Hydrogen Refueling Station Consideration and Driver Experience in California

The recent growth in the California hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (FCV) market offers the opportunity to analyze how refueling stations that drivers use after some experience compare with those they initially intended to use. Online surveys completed by 124 FCV adopters in California in early 2019 were analyzed. Respondents listed stations they initially planned to use, stations that they later used, subjective reasons for using them, and important travel destinations. Network GIS analysis was then used to measure estimated travel times between both available and planned retail hydrogen stations and home, work, and frequently traveled routes, both at the time of adoption and at the time of the survey. Results show that 40% of respondents changed refueling stations over time. Those with stations objectively nearer to home, work, and frequently traveled routes were less likely to change their list. Drivers were more likely to subjectively label stations as near home and less likely to label them as on the way compared with objective measurements of these criteria, though these differences are greater for respondents who changed stations. Regardless of whether the station was available pre-adoption or opened post-adoption, stations that respondents added to their lists were farther from home than those they initially intended to use. For stations available pre-adoption, reliability positively influenced adding them after experience, while stations added by drivers that opened post-adoption tended to require short deviations to reach. These results indicate that a mixture of geographic and station-level characteristics contribute to FCV drivers changing stations over time.