Battery Electric Rise, Hydrogen Falters: Lessons From South Korea

[CentralMass]

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/09/06/battery-electric-rise-hydrogen-falters-lessons-from-south-korea/
"In 2019, South Korea announced a program that was meant to make the country a global leader in hydrogen transportation. The government declared that all 802 police buses then in service would be replaced with hydrogen fuel cell models by 2028.

These were not ordinary buses. They were national security assets used to transport officers in large groups, often for crowd control or emergency deployments. They were highly visible symbols of state capacity. Outfitting them with hydrogen was intended to show that the country was serious about making hydrogen transportation the future. Hyundai delivered early prototypes, ministries set aside billions of won, and plans for hundreds of fueling stations were published. At the time, South Korea was among the few countries willing to put hydrogen into such a prominent operational role.

Inside the box the economics were never favorable. Hydrogen buses remain more expensive to buy and operate than battery electric ones. Stations cost millions to build, have low throughput, and break down often. Fuel is expensive compared to electricity. A bus that should be on the road may sit idle waiting for a tanker to deliver hydrogen or for a compressor to be repaired. The safety record has also raised concerns. The December 2024 explosion of a hydrogen bus in Chungju that injured several people underscored that even mature fueling equipment carries risks. These are not minor inconveniences. They go to the core of whether a fleet can function.

The decision of the police is one sign in a broader pattern. South Korea had ambitious hydrogen plans beyond the police buses. The country pledged to have more than 21,000 hydrogen buses on the road by 2030 and built industrial policies to support Hyundai’s fuel cell offerings. Yet actual uptake is faltering. The Hyundai Nexo, the country’s flagship fuel cell car, saw sales fall from more than 10,000 units in 2022 to fewer than 3,000 in 2024. While a redesigned Nexo and a hard push has increased sales in the first half of 2025, it’s unlikely to hit 10,000 this year. The infrastructure targets have slipped repeatedly. The number of fueling stations has lagged far behind projections, and many that exist have poor availability.

Battery electrics tell the opposite story. In South Korea BEV sales in 2025 are surging. In the first seven months alone, 118,717 were sold, nearly matching the entire 2024 total. In July sales grew 67% year over year, and BEVs are now more than 13% of new car sales. The infrastructure to support them is scaling quickly, costs are falling, and models are available across price ranges. Globally BEV adoption is accelerating in Europe, China, and North America, and in fact in every country in the world. The actor networks around battery electrics are strengthening with every quarter because what’s inside the black box actually works economically and reliably."

[hunter]

1. You can't drive all that far in South Korea

A tank of gas or full electric charge will take you anywhere you want to go.

It's essentially an automobile island surrounded by the ocean and the North Korean border.

"Range anxiety," which is one of the selling points for hydrogen vehicles in the U.S.A., is not an issue.

But that's moot. Hydrogen is a poor fuel in every way. The Hydrogen Faithful are members of a cult.

[CentralMass]

2. Yes. Hydrogen is an energy hog.

[NNadir]

3. Not all the hydrogen faithful are cultists in my view.

Given all of the slick videos that show up here, they strike me as fossil fuel funded greenwashing advertisers describing hydrogen as if it were environmentally sustainable.

It isn't.

After all, ExxonMobil runs hydrogen ads frequently and it would hardly surprise me if they also fund ads designed to present an ersatz "green movement" without attaching their name to the efforts.

The less than subtle people running these ads here are quite happy to engage in antinuke scare mongering as well and given that nuclear energy is the only viable tool to eliminate fossil fuels, this is also consistent, to my mind, with supporting the interests of the fossil fuel industry.