Kia is reportedly considering the use of ultra-capacitors to store electrical energy in the next generation version of its fuel cell vehicle. Ultra caps have an advantage over batteries in that they can absorb and release energy much more quickly. Unfortunately, they don't have as much capacity and are currently much more expensive. There is a lot of work being done on capacitors and EEStor has made claims of tremendous progress. So far, though, EEStor has not publicly demonstrated any prototypes of its capacitors. In its current form, the Sportage FCEV has a range of 235 miles. Interestingly Honda has gone the opposite direction for its fuel cell vehicles. The previous-generation Honda FCX used ultra-caps but those have been replaced by a lithium ion battery in the FCX Clarity.

[Source: The Telegraph]

Toyota has started offering its fuel cell powered Highlander for lease by government agencies and energy related companies. The latest version, known as the FCHV-adv, uses an updated version of Toyota's in-house developed fuel cell stack which offers an extended range of over 470 miles on the latest JC08 test cycle. In 2007, Toyota engineers drove an FCHV 347 miles from Osaka to Tokyo on a single tank of hydrogen and then later drove one 2,300 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska to Vancouver, British Columbia. The FCHV-adv uses a 10,000 psi compressed hydrogen storage system and a nickel metal hydride battery pack to recapture kinetic energy during regenerative braking. Fleets that want to try out the fuel cell Toyota will be paying a hefty price. The FCHV-adv will cost $7,700 per month for a 30 month lease. The Toyota press release is after the jump.

[Source: Toyota]

Until fairly recently, Nissan has been mostly quiet about its fuel cell development program. The Japanese brand recently became the first to run a fuel cell vehicle around the Nurburgring in Germany when its X-Trail FCV took to the circuit more typically populated by GT-Rs, Corvettes and Porsches. Now it looks like Nissan might follow the lead of Tesla with its first production fuel cell vehicle. Izuho Hirano, Nissan's fuel cell laboratory manager has told AutoCar that a sports car or luxury car would likely be the best place to introduce the technology. Using the same rationale as Tesla and Honda with the FCX Clarity, expensive new technology like lithium batteries and fuel cells would be accepted better in a more expensive car because other premium features could be packaged with it. A fuel cell car must have something to justify the price besides the powertrain. Nissan will make a decision in early 2009 about whether to proceed with a production fuel cell car for launch in 2014.

[Source: AutoCar]

By the middle of the next decade Mercedes-Benz wants its entire lineup to be able to operate entirely free of petroleum. The German giant is working on a variety of technologies that will help provide crude oil free transport such as battery electrics, fuel cells and highly efficient internal combustion engines that can operate on biofuels. Mercedes has recently been letting European journalists sample some of these new powertrains at a test facility in Spain.

The F700 concept that debuted last fall in Frankfurt is powered by a turbocharged DiesOtto engine. The DiesOtto is Mercedes' branding for a combined HCCI and spark ignition engine that provides nearly the same efficiency as a diesel without the need for the expensive after-treatment systems. This and conventional diesel engines can run on biofuels and Mercedes hopes to launch the DiesOtto in production by 2010. Mercedes is also currently field testing electrically-driven vehicles with both batteries alone and fuel cells each of which they also plan to launch at the beginning of the decade. While it may well be that all Mercedes models in 2015 will be capable of running petroleum free, the reality is that many - if not most - will still be using fossil fuels much of the time. That may come in the form of coal for electricity, natural gas reformed into hydrogen, or petroleum fuels blended with biofuels. But you have to start somewhere.

[Source: The Sun]

Honda has just announced details of the leasing program for the new FCX Clarity fuel cell car that was unveiled at the LA Auto Show last November. The Clarity will be the first series "production" fuel cell vehicle available for lease to retail customers and the first examples will be delivered in July of this year. American Honda expects to lease about 200 Claritys during the first three years of the program. Right now, Honda is filtering through the 50,000 people that have shown interest in the lease program. The majority of those people who will be ruled ineligible because they don't live within range of a hydrogen filling station in the Los Angeles area.

The first batch of lessees will be announced on June 16 when the first Clarity rolls off the assembly line in Japan. The leases will be three year terms at $600/month which includes the insurance for the car. To qualify for a lease, potential customers will have to go through a multi step process that evaluates where they live and drive, and whether they have the financial means to pay for the car. When we talked to Honda's Stephen Ellis a few months ago, the retail price of hydrogen in the LA area was about $5/kg (equivalent to about 1 gallon of gas). The Clarity has a range of 270 miles and gets the equivalent of about 68mpg for gasoline. The full press release with all the details is after the jump.



All photos ©2007 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

GM isn't the only one ready for a lot of hydrogen fuel cell cars. Daimler chairman Dieter "Dr. Z" Zetsche believes that the technology for fuel cell vehicles is here today and that vehicles using the hydrogen-for-energy system will be available in five to eight years time. Zetsche also believes that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will compare favorably with their competition, which we assume means other alternative powertrains like full-electrics and hybrids. One reason he cites as a fuel cell benefit over electric cars is range, suggesting that hydrogen electrics could travel 300 miles on a single tank of hydrogen. One unanswered question, though, is how far will pure electrics be able to go on a single charge in five to eight years time. Still, by refilling a hydrogen tank, the driver gets another 300 miles while it will likely take another full charge for the electric car. Zetsche recognizes that a potential problem area exists regarding the infrastructure that a hydrogen fueling system would require. We remain intrigued by the technology, but recognize that major advancements must be made before jumping on the fuel cell bandwagon. We also believe that other extended-range electric vehicle technologies will allow for many of the same benefits as hydrogen fuel cells.

[Source: Just-Auto (sub. req'd.)]

Click on the image to enlarge

Last Spring, when Suzuki and Intelligent Energy announced their partnership, we wondered out loud if fuel cell powered-motorcycles were in the offing. What we got was a very cool concept bike at the Tokyo Motor Show called the Suzuki Crosscage, which did in fact use IE's Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) technology. The bike was clearly just a concept, though.

News comes by way of IE today that they have furthered their partnership with Suzuki. Could we finally start to see bikes like IE's ENV on our roadways? "This is an important next step for our collaboration with Suzuki as we move from a very successful concept toward a range of commercially viable fuel cell motorcycles," said Phil Caldwell, director of business development at Intelligent Energy. With those words, we remain hopeful that this investment and collaboration bears water-emitting fruit in short order.

[Source: Intelligent Energy]

With the dramatic increase in international trade in the past couple of decades, particularly between China and North America, ocean shipping traffic has gone up along with the emissions from those ships. Recent studies have shown that shipping is generating almost as many emissions as road transport and more than aviation.

Ships typically use much lower quality fuels than road going vehicles and don't have much in the way of emission controls. The marine bunker fuels typically used emit 700 times the sulfur dioxide of road-going diesel vehicles. A group of northern European companies is now collaborating on a project to install a fuel cell in a Norwegian offshore oil field supply ship in 2008. The molten carbonate fuel cell stack will use natural gas with on the fly steam reformation to produce the hydrogen to generate the electricity.

The fuel cell ship will be much more efficient than the diesel engines and run much cleaner. Meanwhile Iceland is planning to convert their fishing fleet to hydrogen fuel cells using hydrogen produced by their abundant geothermal energy.

[Source: Reuters]

Aside from Honda, General Motors has probably been the most aggressive automaker when it comes to developing fuel cell technology in-house. The company has taken great advantage of some of the advanced manufacturing technology they have developed in producing catalytic converters for gas engined vehicles. Based on what VP of research and development and strategic planning Larry Burns has said in recent months it looks like the most important advance GM has made with fuel cells is catalyst thrifting.

The basic technology of how fuel cell stacks function is basically worked out. The biggest issue with the stack is getting the manufacturing cost down. Thrifting allows GM to apply the catalyst to the layers of the stack more uniformly while using less of the precious metals. That allow the efficiency and power density to be increased while reducing the cost dramatically. GM has already said that by 2009 they will have the cost of the their fuel cell system down to cost parity with current internal combustion engines at $50/kW.

With all of these advances GM has decided it's time to move this technology from the research side of the business over to the production side. To accomplish this GM is moving a large chunk of the people with the fuel cell expertise from their research and development group over to production engineering. Over 400 of the engineers and scientists from the company's Honeoye Falls, N.Y. facility will now report to the powertrain division to begin the production engineering while another 100 will be applying fuel cells to future production vehicles as part of the global product development teams. The remaining 150+ engineers and scientists at Honeoye Falls will stay in the research department to keep stack and hyrdrogen storage technology moving forward. The GM press release is after the jump.

[Source: General Motors]

Toyota is expanding their fuel cell vehicle development tests out of their own facilities into the real world. They have built some fuel cell-powered vehicles based on the previous generation Highlander and they are loaning one out to a Nagoya transport company. The FCHV uses a Toyota-built fuel cell stack and stores enough hydrogen compressed at 5,000 psi to go about 200 miles.

Toyota has tried to optimize the range by tweaking the aerodynamics to get a 0.326 coefficient of drag and reducing weight with changes like an aluminum hood and roof. The FCHV has been fully crash tested with emphasis on the the high voltage electrical system and hydrogen storage system. Toyota is using this program to collect real world performance data on the FCHV which will be fed into future fuel cell vehicle designs. One of the main areas of development besides improvements to the stack are the hydrogen storage system. Toyota is evaluating liquid hydrogen, solid state storage and 10,000 psi gaseous storage.

[Source: WorldCarFans]

"Battery technology has been moving forward and batteries are still zero-emission technology, but the car companies have made it very clear that fuel cells are the technology of the future," said Jerry Martin, an Air Resource Board spokesman. This statement comes after the EPA approved regulation amendments to the California Zero Emissions Vehicle program. "This waiver simply reflects the prominence of fuel cells, fuel cells have really taken off," added John Millet, a spokesman for the EPA.

Amendments are common for the rules of the California program. Since created in 1990, as new technology is developed, the laws are changed to reflect what the manufacturers are pushing forward with.

Automakers differ on their viewpoint of fuel cell powered vehicles. General Motors expects to have 100 fuel cell powered vehicles on the road by next year for testing purposes, Ford, on the other hand, does not forecast popularity of the technology until 2015. Jennifer Moore, a spokeswoman for Ford Motor Co., said that "there are a lot of challenges that remain ahead for fuel-cell vehicles, everything from infrastructure to cost to range. In terms of when they're going to be commercially viable, it's pretty difficult to say at this point." Dave Barthmuss of General Motors says "a lot of milestones are being met and a lot of progress is really being made" on the fuel cell front.

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have adopted the California rules for zero emissions vehicles. The future seems to hold out hope for hydrogen, according to some auto manufacturers. With Toyota and Ford leading the way with hybrids, GM championing fuel cells and smaller companies pushing for plug in electrics and plug in hybrids, the landscape of green vehicles seems poised for growth. Legislation is doing its best to keep up.

[Source: biz.yahoo.com]

During last week's meeting of the Europe Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform (HFP) in Brussels, Belgium, an agreement was reached between a half dozen Canadian and European cities and provinces to jointly purchase hydrogen powered buses. The hope is that by getting together to place a larger order, they can get lower costs for the buses and related infrastructure. The western Canadian province of British Columbia, as well the cities of London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Berlin and Hamburg are participating. No time-frame has been announced yet, but zero-emission buses would certainly be welcome in crowded cities.

[Europa.eu via GreenCarCongress.com]

Hydrogen containment and distributor FST Energy, Inc. has developed what may be a big leap in fuel cell technology. The company's FST Fuel Cassette system can apparently generate up to 300 percent more hydrogen in fuel cells that are one-third the size of conventional ones. States FST CEO Mike Wilson, "Our system enables fuel cell backup systems to run many times longer than with current pressurized hydrogen fuel sources, while being significantly smaller, weighing less and maintaining similar operating costs as pressurized hydrogen. FST Fuel Cassettes easily provide enough hydrogen to power a 5 kW fuel cell for anywhere between 12 to 120 hours, yet require less space than a standard rack of 6 hydrogen cylinders, which provides 12 hours."

The company is currently demonstrating the system in California and plans to start testing full prototypes by year's end. It is unknown if the technology is being reviewed for fuel-call car development.

[Source: The Auto Channel]

Ask any pragmatic member of the automotive community when we might see a hydrogen-powered vehicles (fuel cell or internal-combustion engine), and the answer will probably range from "several years" to "several decades". General Electric looks to be trying to push that towards the lower end of the range with a prototype electrolysis device that promises low-cost hydrogen.

GE has replaced certain expensive metal components in the electrolysis process with Noryl, an inexpensive thermoplastic (although not by the standards of the resin world!). We're guessing that this is Noryl GTX, which was developed for use in electrostatic paint processes and thus is electrically conductive by means of embedded carbon fibers. By doing so, the cost of hydrogen may potentially plummet from $8/kilogram to $3/kilogram, or what is said to be in the same realm as current gasoline prices (presumably, this still doesn't include the costs of storing the hydrogen in a practical "fuel tank").

As the saying goes - what should come quickly usually takes a lot longer than anyone thinks, and what looks to be way out on the horizon often appears much more quickly than anyone expects. The category that hydrogen happens to fall into remains to be seen.

[Source: Popular Mechanics]

To significantly affect fuel consumption in the near-term, we shouldn't put all our eggs in the hydrogen fuel cell basket, according to Professor John Heywood at MIT. It could take more than 50 years for fuel cell vehicles to have a significant effect on fuel consumption, even though it is estimated competitive fuel cell vehicles will be available within 15 years. After the fuel cell vehicles become available, it will take decades to affect fuel consumption, as they work their way into the market. If the fuel cell cars follow the path of hybrid vehicles, it could take roughly 25 years for these vehicles to make up about one third of the new car and light-truck sales. Advances to internal combustion engines continue to happen, are available in the marketplace faster, require less retooling and therefore spread through the fleet faster. Short-term changes in fuel consumption need to be realized with existing technologies, and changes in vehicle usage and consumer buying patterns.

[Source: Technology Review]