07. January 2020 | 10:42 CET
Ballard Power, dynaCERT, NEL ASA - higher, faster, hydrogen!
The mobility of the future will be a mix of different energy sources. New technologies will make conventional combustion engines even cleaner and more efficient and, where it makes sense for the user, technologies with electronic drive motors will also be used. However, the German government is also attempting to influence the market by subsidising battery cars, a technology that is already being phased out in China. This political actionism from the Chancellor's Office is bypassing the market, and car manufacturers in Germany are noticing this too. A total of 57,533 purely electric cars were registered in 2019 until November - of a total of 3.6 million newly registered passenger cars.
time to read: 2 minutes by Mario Hose
Germany does not want battery cars
Detached from all redistribution efforts with tax money, the interest of the German population in purely electric cars is so low that it is negligible. Daimler's fully electronic EQC seems to be becoming an economic disaster. Just 55 vehicles were registered with the Federal Motor Transport Authority from May to November in 2019.
Hardly better was the situation at Audi, where 192 E-Tron were registered in November 2019. Technologies that flop despite incentives from tax money are obviously not innovations, because they neither solve an obvious problem nor create desires.
Charging stations for electricians are missing
Battery cars need power stations to be charged. Due to the high power requirements, conventional sockets, as found in households, are not sufficient and stronger charging stations are needed. In 2019, for example, around 250 new charging stations were registered in Lower Saxony, as in the previous year. In total, there are now around 1,000 public charging points in Volkswagen's home state.
The German government is aiming to achieve the target of seven million electric cars being registered in Germany by 2030. If this goal is to be achieved even approximately with battery-powered cars, several million charging points will probably be needed nationwide - with state subsidies, of course.
Hydrogen is the solution
While the planned economy scenarios of Chancellor Angela Merkel lack real reference and are obviously going to fail, investors are successfully backing hydrogen technologies. Shareholders of the manufacturer of fuel cells, Ballard Power, could experience a share price that went through the roof in the past months.
The same experiences made shareholders of NEL ASA, because the company develops hydrogen production systems as required for a network of filling stations for hydrogen-powered vehicles. Filling up with hydrogen takes as long as with petrol or diesel and for this reason it would be sufficient to add hydrogen stations to the German network of filling stations with just 14,000 locations.
Retrofitting instead of abolition
With an environmentally friendly solution for 'now and today', dynaCERT can inspire the capital market. The company has developed a retrofit technology for diesel engines that generates hydrogen on demand and adds it to the combustion process. The hydrogen is used less as a fuel and more as a catalyst, which significantly increases the efficiency of the combustion process. In addition to saving fuel, the emission of pollutants is also significantly reduced.
The company has been able to attract renowned investors such as the Canadian billionaire Eric Sprott and German automotive logistics specialist Dr. Jörg Mosolf. Smart Money usually knows what it's doing - and doesn't need taxpayers' money for it.
