Maruti Suzuki Exploring Hydrogen CNG (H-CNG) For Future Vehicles

What Is H-CNG?

According to our online research, even up to 20% of hydrogen concentration doesn’t need to follow the HCNG nomenclature. Only a concentration of more than 20% hydrogen in CNG needs to be labelled as HCNG and requires modifications to the engine components.

While CNG itself drastically cuts down CO2 emissions compared to a regular petrol car, hydrogen CNG or hydrogen-enriched CNG helps cut down emissions further. Since hydrogen is also a combustible gas, it nicely gels with CNG and burns normally in a combustion engine. The hydrogen-enrichment cuts down emissions as burning hydrogen results in no harmful gases. Pure water is the only outcome of burning hydrogen in vehicles’ engines.

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Higher Hydrogen Concentrations In CNG

At the moment, it’s unclear what concentration of hydrogen Maruti Suzuki are aiming to achieve for their HCNG vehicles. It’s worth noting that Toyota have greater expertise and research in hydrogen combustion engines. So, borrowing some of their tech know-how can certainly accelerate Maruti’s HCNG engineering efforts.

With some research, Maruti Suzuki could identify the ideal level of hydrogen enrichment to find the best balance in the following key areas:

• Total cost of ownership (net fuel costs)
• Emissions
• Long-term reliability
• Performance
• Cost of necessary modifications

While Maruti Suzuki and Toyota are investing heavily towards building electric vehicles, their approach towards cutting down emissions are more diversified than any other carmaker. Tata Motors are the only other carmaker with a comparable level of diversification in alternative propulsion technologies. Besides petrol, diesel, CNG and electric vehicles, they also have flex fuel vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen combustion engines in the pipeline.

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Maruti Suzuki and Toyota’s combined powertrain engineering efforts include the following 10 alternatives:

• Petrol
• CNG
• Mild hybrid petrol
• Strong hybrid petrol
• Hydrogen CNG
• Bio-CNG
• Flex fuel vehicles
• Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
• Hydrogen combustion engine
• Electric vehicles

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