BMW 7 Series Liquid Hydrogen Hybrid

The BMW Hydrogen 7, as the hydrogen hybrid is called, is a fully operational and ready for production hybrid that runes on liquid nitrogen. Quoting the BMW website this is the first production ready hydrogen vehicle. The whole quote can be read below.

The future is closer than you think.

The BMW Hydrogen 7 is the world's first production-ready hydrogen vehicle. It's already proving itself in the real world too: we're putting 100 of them to the test as loan cars for leading figures from the worlds of culture, politics, business and the media, including Oscar-winning film director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Erich Sixt, chairman of rental car company Sixt AG.
Real-world experience shows that switching to hydrogen can go hand in hand with the comfort, dynamics and safety you'd expect from a BMW.

This is a pretty bold move by the German manufacturer because they are going into uncharted territory, and boldly at that, with their flagship model, the 7 series. What is really impressive is that this car is able to delivery the same kind of luxury expected from BMW and the piece of mind that you are doing your part in not polluting the environment. Now what is different about this specific hybrid is that it uses an internal combustion engine to burn both regular gas and the liquid hydrogen. This might be convenient looking from the manufacturing point of view, but this type of engine, found in most modern cars, is very inefficient and when burning the liquid hydrogen it looses a lot of it. This type of engine would need much more liquid hydrogen to produce the same amount of energy that an engine designed specifically for liquid hydrogen burning would need. So while still not too practical the BMW hybrid is a reality and that is the first step necessary into tackling the problem of what is going to drive the cars of the future.



Now in the above picture you can see one of the people mentioned in the quote taken from the BMW website. This person is Oscar Winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck , he was one of the lucky once to get this baby for free, before its available to the public.