GROWTH OF A HYDROGEN TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract

A transition to a personal transportation system based on hydrogen rather than petroleum will entail major changes in the supporting infrastructure and in the driving habits of consumers. Early-adopting consumers will be put to some inconvenience in making trips, as they will likely have to plan ahead to determine if there will be hydrogen stations available when and where they need to refuel. While this and other potential drawbacks to an individual’s decision to purchase and drive a hydrogen vehicle operate on a very personal level, the benefits of doing so are almost exclusively societal in nature (that is, reduction in both the worldwide demand for petroleum and the emission of carbon dioxide). It will be critical to build up the hydrogen support infrastructure in a way that minimizes the hardship to the consumer and creates as strong an incentive as possible for robust early growth of the system. In this paper we examine the growth of a hydrogen infrastructure in a simple agent-based model consisting of a city center, a metropolitan region, suburbs, and a surrounding rural area. Previous studies have shown that a successful transition to a self-sustaining system depends on cost of ownership, community member influence, and vehicle and station densities, and that the growth and ultimate penetration of the hydrogen system may be strongly dependent on the initial distribution of stations and drivers. In this paper, we extend the investigation to consider other factors, such as effects of driver preference for refueling near home and the effects of changing subsidies.