5,200 Public EV Charging Stations, 58 Hydrogen Fueling Stations

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Reposted from EV Obsession:

We all have our own favorites when it comes to clean cars of the future. Since I am writing on this site, I think you can tell what mine is. However, there are of course others who think that hydrogen-powered cars own the future. I remember seeing an ad (I think from Ford) in a major magazine about 10 years ago that was about the beautiful fact that hydrogen-powered cars didn’t emit pollution, just water (and heat). 10 years later, I’m yet to see a fancy hydrogen-powered car… wait, actually, I did see one at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (see the pic below) — I guess I should say that I’m yet to see one on the road.

hydrogen fuel cell car
A 5-second friend and me in front of a hydrogen fuel cel car in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Credit: Marika Krakwoiak / Zachary Shahan

I’m really not certain what kind of future hydrogen-powered cars have (see the interview I conducted with NREL Director Dan Arvizu at the bottom of this post), but it’s pretty clear that electric vehicles are moving into the future a lot faster than hydrogen-powered vehicles. As one indication of that, I’ll finally discuss the numbers posted in the title.

According to a recent report, there are only 58 hydrogen fueling stations in the US, compared to 5,621 public electric vehicle charging stations (as I’m writing this). I think the 58 number is for the end of 2012 (not that it has changed much since then), so in my title I used the December 18 US charging station total of 5,200 to be as accurate as possible.

North America added 8 hydrogen fueling stations in 2012, while the US has been adding about 180 electric vehicle charging stations each month this year, so the gap is only growing.

Of course, this is all common sense, since there are a fair number of 100% electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the market already, and not really any hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the market yet. Perhaps we’ll see a change as we approach 2015, the year in which Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and Hyundai say they are planning  to release fuel-cell vehicles. We’ll see…

I’m not very bullish on hydrogen vehicles, since the storage of hydrogen is not particularly the safe and the (almost not present) fueling stations are much more critical for their growth than charging stations are for EV growth (EV owners can simply plug their cars in to conventional power outlets — they don’t require charging stations). But, as stated above, some car companies are putting money on this technology. NREL’s Dan Arvizu also isn’t counting them out, as you’ll see in this video interview:


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7324 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan