Nissan has been in no hurry to jump on the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle bandwagon and in recent times they have focused more energy on their battery electric vehicle lineup with cars such as the Leaf.
The last prototype hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that Nissan had shown was the Terra Concept SUV in 2012 (pictured above). And before that Nissan unveiled its prototype X-Trail FCV in 2003 and 2005.
In January 2014, I had talked about how Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn (plus Elon Musk and Jonathan Browning) had publicly given the thumbs down to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Now, it appears as if Mr. Ghosn has had a change of heart.
According to AutoNews.com, “Nissan Motor Co. CEO Carlos Ghosn, after prioritizing electric vehicles for years, now says the automaker will enter the hydrogen fuel cell race with a vehicle around 2020. Nissan is co-developing some of the technology with Germany’s Daimler AG.”
Now to be fair it sounds like Mr. Ghosn is taking the ultra practical approach of waiting a few more years in order to let the hydrogen fueling station infrastructure build up and out. But now, instead of standing on the sidelines and thumbing his nose at FCEV technology, he has jumped squarely on the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle bandwagon, giving it a thumbs up instead.
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It’s interesting how it never fails that these concept cars always look alien and futuristic, but then they come out and don’t look anything like the concept. It makes me wonder if they do it on purpose.
Many online sites try to build drama and treat the hydrogen vehicle / battery vehicle development process as a competition or a reality show.
The truth is that the car companies just want to build stuff they can sell at a profit.
Currently, neither BEVs nor FCEVs can be sold in large numbers at a profit. And while the governments of the world are willing to massively subsidize 100s of thousands of zero emission vehicles, the governments of the world will not subsidize tens of millions of vehicles.
The OEMs know the price targets they need to beat in order to have a marketable product:
1) Build the car for the same or less than a Prius – most of the OEMS seem to believe that this will be possible with fuel cell vehicles in another 10 to 15 years.
2) Fuel the car for the same or less than a Prius – that’s not going to be possible until the price of gasoline moves from today’s $1.50 per US gallon (plus tax) back to around $3.00 per US gallon (plus tax).
The only car company that claims FCEVs are never going to happen is Tesla – and that’s just hype to feed their BEV fanboys.