German car makers are getting hyped about hydrogen

It seems like most of the auto industry is getting hydrogen fever, and we can now add Audi and Mercedes-Benz to that list. Audi used last week's North American International Auto Show in Detroit to debut its h-tron Quattro fuel cell SUV concept, and the UK's Autocar is reporting that Mercedes-Benz has green-lit for production a fuel cell version of its GLC SUV.

Audi's h-tron Quattro looks fairly similar to the e-tron Quattro concept we saw in Los Angeles, and it presumably uses a lot of the same EV powertrain know-how. A full tank of H₂ gives it a range of 373 miles (600km), and the on-board lithium-ion batteries can also be topped up by the gigantic solar panel on the roof.

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz told Autocar at the Detroit show that it was in the middle of rolling out the fuel cell-powered GLC, which should be revealed to the world at next year's Frankfurt Auto Show. Mercedes-Benz had previously ventured into the world of H₂ with a fuel-cell version of the B-Class, called the F-Cell. Several years ago, Mercedes-Benz leased 50 F-Cells to environmentalists in California.

BMW has also been playing with H₂. For quite a while, the company was experimenting with internal combustion engines that used H₂ instead of the traditional hydrocarbon fuel. More recently, it showed us an i8 and 5 Series powered by fuel cells, although neither is set for production. And in Japan, companies like Toyota and Honda have been bullish about H₂ fuel cell electric vehicles for a while now. Thanks to a concerted push by their government to start an H₂ economy, those two companies have been bringing various concepts and production cars to auto shows for a while now.

Meanwhile, here in the US, General Motors has joined up with the US Army to test how suitable fuel cell EVs are for military applications. If you live in California, you can even buy a fuel cell EV, although residents of other states might want to wait a while until publicly accessible H₂ filling stations become a reality. California has even increased the subsidy available for a fuel cell EV—up to $6,500 on top of any federal tax incentive—in order to hasten the uptake of this technology.

Not everyone is convinced H₂ fuel cells are the answer, though. Elon Musk is well known to be dismissive of the technology, and lots of other people have pointed out that it's less efficient to use electricity to produce H₂ and store it than it is to just use electricity to charge a battery. But the much quicker refueling times—similar to a hydrocarbon-fueled vehicle—compared to battery EVs mean we should expect to see more fuel cell announcements in the future.

Listing image by Audi