Australia's Former Right-Wing Govt "Plan" For Cleaner Cars Breaks Down: 5 Hydrogen FC Cars Sold In Past Quarter. 5.

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Is Australia’s love affair with the hydrogen car over before it began? New data shows just five vehicles running on hydrogen fuel-cells were sold across the country last quarter. Battery-powered electric vehicles, on the other hand, sold steadily. Australians bought 25,353 EVs in the three months to 30 June – 8% of the total. Hybrid cars were even more popular, with 46,727 sold.

It is far from what the then Morrison government envisaged in late 2021, when it released a long-delayed “future fuels” strategy that promoted hydrogen as a potential replacement for petrol cars alongside other cleaner alternatives. A national hydrogen strategy two years earlier had gone further, championing the fuel’s “exciting possibilities” and arguing hydrogen cars could have advantages over EVs.

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Prof Jake Whitehead, the head of policy at the Electric Vehicle Council but speaking in his role as a transport scholar at the University of Sydney, says hydrogen cars are a distraction when the world’s focus should be on electrifying the transport system. “Hydrogen cars are not economic, nor are they efficient. In my opinion, this technology has been used as a red herring by some parties internationally to delay the electrification of transport,” he says.

The market may have already decided. Globally, about 14,000 hydrogen cars were sold last year, compared to 14m battery and plug-in hybrid electric cars.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/18/australia-hydrogen-car-sales-evs