• You might expect the Nexo to be cheap to run
• But it’s more about being sustainable
• Hydrogen isn’t cheap to fill up with

The Nexo’s high purchase price aside, the running costs are perhaps not as low as you’d expect. While it runs without any emissions, filling up with hydrogen at one of the very few filling stations isn’t cheap. And with an approximate 350-400-mile range, it’s similar to running a petrol car in terms of filling costs.

However that’s not what the Nexo is about. It’s about being a sustainable source of power longer-term, with the most environmentally-friendly eco credentials of almost any car because there are no harmful emissions coming from it. There are only a handful of Hyundai dealers in the UK able to service the Nexo, though, so you can’t just turn up to any showroom hoping to get your car serviced.

Like an electric car, the Nexo emits no CO2 emissions, but it’s also more sustainable long-term than these cars as, due to its hydrogen fuel cell, all that comes from the car is water and purified air. Hyundai is keen to point out that the Nexo actively purifies the air as it drives, something electric cars do not do.

However, the energy used to convert hydrogen and oxygen into a fuel to go into the car is a lot, the tailpipe emissions (or lack of) makes the Nexo one of the very few cars with zero harmful emissions physically coming from the vehicle.

Reliability

• The Nexo uses very new technology
• So it’s hard to gauge long-term reliability
• Hyundai has a good reputation, plus a long warranty

Using hydrogen fuel cell technology, the Nexo’s long-term reliability is more difficult to predict than a more conventionally-powered Hyundai (or any other car for that matter).

However, the brand does have a brief history of this with the ix35, and a lot of the other components used in the Nexo can be found in other Hyundai models, and the company has a good reputation for building dependable cars. Also, the car is covered by the firm’s standard five-year, unlimited-mileage warranty.