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EDN Europe's Editor Graham Prophet posts a selection of comments and insights prompted by the many items of industry news and rumour that cross the editorial desk or are gathered on his frequent travels to interviews, press conferences and events around Europe - and further afield - and somehow never find their way to the magazine or the web site, recovering some of the information otherwise lost in the noise level...

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Where’s the hydrogen?

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Today (Tuesday) was the first day of the Automotive Electronics Congress, held in Paris. Part of the first day’s conference programme was a panel discussion on the subject of “Environment and Infrastructure for EVs and HEVs (electric vehicles/hybrid electric vehicles). That covered, as you might expect, a wide range of topics including the various “degrees” of hybrid that are presently under development, extending out to the pure electric car with range-extending engine.
Notably absent from the discussion – and the keynote speech that followed it, a paper entitled, “The future for the automotive industry; a mixed model with thermic and electric solutions?” – were two words. Those words being, “fuel” and “cell”.
It seems that for Europe at least, the consensus on the near-to-medium term future for personal transport has settled on a plan that doesn’t include hydrogen-based technology. Whatever future architecture we find ourselves designing for, it’s going to need a lot of infrastructure spending, probably funded to a greater or lesser extent at state or EU level. No-one will want to put in electric charging points everywhere if the technology of choice turns out to be hydrogen: and vice-versa.
Right now, although you could hardly say that we have a range of fully-developed technologies at our disposal, it appears that the majority of industry players have more confidence that the steps needed to get to an electric/thermic end-result look more readily achievable than the alternative.
As Ian Riches, industry analyst with Strategy Analytics, puts it (with perhaps a degree of understatement), that answer somewhat depends on where you are having the discussion. Transplant it to USA, and you might find a different emphasis.
Which paints a picture of a world divided between competing standards, each attempting to produce the best outcome for a single set of constraints. That’s OK; we’re the electronics industry – we know how to deal with the ol’ multiple-competing-standards scenario.

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