Hyundai ix35 FCEV 2015 Review

When you consider the choices we have for zero-emissions vehicles, there is not a lot on the table. There’s the plug-in EV, of course, the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle and the compressed-air car, the last being very much a long shot. The fuel-cell vehicle is yet to take hold in any meaningful way – but Hyundai is out to change that. As we had the opportunity to sample on a 1000km drive in the Korean marque’s ix35 FCEV from outside Venice to Frankfurt over four days.

The ix35 FCEV is very much like the fossil-fuelled ix35 in body structure. Aside from the instrumentation and gear lever giving away the story, the only other tell-tale is the loss of some cargo space and peek-a-boo hydrogen tanks underneath the SUV’s rear. This is where the standard ix35’s spare wheel would sit, so here there’s no spare — you have to rely on a repair kit. The electric motor and fuel cell stack sits in the engine bay, the high-voltage lithium polymer battery is underneath, about mid-point down the platform.

Inside, it’s a similar story; aside from the instrument cluster, with its charge/power meter and additional information in the central trip computer (such as refueling count), you are looking at a conventional ix35 layout. The gear lever is a normal gated lever with an ‘E’ mode and ‘L’ mode. The ‘E’ mode reduces power output, and the ’L’ mode activates regenerative braking to recharge the high-voltage battery when not applying throttle.

The FCEV drives much like a ‘conventional’ EV — because basically that’s what it is… The difference lies in the way the ix35’s electric motor sources its electricity. While it has a 25kW 12volt battery to supplement power when the fuel cell stack can’t feed enough current, the FCEV otherwise relies on its onboard hydrogen supply to make electricity as it goes along.

Aside from a barely audible whirring from underneath, the FCEV is silent, and only road and wind noise becomes obvious from about 100km/h.

From rest to about 80km/h, the ix35 gets along very well. Electric motors give their maximum torque from the moment they begin to turn so you have a strong, linear acceleration and roll-on response until the imposition of pushing the ix35 though the air blunts performance.

We also noticed how much climbing into the Austrian Alps sapped power. This, Hyundai said, was because the vehicles we drove (which were actually all pre-production models) did not have the software update for high altitude driving.

Given the similar lack of response on the German plains at speed on the Autobahn, maybe the 25kW battery isn’t pitching in as much, or for as long, as it could when you’re asking the FCEV to give its all.

The FCEV’s dynamics were much the same as the fossil-fuelled ix35s. There was not a lot of steering feel, the handling response was quite staid and ride quality was in the main supple.

Brake pedal feel (as we’ve noted in some of the conventional ix35’s we’ve driven) was odd because nothing happened for the first one-third to half of the pedal travel. Then the brakes felt wooden, with little feel.

At least when the re-generative mode was selected, you could rely on the strong ‘engine’ braking to do some of the slowing down for you. In stop-start traffic, just lifting off the accelerator would bring speed down to walking pace. Rolling along at much more than about 80km/h though and this regenerative mode didn’t seem to help much, requiring plenty of use of the brake pedal to wash off speed.

When we rolled into one of the refueling stations, we could recharge the hydrogen tanks in about the time it takes to go get a coffee from the servo. It’s about a two-to-three minute procedure to recharge the tanks to their 5.64kg capacity. The nozzle itself is much like an LPG nozzle; you simply lock the bowser’s nozzle onto the filler port, squeeze the trigger and wait until a whoosh sound signals that the tanks are full.

The Hyundai ix35 FCEV is a zero-emissions vehicle that gives an insight to our motoring future, especially in a country like Australia. It has the touring range and recharge speed that EVs can only dream about.

But the main problem facing this type of zero-emissions vehicle is the elephant in the room: hydrogen refueling infrastructure; and to a degree, how that hydrogen is made.

In Australia, there is just one hydrogen station, at Hyundai’s headquarters in Sydney. So right now your hydrogen car has a 250km-or-so range around Sydney. That said, given our drive in Europe (where we were able to refuel at hydrogen stations every 300km or so) this is a problem that can be easily overcome provided that there is the political will to do so.

Solar power can also take away the need to rely on coal-fired electricity to make the hydrogen. This is not viable now, but in the next 10 years or so it could be.

2015 Hyundai ix35 FCEV pricing and specifications:
Price: Overseas lease program only
Motor: Induction (electric)
Output: 100kW / 300Nm
Transmission: Geared differential
Battery: 24kW lithium polymer
Fuel cell: 100kW / 2 x hydrogen tanks (700MPa) 5.64kg
Fuel consumption: 3.3L/100km
Safety rating: TBA