Hyundai Nexo 2019 first drive

The Hyundai Nexo is one of only a handful of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that you or I could walk into a showroom and actually buy.

It plays the parts of high-riding urban runabout, undemanding motorway hack and versatile family car rather well. As we’ll discover, this is a perfectly adequate machine and there is plenty to like about it. But as we’ll also discover, it suffers from the same chicken-or-the-egg problems of other hydrogen cars like the Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity that prevent it from being something we can all enjoy. We’ll get to that in a bit too.

The Nexo picks up where the ix35 Fuel Cell, launched in 2013, left off. It was the world’s first mass-produced fuel cell vehicle. Unlike that car, though, which was an adapted version of an existing model, the Nexo was created from the ground up specifically for this purpose. As well as making it lighter, that means the Nexo is more efficient.

Take the bodywork, which has been designed to be as slippery as possible. The underside is completely flat, there are air curtains that reduce drag front and rear and the door handles sit completely flush with the bodywork, popping out only when you need them. Even the wheels have been designed with aerodynamic efficiency in mind.

Then there are the hydrogen tanks. The Nexo has three, all mounted transversely across the rear of the car. They look like oversized scuba diving cylinders. Two are just ahead of the rear axle line, the third just behind it. By using three tanks – with a total capacity of 157 litres – rather than two like the ix35, the packaging is neater and boot space is preserved.

So the Nexo is a purpose-built fuel cell car. Hyundai quotes a 414-mile range (on the more stringent WLTP cycle) and says those tanks can be fully replenished in five minutes, little longer than it takes to refuel a conventional car.

The point of all of this, of course, is that you have the range and flexibility of a petrol or diesel car, but nothing more harmful than water comes out of the tailpipe.

The Nexo takes learnings and engineering know-how from the ix35, but not its hardware. The fuel cell componentry is completely new, and the stack itself was designed and built in-house by Hyundai. At current UK prices, it would be slightly cheaper to refuel the Nexo than a similar petrol car and its range is comparable too.

It feels exactly like an electric car to drive, albeit one with a relatively lightweight motor. You simply aren’t aware that any clever chemistry is happening beneath that bonnet. The car is every bit as serene as a conventional EV. What it doesn’t have is the surprising turn of speed of a typical electric car. Instead, it feels brisk enough to keep pace with traffic, but no faster.