Makes hydrogen "sexy" for status seeking wealthy, who may confer this value on others.

A niche market for this 12 banger would help develop the infrastructure needed for fuel cell cars in air quality limited places like LA.

Keep in mind that fuel cells may one day be used in hybrids to supplant battery weight, and to diversify the fuel mix. Hybridization, after all, does not infer only a pure dualty of propulsion energy. Multi-hybrids are definitely in reach.

Having said that, BMW has had these or cars like them in play since 2001, in Germany; and it's therfore probably just a brand image burnishing move. Everyone can smell a regulatory change coming after this fall and it's good business to act in accordance.

This is a transition car. It will run on both hydrogen and gas. I'm not sure why the large engine doesn't produce more power though.

I wonder what the engine displacement is. Maybe it's 12 really small cylinders which are somehow preferred over fewer larger cylinders when burning hydrogen.

Perhaps adapting the car to run on two very different fuel types results in neither of working very well.

Good points, Jacob, about the hydrogen PR smokescreen the auto makers are using. For years GM talked up hydrogen as a way to avoid engineering a hybrid. The logic was why invest in a transition technology when you could "leapfrog" fuel cells. Well, we need economical cars now, not in ten years.

Of course, we are still at least a decade away from fuel cells in cars and a lot of smart people are questioning whether hydrogen cars are even such a great of an idea in the first place.

Not to mention it hasn't exactly been worked out where all this hydrogen is going to come from. Creating hydrogen uses an awful lot of energy, which makes it not so great as a storage medium.

Found this part of the article interesting...

"cheap, powerful, fast-charging batteries, mostly made in China".

So that's ok then. Not as if sea transport pollutes.

As for the car...nah, I'd have a 450h.

JL, fuel cell is not the answer either. The European Fuel Cell Forum, a leading group of fuel cell engineers and designers, has decided to stop discussing or supporting hydrogen fuel cells as the hype around hydrogen has distracted from what Ulf Bossel, the leader of teh EFCF, calls the "electron economy" which is 90% energy efficient rather than 25% energy efficiency as hydrogen fuel cells would be from energy source to wheel. There is room for fuel cells that use more efficiently produced liquid fuels with an overall efficiency of 50% or so but these are not as efficient as a system that generates electricity and stores a charge in a battery or ultracapacitor. Unfortunately there needs to be a steady campaign that undoes the decade or so of hydrogen hype which is still with us.

electric motors still have to be charged and CO2 fuels burned to charge them. Hydrogen cars or any Hydrogen motor release only H2O. Plug-in hybrids are not the way to go.

The engine in a typical 750i/iL is 5.0-6.0L depending on the vintage and export model. The prototype of this car ran on modified version of the gas burner using compressed hydrogen and produced well over 350hp. I suspect inaccurate reporting on sub-300hp ratings. It is also possibly one of the most comfortable, luxurious and *safest* automobiles on the planet (the 7 series BMW in general).

Niche market? Just the gas model alone has a SMRP of well over US$100,000 and the first batch of the hydrogen burners are likely to double that. It was designed for a niche market even before it started burning hydrogen!

Electric cars are all fine and dandy but a true hybrid that can burn petroleum products while the transition is made (first to hydrogen and then pure electric, IMHO) is what is needed. Electron economy still needs a safe, affordable, and easy to deploy infrastructure to make work beyond "novelty". Hydrogen is quite possibly the biggest part of that answer, whether it's pumped straight into a tank or converted on an industrial scale.

This car is no more a novelty than the Prius and when translated to the much more economical 3-series is likely to make much bigger waves in the automotive industry... world wide.

I will look no longer to the larger companies whose sole interest is to divert attention and blow smoke up our proverbials. No, I will look to the small engineering firms and the "crackpot" wrench geeks who will drive innovation in the beginning of this century as they did in the beginning of the 20th.

With a candle, I will mourn the demise of the shortsighted, money-hungry politicos and special interests who truly run this country as they dig their own grave.

Regardless of whether this is the "right" strategy for renewable vehicles, I believe that BMW should still be commended for their efforts.
Whether or not one agrees with the "Hydrogen Hype", it would appear that everyone's money is on hydrogen, and so that is where we are headed. So for BMW to produce a vehicle that is near enough as green as a fuel cell vehicle, as far as emissions are concerned, within a few years, by using vehicles and drivetrains already at their disposal, is an encouraging achievement.
Fuel cell cars are still a while off (I suppose Honda might come up with something by the end of the decade if we're very lucky, although I wouldn't hold your breath)and a fuel cell car that is equal in terms of desirability and drivability to a BMW 7 series, is a hell of a way off.
So, a company with the engineering abilities of BMW could develop this stop-gap vehicle into a true alternative, significantly ahead of a competetive fuel cell vehicle.
As for why the engine underperforms compared to an equivalent petrol engine: Hydrogen generates less heat when it burns than petroleum, therefore there is less movement in the pistons. This is compounded by the car's duel-fuel nature- an engine set up to run exclusively on hydrogen would perform considerably better.
This is not to say that a hydrogen ICE runs any less efficiently than a petrol- quite the opposite in fact.
A hydrogen ICE runs smoother and cleaner than a petrol, reducing strain on the engine(which increases the engine longevity), and all it really means is that you don't get the high-octane immediate power of a gas engine. Over time, the hydrogen ICE will evolve, however, and become ever more powerful, untill it is in the same league as today's petrol fuelled engines.
I can see why many prefer the idea of an all-electric car, but in reality there are just as many environmental pitfalls to be tackled in all-electric cars, as there are in hydrogen cars( the "long tailpipe", manufacture and disposal of chemical batteries, transporting those batteries, etc etc)
In my opinion, BMW are definately on to a winner, at least in the short to medium term.

Man some people will never be happy...

The thing that caught my eye was that a half-full dewer of LH2 will boil dry in just 9 days. I frequently leave my car sitting unused for four or five days at a time, sometimes more than a week. Obviously, liquid hydrogen is not for me.

Interesting how the comments have turned into a hydrogen v electric Car debate. The fact is electric cars where successfully mass produced and sold in 1990's by the big manufacturers. Now smaller manufacturers are producing 2nd generation models with greater range and power. Today I can access electricity almost anywhere. Today I can buy green electricity or easily generate my own. Today I know that my $$/mile cost for an electric car is a fraction of an ICE car. Can I do any of this with hydrogen cars today? When and where can I buy hydrogen? How much will hydrogen cost me in $$/mile?

Very interesting! I'm making a documentary film and need a form of transport while I'm in the US making it, really like the idea of having a sustainable energy powered car in the film. Two questions:

1)Is an electric plug in the best or biofuel / ICE (which I'm gathering is not)?

2) Which companies / groups / people can I approach about getting sponsored one?

Some of you are correct and some of you need a little more clarification. No problem… and thank you John for you factual portrayal.

H2 is not always H2. And LH2 is a whole different animal. And of course, Hybrid is not Hydrogen.
H2 can be stored in a gaseous form under pressure or at ambient temperature without pressure. Because H2’s energy density, it take up a lot of space to get the same bang for your buck (or volume) as petroleum. GH2 under high pressure is more dangerous than LH2 in many ways. LH2 is usually stored at low pressure ~ 3-6 bar (less than a champagne bottle which has 7 bar). When released into an ambient environment, it dissipates almost immediately without much risk of explosion so long there are no ignition sources in the area. H2 under pressure (the industry’s current standard is ~ 300 bar, while some research is attempting to reach close to 700 bar) is more volatile due to the inherent explosive factor and subsequent ignition source of a container under extreme pressure. Tests done on CGH2 show it to be a safe substance under the right precautions. Road accidents and crash testing will prove this to be true or false.
LH2 on the other hand is very hard to handle because is must always be kept cold -253C°. Above this temperature, LH2 begins to boil and expand. As an example Gaseous H2 is ~ 830 times more voluminous than LH2. This means that with LH2, the BMW Hydrogen 7 gets better range than it would if it used GH2 and the tank would need to be much larger than it is today.
Hybrid is only the inevitable electrification of the internal combustion engine, just like carburetors were phased out, an electrical motor will be phased in. It’s nothing more spectacular than that. Manufacturers have different approaches. BMW has a holistic approach rather than a piece meal one like some.
The Hydrogen 7 is a stepping stone and a bridge to a new type of energy carrier (H2 is not an energy source, but rather a storage for energy released or collected from another source (sun, wind, geo-thermal, nuclear, …). Unfortunately, most of the worlds H2 is produce from fossil fuels.
The GM Model is a far reaching concept, which will perhaps in the distant future be a replacement for some modes of transportation like the ICE (internal combustion engine) powered personal vehicle. But it will remain to be seen how technology develops. FC’s need to withstand horrendous conditions as ICE’s do today. Unfortunately, experts believe this will be a long road until FC’s are far enough along to replace your average car. Heavy industry is also a major question mark.
The BMW concept is, as I mentioned, a bridge to the future. The Bi-Fuel concept allows a driver to drive in either mode, depending on fuel availability. Of course it will take some time for the costly infrastructure to develop, but as it does organically, like the petroleum business, the vehicle can run more and more on H2. The FC model from GM can’t do that, which is, realistically speaking, its major downfall in 2006. In 2020, this could be a different story. We will have to wait and see.
The BMW Hydrogen 7 is obviously not a redeveloped or completely new developed vehicle. It looks like the LH2 technology way squeezed into the vehicles original package, which is very clever. This way, BMW can save millions in R&D costs and is avoiding any major risks of developing a car that no one wants and being stuck with very costly initial costs like a new production facility or expensive tooling.
The FC and the H2-ICE story will continue to be exciting to watch. It is important to remember that if the industry moves too fast or is mandated by government to eliminate CO2 before the technology is viable or the infrastructure is available, billions will need to be spent for retraining and revamping or the current production facilities and well as suppliers in the ICE world we know today. The industry will be bankrupt and we will not need to care about the silly quips above. We will be back to living in urban areas, riding bicycles and horses before you know it.

Cheers,

Argodelmar

Argodelmar makes quite an interesting post about some of the technicalities of H2 and is apparently quite well informed on the topic.

However I would have to disagree with his last paragraph suggesting that if we tried to reduce CO2 too quickly we will bankrupt the auto industry. We are currently in a situation where modern science is telling us that if we don't move quickly to reduce CO2 then the Global Climate change will make the planet a far less inhabitable place for all. The emerging Carbon economy is actually stimulating those industries who choose to embrace the concept. Old world industries who continue to operate without respect for the environment will naturally suffer. We are already seeing this with the big US auto manufacturers.

It seems to me that big oil (who have a symbiotic relationship with big auto) and big coal want all of us to think that if we give them another 10 years or so they can introduce H2 / FC cars and clean coal. The problem is that many scientists think that the next 10 years is the most critical timeframe for correcting the C02 balance.

So in essence we cant afford to wait 10 more years for big oil, big auto and big coal to have it their way. Our Governments should be further encouraging eco friendly solutions today. While H2 / FC technologies may well be eco friendly and possibly viable in a decade we simply cannot afford to wait that long.

I know that electric cars used for commuters are a relatively eco friendly solution that is available today. The biggest downside today is the cost of the high performance batteries that this solution requires. This is where Govt administered Carbon taxes / credits and other eco subsidies are required.

Right now we all have a choice to either trust the future of our World to big oil and big auto or we can use our birth rights to insist that our Governments take action today to protect our future.

Cheers,
Martin.

Something that many of the commenters in this thread are still not getting is: where does the H2 come from?

It comes now from reformed petroleum or natural gas. Both of which have more more energy than the H2 if used in an efficient engine. If it were theoretically derived from electrolysis using renewable electricity, you would be saving almost 70% of that renewable energy if you just put it in a battery or ran an electrified vehicle directly from that power. With the H2 internal combustion engine we are talking

Why is having a liquid fuel worth all that sacrifice?

Too many intelligent people have bought into the assumption that Hydrogen is the answer. You have to ask yourself why environmentally conscientious Fuel Cell researchers have decided to advocate for the simple use of electricity to drive vehicles and not take the long and costly detour through hydrogen.

Because current batteries can not compete with standard fuels or even H2.

Why, if not for solely political reasons, should we transition to hydrogen--a source of energy that requires a lot of energy to produce, when we have many other clean, energy efficient methods of propulsion?