BMW plans to switch Regensburg plant logistics fleet to hydrogen

Bavarian automaker BMW has announced plans to convert the intralogistics fleet at its Regensburg plant from battery to hydrogen power, with FCEV forklift and tugger trucks set to replace the entirety of its existing fleet by 2030.

Despite sales of BMW’s battery electric starting to take off, the propeller company is still investing heavily in fuel cell development – from its latest iX5 Hydrogen FCEV concept to, well, the intralogistics fleet at its Regensburg plant, where the company plans to employ hydrogen forklifts and tuggers in the press shop, body shop, and assembly lines.

BMW’s aggressive deployment timeline is, of course, loaded with problems. For starters, very little hydrogen is actually “green,” and the majority of conventionally available hydrogen is created using fossil fuels – making it both far less environmentally sustainable than you might think … and a lot more expensive than either diesel fuel or battery capacity.

Then there’s the outright misinformation, like this tidbit:

Switching production logistics from electricity to hydrogen will diversify our plant’s energy mix – while optimizing logistics processes and saving valuable space. The advantage of hydrogen is that refueling is very fast – just like with conventional fuels. The filling stations required for this will be installed directly within the different production areas and do not take up much space.

Project Manager, BMW Regensburg, Katharina Radtke

I don’t think this is a situation where Katharina is trying to spread misinformation – but she does, like many hydrogen fans, seem to be misinformed.

See, when you fill up a storage tank with a gas like H or CNG, the gas heats up as it’s quickly forced into the tank, causing it to expand. That means the same amount of fuel takes up more physical space hot than it does cold – and, as the gas in the tank gradually cools down, it contracts, leaving empty space in the tank.

That means you can “fast fill” a hydrogen tank to 100% in a few minutes, but it’ll eventually settle back down to about 75-80% full, even if you don’t drive anywhere. You’ll then have to “slow fill” the remaining capacity to avoid a similar expansion – and that can take hours.

You can see an example of this phenomenon, below, in this interactive infographic from the US Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC).

Electrek’s Take

In case you can’t read between the lines, filling a tank with hydrogen isn’t any faster than filling a battery with electricity, and even the most cryo-compressed hydrogen tanks can’t get too far past a 90% fast fill … and they have other problems with boil off, leaks, etc. All of which sort of begs the question: why make the switch to hydrogen at all?

Back in January, MAN Trucks’ CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp, told reporters that it was, “impossible for hydrogen to effectively compete with battery electric trucks.” Vlaskamp added, “Today you cannot buy hydrogen for less than 13 or 14 euros … and it is not green. And when we have green hydrogen it will be needed for the heavy industry of steel, cement, or plastic.”

So — if all that’s true, why is MAN, like BMW, continuing to invest in hydrogen-powered vehicle programs? “Only to test our hypothesis,” says Vlaskamp (emphasis mine). “We may use hydrogen for transportation in 2035, but only if there is enough green hydrogen at the right price and the necessary infrastructure is in place.”

To ensure it has enough H, BMW will install a mile-long network of underground pipes, with six decentralized H filling stations, between now and Q1 of 2026. “Once the conversion is completed, our annual hydrogen consumption will be around 150 tonnes,” says Radtke.

Here’s hoping BMW can get a better deal than 14 euros for dirty fuel by then.

SOURCE | IMAGES: BMW.