I
t’s the VHS vs Betamax battle for the new age: battery electric v hydrogen cars. While there is still a vocal minority of people who advocate the latter, most people now recognise that battery-powered cars have emerged as the dominant force.
There are a number of reasons for this. For example, hydrogen might be the most abundant element in the universe but it loves binding to other elements, such as oxygen to create water, so you need to separate it to get the pure gas, and that takes energy. The only way to make it a clean fuel is to use renewables to do this, and that has not always been the case.
The bigger problem is refuelling: it may take longer to recharge a plug-in car, but it’s become a lot easier in recent years to find a place to do so — many EV owners can charge up at home, while public chargers can now be found in more than 40,000 locations around the UK, according to Zap-Map’s latest figures.
Shell closed its three UK hydrogen filling stations in 2022, including this one in Cobham, Surrey
