Driving with hydrogen almost 50 years ago
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In recent years, hydrogen has often been proclaimed as an alternative to the battery-electric car and courageous manufacturers are even offering corresponding new cars. However, the topic has not really taken off, not least due to the very thin network of filling stations.
However, hydrogen was already an issue almost half a century ago, when liquid hydrogen was seen as an alternative to gasoline for combustion engines.
At the Hanover Fair in 1980, as Automobil Revue reported at the time , a BMW 520 was shown that had been converted to run on hydrogen, but had to give up almost its entire trunk to do so.
One of the challenges of the project, apart from storing the hydrogen, was getting it into the combustion chambers in a targeted manner. The BMW 520/4 was not allowed to drive on public roads; the test drives were carried out at the DFVLR test site in Lampoldshausen.
This BMW 520 built in 1975 with a four-cylinder engine can be admired today at BMW in Munich. It probably remained a one-off and the project came to an end, although there were hopes of a range of around 500 to 700 kilometers and hardly any reduction in driving performance. Nevertheless, further research vehicles were built in the following years.
