Hydrogen not hybrids for Hyundai

While willing to campaign for a hydrogen refuelling infrastructure that could take decades to develop, Hyundai Australia has made it clear it has no interest in selling “band-aid” automotive environmental solutions such as hybrids and electric vehicles that are available now or in the near future.

The company cites a combination of business hard-headedness and philosophical objection as the basis of its policy, despite its global parent offering various hybrid models as well as reportedly having a dedicated Toyota Prius rival under development.

“There are different ways of making the internal combustion engine a bit more fuel efficient; it’s nice but it’s not necessarily the longest term thing,” Hyundai Motor Company Australia chief operating officer John Elsworth told motoring.com.au.

“And having electric cars that just plug into the grid is not necessarily solving anything. It’s creating another problem.

“They are interim solutions. We just wanted to jump in at the end point.”

Elsworth was speaking only moments after the company had opened Australia’s first hydrogen car refuelling station yesterday at its Macquarie Park headquarters in Sydney, which for the moment at least only has a prototype ix35 fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) to refill.

Internationally, Hyundai offers a petrol-electric hybrid Sonata medium sedan and also intends to launch a plug-in version. It has also shown mild and plug-in diesel-electric hybrid versions of its new Tucson mid-size SUV, orthodox petrol and diesel versions of which will be launched here late July.

As well as the issues relating to their effectiveness as green transport alternatives, Elsworth said assembling a right-hand drive business case for these cars was “pretty challenging”.

“We could probably do a hybrid car, but there’s not a lot of right-hand drive volume so that does drive your cost up.

“There are really only three right-hand markets – us, the United Kingdom and New Zealand is the volume. So creating the business case for all that sort of stuff is pretty challenging too.

“As we sit here today we haven’t been able to see how that works financially and part of it is the amortisation across the right-hand drive markets.”

The refueller and the ix35 were ‘launched’ by federal science and industry minister Ian Macfarlane, who endorsed the technology.

The ix35 FCEV converts hydrogen to electricity, burns no fuel and emits nothing but water vapour from its exhaust. The range and refuelling time is similar to that of a normal petrol-powered car. But the sole left-hand drive example in Australia can only be driven by Hyundai employees.

Right-hand drive FCEV production is expected to start in 2018 when the next generation of Hyundai fuel cell tech is introduced.

Hyundai hopes its actions will spark a debate about hydrogen with government and industry and eventually lead to the establishment of a nationwide refuelling network and the widespread availability of FCEVs at an affordable price.

But Elsworth admitted that could take “20 years”.

“There just needs to be the right number of cars. What people are used to is the norm. Going way into the future it should be no different to accessibility of petrol and the cost of a car,” he said.

Despite the length of time likely to yield results, Elsworth said Hyundai’s actions were the right thing to do for both the future of the company and future generations of Australians.

“In this industry you can get caught up in very short-term solutions and not provide anything that will help your kids,” Elsworth said.

“I have seven-year-old kids, so I’d like to finish one day and say ‘OK, we created a legacy for our kids that is really meaningful’. At the moment we are working on stuff that is band-aid.

“It’s … saying if you are in charge of a business ‘what’s going to make the business live well beyond your time here?’ Focussing on everything short-term is not providing a legacy that exists forever, so I think at some point you have to lift your eyes up and look way off into the future and say ‘what is it, what’s the thing that’s going to revolutionise cars?’”