FUEL CELLS
5. The Hyundai ix35 Fuel
Cell was the world’s fi rst
commercially available
fuel cell electric vehicle,
launched in 2012
6. ix35 Fuel Cell vehicles
on the Hyundai
production line
120 // July 2019 // www.electrichybridvehicletechnology.com
TESTING THE WATER
The ix35 Fuel Cell, the world’s first commercially
available fuel cell electric vehicle, was first shown in
September 2012 but this follows an extensive period
of FCEV development and production, which began in
1998. Throughout this time, Hyundai has developed
its own systems including not just fuel cell specific
components such as stack and fuel tanks but also
components such as electrical motors and voltage
converters that can be shared with pure battery electric
vehicles. ix35 Fuel Cell was the first series production
fuel cell electric vehicle to go to market and was on
sale in some 18 countries around the world.
investment into plug-in electric vehicle
infrastructure than hydrogen refueling
infrastructure and has clearly favored one
technology over another to date,” he explains.
Spowers also agrees that the weakness for
FCEVs (fuel-cell electric vehicles) is the
infrastructure, but describes a solution that
starts small but has the ability to grow big.
“If you build intercity capable cars as an
equivalent of the average mainstream car
today, we will need about 300 fi lling stations to
create a viable commercial market. Whereas if
you target the local vehicle the critical scale of
infrastructure to create a market comes down
from 300 to just one. It is a small market, but it
is commercial and highly concentrated. Put a
single fi lling station in a small city like Oxford
and anyone who goes into the city once a week
is a potential customer.
“You can grow the skeleton of a nationwide
network incrementally in a large town or small
city as a commercially viable investment as it
does not depend on 300 other fi lling stations
but is a standalone business case. You can then
grow a network by increments without ever
taking a nationwide gamble,” he concludes.
ITM Power,
a UK-based
hydrogen energy
solutions company, works
with OEMs like Toyota and
Hyundai to plan the location of fi lling
stations, rolling out infrastructure and
vehicles together in a coordinated way. “We
plan the location of our Hydrogen Refueling
Stations HRS very carefully and the deployment
of vehicles to fl eet customers near the stations
insures high station utilization,” reveals company
CEO, Dr Graham Cooley. “We can refuel
a fuel-cell electric vehicle such as the Toyota
Mirai in three minutes and our HRS have high
availability, higher than petrol pumps.”
Cooley, says that the industry is in strong
growth and since 2015 the company has
worked with Shell to include its (HRS) on its
forecourts, but a paucity of public investment
has not helped. “Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
have the advantages of range and refueling
times, but what is required is su cient
investment in the refueling infrastructure.
Although the UK government claims to be
technology agnostic it has put 30-times more
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