FuelCellsWorks

By Mark Vann
Chevrolet Fuel Cell Vehicle Deployment Manager

It’s hard to believe only two short years ago we kicked off Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell electric vehicle deployments for Project Driveway at the Society of Environmental Journalists event in Palo Alto, Calif. Since then, our vehicles have accumulated almost 1 million miles in everyday driving conditions, predominantly on the streets of Southern California, New York and the greater Washington, DC-area.

No other automaker comes close to the number of miles we’ve driven using hydrogen in real world conditions, with real people driving these Equinox fuel cell EVs.

These people are teachers, homemakers, accountants, video game designers and people from many other walks of life just like you, and they were selected based on their passion for the environment and new media prowess. We’ve had around 70 families experience the Equinox fuel cell EV in their everyday driving routines and thousands more at the many ride-and-drive events we’ve participated in across the country.

During the past two years, I have personally ridden with several hundred people in the Equinox fuel cell EVs. The look of sheer amazement on peoples’ faces when they press the accelerator to the floor is priceless and their first comment is almost always, “Wow!”

People love the smooth powerful acceleration and doing it without consuming a drop of petroleum or emitting anything from the tailpipe except pure water vapor. The toughest day for our drivers is when they have to turn in the Equinox at the end of their loan.

We’ve learned a great deal from having the vehicles in varied usage and climates, from the heat of the San Fernando Valley in LA to the bitter cold winter of West Point, NY. We’ve used these experiences to extend fuel cell stack life and improve the regenerative braking system, which benefited our 2-mode hybrid vehicles since it’s the same brake system used on the Chevy Tahoe and GMC Yukon 2-mode hybrids. Plus, we’ve applied what we’ve learned about fuel cell thermal design to the Volt battery design.

We could have tested these vehicles at our proving ground facilities, but the opportunity to have real people drive these vehicles gave us a much higher degree of relevant feedback on the vehicle’s performance – and even more important, it gave us a great opportunity to listen to our customers.

I think I have the best job at Chevy; people love this electrically driven vehicle. It’s quiet, smooth, has great acceleration and most importantly, it does all of this without consuming a drop of petroleum or producing any tailpipe emissions. Fuel cell vehicles are part of an energy diverse future and I’m proud we’re in a leadership position with this budding technology.

Join me and one of our DC-area drivers, Daniel Stewart, right here on Wednesday at 2 p.m. EDT for a live webchat to discuss the future of hydrogen and how fuel cell vehicles fit into the nation’s energy future. Daniel will also be able to give you a first-hand account of what it’s like to drive an electric vehicle powered by hydrogen as an everyday experience.

Our Project Driveway people in the DC-area will also be hosting a tweetup Wednesday evening in Arlington, VA beginning at 6 p.m. EDT. Join us if you’re available.

And make sure to use the hashtag #chevyfuelcell this week if you’re on Twitter and tweeting about fuel cells and hydrogen, because we will randomly select a few people for Equinox fuel cell EV rides from each of the Project Driveway markets (LA, NY, DC).

Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer Delivers Keynote Address in Brunnthal near Munich

Munich – SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG, market leader for mobile and off-grid power solutions based on fuel cells, and Hubert Haupt Immobilien Holding, a builder and real estate owner, held a joint roofing ceremony on September 7, 2009, for SFC’s new headquarters south of Munich. The 7,000 m2 building currently being built on the Eugen-Sänger-Ring in Brunnthal will provide the high-tech company with production, laboratory, office, and warehouse space to be occupied in mid-2010. Some 300 guests participated in the traditional ceremony. The keynote address was delivered by the guest of honor, Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer. Seehofer noted that “innovative, dynamic, mid-sized companies like SFC ensure that the Bavarian economy will remain strong and that employment will remain robust throughout the state. The new corporate headquarters in Brunnthal are a clear indication of the strength of Bavaria as a place to do business, particularly in the current difficult economic environment. I am convinced that companies like SFC that courageously invest in the future will have a significant competitive edge when the economy turns around.”

With its new headquarters, SFC Smart Fuel Cell has an ideal basis for continuing its international success story in the field of clean off-grid power generation. Unlike other fuel cell companies, the technology pioneer from Germany has been selling fully commercialized fuel cells for the leisure, industrial and defense markets for several years – with a total of more than 14,000 fuel cells sold worldwide. “Outstanding work has been done on our new headquarters, which combines efficiency and sustainability and thus squares nicely with our corporate philosophy,” said Dr. Peter Podesser, CEO of SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG. “The economic conditions here in Bavaria are excellent and we have superbly trained, highly motivated employees. This will allow us to continue expanding our leading market position at the international level, and to press ahead from our Brunnthal location with the development of innovative, environmentally friendly power generation solutions.”

The real estate project has an investment volume of EUR 12.5 million and brings together a number of innovative, sustainable elements. In the future, pioneering products will not only be developed and produced, but will also be used in the world’s most modern fuel cell factory: for example, the building will be supplied with electricity from the company’s own fuel cells. “It is just a question of time until today’s architectural dinosaurs are replaced by energy-efficient office buildings,” commented Munich-based builder and owner Hubert Haupt.

Research & Development, Production, Sales, Customer Service and Administration will all be located under one roof on the building’s three floors. Production will be located on the ground floor, which is covered by a two-storey cube-shaped building with a walk-in atrium. The new building will include numerous efficiency technologies, such as solar panel power generation, concrete core cooling and ground water cooling, and a public charging station for electric vehicles. The architecture was designed by the renowned Munich firm of Brückner Architekten.

About SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG

SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG (www.sfc.com) is market leader in fuel cell technologies for mobile and off-grid power applications serving the leisure, industrial and defense markets. As one of Germany’s technology pioneers, SFC has won numerous innovation awards. SFC has alliances with leading companies in a wide range of industries. Unlike most other fuel cell manufacturers, who are in the research and development phase or run subsidized demonstration projects, SFC has shipped more than 14,000 fully commercial products to industrial and private end users for more than five years, and has created a convenient fuel cartridge supply infrastructure. SFC is DIN ISO 9001:2000 certified. SFC is based in Brunnthal, Germany, and has a sales and technical service office in the U.S.

Mention of nanotubes usually means carbon nanotubes. But not all tiny tubes are made of carbon. For example, layers made of nanoscopic titanium dioxide have proven to be useful materials for biotechnology, catalytic converters, and solar cell technology. Although the semiconducting properties of these nanotubes are critical for many of these applications, their limited conductivity represents a hindrance for other areas of application. A team at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and the University of Turku in Finland has now found an easy way to breathe some metal-like conductivity into the nanotubes without changing their structure. Through carbonization, the titanium dioxide can be converted into a carbon-containing titanium oxycarbide compound. As the researchers led by Patrik Schmuki report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, this novel material could drastically increase the efficiency of methanol fuel cells.

In order to carbonize titanium dioxide nanotubes, the researchers treated them with acetylene at 850 °C. This forms a carbon-rich compound with semimetallic properties, which is also significantly harder than before carbonization. “This is not about simply doping titanium dioxide with carbon atoms,” clarifies Schmuki. “Although the ordered tube structures remain almost completely unchanged, a new chemical compound is formed. This titanium oxycarbide can be interpreted as a solid mixture of titanium carbide and various titanium oxides.” Its high electrical conductivity and favorable electrochemical characteristics make this new material an interesting new electrode material.

Its use in methanol fuel cells seems particularly attractive. These days, methanol oxidation is usually carried out at catalytic electrodes with a carbon support and a platinum or ruthenium catalyst. “Titanium dioxide nanotubes have been under consideration as an alternative to the carbon support for a number of years,” says Schmuki. “But our new conducting oxycarbide beats these by a mile: Supports made of the oxycarbide increase the activity of the catalyst for the methanol oxidation by 700 %.”

OKYO, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Honda Motor Co (Paris: JP3854600008 ) will maintain the target for lease sales of its newest fuel-cell car after over a year since its launch despite the challenge of boosting productivity, the model’s chief engineer said.

Honda’s FCX Clarity, a sporty-looking fuel-cell sedan, is still a long way from mass production, the key to pushing prices lower, with a total of only 10 cars on the road in the United States and in Japan.

Honda, Japan’s second-biggest auto maker, has said it is targeting lease sales of about 200 cars in the first three years in the two countries combined.

It aims to have the cars ready for sale in showrooms by 2015.

Fuel-cell vehicles are widely considered the ultimate longer-term alternative to today’s conventional cars as they run on a clean and inexhaustible source of fuel, hydrogen, emit only water vapor and do not compromise driving performance.

Among automakers, Honda and its bigger rival Toyota Motor Corp were the world’s first to put vehicles powered by fuel cells — devices that produce electricity from hydrogen using a chemical reaction — on the road in December 2002.

Still, the most difficult part is how to raise productivity, in particular for building the core part, fuel cells, as Honda is on the last and toughest part of the road toward commercialisation, Sachito Fujimoto, FCX Clarity’s chief project manager, said on Tuesday.

‘Everyday there’s progress,’ Fujimoto said at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit.

‘We would like to maintain the target (for 200 cars). It’s my own dream to make fuel cell vehicles for the ordinary motorist. I would like to make the age of the fuel cell cars begin in earnest as early as possible,’ he said in an interview

In an interview with the Nikkei, Shinji Nishio, president of Nippon Oil Corp., said that gas stations will transform into providers of electricity and hydrogen, in addition to gasoline.

Given automakers’ production plans, electric vehicles will in the near future account for less than 1% of all passenger cars, with little immediate impact on gasoline sales. But in the medium term, electric vehicles will have an inevitable impact. I often tell gas station managers that we must adapt to the changing times. Electric cars are currently beset by high prices and short distances per charge, but technological innovation will lead to eventual improvements. Such vehicles may expand at an enormous rate from around 2015.

If the DPJ’s campaign pledge of reducing Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from the 1990 level by 2020 is implemented, it could possibly result in electric and hybrid vehicles accounting for all new car sales.

Starting in October, Nippon Oil is installing rapid chargers at 22 gas stations in Tokyo, Kanagawa and other prefectures. The additional time required to recharge an electric vehicle compared to fueling a car with gasoline (15-30 minutes compared to about 5) may give stations opportunities to provide additional services, Nishio said.

Nishio said he expected the number of gasoline stations may decline by more than 20%, proportional to the fall in demand for gasoline (which began in fiscal 2005).

When fuel cell cars arrive on the market, Nishio said, gas stations will also need to offer hydrogen.