All three hydrogen fuel cell car makers enter the electric car market. Toyota and Honda which mainly develop hydrogen-powered car announced to release electric cars after Hyundai Motors. The reason is that sale of hydrogen-powered cars falls short of expectations and the electric car market grows fast so as not to lose in the electric car competition.

On Jun. 14, according to business, Honda releases the first electric car this year. For this, Honda established an electric car unit in the research and development department on October last year. A clarity electric car will be first released in U.S. and an electric car for China market will be released next year.

Hyundai Motors already released Ioniq electric on March last year, and is planning to release electric SUV (sports utility vehicle) next year. Toyota also established part companies and in-company venture on November last year to develop electric cars, and will prepare mass production system for electric cars until 2020. Toyota recently started independent electric car development ending 8 year alliance with U.S. electric car maker Tesla.

“Toyota and the like focused on hydrogen-powered cars and considered electric cars stepping stone to hydrogen-powered cars, but faced the situation such that they cannot ignore the growing electric car market” said Lee Hang-gu, senior researcher of Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Technology (KIET).

The hydrogen-powered car makers are negative to electric cars all the while due to low mileage, long charging time and the like. Hydrogen-powered cars currently released, such as Tucson ix hydrogen-powered car of Hyundai Motors, Mirai of Toyota, and Clarity of Honda can go 426-589 ㎞ by being charged for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, GM Bolt EV which has the longest mileage among electric cars released in Korea can go 383 ㎞ by a single charge, but even quick charging takes one or more hours.

Despite of these disadvantages, electric cars become the general trend of eco-friendly car by lower price compared with hydrogen-powered cars, low charging infrastructure price and the like. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), last year, the scale of the electric car (including plug-in hybrid car) market in the world is 2.01 million which is increased 59.52% compared with prior year. IHS, a market research company, estimates that the electric car market scale will grow up to 7.7 million until 2020.

Compared with this, the sales record of hydrogen-powered car is poor. The sales volume of Toyota Mirai last year was about 1,000 lower than the first goal of 2,000. Honda planned to sell 200 of Clarity in the very first year. The sale volume of Tucson ix of Hyundai Motors was only 242. It is 32% of 4,500 which is the sales volume of hydrogen-powered cars estimated by IHS, the market research company, and the sales volume is estimated to be 6,000 until 2020.

The business analyzed that hydrogen-powered cars have an obstacle because the price of hydrogen-powered cars is 70 million won which is higher than the price of electric cars which is 40-50 million won, and the price of a charging station for hydrogen-powered cars is 3 billion won which is 20 times higher than that of electric cars. “The reason why the hydrogen-powered car makers enter the electric car market is that it will take a considerable time for popularization of hydrogen-powered car” said a business official, and “the fear that if ignoring the electric car market on a rapid growth curve, the car makers would lose in the future car market, has affected” analyzed the official.


By Kim Yang Hyuk mj@


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