Friedland said Daimler Chrysler, BMW, Ford and Volkswagen were setting out to electrify Europe by installing hundreds of extremely fast charging stations for fuel cell vehicles.
Each charging station will have a capacity of 350 kW, which will be 140% more powerful than the super chargers proposed by Tesla.
In January, Ford introduced a programme in Europe and America that also allows cars to charge wirelessly.
They pull up to a parking spot and the cars are charged without plugging in.
Some 380 000 people have paid deposits of $1 000 to reserve Tesla Model 3s, which has a reduction motor as its only moving part.
The $35 000 car is extremely copper intensive.
Simultaneously, platinum-catalysed hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will dominate larger vehicle ranges and cold climate regions, owing to fuel cells having proton exchange membranes that also provide heat as well as electricity.
The Toyota Mirai fuel cell car has a range of 312 miles and refuels in less than five minutes and the Germans are following the Japanese.
Daimler Chrysler, BMW, Audi and Volkswagen are all working on fuel cell automobiles.
Large cars, like the Mercedes S Class variety, are more likely to be fuel cell driven, while small cars not required to drive far are likely to be battery driven.
Both are electric cars, except that the fuel cell generates the electrical energy for all-electric drive trains and bigger vehicles will all be fuel cell driven.
The Chinese are building trams that run on hydrogen fuel cells that take 30 seconds to refuel, emit only water and the Chinese are spending $32-billion extending the tracks over 1 200 miles.
He flashed up a picture of a German passenger train with a hydrogen fuel cell that gives it a 500-mile range.
“These sorts of zero-pollution mass transportation vehicles will rely on the platinum that comes from South Africa,” he said.
The Japanese will begin selling fuel cell buses in Japan this year and there will be a fleet of 100 of them in operation for the 2020 Olympics.
He sees platinum as holding the key to hydrogen’s potential, with a typical small car using about 30 g of platinum.
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