BMW IX5 HYDROGEN

Munich still believes there's a future for fuel cell EVs, and after years of R&D is now ready to commence public trials

- RICHARD LANE

TESTED 17.2.23. ANTWERP, BELGIUM

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In this business, it's not rare to come across new series-production cars that have been left conspicuously underdeveloped. But to find an experimental, proof-of-concept, never-for-selling machine that already feels very convincingly honed for public consumption? Now that's quite unusual.

Of course, no matter how plausible the BMW iX5 Hydrogen seems in isolation, there's the big obstacle of refuelling the thing. With its carbon-fiber-encased cylindrical tanks speedily filled with 6kg of hydrogen, compressed to 700 bar and cooled to -40deg C, it will in theory do 313 miles before needing to stop. But with few hydrogen fuelling stations on the ground in Europe, stopping in the right place is rather tricky.

BMW suspects that as heavy industry turns towards hydrogen and ICE options are legislated into the margins, a robust hydrogen fuelling network will germinate, such that using it for certain cars will in time become a no-brainer.

But that's all hypothetical. For now, BMW's goal is to be ready - readier than rivals, at least - if such an eventuality arises, and this is why the iX5 exists, albeit on a tiny scale.

Rather than being produced en masse alongside every other X5 variant at BMW's vast American SUV plant in South Carolina, this FCEV version is being hand-built in Munich, Germany, with fewer than 100 examples to be made.