People of Howick and Pakuranga. We need your help discovering what has happened to Auckland Transport’s (AT) hydrogen bus.
Back in March 2021, AT announced the start of a two-year trial of a $1.175 million hydrogen-powered bus. The idea was to compare the hydrogen bus to similar electric busses to find out which is better.
Sadly, if AT had simply asked a random group of college science students to do a Google search, they would have discovered that hydrogen buses are, at best, half as efficient as electric buses and, at worst, one third as efficient.
As far as I can tell, the only person to ever actually see the hydrogen bus is my friend Roger Hill, the famous boat designer. No other human being has seen, let alone actually ridden on the hydrogen bus.
AT refuses to discuss the subject and one can understand why. It turns out that a hydrogen bus actually runs on electricity just like an electric bus. The electricity is first turned into hydrogen by electrolysis then the hydrogen is turned back into electricity by a hydrogen fuel cell.
Unfortunately, the round-trip efficiency of the hydrogen process is half that of the electric bus. An electric bus only costs $750,000. Anyone who spots the hydrogen bus please write to the editor.
John Caldwell
Howick
