Michel and Françoise Caviglioli – “Mitch and Soize” as they are called near Chambéry – wanted to make a gesture for the planet before retiring. This couple of taxi artisans based on the shores of Lac du Bourget bought two hydrogen-powered Hyundai Nexos (H2) in 2020 and 2021. “Zero emissions” to transport their customers to the hospital or the airport. And to their surprise, they have, with almost 200,000 kilometers traveled in a few months, become global beta testers of the hydrogen car, scrutinized from the headquarters of the South Korean manufacturer, known to specialists in this mobility niche. to California.
If the story is amusing, it first highlights a fact: hydrogen car users do not run the roads. Few in the world are those who, like Mitch and Soize, swallow the miles with an automobile running on gas H2. Unlike the battery electric car, the hydrogen electric car has not developed strongly in the past five years. The reason ? A doctrine has gradually imposed itself in the automobile industry: H technology2 (a fuel cell that produces electricity from hydrogen) is reserved for heavy vehicles – trucks, buses – or utility fleets.
However, two brands have invested in the hydrogen passenger car. Japanese Toyota and South Korean Hyundai market two vehicles: the second generation Toyota Mirai and the Hyundai Nexo SUV. But the list ends there. Daimler and Honda have thrown in the towel in 2020 and 2021, stopping the marketing, for lack of sales, one of the Mercedes GLC F-Cell, the other of the Clarity. The only vehicles to come are a BMW, presented at the last Munich Motor Show in September 2021, and a super sports car project from the French start-up Hopium.
Ambassador adventurers
But the irreducible Asians of car H2 don’t let go. Their French subsidiaries have set up hydrogen ambassador adventurers: the Swiss Bertrand Piccard for Hyundai, the first to have circumnavigated the world in a solar-powered plane, and Victorien Erussard at Toyota, captain of the experimental zero-emission boat. Energy Observerwhich works with H technology2 from Japanese.
It is then a question of demonstrating the elements of superiority of the fuel cell over the battery, and in particular its great autonomy with a single recharge. So, the performances put forward rain. At the end of August 2021, a Toyota Mirai broke a range record in California with 1,300 kilometers traveled without going back to the service station. She smashed the record for another Mirai, set in France a few weeks earlier: 1,003 kilometres.
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