Why hydrogen motoring is a real prospect for South Africa

At the beginning of 2013 BMW South Africa hosted a local event at which it showcased two electric trial cars.

These were the Mini E and Active E prototypes, the former based on the R56 Cooper and the latter on the stylish E82 coupé.

Both wielded battery electric vehicle (BEV) power trains and offered a taste of what the future could bring.

Representatives from Nissan (and Eskom) were also in attendance. The Japanese firm was preparing to launch the first-generation Leaf and it arrived in November that year.

A spirit of working together to advance BEV technology and infrastructure was being touted.

As early development exercises, there were compromises besetting the two prototype vehicles from BMW. The packaging of the Mini was impractical with a cumbersome arrangement of cells occupying where the rear seats would have been. Neither vehicle had a real-world range in excess of 120km.

But as we whizzed around sections of road outside George in the Western Cape, the novelty of the technology made a favourable impression with responsive acceleration and silent progress.

After hitting the last full stop on the story after that event, many of us scribes may not have given a second thought to the futuristic technology whose market proliferation seemed quite far down the line. Yet, two years later, BMW began sales of its first production BEV in the country, the i3. It was launched with the dazzling i8 plug-in hybrid.

Almost a decade later, despite challenges in the energy parastatal, the electric vehicle (EV) market continues to mature with new entrants and strides made in the establishment of charging networks.

So what does this long-winded background have to do with the topic in the headline? Mindful of the BMW electric shindig 11 years ago, a recent hydrogen-themed conference had me thinking that soon we could be getting gassy about production series hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) options.

An event in February saw key speakers from Sasol, Anglo American and BMW. There were also representatives from Toyota, as in 2023 the carmaker conducted a demonstration with its second-generation Mirai at the Smarter Mobility Africa summit in Midrand.

Making hydrogen sexy

“My job is to make hydrogen sexy,” said Dries Swanepoel, principal specialist for market development of green hydrogen at Sasol. It was an opener that would raise the eyebrows of the everyday motorist.

But even if talk about pressurised molecules fails to get your juices flowing, the physical example of a hydrogen-powered FCEV such as the BMW iX5 prototype stirs excitement. Check out our separate driving impression here.

Swanepoel referenced a National Business Initiative study ranking the South African transport sector as the third largest contributor to greenhouse emissions.

“Hydrogen mobility provides a genuine opportunity for South Africa to decarbonise, particularly in the hard to abate and hard to electrify heavy duty transport sector,” he said.

In June last year the company repurposed a 60MW electrolyser at its Sasolburg facility, supported by a 3MW solar park, to produce green hydrogen.

On the cards for 2024 is a 69MW wind farm in the Eastern Cape, which Sasol claims will be able to deliver sufficient power to produce green hydrogen on a commercial scale — as much as 3.5 tonnes a day.

At the Smarter Mobility Africa summit in 2023, the rollout of a hydrogen mobility corridor along the N3 between Durban and Johannesburg was discussed as a pilot project for hydrogen-powered heavy trucks.

During a Q&A session we asked Swanepoel how much one might expect to pay for 1kg of hydrogen in future, as in current per-litre terms when discussing fuel.

He said the initial expenditure to establish refuelling infrastructure and produce hydrogen would be major considerations but it would become more affordable in time.

“In the US — for quite some time in California where liquid hydrogen infrastructure is established, they were hovering at $18/kg to $20/kg (R340.45 to R378.29), now at $36/kg (R681.16), there is a belief that to be on a comparative basis today the pump price of hydrogen should be between $7 (R132.47) and $10 (R189.29).” 

He predicts that in the future the pump price of hydrogen might be similar to a diesel equivalent.

Who will regulate the price of hydrogen? That subject is a work in progress, Swanepoel said, depending on the classification.

If it is deemed to be a gas, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa would be involved. If it is categorised as transport fuel, the energy department would weigh-in.

Hydrogen benefits over BEV

“The future is electric, all the energy of the future will come from sun, wind and water,” said Dr Juergen Guldner, general programme manager for hydrogen technology at BMW.

“But electricity, especially renewable electricity, has a few challenges — you can't store electricity for a long time, we know that from our cellphones, you can't transport energy over longer distances.

“There are processes in the industry that cannot be electrified, steel production, fertiliser production. We have a large spectrum of use cases for electricity but also for hydrogen.

“Hydrogen can be stored for longer periods, hydrogen can be transported over longer distances, as a gas in pipelines or in liquid form by ships.”

Guldner said while hydrogen has benefits in passenger vehicle applications, primarily, the technology will find ideal suitability in heavy commercial vehicles.

“A hydrogen car uses 100kg less steel and so on than a BEV with equivalent range, a hydrogen car uses 90% less of the raw materials in its battery vs a BEV, we can make 10 batteries for a fuel cell car vs one battery for a BEV.”

Then there is the refuelling time — going from empty to full in less than five minutes, according to Guldner.

“We want to offer a suitable technology to everybody. Hydrogen is interesting to people who don't have electric charging at home or work, especially in metropolitan areas, it is difficult to get charging in each parking spot.”

"[Hydrogen will appeal to] people who travel a lot and don't want to plan their lives around electric charging stations or have to wait 20 to 30 minutes for their cars to charge.”

So when will we see a series production hydrogen FCEV BMW model? Guldner was coy.

“This world tour and pilot fleet is about getting feedback from different regions of the world. We don't have a timeline established yet as to when it would make sense for us as a company to have the first mass product.”

We asked Guldner, if hydrogen offers such clear benefits over BEV technology, why not commit to it entirely?

“It is important to be flexible as a company, to offer each customer the ideal solution for their mobility needs,” he said. Being “technology agnostic” and allowing customers to choose is the best strategy, according to Guldner.

Mining sector involvement

Prakashim Moodliar, executive head of projects and environment at Anglo American Platinum, spoke of the solution hydrogen technology could offer in the decarbonisation of the mining sector.

In 2022 the company trialed a mining haul truck with a 290-tonne payload powered by hydrogen. The vehicle was purported to have been in operation for a year as a test exercise at its Mogalakwena mine in Limpopo, supported by on-site hydrogen production, compression, storage and refuelling solutions.

The 2,000kW hydrogen-battery hybrid haul truck was described as the largest of its type in operation in the world.

“Mogalakwena mines up to 20% of the world's platinum, 20% of emissions come from diesel in heavy haul trucks,” Moodliar said.

“In addition to decarbonisation, hydrogen and its application provides opportunity for our platinum group metals (PGMs) to play a strategic role in the value chain.”

While nickel, copper and cobalt are mainstays in BEV technology, the PGMs suite of platinum, iridium, palladium, ruthenium, rhodium and osmium are identified as drivers in the development of hydrogen-powered FCEV technology.

“Within the hydrogen and mobility ecosystem we see the potential to trade between 2bn and 5bn ounces of platinum demand.”

Moodliar said Anglo American is exploring the development of the first hydrogen valley in South Africa.

The valley would span from the Mogalakwena mine along key transport corridors to Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and would be “conceived as a cluster of industrial and research initiatives carrying out a series of pilot projects in the value chain.”