In the midst of launching numerous electric models from its national automobile groups, the German government took the opposite view by announcing a budget of 9 billion euros for hydrogen. The objective is to become the world number one.
Volkswagen Group, BMW and Daimler have one thing in common at the moment: wide-ranging communication on electric mobility, and investments total billions of euros. While the manufacturers are busy, the German government taking everyone backwards by announcing a special envelope of 9 billion euros for hydrogen.
Germany is focusing mainly on the fuel side hoping to become the world leader in the production of hydrogen. However, the manufacturers will have to follow, which is not necessarily the case. Daimler recently confirmed that it is abandoning plans for a fuel cell vehicle for the time being.
Let us also remember that, in the case of the automobile with fuel cell, hydrogen is not an energy strictly speaking but an “energy vector” making it possible to generate electricity which will be used for the engines. The efficiency of the chain is therefore clearly worse than a more conventional electric vehicle with batteries, since the losses are not negligible in a fuel cell.
Germany specifies that it intends to produce “decarbonated” hydrogen, which is clearly in feasible at this time. Almost all of the hydrogen produced today in the world comes from gas and oil sources, and in particular from methane.
