Fuel cell vehicles to break one million sales barrier

Commercial sales of fuel cell vehicles will finally reach the one million milestone by 2020, according to a report from Pike Research.

The company believes the fuel cell car market is now in the ramp-up phase to commercialisation with many models to be released in 2015. During the pre-commercialisation period from 2010-2014, around 10,000 fuel cell vehicles will be deployed. However, following that phase 57,000 will be sold in 2015 with sales increasing to 390,000 vehicles annually by 2020.

Pike notes that fuel cells for passenger cars are still being pursued although the stock in the vehicles has fallen dramatically in the past few years, particularly in the US. They face serious competition from electric vehicles which have made a comeback after experiencing their own period of disappointment in the late 1990s.

However, Pike believes that fuel cell vehicles are part of the continuum of electric drive technologies that will capture a large share of not only the global passenger car market, but also the transit bus market. It points to considerable progress in recent years and that the main barrier for fuel cell vehicles is no longer performance, but rather cost and infrastructure.