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BMW Still Working on Fuel-Cell Car But Sees Electric Vehicles as the Future

BMW surprised everyone when they announced that a powertrain using hydrogen will be unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show. The world knew that the Germans were working with Toyota on developing a car with fuel-cell technology but nobody expected them to show the results so soon.
BMW 750hl 1 photo
Photo: indos.com
However, in a recent interview for Autocar, BMW’s Sales and Marketing boss, Ian Robertson said that even though the company he represents is investigating using hydrogen as fuel, the highest hopes come from electric vehicles still.

The current cars they are working on are in development at the moment, in collaboration with Toyota, in particular the packaging of the fuel cell stack and hydrogen storage. Seemingly, there have been serious developments in these areas over the last few years but other advancements are causing engineers to turn their heads.

That’s because even if cars using hydrogen will provide the performance we’re expecting from them, they will also need proper infrastructure to be comfortable and cheap enough to run. That’s the one issue that the Marketing boss from BMW fears the most.

“The real issues lie not around what we can do, though, but whether the infrastructure can be built up to supply hydrogen in the marketplace cost-effectively,”
he said for Autocar.

Battery technology research to the rescue

However, a solution could come from the advances recorded in the field of batteries where lithium-ion cells could be replaced pretty soon by lithium air ones and then by solid state batteries. Such moves would reduce charging times to a couple of minutes and would also improve range quite drastically.

For example, there are also aluminum-air batteries on the way that can carry an EV up to 1,000 miles on a single charge. That’s because the aluminum anode, the oxygen from the air used as cathode and the water used as electrolyte are combining to create electricity to power the vehicle.

During this process, a byproduct is created called aluminum hydroxide which is the reused to create... more aluminum. It’s really quite intriguing.

On top of that we could also get carbon-carbon batteries in the near future that allow you to recharge a car 20 times faster than a conventional lithium-ion one.

With such solutions in mind, electric vehicles seem like a better proposition, especially since the infrastructure needed for them is already in construction.
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