For a while, it seemed like BMW had turned a corner with its EV strategy. Its i4 and iX have received stellar reviews, and this spring the company announced an all-electric platform, the Neue Klasse, which it said will underpin EV versions of the 3-series sedan and the X3 crossover starting in 2025. The company that had squandered its once-promising EV lead seemed poised for a comeback.
Seemed.
It’s increasingly clear that Neue Klasse isn’t going to be a dedicated EV platform, at least not in the way just about every other automaker conceives of one. “We could also imagine a hydrogen drivetrain for this new vehicle generation,” CEO Oliver Zipse said in last week’s earnings call.
If BMW follows through and makes the Neue Klasse accommodate both batteries and hydrogen, it’ll have created yet another compromise platform, a futon of automotive engineering that doesn’t excel at anything except making waffling board members happy.
For BMW, this is well-trodden ground. A decade ago, during the first wave of EVs, the company burst out of the gate with the quirky yet innovative i3. It was a breakthrough car that received rave reviews. It sold well enough, too, especially considering its outlier status in the company’s lineup. Had BMW continued to invest in the platform and the concept, it’s possible that today it would be leading the EV pack instead of bringing up the rear.
Instead, BMW hesitated, choosing to halt the development of any i3 successors. It invested heavily in a do-everything compromise platform known as CLAR. In press releases and public statements, the company touted CLAR as the best of all worlds, accommodating everything from internal combustion to hybrids and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). The thinking was that a flexible platform would allow the company to speed the development of electrified models that could be built alongside ICE vehicles on the same production line.
The strategy worked well enough for plug-in hybrids, but that drivetrain has quickly fallen out of favor among regulators — real-world data has shown that they’re not charged often enough to make a dent in emissions. For some users, the extra weight of the batteries and gas engine meant that plug-in hybrids were actually worse than just driving a regular gas vehicle.
Meanwhile, it took seven years for the first CLAR-based EV, the i4, to surface. In automotive engineering terms, that’s practically a lifetime. BMW essentially confirmed CLAR’s failure as an EV platform when it announced that a 3-series EV would be based on a different architecture.
Yet with Neue Klasse, it apparently didn’t learn from that failure, refusing once again to commit to a single powertrain.
Hydrogen- and battery-electric vehicles each have different engineering requirements. While they can share electric motors and some associated electronics, that’s not true of hydrogen tanks and batteries. Batteries can be laid flat and easily distributed, but hydrogen tanks are large cylinders that have to be centrally located. Batteries can be slung under the floorpan, while hydrogen tanks fit better under seats or in a central tunnel. Hydrogen also requires a boxy fuel cell, eliminating any frunk space.
It’s possible that BMW has found a way to make Neue Klasse work equally well for both hydrogen and BEVs, but the evidence isn’t in their favor. There’s a reason why automakers have largely converged on the so-called skateboard chassis for BEVs — they’re simpler to engineer, and they reap handling and packing benefits that make EVs spacious inside and pleasant to drive. Plus, fuel cells remain expensive, reliant on pricey metals that would make a battery materials buyer blush. With hydrogen, BMW is fighting an uphill battle against both physics and economics.
Then there’s the infrastructure problem. In many ways, hydrogen is an ideal fuel for transportation, energy-dense and quick to refuel, but it has always fallen short when it comes to distribution. In the U.S., California has the most hydrogen refueling stations, and even then it only has 60 available to motorists. Most of those rely on natural gas to produce the hydrogen, a process that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and relies on a fossil fuel that’s currently going through a supply crunch. BEVs have beaten hydrogen largely because the electric grid already exists.
Still, BMW continues to hope that hydrogen will be the fuel of the future. Problem is, it’s been that for a while now. For decades, people have dreamt of hydrogen-powered passenger cars. I wrote about them in a school research paper … in seventh grade (that was about 30 years ago). More recently, I drove a prototype fuel-cell Mercedes B-Class. That was nearly 15 years ago, and you can’t buy one today.
Despite billions in R&D and a smattering of pseudo-publicly available models, the world is still waiting for a breakthrough fuel-cell vehicle.
All the while, batteries are getting better and charging infrastructure is getting faster and more widespread. Hydrogen may have a place in trucking and other heavy-duty, long-range use cases. But it’s unlikely that it’ll make a serious dent in the market for passenger vehicles.
BMW isn’t alone in its quixotic quest. Toyota and Hyundai are still chasing the hydrogen dream. Theirs, though, appear to be encouraged by Japan’s government policies that prop up hydrogen and fuel-cell development. Germany has a similar policy, though it’s aimed more at hard-to-decarbonize fleets than private owners.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that BMW’s fixation on hydrogen is rooted in its obsession with high-speed Autobahn travel. Driving faster requires more frequent top-offs, and topping off as quickly as a gasoline-powered car would eliminate at least one pain point of the energy transition. Hydrogen does check that box. Yet the unrestricted Autobahn is increasingly untenable, and when the last sections finally get a speed limit, hydrogen’s refilling advantage over batteries may be moot.
The myth of the limitless Autobahn remains strong, though, and BMW’s problem is that its strategy appears more rooted in nostalgia than reality. Ask horse buggy manufacturers how that went.