Hyundai ix35 Hydrogen Fuel Call cars in world’s FIRST hydrogen car-sharing service

The Hyundai ix35 – Hyundai’s hydrogen fuel cell powered SUV – will be available in the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell car sharing service.

The Hyundai ix35 FCEV – the hydrogen fuel cell take on what is now the Hyundai Tucson – is, as Hyundai are keen to point out, the “world’s first mass produced and commercially available fuel cell electric car”, and now it’s heading for another first as part of a new car sharing service in Germany.

To be launched by the Linde Group this summer in Germany, 50 ix35 FCEVs will be available for public use in the BeeZero car sharing service.

The new car sharing service will be zone-based, with the 50 ix35s available in Munich’s city centre and also in Schwabing, Haidhausen, Au and Glockenbachviertel, with all the same on-line and App booking you get with a normal ICE car sharing scheme.

Thomas A. Schmid, Hyundai’s Europe boss, said:

The new BeeZero car sharing offer is pioneering sustainable mobility.

Featuring the Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell, BeeZero will not only be the first car sharing service using hydrogen-powered zero-emission cars, but will also offer comfortable and reliable transportation for the public’s everyday needs.

Because the ix35 FCEV has a pretty impressive range of 350 miles or so, users of the BeeZero cars won’t be limited just to drifting around Munich and its suburbs, but will be able to wander up in to the Bavarian mountains (or wherever they fancy) without range anxiety, and BeeZero are making sure they live up to their name by using hydrogen that’s sustainably produced to make it carbon neutral.

Whether it’s cost-effective for BeeZero and Hyundai to run a car sharing scheme with hydrogen powered cars is questionable, but it will expose drivers to the technology and demonstrate that FCEVs are the same to drive, and just as practical, as an ICE car.

And that’s a message makers of hydrogen fuel cell cars need to get across.