NORTH AMERICA REPORT
As of Feb. 6, 2024, Shell permanently closed its seven light duty hydrogen fuel stations in California citing “hydrogen supply complications and other external market factors” for this decision. According to the below MOTORTREND article, this leaves 17 stations operational (although several are offline at the time of this writing) in the Bay Area, and just one in the Sacramento area.
Shell had already told industry outlet Hydrogen Insight that it would stop building any of the 48 new California stations it had planned—a significant number for the state—and that the company “made the decision to permanently close its light duty station network in California in early 2024.”
Source: MOTORTREND
PSR Analysis: The current cost of producing hydrogen along with very low adoption rates for light fuel cell vehicles does not justify maintaining–let alone expanding–the hydrogen service infrastructure for this segment. The stations are expensive to build, operate and maintain and getting a sustainable supply of hydrogen appears to be very difficult.
Hydrogen would be a great fuel source for meeting the zero-emission vehicle standards, but at this point there appears to be many barriers to adoption that will not be resolved quickly. To bring the cost down for hydrogen fuel, significant hydrogen production would be required. Basically, hydrogen production would need to “scale “up”.
Within the heavy truck segment, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles would be a good option for meeting zero-emission goals, but the same barriers exist that will delay mass hydrogen vehicle adoption at least through the rest of this decade. PSR
Chris Fisher is Senior Commercial Vehicle Analyst at Power Systems Research
