SMS news: Interview with Driving Hydrogen Editor Matt Lister

In July 2024, Harewood Digital appointed Sip Media Solutions to provide content strategy and SEO services for a new site called Driving Hydrogen.

The brand’s mission is to provide comprehensive, unbiased news, in-depth reviews, timely updates and expert opinions on the latest developments in the hydrogen automotive sector.

Sip Media Solutions’ Managing Editor Simon Wilkes sat down with Driving Hydrogen Editor Matt Lister to get the full lowdown on the vision, mission and target audience for the brand.

Simon: “What’s the vision for Driving Hydrogen - what’s it setting out to achieve?”

Matt: “We want to be the mass-market place you go to for news, updates and expert opinions on the automotive hydrogen space.

“When there are new car launches, we will do a review - when there are any new infrastructure projects, we want to be at the forefront of that.

“While you have lots of B2B industry hydrogen pages, which are a bit dull, boring and technical, we want to offer hydrogen information to the mass market.”

Simon: “What’s going to set you apart from anyone else talking about hydrogen?”

Matt: “Nobody is doing a mass-market news site for hydrogen - so I think that stands us out immediately.

“From the people we have spoken to, hydrogen right now is in its infancy - hydrogen cars have been nearly perfected since the 1990s, but now it seems like we are on the cusp of the hydrogen revolution - almost like it was back in 2008 with electric cars.

“We want to tap into that in the early stages - and build a really solid business and brand around automotive hydrogen.”

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Simon: “Just touching on that, it’s not just about cars - it’s about the wider industry right?”

Matt: “Yep, we want to target the mass market, and most people have got cars, so definitely that’s an avenue we are going down - but I think generally speaking, the timeline for hydrogen will be the heavier vehicles, the trucks, planes, marine - massive container ships won’t run on electric batteries - so everything can run on hydrogen.

“Cars will definitely run on hydrogen but the passenger cars sector has been pretty dominated by battery electric cars - and there has been billions of research and development costs, so that will be batteries for a while - but there will be some hydrogen cars starting to come out.

“But everything involved in transportation has the potential to use hydrogen, so we will be covering all the developments on that front.”

Simon: “The brand is going to focus on the UK industry - but that’s quite far behind. Which industries are the furthest ahead when it comes to hydrogen?”

Matt: “In terms of markets, it’s Germany, Japan and South Korea. I think the hydrogen fuel cells, generally speaking, are all fundamentally the same, it’s just about scaling it up.

“Maritime is probably the least developed, although there’s a lot of money going into that now - but your passenger cars, your vans, your pick-up trucks - they’ll run on the same fuel cell systems.

“Your trucks are a bit of a scaled-up version - but the most prototypes are in cars currently.

“You’ve got Toyota with their Toyota Mirai, which is a family car - but then the Toyota Hilux pick-up truck uses the same fuel cell system as that.

“BMW Group have got their own fuel cell system and that’s being co-developed with Hyundai (check this at Matt was not sure) - and China has got lots of city buses, but that’s not really a market we want to focus on yet.”

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Simon: “If I’m a new person that comes to your website, or looks at your Linked In page, what sort of personality is the brand presenting?”

Matt: “If you look at some of the most popular, most famous automotive-related content providers, you look at Top Gear - the biggest [motoring] entertainment show in the world - and I’m talking about the [Jeremy] Clarkson, [James] May and [Richard] Hammond version.

“They were motoring journalists, late on in their career.

“They’d been there, got the tee shirt and had the expertise - they knew what a flat-plane crank is, they know what oversteer is, so they can afford to spread it out to a wider audience - we want to do something similar with this.

“Also, if you look at automotive reviews on Youtube, some of the biggest channels are people like carwow with Matt Watson - he has the technical expertise, he knows how things work - but then he spreads it out to a wide audience.

“That channel has got just short of 10 million subscribers and he gets millions of views on each video - so we are looking for mass-market appeal but with credibility and expertise behind it.”

Simon: “There are other contributors on Driving Hydrogen - but you are driving this project as Editor of the brand - where did your passion for driving and hydrogen come from?”

Matt: “I’ve always been a petrolhead ever since I was a kid - I come from a car-mad family.

“I’m a knuckle-dragging petrolhead - l like a big old V8 that sounds good, I like a supercar and all the rest of it - but the future of fuel..I don’t necessarily believe in battery electric cars - and the alternative to that is hydrogen.

“I have an interest in sustainability generally - that’s where I’ve had my career for the past five years in the eco space - and I’m a petrolhead, so marrying those together seems like the perfect project for me.”

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Simon: “You are in your early 20s [Matt is 24], have you had a think about your target audience? We have just had the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed and saw that being well attended - what sort of demographic are you aiming for?”

Matt: “I think it’s quite wide. If you look at the price of hydrogen cars now - not that they are mass market anyway - the Toyota Mirai is a family car you can buy.

“Really you can only have it if you live in London or California because they are the only places where you’ve got hydrogen filling stations - they are £65k to buy, so there’s not many young people with that sort of money to spend on a hydrogen car.

“So I think we want to entice people generally - probably mostly petrolheads will be interested in this, people who are interested in electric cars, and car enthusiasts.

“But I think we then want to spread it out to anybody. If you look at EV [electric vehicle] sales, they slumped recently, so I think the public - generally speaking - are not so much in favour of battery-electric cars.

“So we want to appeal to the enthusiasts but then also have mass-market appeal.”

Simon: “My background is in sport and I’ve seen a huge surge in interest around Formula One - mainly down to the Netflix series Drive to Survive, which has tapped into a younger audience, particularly in America. Do you think that’s an audience you can tap into with this project?”

Matt: “I think we can tap into young people definitely.

“If you are young and you’re a car enthusiast, you’ll also be interested to know what’s going on with hydrogen - because hydrogen, in my opinion, is the future.

“We want to appeal to young people because they will be buying hydrogen cars in the future hopefully, at some point.”

READ MORE: Hydrogen vs. Electric Cars: Will hydrogen win the battle for the future of fuel?