Sales of hydrogen fuel cell cars, an alternative zero-emission solution to battery-electric cars, remain low without much chance for significant growth.
According to the California Fuel Cell Partnership’s data, during the third quarter of 2022, only 153 hydrogen fuel cell cars (aka FCV or FCEV) were sold in the US, which is 82% less than a year ago.
The California Fuel Cell Partnership’s FCVs sales data comes from Baum and Associates. “Sales data is based on car sales sold by a dealer to a retail or fleet customer”.
That’s a pretty weak result, even for FCVs, which from time to time were even able to reach 1,000 units per quarter (in Q1 2021 and Q1 2022).
Comparing those results to all-electric cars only adds to our skepticism related to FCVs, which have a variety of issues (price of the car, overall energy efficiency, and lack of refueling infrastructure to name the three major ones, plus the limited number of models and limited geographical availability – basically only California).
If we combine the overall results with the numbers reported by the manufacturers (Toyota and Hyundai ), then it turns out that only two models were actively sold – the Toyota Mirai and Hyundai NEXO.
Sales in Q3 2022 (Mirai and NEXO sales as reported by the manufacturers):
Toyota Mirai – 79 (down 88%)
Hyundai NEXO – 74 (down 50%)
other models – 0 (down 100%)
Total: 153 (down 82%)
So far this year, almost 2,000 hydrogen fuel cell cars were sold in the US, which is 28% less than a year ago.
Sales YTD (Mirai and NEXO sales as reported by the manufacturers):
Toyota Mirai – 1,437 (down 37%)
Hyundai NEXO – 345 (up 22%)
other models – 205 (up 6%)
Total: 1,987 (down 28%)
