Hydrogen, Tomorrow’s promise or Today’s proof’ that is what we ourselves when we started to prepare our H2Roadtripmore than 2 years ago.We (my wife Els and I) started the H2Roadtrip end of April this year. Our target was to pass through 12 countries and drive 12.000 km to Istanbul along the European coast in 100 days, to promote the use of hydrogen and the H2storage tanks and systems.Did we achieve it? Yes and No.
We could not reach Istanbul due to changed ferry regulations but Yes, we drove 15.440 km zero emission and passed 12 countries in 100 days.
Yes, we drove zero emission but not as much on hydrogen as expected and hoped. We expected challenges and we experienced this. We had technical issues with the equipment, like cooling and failure of components. But once it was solved it operated as expected.
Towards to the filling infrastructure challenges, this was even more difficult than expected. We thought that the hydrogen community in Europe would be more flexible towards projects like ours and would help us with filling in alternative ways. For example, open limited accessible filling stations for us or help us with cascade filling from bundles. But I was to ambitious and optimistic about that. On the other hand, help was offered to fill hydrogen by companies who were willing to help us in creative ways, but unfortunately those locations did not fit in our schedule or route. That is why it is hard to conclude our question ‘Hydrogen, Tomorrow’s promise or Today’s proof’ with facts.
We are looking back to our H2Roadtrip as a big success. We succeeded in getting worldwide attention for hydrogen as clean renewable fuel in the press and social media.
We met a lot of people and had very nice discussions all along our trip on events, business meetings, parking places, camp sites or any other places.
We enjoyed bringing the message of the energy transition and convincing people about the need to change and to show what is possible today. Hydrogen is not a target on it’s own, but one of the tools to reach the agreed reduction of greenhouse gasses in the Paris Climate agreement!
We would like to thank all partners who supported and helped us to make this trip unforgettable. We could not have done it without their help.
Our final conclusion is: Hydrogen, as a fuel, has proven itself as an alternative fuel for transport and hydrogen is even more promising tomorrow.