As the push towards electrification gathers pace, there are still a couple of vehicle makers who are placing bets on fuel cells, notably the Hyundai group in South Korea, and Japan's Toyota.
Interestingly, Volkswagen is jumping into bed with Hyundai and Kia to share technology. The more manufacturers who get on board, the greater the investment and the faster the technology can come to market.
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The president and chief executive of Hyundai UK, Tony Whitehorn, also believes that as fuel cell vehicles become cheaper, the cost of full electric vehicles will rise.
He said: "Batteries contain a lot of precious metals and these are a finite resources. As they start to diminish in availability so their cost will rise.
"The only precious metal involved in fuel cells is platinum and all of a sudden we have a plentiful supply as we scrap catalytic converters and recover this particular metal from them.
"Yes, we are still some way from large volumes for FCEVs because they remain expensive to manufacture and the infrastructure is not in place."
That could all change very quickly. China claims it will have 2,000 hydrogen fuel stations by 2020 – less than two years away – while there is a fast-growing network in Germany and South Korea.
Just as significant is that oil giant Shell is jumping on board as it looks to the future. It has this year added a hydrogen fuel station at a major motorway service area west of London and more are in the pipeline.
The opening of the new hydrogen refuelling station at Shell Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, supplied by ITM Power, follows the launch of the first fully branded public hydrogen refuelling site in the UK at Shell Cobham in February 2017.
Shell Beaconsfield is the first site in the UK to bring hydrogen under the same canopy as petrol and diesel. The hydrogen is generated on-site using an electrolyser that requires only water and electricity to generate the hydrogen gas.
Beaconsfield is the fifth hydrogen refuelling site in the UK to be supplied by ITM Power and will be the first to be opened as part of the H2ME project.
The initiative has been partially funded by the European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), and the UK's Office of Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV).
In addition to its two sites in the UK, Shell has a growing number of hydrogen sites in California and is part of a joint venture in Germany which aims to open a network of up to 400 sites by 2023. Shell is also assessing the potential of future projects in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
