In this episode, we’re talking hydrogen power, specifically the hydrogen power of the Hyundai Nexo owned by Phil Mauger. Phil made the news at the end of 2021 when he bought his NEXO. He lives in the South Island, and there was no publicly accessible refuelling station for him to use.
Mentioned in episode:
Gary Cockram Hyundai: https://www.hyundai.co.nz/dealers/christchurch/gary-cockram-hyundai
Global Bus Ventures: https://www.globalbusventures.co.nz/
Transwaste: https://transwastecanterbury.co.nz/
Hyundai Nexo TRANSCRIPT
Adrian
Hi, I’m Adrian Maidment, and this is EV Quest.
In this episode, we’re talking hydrogen power, specifically the hydrogen power of the Hyundai Nexo. owned by Phil Mauger. Phil made the news at the end of 2021 when he bought his NEXO. He lives in the South Island, and there was no publicly accessible refuelling station for him to use.
So in this episode, we catch up with Phil and see how his Nexo is going.
So you’re in the news a few months ago about buying a Nexo. Hydrogen Nexo. There was 3 in the country, and the story was it was that there was nowhere to refuel it. So you sort of that problem out?
Phil
Yes, we did. I was very lucky. There’s a place down here in Rolleston called ‘Global Bus Ventures’ and they built a hydrogen bus, New Zealand’s only hydrogen bus, for Auckland Transport. So I knew if they built one, they must be able to fill it. So I went and met up with a guy called Mike out there, and he was more than helpful. Tripping over himself to help me and get it filled down here. Albeit a wee bit slower but at least I’m getting a result.
Adrian
So there’s a pressure isn’t there. Was it 700…700 bar it’s supposed to get to.
Phil
Well, trucks go to 350 bar, because they got large tanks. But my car’s got three what you’d call almost like underwater diving bottles and they’re 75 mil thick, carbon fibre and they go to 700 bar which is nigh on 10,000 PSI.
Adrian
So apart from the fuel situation, how’s it been running?
Phil
Fantastic. It’s great! A buddy of mine bought a Model 3 Tesla, but it’s relatively heavy whereas my car’s very light.
Adrian
Does it drive more like a traditional car or an electric car?
Phil
Like a traditional car. But it’s quiet.
Adrian
And what about the mileage?
Phil
Roughly speaking, it holds just under seven kilograms of hydrogen. It’s a roughly $70 and it takes me 700 kilometres roughly. When the new fuelling stations happen down here that will take about 7 minutes to fill it up with that much fuel.
Adrian
They’re planning more hydrogen fuelling stations down south?
Phil
There’s a company called Hiringa who are doing a whole lot in the North Island. They’re working on coming down here. I know there’s a company from Invercargill is setting one up in Edendale, so it’s sort of attacking me from both sides at the moment.
I’m incidentally on the board of a company called Transwaste, which runs a big land in Waipara, just north of Christchurch. And one of the things, a couple of things you need for making hydrogen is a fair bit of power. And a fair bit of water and we’ve got plenty of water. There’s no problem. And the power we have to, because it’s a landfill, we have to scavenge, so to speak, the methane off the dump, off the landfill.
We’ve got three, four, one megawatt generators and we pump out to the national grid. So if we can get these guys coming in or a company coming in and getting power before we put it on the national grid because we only get probably $0.08 a litre for the power, whereas you and I buy it in a house for probably $0.25, megawatt hour or whatever it is, a unit.
So if you can get the power before the meter, it makes it lot, lot cheaper to produce.
Adrian
So do you think the future is kind of hydrogen or is it, because now everyone’s into the electric cars? Hydrogen cars are going to catch on?
Phil
Well, I think to answer your question, heavy transport will be hydrogen. You just cannot put tons and tons of batteries on a truck and expect to carry the same amount of payload. So the tanks for the hydrogen don’t weigh a hell of a lot more than the tanks for the fuel with the diesel, in the trucks. And especially up at Cape Elliot, as I say, Waipara, if we can run our trucks on hydrogen from there, they can fill up, up there, come into town, pick up their load of waste, take it out to Cape Valley Waipara, and dump it off in Zero Carbon. All that comes out to water. So it’s fantastic.
Adrian
I guess you haven’t met anyone else on the road with the same car as you. But have you spoken to anyone else overseas with one?
Phil
Before I was a councillor, I had a trucking company, and I’m interested in new things and trucks and things like I was a generally leaning towards it. So I did a bit of homework on hydrogen cars and found out that they had quite a real good following of Hyundai Nexos in California because they’ve got a good refuelling system situation over there.
So I rang my cousin up who runs the biggest Hyundai dealership in the South Island and said, Oh, I’ll bring one of these in from America, a left hand drive one. I don’t care if it’s left hand drive, I just want to try one. We’ve actually got three in the country and one of them is brand new and you can buy that if you like.
So I did. So I’ve got it. It does everything you ever want. It’s got heated seats, it’s got cool seats, heated steering wheel, you name it. It’s got it. So it’s really good.
Adrian
It looks like quite a luxury car is and the inside lots of buttons. A Tesla a screen, and then you’ve got buttons everywhere, which I like.
Phil
Being an elderly dinosaur that I am but it’s like Hyundai have gone around and found every button from their old cars, it’s simple
It’s so easy to actually turn a knob and the volume goes up and down on your stereo. So it suits me the way I am. So it’s really good.
Adrian
Anything you don’t like?
Phil
One thing I will say, other thing we’ve got here in Christchurch is an outfit called AFCryo.
Now they make a 20 foot container with lots and lots of things in it and you plug power in one side and water and the other. You put 4000 litres of water in, per day. And you put 1.1 megawatts of power in per day and you get 450 kilograms just under half a tonne of hydrogen out of it.
But the by product is three and a half tonnes. Three and a half thousand kilograms. Yeah, yeah. That’s right. Of medical grade oxygen out of it, as a by-product. . So they these, 20 foot containers will be quietly set up all over the, all over the place and that the benefit of having medical grade oxygen that someone can use I’m sure is going to be a plus.
Adrian
So there’s lots of opportunities opening up for hydrogen isn’t there. It’s still very early days.
Phil
Oh it is. Absolutely. So you could set up one of these hydrogen generators somewhere will say they a milk plant or whatever and you could run your forklifts on them. There’s all sorts of things. And the good thing about it is because it makes it onsite, no matter where you put it, there’s no tanks like LPG tankers driving around all over the place. It’s right there.
And so I can if I’ve got one of these machines at my place, it makes 450 kilograms a day… if I come and take ten or 20 or 30 kilograms out if I’m a truck or whatever… and while I’m away it just tops up and keeps it topped up to just under half a tonne of hydrogen all the time.
So it’s great.
Adrian
It’s quite exciting times isn’t it. You’d say.
Phil
I couldn’t agree more. You go on YouTube and also things and you see them mining lithium now it doesn’t look like the, the best thing in the world sort of takes a fair bit of that fuel diesel, you know that sort of scares the planned a bit like mining in phosphates.
It does a fair bit of damage to the planet.
So I think this going forward especially for trucks, cars of probably just as you can plug it in and stuff like that, but hydrogen’s way to go as far as I’m concerned.
Adrian
Maybe just lastly, say in ten years’ time , where do you see the hydrogen industry?
Phil
I would say electric cars will still be around, but delivery trucks around town, small delivery trucks, and maybe even long haul stuff like the Transwaste thing, they’ll be good. Long haul trucks will be the way it happens.
Especially with diesel and fuel going up the way it is.
Adrian
Well Phil, thanks for your time. It was a very interesting.
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