Hydrogen faces challenges competing with BEVs

Mission Hydrogen recently hosted a webinar on battery electric (BE) power and its outlook — a move that David Wenger, founder and CEO, remarked might strike attendees as unusual for the organization.

“Thanks to all the sponsors who might be shocked that we are doing a webinar on batteries,” he joked in his opening remarks.

The webinar’s purpose, however, was to inform “hydrogen evangelists” about the latest in battery technology, which is often competing with hydrogen in mobility and stationary electricity.

Maximilian Fichtner, director of the Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage Ulm-Karlsruhe (CELEST) in Germany, spoke on the topic. While some of his remarks referenced BE vehicles in the automotive sector, his comments could easily be extrapolated to include commercial vehicles and industrial equipment.

In the first part of his presentation, Fichtner focused on evaluating alternative power and powertrains. He said that for mobile equipment and vehicle applications, it’s important to ask some key questions to help determine which solution will work best.

“For example, which contribution do you have to greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction — also, greenhouse gas reduction cost?” he said. “How efficient is the drive? So, is your collected renewable energy really going straight forward to the wheels, more or less, or is most of it turned into useless heat?”

Fichtner added that it is also critical to look into raw material supplies, as it can help determine whether building a fleet of vehicles or equipment is feasible. Other questions include cost, safety and user-friendliness.

Evaluating GHG Reduction

Fichtner said that evaluating a power source’s contribution to reducing GHG means looking beyond any one aspect of the power source.

“You do a so-called lifecycle analysis, and this includes everything from the mining of the raw materials [through] the use of the car until the end storage or recycling,” he said.

Ten Nikola Tre fuel cell electric trucks in California logistics company Biagi Bros.’ livery. (Photo: Biagi Bros.)

Such an analysis accounts for the manufacture of the vehicle chassis, vehicle maintenance and fuel or electricity production. For internal combustion (IC) engine-powered vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), fuel consumption figures significantly into the analysis. For IC engines fueled by natural gas or biogas, the 20-year global warming potential (GWP) of methane is also a factor, as it is with fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) powered by gray hydrogen, which is made via natural gas or methane..

Among battery electric vehicles (BEV), one must account for GHG emissions related to battery manufacturing. In FCEVs, the analysis includes hydrogen tank manufacture.

In evaluating the lifecycle GHG emissions for all these types of vehicles via data supplied by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), Fichtner said that the electric varieties, including PHEVs, offer reduced emissions over their IC counterparts.

Measured in grams of CO2 equivalent per kilometer (g CO2 eq/km), IC-powered vehicles hovered around 250. PHEVs came in around 200.

BEVs and FCEVs were broken into two groups — those being powered by today’s power or fuel sources and future vehicles using entirely renewable power sources. Today’s BEVs, for instance, rely on grid power generated in part by fossil fuels. They have approximately 90 g CO2 eq/km compared to BEVs that will potentially run entirely on renewable power, which come in at about 50 g CO2 eq/km.

Meanwhile, FCEVs today are often supplied with gray hydrogen. They measure a bit more than 200 g CO2 eq/km compared to FCEVs that could run on green hydrogen in the future, which measure between 60 and 70 g CO2 eq/km.

Fichtner added that there is some debate about whether there’s a business case for green hydrogen.

“In reality, there is no green hydrogen. Overall in the mixture, we have more than 99 percent coming from fossil sources, methane. Particularly, the gas stations in Germany are mainly supplied by a big facility in Leuna where they make gray hydrogen. So, that means that at the moment, the fuel cell car is not really contributing much to the improvement of this climate situation. It would be able to improve a lot if it was running on green hydrogen, but we first have to achieve that.”

EV Efficiency Comparisons

When looking at vehicle efficiency across the supply chain and comparing BEVs to FCEVs, Fichtner said that BEVs are the clear winners, with an efficiency of about 75 percent. This is because for BEVs, the supply chain is quite short, having only a power source and the transmission to the BEV, where that power is stored.

By comparison, all the supply chain steps required to bring hydrogen to an FCEV diminish the vehicle’s overall efficiency. Fichtner said these include the collection of power, electrolysis, fuel cleaning and storage, pressurization and transport, storage at a filling station, cooling and repressurization, fueling of the vehicle and inherent losses in the efficiency of the fuel cell itself.

“Overall, I come to 18 to 20 percent [efficiency],” Fichtner said of FCEVs. “If you look in studies, you often find 30 or 33 percent as the number. If you then look closely at what they assume in their studies, they actually assume, typically, a ‘pressureless’ scenario where you have no losses due to the pressures. And they always neglect losses at the gas station for whatever reason, because maybe there are no publicly available numbers.”

H2 Trucking Challenges

Fichtner also addressed the differences between the viability of BEVs and FCEVs in on-highway trucking. He focused on the needs of the transportation industry.

“What really matters in their business — you will find that cost is a major issue,” he said, “especially cost per kilometer.”

When considering that, Fichtner said that according to consulting firm P3 Automotive, green hydrogen will only become cost-competitive below 4-5 euros ($4.19 - $5.24) per kilogram.

“Currently in Germany, we pay 16 to 17.75 euros per kilogram,” he said. “This is gray hydrogen, and it is subsidized — there’s no tax on it.”

The long-range version of Volvo Trucks’ FH Electric will be released for sale during the second half of 2025. (Photo: Volvo Trucks)

Echoing his earlier comments about the viability of green hydrogen in the near future, Fichtner expressed concerns about reaching the target price. He said to meet the target cost, electrolyzer costs would have to be reduced by about 80 percent, electricity costs to produce the fuel would have to decline by roughly 25 percent and electrolyzer efficiency would have to improve by about 6 percent. He also noted that competition from BEVs will increase as battery costs decline.

Regarding hydrogen, Fichtner said, “The major advantage that I hear always that you can refill the tanks quickly — doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the people who really run such trucks, they say OK, after 4.5 hours, our driver has to take a break of an hour. In this hour, I park my electric truck in front of a 350 kW regular CCS charger. I charge enough during this hour so that I can run the next slot. So, it doesn’t matter whether your truck charges within 15 minutes or whether it charges in 50 minutes.”

Fichtner also noted differences in fuel costs, in which BEVs seem to win over hydrogen.

Using diesel fuel as a starting point, Fichtner said a 40-ton truck will consume about 0.45 euros/km ($0.79/mile). Additionally, citing data from Nikola, he said an FCEV operating in Germany will consume about 1.40 euros/km ($2.45/mile) of gray hydrogen.

“In comparison, a 40-ton BEV truck consumes, according to a recent test of the Daimler eActros, it consumes 90 kWh per 100 km,” Fichtner said. “So, depending on the tariff that you have, this makes about 0.35 to 0.55 euros/km ($0.61 to $0.96/mile).”

According to Fichtner, this is why you see more electrified trucks on the roads.

“You also see more fuel cell trucks, but the ratio between the two is about 80 to one,” he said. “There are 80 times more BEV trucks, new registrations, than FCEV trucks.”

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