Ten years back, Hyundai is the absolute last car that one would have considered buying. But times have changed, they went from being a car you wouldn’t pay 10 bucks for to being a car you’d spend 10 bucks on the valet ticket.
Hyundai has turned the company around 360 degress to the desirable marque that makes a range of handsome and stylish sedans and compacts. Right now, they are accredited with being the first manufacturer to sell a production-built hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, namely the ix35 model.
Sports Scientist Arnt-Gøran Hartvig and physicist Marius Bornstein have both taken their own brand of zero-emission motoring to the streets of Deutchland in a feat that will define the daily usability of the hydrogen-powered car, which in this case is the Hyundai ix35 or better known in some markets as the Tucson.
The duo drove as the heading suggests, 2,383 kilometres in the span of 24 hours. Now, this was accomplished by nothing more than driving around on German roads; from the Shell station in Hamburg to the one in Berlin to be exact. Refuelling takes a mere three minutes and then it’s back to the commute.
The whole point of this exercise was to see how well this car and its fuel source can cope with daily commute, running around and long distance journeys. A tank full of hydrogen would give the ix35 a range of approximately 600km to 700km.
The ix35 has a tank with a 5.64 kg capacity. Currently, the going rate of hydrogen per kilogram is RM26.33 which adds up to about 25 cents per kilometer. Filling up the ix35 would set you back RM143.50 for a range of about 600 km. All things considered and bearing the fact that these are very conservative figures, it’s not that bad at all.
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