In order to pro­tect the world from cli­mate-dam­ag­ing CO2, the fight against com­bus­tion has been declared. Bat­tery elec­tric vehi­cles should fix it. But they are not real­ly prac­ti­cal for all users. It is dif­fer­ent with a fuel cell car like the Hyundai Nexo, as the prac­ti­cal test by ntv.de showed. With a view to the future of indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ty, the say­ing: “The king is dead, long live the king” could actu­al­ly be used. As in old monar­chies, the death of the ruler was often used to estab­lish new pow­er con­stel­la­tions. If one did not want to unnec­es­sar­i­ly bring dis­plea­sure and unrest into the pop­u­la­tion, it was nec­es­sary to quick­ly present the new rep­re­sen­ta­tive as a strong man and to show the peo­ple that it is good for them to be wor­shiped. It seems to be the same or sim­i­lar in the tran­si­tion from mobil­i­ty pow­ered by fos­sil fuels to sus­tain­able and pure­ly bat­tery-elec­tric powered.

Only water vapor comes out of the tailpipe of the Hyundai Nexo while driving.

There is still a third way with the fuel cell. How­ev­er, it was vot­ed out by many car man­u­fac­tur­ers for rea­sons of cost and because of its “low ener­gy effi­cien­cy”. Because hydro­gen does not occur in nature. It has to be pro­duced with a lot of ener­gy. To do this, hydro­car­bons are split using ener­gy. The hydro­gen pro­duced in this way has to be com­pressed and trans­port­ed to the fill­ing sta­tion in order to be con­vert­ed into elec­tric­i­ty in the fuel cell using the pre­cious met­al platinum.

How­ev­er, and this must not be for­got­ten, even bat­tery-elec­tric cars are not envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly per se, despite their math­e­mat­i­cal­ly bet­ter effi­cien­cy — even if the elec­tric­i­ty that dri­ves them comes exclu­sive­ly from renew­able ener­gies. The pro­duc­tion of the bat­ter­ies alone pro­duces so much CO2 that an old com­bus­tion engine could dri­ve for a few years before it has left this eco­log­i­cal foot­print. In addi­tion, rare and poor­ly degrad­able raw mate­ri­als such as lithi­um or cobalt are used, the extrac­tion of which has a heavy impact on the environment.

At 77,000 euros, the Hyundai Nexo is not a bar­gain, and there is no state fund­ing for it either.

Hyundai has had a fuel cell SUV on the mar­ket, the Nexo, since 2018. At 77,000 euros, it is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more expen­sive than a pure­ly elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered BMW iX3, which costs at least 66,300 euros. While there is a finan­cial sub­sidy from the state for the lat­ter when it is bought by a pri­vate cus­tomer, the CO2-neu­tral hydro­gen car remains exclud­ed. Only traders who buy three such vehi­cles at once will receive up to 21,000 euros from the state. Is a tech­nol­o­gy being exclud­ed from pol­i­tics here that could also con­tribute to the reduc­tion in CO2 emis­sions that it calls for?

The lack of infra­struc­ture at hydro­gen fill­ing sta­tions is anoth­er rea­son why fuel cell cars do not sell in Ger­many. The num­ber of under 100 columns in the mouth is very cor­rect. Let’s name it exact­ly: In Ger­many there are 87, in all of Europe 116. It would take at least 1000 to make H2 vehi­cles attrac­tive, they say.

Easy over 500 kilometers

But the test with the Hyundai Nexo shows some­thing else: The Kore­an has a capac­i­ty of 157 liters in its three tanks, which enables it to cov­er 528 kilo­me­ters with­out refu­el­ing. Hyundai even spec­i­fies the range as 666 kilo­me­ters and, ide­al­ly, cal­cu­lates the con­sump­tion of 0.92 kilo­grams of hydro­gen for 100 kilo­me­ters. In real­i­ty, it is 1.2 to 1.3 kilo­grams, which is per­fect­ly fine, because the H2 fuel pumps are so intel­li­gent­ly dis­trib­uted across the coun­try that it is easy to flow through. Admit­ted­ly, this requires logis­ti­cal plan­ning, but it is quite sim­ple. On the one hand, the on-board nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem sup­ports the dri­ver, and on the oth­er hand, there is an app called H2.Live, which even pro­vides infor­ma­tion on when columns are being ser­viced or out of order.

It is rather unlike­ly that you will not find an H2 fill­ing sta­tion with­in Ger­many with­in the range men­tioned above. Even if you can get fuel just a few kilo­me­ters from your des­ti­na­tion, that’s no prob­lem, because refu­el­ing only takes five min­utes. Once the con­nec­tion between the col­umn and the vehi­cle has been estab­lished, the gas is pumped into the tanks at a pres­sure of 700 bar. A fiber­glass hous­ing, emer­gency stop valves and leak­age sen­sors ensure safe­ty. When the process is com­plete, the noz­zle is attached and the jour­ney con­tin­ues. But it should not be over­looked that hydro­gen is cur­rent­ly as expen­sive as super gaso­line. Who­ev­er pumps the three tanks full pays around 60 euros for the next 528 kilo­me­ters. If you dri­ve with a clear con­science — in two respects: on the one hand, only water vapor comes from the tailpipes, on the oth­er hand, the Nexo cleans the air while dri­ving. A high-per­for­mance fil­ter binds the par­ti­cles of the sucked in air that are small­er than 2.5 microm­e­ters, and that is almost 100 per­cent of all fine dust par­ti­cles in the air.
As fast as with a com­bus­tion engine

The seats in the Hyundai Nexo are not only made from renew­able raw mate­ri­als, they are also comfortable.

Inci­den­tal­ly, from a tech­ni­cal point of view, noth­ing more than reverse elec­trol­y­sis is nec­es­sary to dri­ve the elec­tric motor. The hydro­gen is mixed with oxy­gen from the air, and the on-board pow­er plant, con­sist­ing of 440 fuel cells with an out­put of 95 kW, gen­er­ates elec­tric­i­ty, which in turn is stored in a bat­tery with an out­put of 40 kW, which then has an elec­tric motor with a max­i­mum Pow­er of 163 hp dri­ves. When fired this way, the SUV can be accel­er­at­ed to 100 km / h in 9.2 sec­onds, and if you want, you can dri­ve 180 km / h on the free stretch­es of the auto­bahn. If you want to save, set the dri­ving mode switch to Eco, if you like it a lit­tle faster, you can dri­ve in nor­mal mode. For under­stand­able rea­sons, Hyundai did not use a sport mode. The air con­di­tion­ing, seat and steer­ing wheel heat­ing can also be switched on in the Nexo with­out regrets. Because while the named ener­gy guz­zlers in a bat­tery-pow­ered vehi­cle reduce the range expo­nen­tial­ly, the Nexo con­tin­ues to purr with the same range dis­play. And purring is meant lit­er­al­ly, because as in every elec­tric car, there is no engine noise in the Kore­an either. Embed­ded in an envi­ron­ment made from nat­ur­al mate­ri­als such as sug­ar cane, corn or soy, the dri­ver then also looks at a 7‑inch instru­ment dis­play and a 12.3‑inch touch­screen, which com­bines to form a mas­sive infor­ma­tion cen­ter above the dash­board raise. But some­thing else ris­es to the right of the dri­ver; a mighty cen­ter con­sole that is equipped with so many but­tons that one might think that it would take the Enterprise’s helms­man, Pavel Chekov, to oper­ate this key­board. On the oth­er hand, there is almost some­thing lib­er­at­ing about not hav­ing to con­tin­u­ous­ly wipe, touch or slide over any sur­face, but rather to press and turn in the old fashion.

Time is fast moving

Those who have not yet mas­tered the fin­ger play can use the lane depar­ture warn­ing sys­tem and dis­tance radar while dri­ving in order to be able to con­cen­trate a lit­tle more on the cen­ter con­sole, because in day­light the blue back­lit sil­ver but­tons are more dif­fi­cult than easy to read. But here, too, it is notice­able how fast vehi­cle devel­op­ment has become. What was con­sid­ered a smooth inno­va­tion two years ago is almost rough today. We are talk­ing about steer­ing inter­ven­tion when pre­sum­ably cross­ing the cen­tral or side line. It is dif­fer­ent with the cam­eras built into the side mir­rors. Their images are shown in front of the dri­ver when they flash in the main dis­play. So not only is the look in the side mir­ror his­to­ry, but also the blind spot. And there is no oth­er car on the mar­ket like this.

Oth­er­wise, the Nexo dri­ves like a nor­mal car. Maybe even bet­ter than some oth­er SUVs. The steer­ing is direct, the chas­sis has no prob­lems with uneven­ness, and due to a dif­fer­ent cen­ter of grav­i­ty, the device can also be direct­ed very charm­ing­ly around curves. In addi­tion, the Nexo recu­per­ates in three stages when rolling and brak­ing and thus brings some of the ener­gy back into the accu­mu­la­tor, which is installed under the rear bench seat.

The trunk of the Hyundai Nexo offers 461 to 1466 liters of stor­age space.

Speak­ing of which, there is also enough space for adults on it. The lug­gage com­part­ment offers 461 liters of stor­age space when ful­ly seat­ed and 1466 liters when the back­rest is fold­ed down. Seen in this way, the Nexo is also ide­al for fam­i­ly out­ings or vaca­tion trips.
Data sheet Hyundai Nexo
Dimen­sions LxWxH 4.67 / 1.86 / 1.62 m
Wheel­base 2.79 m
Emp­ty weight (mea­sure­ment) 1889 — 1948 kg
Seats 5
Lug­gage com­part­ment vol­ume in front / rear seats fold­ed down 461/1466 liters
Motor elec­tric motor
Gear­box 1‑stage reduc­tion gear
Sys­tem out­put 120 kW (163 hp)
Max. Torque 395 Nm
Fuel cell 95 kW (129 PS)
Starta­bil­i­ty down to ‑30 degrees Celsius
Front-wheel drive
Top speed 180 km / h
Accel­er­a­tion 0 — 100 km / h 9.2 sec
Max­i­mum range 756 km at 0.77 kg / 100 km
Test con­sump­tion 1.3 kg / 100 km
Effi­cien­cy class A +
CO2 emis­sions 0 g / km
Base price 77,008.40 euros
Test car price 77,008.40 euros

Con­clu­sion: Even if the fuel cell does not cur­rent­ly play a role in pri­vate trans­port, soon­er or lat­er it will play an enor­mous role in freight trans­port. That in turn requires an infra­struc­ture and fur­ther devel­op­ment steps, which could then pave the way for vehi­cles such as a Hyundai Nexo. With a view to sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty, this tech­nol­o­gy should def­i­nite­ly not be writ­ten off. Because in every­day use it comes clos­est to what peo­ple have learned to appre­ci­ate about indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ty over a century.

Tags: design TT Mod­ell­bahn TT H0 N schal­ten mod­elleisen­bahn bahn spiele­max preise 

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