GERMANY'S CAPITAL WELCOMES THE BMW HYDROGEN ERA

11/12/2004

The BMW Group is a project partner involved in Berlin's first public hydrogen filling station

Munich/Berlin. Dr Manfred Stolpe, German Minister of Transport, Building and Housing, Margareta Wolf, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and Georg Wilhelm Adamowitsch, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour, today open the German capital's first public hydrogen filling station. In addition to conventional fuels, it offers hydrogen in the form of gas (Compressed Gaseous Hydrogen - CGH2) and in liquefied form (Liquid Hydrogen - LH2). The latter boasts a higher energy density and is favoured by the BMW Group as it gives vehicles a greater range. As a project partner in the Clean Energy Partnership (CEP), the BMW Group is playing an active role in the demonstration programme by running trial vehicles based on the hydrogen-powered 7 Series.

"In this inauguration, we are pointing the way forward for sustainable mobility. This project makes it patently evident that hydrogen has a high potential as a replacement for oil and other fossil energy forms in many areas", declared Dr Stolpe. Representing the BMW Group, Christoph Huss, Director of Science and Transport Policy, added: "The BMW Group has been driving forward the development of hydrogen vehicles for more than 20 years now. With the opening of this hydrogen filling station in Berlin, all partners of the CEP have come a significant step closer to fulfilling their vision of turning sustainable mobility into reality."

As part of the opening ceremony, the fuelling of a BMW test car with liquid hydrogen is presented to the government representatives. In the course of the project, an entire fleet of BMW hydrogen-powered vehicles will be deployed in Berlin.

Basis of the CEP Berlin: the Transport Energy Strategy The involvement in the CEP Berlin is part of the BMW Group's involvement in setting up an infrastructure for hydrogen vehicles. The basis of this is the Transport Energy Strategy (TES). More than ten partners from the motor and energy industry are collaborating in this group. The aim of the TES is to introduce a countrywide supply network for the sustainable energy carrier hydrogen. The German government is backing and overseeing the work of this group, which was set up on the initiative, among others, of BMW AG. The Clean Energy Partnership in Berlin is a project by the TES.

Coming to customers soon: BMW hydrogen cars BMW AG will be offering customers a production car with a hydrogen combustion engine during the production period of the current BMW 7 Series. This will feature a bivalent drive that runs on hydrogen as well as petrol. It will mean that the BMW flagship can be filled with both fuels depending on availability and infrastructure in order to guarantee mobility for the customer.