What Happened to the Hydrogen 7?

After picking up a August 2007 copy of BMW Car magazine for some bedtime reading, I stumbled across an article about the Hydrogen 7 entitled 'Future Perfect?' It occurred to me that I hadn't heard about the hydrogen 7 since, well, 2007. How come?

Surely after Jay Leno drinking the water from the exhaust of a Hydrogen 7 in LA, such an endorsement should not go to waste? Furthermore, according to BMW, they had been working on hydrogen technology for over two decades, long before anyone else - why would they give it all up now?

It seems to me, that the BMW i electric vehicles have taken over in terms of publicity for the environmentally friendly cars within the BMW group. Although these cars are very impressive on the eye, I am disappointed that the Hydrogen 7 has not had any further developement, that I know of.

Certainly it had its weak points, namely the huge cost of the car, the very few hydrogen filling stations in the world and the rather unenvironmentally friendly nature of creating and keeping the hydrogen cool, but the BMW i has its pitfalls as well.  How can an electric car really be more efficient and less of a strain on global natural resources?

Electricity, for the most part, is fuelled by power stations, but car companies would most likely claim that electricity is increasingly being created by renewable sources and therefore more efficient and less sore on fossil fuels. However, there is not enough sources of renewable energy to power all electric cars and manufacturers cannot really base a pro-electric car arguement on a hypothesis that more wind turbines and other sources of renewable energy will be errected in the future, as this is completely unknown.

So, either option does not completely eradicate our dependece on fossil fuels, but rather gets around it. However, if the hydrogen fuelled combustion engine was developed further and further, perhaps we could arrive at a situation where we are not dependent on fossil fuels at all, in order to create the new fuel going into our cars, be it hydrogen or electric.

So again, I ask you, what about the Hydrogen 7?

Photo is my own.


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