20 April 2002: London was the first European stop in BMW’s CleanEnergy World Tour 2002, which aims to promote the introduction of hydrogen as the fuel of the future and to establish partnerships with other organisations to help make this a reality.

BMW has developed a ‘bivalent’ internal combustion engine which can run on both liquid hydrogen and petrol. Using this engine, customers can drive the car without any inconvenience, even before a complete network of hydrogen filling stations is established, using petrol if the next hydrogen station is too far away.

Already prototype cars have racked up over 100,000 trouble-free miles during development, which is four times around the world.

The energy company BP is supporting the BMW CleanEnergy WorldTour 2002 and is committed to the development of hydrogen fuel. BP will put the first hydrogen refuelling point in London into operation in 2003.

When liquid hydrogen is used to power an internal combustion engine, no carbon dioxide is generated. BMW’s vision is that hydrogen, produced from water using power generated by renewable resources (solar, wind, wave, hydro-electric), is made available via a network of liquid hydrogen filling stations. In this way, minimal amounts of greenhouse gases are produced throughout the whole process.

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