BMW late to hydrogen party

For all its talk about hydrogen lately, senior BMW officials have confirmed it won't have a fuel-cell car on sale before 2023, at the earliest.

That will be about five years behind key foe Mercedes-Benz and at least four years behind Audi, while Lexus will even gain a head start on the Bavarian company.

BMW recently gave selected journalists drives of a prototype version of the 5 Series GT with hydrogen fuel-cell power, along with drives of the secretive i8-based Black Beauty fuel-cell sports car.

But when it comes to production cars, BMW plans to wait until the next generation of fuel-cell development it's doing with research partner, Toyota. So, despite reports of an i-badged mid-size fuel-cell car from BMW being imminent, it seems we're in for a long wait.

"There will be nothing whatsoever from the Toyota and BMW partnership in production next year or 2017," BMW's vice-president of drivetrain research, Matthias Klietz admitted during the Detroit motor show.

"2019 is probably the best bet for that, and that's the normal development cycle.

"But it will be somewhere between 2020 and 2025 from the hydrogen fuel-cell development."

While it also means those expecting replacements for the BMW Z4 and Toyota Supra will have much longer to wait, the most concerning part is the joint-venture won't even deliver production-ready fuel-cell parts until 2020, much less a fully developed car to sit in showrooms.

"Our target is to have HFC (hydrogen fuel cell) components ready by 2020," Klietz admitted. "It does not mean we would not be able to show something before then, like a concept car or a prototype.

"The HFC stack in the 5 Series GT prototype is the same as the one in the (Toyota) Mirai. With the 5 Series GT prototype we can produce 100kW of power out of the stack with 400 parts at 0.25kW each.

"The Black Beauty stack was a totally different story. That one was not industrialised. It was pure research and everything in it was a prototype part."

So what will BMW be doing in the long years before its production fuel-cell car comes to life? Catching up to its partner, Toyota, it seems.

"Toyota are more advanced in that technology than we at BMW are. We started to develop targets," Klietz admitted.

"In phase one our main task was to speed up in the development from our end so that we were able to continue in the same level of development competence as Toyota.

"Now we are in phase two and we want to now develop with the same level of competence.

"Now we develop target [for] a different stack for 2020. Now we share a stack [from Mirai] but by 2020 it will be the one that's in development right now.

"It's all now about cost reduction in the fuel-cell system in the stack, its life and the cell and all the technology in terms of performance efficiency and integration of the system."

But don't expect a Toyota and BMW fuel stack to (eventually) drive the same way. BMW is out for more power, while Toyota is all about stretching more and more range.

"The more stacks we get in the same space, the more power we get out of them.

"The industrialisation is the target, that includes cost down and decreasing rare-earth material use."

It's clear that BMW and Toyota have different ideas about who is going to need fuel cells the most. Toyota is starting off in the smallest of its small cars, while BMW intends to go big, probably going into production first with a 5 Series in two generations' time or one of its X models.

"A fuel-cell vehicle is going to be used for long driving, and it's an electric vehicle. It's an EV and a different power source," Klietz insisted.

"That's why we have categorised it as a large vehicle, because it will work best if it's doing more than 18,000km a year."

The two (publicly admitted) 5 Series GT fuel cell prototypes deliver 150kW of power, a 0-100km/h sprint of 8.4 seconds and a 180km/h top speed.

One of them has a 700-bar hydrogen gas tank inserted down its length, while the other is a newer system with a cryogenic tank that holds liquid hydrogen. The biggest difference between them is that the older tank holds 4.5kg of hydrogen, while the new-school cold tank, with an internal pressure of just 350 bar, can hold 7.1kg.

Effectively, it almost doubles the 450km range of the 'standard' one, pushing out to 700km.

Other than that, both cars have identical electric motors driving the rear wheels and identical two-speed transmissions as well. Apart from adding spring stiffness to cope with the extra weight, the chassis, suspension, braking and steering systems are carried over from the standard 5 Series GT.

But when it comes time (eventually) for production, they won't share much architecture with any other production BMWs. Or Toyotas, for that matter.

"Having a technical development partnership does not mean that we necessarily share a complete architecture, but it's about the knowledge of the components.

"The operation does not necessarily mean that we share it in both cars and both brands."