According to the latest data, presented in January 2018 by the authoritative data and forecast platform for the automotive industry KPMG GAES (Global Automotive Executive Survey), the increase of hydrogen-powered cars will be the brightest tendency in the entire automotive industry until 2025.
The KPMG study of the automotive market presented and summarized the knowledge and opinions of 3000 market participants from around the world (including the managers of industrial enterprises and consumers) in answering the most significant questions: “what happens”, “what is the most important” and “what is the most probable”.
One of the most discussed discoveries of the new KPMG GAES report is a change in future expectations in the field of energy sources, i.e. the majority of respondents believe in the future prevalence of hydrogen-powered vehicles with fuel cells. The forecast for the introduction of electric vehicles is still high, however, it has shifted to the second place. The vehicles with internal combustion engines and hybrid cars are also in the top three.
The report published this year on January 5 presented a large amount of interesting information that considerably proved the well-known and widely discussed tendencies: the decrease in the use of internal combustion engines and an increase in the number of autonomous cars.
The increase of the use of hydrogen as a fuel for cars, was named as one of the most vivid tendencies in the near future. The report underlined an important aspect of the possibilities of hydrogen use – the cars can be filled with hydrogen at the already existing filling stations, and the development of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles is not as fast and simple, as it was planned and expected to.
It should be noted that the analysis once again proved one of the fundamental principles declared by the European Commission – there is not only one technology that can meet all demands. The allocation among several technologies is supposed in the future. The experts that participated in GAES survey predicted a similar situation by the year 2040 for all four technologies listed above. 26 percent of respondents gave their priority to the vehicles powered by electric batteries, 25 percent of respondents – to hydrogen transport, 25 percent of respondents – to vehicles with internal combustion engines and 24 percent of respondents – to hybrid vehicles.
“In Lithuania we have chosen the way of development of the hydrogen technologies, because a few years ago we firmly believed that this fuel had a great potential. That is why the latest tendencies satisfy and provide excellent business prospects for both entrepreneurs and consumers. We believe that we have a huge potential to go “step for step” with the most successful European and world countries: today in Lithuania hydrogen is already used as fuel for transport, although, so far only as an additive in the mixture of compressed natural gas H2NG. The company “SG Dujos” opened in Pabradė a successfully operating Hydrogen fuel research laboratory; the company has also equipped and is successfully operating three compressor stations enriching natural gas with hydrogen, which is later filled in the buses of the bus fleets of Ukmergė, Marijampolė and Telšiai. The increase of such mixtures’ use will increase the applicability of hydrogen for transport, and, if necessary, the infrastructure could be extended for the use of pure hydrogen”, – says Mr. Virginijus Korsakas, the director of the JSC “SG dujos”.