Mazda is continuing to focus on hydrogen combustion vehicles as a mainstay emissions-free car, believing the technology has advantages over the fuel-cell vehicles being developed by rival car makers, a Mazda executive was quoted as saying on Monday.
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“I have a big question (regarding) whether fuel-cell cars can really can come into wide use,” Seita Kanai, a senior Mazda executive in charge of the company’s research and development, told Reuters in Yokohama.
The news agency noted that Ford’s Japanese affiliate is the only car company in Japan that offers cars with internal-combustion engines that run on hydrogen and emit only water vapor and is one of just two companies worldwide that leases such cars (BMW is the other). The cars can also run on petrol when they run out of hydrogen.
Other car makers are developing and leasing cars with fuel-cell systems that generate electricity to power cars through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen.
Reuters said fuel-cell technologies are more energy-efficient but still costly because they use precious metals in their power-generating systems and run only on hydrogen. Apart from the limited refuelling stations, they require hydrogen that is 99.99% pure, compared with the 90% purity required for Mazda’s hydrogen-burning cars.
Kanai told the news agency Mazda’s zero-emission vehicles “may be too unique to match” future public infrastructure if the fuel-cell technologies its rivals are pursuing become more popular, adding that the company may need others to use standards similar to Mazda’s own fuel systems for the cars to be commercially viable.
