Simulating the adoption of fuel cell vehicles

Supply security and environmental concerns associated with oil call for an introduction of hydrogen as a transport fuel. To date, scenario studies of infrastructure build-up and sales of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) are driven by cost estimates and technological feasibility assumptions, indicating that there is a “chicken and egg problem”: Car producers do not offer FCVs as long as there are no hydrogen filling stations, and infrastructure will not be set up unless there is a significant number of FCVs on the road. This diffusion barrier is often used as an argument for a major (public) infrastructure program, neglecting the fact that the automobile market is highly competitive and car producers, consumers, and filling station operators form an interdependent dynamic system, where taxes influence technology choice. In this paper, an agent-based model is used that captures the main interdependencies to simulate possible diffusion paths of FCVs. The results suggest that a tax on conventional cars can successfully promote diffusion even without a major infrastructure program. However, consumers and individual producers are affected differently by the tax, indicating that differently strong resistance towards such a policy can be anticipated. Moreover, there is evidence that some producers might benefit from cooperation with filling station operators to generate a faster build-up of infrastructure.