TIMES EARTH

Hydrogen cars were the future once — might they be again?

The clean energy gathered steam in the Seventies, but after many false starts a mass market is yet to materialise. Now BMW wants to change that

Production of the BMW iX5, which needs only four minutes of fuelling with hydrogen to go more than 300 miles
Production of the BMW iX5, which needs only four minutes of fuelling with hydrogen to go more than 300 miles
The Times

For a man trying to buck a decades-long trend of failure, Juergen Guldner is curiously confident of his success. In BMW’s research lab in Munich, Guldner and his team are trying to do something that many car companies have attempted but none have managed. They are trying to build a mass-market hydrogen-powered car.

In February BMW announced that it was making up to 100 hydrogen-powered iX5s for handpicked customers around the world, with a view to bringing the vehicle into mass production by the end of the decade.

The iX5 SUV is essentially an electric vehicle (EV) with an onboard power station, a fuel cell that converts the stored hydrogen in its tank into electricity to power its motors. Trying to drive a long way