Daimler and industrial gases maker Linde have pledged to build 20 hydrogen fuelling stations in Germany in coming years to boost support networks for eco-friendly cars.
Fuel cell cars will compete with purely electric and hybrid vehicles in a race to attract environmentally-conscious drivers, emitting only water vapour and heat. Daimler plans to substantially raise its offerings of hydrogen powered cars from 2017.
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Each company will this year start investing 10 million euro (US$13m) to build 10 hydrogen fuelling stations and plans to set up a combined total of 13 by the end of 2015, the companies said in a joint statement.
Germany currently has 16 hydrogen fuelling stations in operation, including the first from Daimler and Linde, which started operating on 29 September in Berlin.
Fuel cell cars can run five times longer than battery-powered vehicles and fill a tank 10 times as fast. But the high costs have prevented a commercial breakthrough until now. Just a few hundred demo models are on the road, mostly in Japan, California, Germany and Scandinavia.
“We are considerably improving the conditions for successfully marketing fuel cell cars,” said Andreas Opfermann, Linde’s head of clean energy and innovation management.
Daimler joined forces with Ford and Nissan in 2013 to jointly develop a powertrain blueprint for hydrogen-powered cars.
