Is Australia’s love affair with the hydrogen car over before it began? New data shows just five vehicles running on hydrogen fuel-cells were sold across the country last quarter.
Battery-powered electric vehicles, on the other hand, sold steadily. Australians bought 25,353 EVs in the three months to 30 June – 8% of the total. Hybrid cars were even more popular, with 46,727 sold.
It is far from what the then Morrison government envisaged in late 2021, when it released a long-delayed “future fuels” strategy that promoted hydrogen as a potential replacement for petrol cars alongside other cleaner alternatives.
A national hydrogen strategy two years earlier had gone further, championing the fuel’s “exciting possibilities” and arguing hydrogen cars could have advantages over EVs.
The numbers show Australians think otherwise. Alison Reeve, the deputy director of the energy and climate program at Grattan Institute, says it may be time to acknowledge hydrogen cars have probably had their run.
She says not long ago people thought hydrogen was “pretty cool because it could do so many things” and “replace so many different uses for fossil fuels”. But the reality has proven different.
“It can do a lot of things … but it does most of them quite badly – particularly compared to electricity,” she says.
On cars, Reeve says: “We’ll be very surprised to see any of them around in the long term. Battery electric cars are just more efficient and easier to change over to.”
Prof Jake Whitehead, the head of policy at the Electric Vehicle Council but speaking in his role as a transport scholar at the University of Sydney, says hydrogen cars are a distraction when the world’s focus should be on electrifying the transport system. “Hydrogen cars are not economic, nor are they efficient. In my opinion, this technology has been used as a red herring by some parties internationally to delay the electrification of transport,” he says.
The market may have already decided. Globally, about 14,000 hydrogen cars were sold last year, compared to 14m battery and plug-in hybrid electric cars.
The former Australian chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel, who led a taskforce developing the national hydrogen strategy, was an early adopter of both technologies, having bought an EV back in 2013, then adding a hydrogen vehicle about three years ago.
“The logistics are definitely in favour of battery electric vehicles for passenger transport, as opposed to hydrogen,” he says.
Finkel says recharging at home with electricity is “amazingly convenient” – “it takes 10 to 15 seconds to plug it in … you go upstairs, have dinner, go to sleep and in the morning it’s fully charged” – and more rapid chargers are being installed all the time.
He says his hydrogen car, a second-generation Toyota Mirai, is a “smooth, quiet and powerful” drive, but refuelling involves an hour-long round trip to the Toyota factory in Altona – still Melbourne’s only public hydrogen station.
The future and validity of hydrogen vehicles became a global issue in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics. In July, more than 120 academics, scientists and engineers called on the Paris Olympics organisers to dump its selection of a Toyota hydrogen car as the official games vehicle and replace it with an EV.
In an open letter, they wrote: “Hydrogen used to power road transport is not aligned with the world’s net zero goals and ultimately risks distracting and delaying from the real solutions we have available today.”
Toyota says hydrogen technology remains part of its “multi-pathway approach to decarbonisation” and it will “continue working with government and industry partners to support the further development of the hydrogen economy”. Hyundai Australia says it envisions a future for both hydrogen and EVs, but “ultimately the market will decide which technology prevails”.
In Australia, not everyone agrees the hydrogen vehicle dream is over. State and territory governments have extended their trials of hydrogen fleet vehicles. The ACT added 20 hydrogen cars to its fleet in 2021. The Queensland government followed with a smaller fleet of five.
The deputy director general of the ACT environment department, Geoffrey Rutledge, says EVs and hydrogen should not be seen as an either-or choice. “I don’t think it’s a VHS-Beta thing.”
Rutledge says the ACT government is focused on replacing its remaining petrol and diesel passenger vehicles with zero emission alternatives of different types. Of about 600 vehicles, so far about 200 are EVs, 200 are plug-in hybrids, 65 hybrids and 20 hydrogen-fuelled.
He says the 20 Hyundai Nexo hydrogen SUVs have been well received by staff, “like all of our zero emission cars”, and that the trial has been extended. “The cars are running really well and people like them,” he says.
But hydrogen cars remain a rare sight on Canberra roads. There are now only two additional privately registered hydrogen vehicles, according to Access Canberra data.
Queensland’s trial of five Hyundai Nexos was set to expire in July this year, but has also been extended to 2026 as part of a zero emissions fleet overhaul. The Queensland government says it still expects hydrogen fuel cell cars and EVs to “coexist rather than compete” and that lack of refuelling infrastructure is a barrier to wider uptake.
Reeve has another view. On whether government hydrogen fleet trials should continue, she says: “I think we’ve probably learned everything we need to learn.”
She says if there is any use for hydrogen cars and light vehicles it is likely to be niche.
Finkel still sees hydrogen playing a “hugely significant” role in producing green iron, jet fuel and ammonia. But he has reached a similar conclusion to Reeve. “I love the car,” he says. “It’s been a thrill being part of it. But it’s helped me to recognise that passenger vehicles are not where hydrogen is going to be significant in our economy.”
