BMW joins hands with partners to launch hydrogen fuel cell vehicle testing in South Africa, paving the way for future green travel

The BMW Group recently partnered with Anglo Platinum and Sasol to launch a test fleet of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in South Africa. This important cooperation is the result of the cooperation agreement reached by the three parties at the Green Hydrogen Energy Summit in October last year.

It is reported that BMW is conducting trial operations of the iX5 Hydrogen hydrogen fuel model, which is based on the X5 SUV. Although it has not yet been officially launched for sale, it has attracted widespread attention. BMW South Africa emphasized that the trial operation was not to prepare for sales, but to prepare for future planned series production models. They plan to launch mass production models between 2025 and 2030, and the current trial operation is a key step to achieve this goal.

It is understood that the public road test was announced during a regional meeting in Sandton, Africa. This is the first event held by the Hydrogen Energy Council in Africa. Under the cooperation agreement, BMW, Anglo Platinum and Sasol will jointly provide solutions to the fleet.

Although the iX5 Hydrogen and other BMW electric models such as the X1e, X3e and X5e are all electric vehicles, they store energy differently. iX5 Hydrogen uses hydrogen fuel cell technology and uses hydrogen as fuel. According to BMW, the car can be charged in just 4 minutes and has a range of up to 504 kilometers, which is impressive.

BMW further explained that the advantage of hydrogen fuel cell technology is that its reaction process only produces electricity, heat and water vapor, making hydrogen fuel vehicles achieve zero emissions. After Toyota launched Mirai in 2020, BMW also began to get involved in hydrogen fuel cell technology. According to information on BMW’s official website, the iX5 Hydrogen uses fuel cells provided by Toyota, which marks BMW’s development pace in hydrogen fuel cell models.

Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Directors of BMW Germany, believes that hydrogen energy technology is crucial to achieving zero-emission transportation. He pointed out that it is difficult for a single technology to achieve climate neutral transportation on a global scale.

The above is the detailed content of BMW joins hands with partners to launch hydrogen fuel cell vehicle testing in South Africa, paving the way for future green travel. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!