Hydrogen Mobility vs. Platinum Reality
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Last Updated on: 18th August 2025, 11:38 am
Alstom’s hydrogen train experiment has hit the buffers again, with operators in Germany reverting to diesel because replacement fuel cells are not available. Only four of the 14 Coradia trains Lower Saxony purchased are in operation. It is tempting to dismiss this as a simple supply chain hiccup, but the problem runs deeper. Following the thread back reveals not only the weakness of hydrogen in transportation but also a structural material constraint that makes it even less viable.
The Coradia iLint trains were always meant to be a flagship for hydrogen mobility. They use fuel cells supplied by Cummins, built out of its Hydrogenics legacy in Canada and Europe. Each train carries two modules rated at about 200 kW each. Fuel cells of that scale require 0.4 to 0.6 grams of platinum per kilowatt to achieve the durability demanded in rail service. That works out to about 0.2 kg of platinum per train. At today’s prices, that costs about $8,700, around 5% of the cost of the fuel cell. It sounds small until you set it against global production.
At the heart of every PEM fuel cell sits a thin membrane coated with platinum, and its role is both simple and irreplaceable. Platinum acts as the catalyst that splits incoming hydrogen molecules into protons and electrons. The protons migrate through the membrane while the electrons are forced around an external circuit, producing usable electricity. On the other side of the membrane, platinum again makes the reaction possible by speeding up the sluggish process of combining oxygen, protons, and electrons into water. These two reactions are fundamental to the device, and platinum’s unique surface chemistry allows them to happen at practical rates and with the necessary durability. Without platinum, the cell either fails to run efficiently or falls apart too quickly. That catalytic function is why every gram of platinum in a fuel cell stack is indispensable, and why fuel cells cannot escape their dependence on a scarce and volatile metal.
The platinum market produces about 250 to 280 tons per year. Roughly a third goes into automotive catalysts, primarily for diesel cars and trucks. Another quarter goes into jewelry. Industrial catalysts in refining and chemicals absorb close to a fifth. Glass and electronics take a smaller share. Fuel cells and electrolysers together barely register at 1 or 2 tons a year.
In catalytic converters for cars and trucks, platinum is one of the metals that makes modern combustion tolerable under air quality rules. When exhaust gases leave the engine, they carry unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. Platinum provides active sites on its surface that break down these pollutants through redox reactions at the high temperatures of the exhaust stream. Hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide are oxidized into carbon dioxide and water, while nitrogen oxides are reduced into nitrogen. Platinum works in concert with palladium and rhodium, but in diesel engines platinum is the most effective catalyst because of the cooler and oxygen-rich exhaust. The finely dispersed platinum particles can withstand the thermal cycling and chemical poisons that would destroy lesser materials. Without platinum, diesel engines could not meet emissions regulations, which is why automakers buy it at almost any price and why the demand from this sector dominates global consumption.
In refineries, platinum is the quiet workhorse of the catalytic reforming units that turn low-value naphtha into high-octane gasoline and feedstocks for petrochemicals. Platinum atoms dispersed on alumina support surfaces provide active sites where hydrocarbon molecules are rearranged, dehydrogenated, or cyclized under controlled heat and pressure. This not only upgrades fuel quality by raising the octane number but also generates streams of hydrogen gas that the refinery reuses in hydrocracking and desulfurization. Platinum’s stability under harsh chemical and thermal conditions is critical, since these reactors run continuously for months at a time and downtime costs millions. While small amounts of rhenium or tin are often added to tune performance, platinum remains the irreplaceable core of the catalyst bed. Without it, the refining system that underpins both fuels and petrochemicals would seize up, which is why this sector treats platinum as an absolute necessity rather than a discretionary expense.
South Africa supplies about 70 percent of mined platinum. Its mining sector is plagued by electricity shortages, floods, strikes, and political bottlenecks. Recycling adds only a fraction and has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade. The result is a platinum market that is undersupplied by nearly a million ounces per year, which is about 31 tons. Prices have climbed to eleven-year highs, and lease rates spiked to levels more familiar in distressed bond markets.
Recycling should be the pressure valve for a constrained platinum market, but in practice recovery rates are low and volatile. Most platinum recycling comes from end-of-life catalytic converters, where the dense ceramic monoliths can be processed to reclaim the dispersed metal. Even there, collection inefficiencies, export restrictions, and processing bottlenecks mean large fractions never make it back into the supply chain. In other applications like fuel cells, electronics, and glass equipment, recovery is even worse because the platinum is either too finely distributed, too contaminated, or uneconomic to extract. The result is that annual recycling contributes only a small fraction of the roughly 250 tons of platinum demand, and volumes have been falling, not rising. That leaves primary mining in South Africa and Russia to carry the load, which magnifies supply risk and keeps fuel cells exposed to the volatility of a thin and fragile market.
When you look at which industries are willing to pay most for platinum, fuel cells come last. Automakers will pay whatever it takes to meet emissions regulations. Refineries cannot operate without platinum catalysts and every day offline costs millions. Specialty glass and electronics manufacturers have no replacement material for their high-temperature platinum tools. Jewelry consumption is elastic, so it falls away when prices climb, freeing up some supply for industries that cannot do without. Hydrogen fuel cells sit at the end of this queue, with limited volumes and customers sensitive to cost.
This is where the weakness of hydrogen in transportation becomes clear. Batteries require metals as well, but there is a wide range of choices. Nickel and cobalt can be avoided entirely by shifting to LFP chemistry, which is already mainstream in China and increasingly in the west. Lithium itself can be substituted in many applications with sodium-ion, which is now in commercial production. Manganese and iron are abundant. In batteries there are trade-offs, but there is no single non-substitutable metal whose absence ends the technology. In PEM fuel cells platinum is that single point of failure.
Hydrogen for transportation was already disadvantaged by poor energy efficiency, high operational costs, higher infrastructure costs, and lack of market traction compared to batteries. The platinum supply constraint makes it worse. Every additional megawatt of fuel cell capacity consumes more of a scarce metal that other industries will always outbid hydrogen for. Scaling hydrogen mobility only deepens the reliance on a raw material with no substitute, limited suppliers, and chronic deficits.
Transit operators that have purchased hydrogen bus fleets are going to be running into this exact same problem in the coming months and years. Fuel cells typically only last 2-3 years per EU data, and with platinum shortages, fuel cell vendors will be struggling to supply replacements. Warranties are going to be problematic as well, with higher costs for warranties for new buses.
This is just more of the bloodbath in hydrogen transportation this year. I recently updated my tracking spreadsheet of hydrogen transportation firms. 41 of the 164 have either gone out of business or dropped hydrogen. At that, many of the firms haven’t said anything about hydrogen recently, and are likely doing quiet pivots away from it which will only become evident later. I suspect Alstom will be dropping hydrogen shortly.
The return of Lower Saxony’s trains to diesel is symbolic. It shows how fragile hydrogen mobility is when even a handful of trains cannot be kept in service because of missing fuel cells. The irony is that the more the sector tries to scale, the faster it runs into the platinum wall. Battery electric trains are already common, cheaper to operate, and free of this constraint. The lesson is clear. Hydrogen for transportation is not just an inefficient idea. It is one that collides with the hard geology of platinum supply, making it a dead end. The future of transport is electric and it will run on abundant materials, not scarce catalysts.
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