink.
And in a world that demands clean energy without compromise, that’s a trick well worth paying attention to.
