BMW's bet on hydrogen cars

This is certainly an interesting bet by BMW and puts them at odds with most other car manufacturers in backing hydrogen for passenger cars. As the article rightly alludes to, many people consider hydrogen’s only real edge over battery-electric to be for use in heavy vehicles like lorries and buses where the weight and charging times of batteries would be prohibitive.

I recall seeing last year early signs of BMW’s plans in their patent portfolio: I was writing an article on the European Patent Office’s hydrogen report, and the report mentioned BMW having a large number of patents for hydrogen technology, a number of which were, unusually, aimed at storage of hydrogen in liquid form. It shows how patent intelligence can give valuable insights – the signs were there!