Why did BMW stop manufacturing the Hydrogen 7?

Most automakers plan to introduce hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles in about 2015. FCVs have been on the road for years (I drive a Toyota FCV) similar to beta testing. BMW was the only automaker to use a combustion engine instead of a fuel cell, and liquid hydrogen instead of gaseous. The H7 was a great car (I got to drive one of them for a few weeks), but they were part of a learning program for BMW. Like the other automakers, BMW took the results of the test program back to the lab for redevelopment. I hope we'll see a new hydrogen powered car from them soon. In the meantime, check out the cars from the other automakers at http://www.cafcp.org/progress/vehicles.

Chris at CaFCP

The volumetric energy density of hydrogen is very poor, at commercial pressures of 150 bar ( 2,100 psi ) which requires heavy steel pressure tanks, it would take 20 times the volume of gasoline to hold the same amount of energy hence the range of the vehicle is severely limited. A gallon of liquid hydrogen actually holds less hydrogen than a gallon of gasoline and indeed the holy grail of fuel cell research is to find materials that allow liquid hydrocarbon fuel and air to be used instead of pure hydrogen and oxygen. Also, when Sandia Labs investigated more efficient ways to make hydrogen from H2O, they realized that the same process could liberate CO from CO2 and therefore it was just as easy to synthesize gasoline and diesel as it is to produce hydrogen, this is the CR5 Sunlight to Petroleum project. As to the BMW car itself, it's a spark ignition vehicle and therefore it's efficiency is about 30%, diesel is 60% efficient and electric motors are about 95% efficient ( though batteries are less than 50% efficient ). You could do far better than the BMW Hydrogen 7 with almost any technology.

Basic rule of business. If you make a product that nobody buys then you stop making it. Right now the biggest problem with a hydrogen powered car is that you have almost no place to fill it up.