Fuel cells generate electrical power quietly and efficiently, without pollution. Unlike power sources that use fossil fuels, the by-products from an operating fuel cell are heat and water. But how does it do this?
a fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device. A fuel cell converts the chemicals hydrogen and oxygen into water, and in the process it produces electricity.
The other electrochemical device that we are all familiar with is the battery. A battery has all of its chemicals stored inside, and it converts those chemicals into electricity too. This means that a battery eventually “goes dead” and you either throw it away or recharge it.
With a fuel cell, chemicals constantly flow into the cell so it never goes dead — as long as there is a flow of chemicals into the cell, the electricity flows out of the cell. Most fuel cells in use today use hydrogen and oxygen as the chemicals.
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If last week’s Transportation Tuesday article on the world’s smallest solar vehicle wasn’t your cup of tea (after all solar is so last year), then hopefully this week’s entry will be more to your taste. The Hydrocar is a pint-sized vehicle that is powered entirely by a hydrogen fuel cell. It would make an excellent office racer or a fun educational vehicle for children – check out it’s kid-friendly angle over at inhabitots!
Ozone, fuel cell-powered, cylinder-shaped vehicle
Ozone is definitely beyond our imagination. The cylinder-shaped vehicle has taken a big leap in the design of conventional automobile. When you first look at Ozone, you’ll have guessed that it’s just a concept. In fact, it is!
It’s just a concept car presented by Istanbul designer Özkan Koral for Peugeot. Since Ozone is the future car, it’s also been designed in mind not to consume oil. Instead it’ll be powered by hydrogen fuel cell. The Ozone has got tow big wheels which each is independently powered by electric motors.
There isn’t any conventional steering found in the Ozone. To control the Ozone, all depends on a joystick. Its only door is at the front, which rotates underneath to open up and let the passengers and driver get down. I suppose Ozone only rotates its two wheels when it’s running instead of rotating the entire cylinder. The passengers inside will just remain static when the Ozone runs. Or else it’ll be great pains and all sort of dizziness while traveling with the Ozone car. Anyway, it’s simply just a concept which might take years to get it materialized and accepted by the people.
Ozone,Peugeot concept car,hydrogen fuel-cell-powered car
Honda FCX Clarity Fuel Cell Vehicle Lease Program Begins with First Customer Delivery
Zero-emissions vehicle now on the roads of Southern California
TORRANCE, Calif., U.S.A., July 25, 2008– American Honda Motor Co., Inc., announced that Ron Yerxa and Annette Ballester took delivery of their hydrogen fuel cell-powered FCX Clarity on Friday, July 25, 2008 at Honda of Santa Monica, one of three dealerships in Southern California that are part of the first fuel cell vehicle dealership network. Yerxa and Ballester are the world’s first FCX Clarity customers and the first of approximately 200 customers who will lease the vehicle in the United States and Japan over the next three years, with the vast majority of vehicles being leased in Southern California.
“The FCX Clarity lease program is one more step toward meeting the societal goals of climate stability, renewable energy supplies and zero-emissions transportation,” said John Mendel, executive vice president of American Honda. “With this key step, we are advancing toward the goal of broader commercialization,” Mendel added. “Establishing a dedicated sales network and service infrastructure provides customers with the best balance of convenience and the highest level of satisfaction.”
Significant advances over Honda’s previous generation FCX include a 25 percent increase in combined fuel economy to 72 miles/kg-H2* (74 mpg GGE ) and a greater than 30 percent increase in driving range up to 280 miles*. The FCX Clarity is a next-generation, hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle. Propelled by an electric motor that runs on electricity generated in the fuel cell, the vehicle’s only emission is water, and its fuel efficiency is three times that of a modern gasoline-powered automobile.
Honda FCX Fuel Cell Car
We’ve written a lot about the Honda FCX hydrogen-powered car (see links at the end of this post). So far we only could show you computer renderings of the car, but now Honda has shown a working version of the next-generation FCX (to see the 2005 version, see this) doing about 100 mph (160 kph) on a test track. “The company says it plans limited marketing in Japan and the US for the vehicle starting in 2008.” That’s faster than the “3-4 years” announced in early 2006, so presumably things are going better than planned on the technical side of things.
According to Reuters:
Honda also showed off a prototype of its next-generation fuel cell vehicle which runs on a newly developed compact and more powerful fuel cell stack.
The new stack is designed to allow the hydrogen and water formed during electricity generation to flow vertically instead of horizontally, making the component 20 percent smaller and 30 percent lighter than the previous version.
Honda’s new FCX fuel-cell car now has a driving range of 570 km (354 miles) — a 30 percent improvement from the 2005 model — a maximum speed of 160 km (100 miles) per hour and can be driven in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius (86 F).
Honda plans to begin marketing the car in limited numbers in 2008 in Japan and the United States.
Honda said it also developed a flexible fuel vehicle (FFV) system that can operate on any ethanol-to-gasoline ratio between 20 percent and 100 percent. That car will be sold in Brazil, the biggest market for ethanol-based vehicles, later this year.
“Way out in the future, the ultimate green car will be fuel cell vehicles,” Fukui said. “But in the meantime, you need a wide range of green technology to meet varying local needs and fuel supply.”
For more technical specifications, see this.
We wish that Honda was spending more energy on electric cars and plug-in hybrids (if they are, they’re keeping quiet about it), but since there probably won’t be a single silver bullet technology to solve our transportation problems and it’s impossible to predict what kind of breakthroughs will happen in the next 5-10 years, it’s still good to see companies making steady progress with fuel cell hydrogen cars. A lot of that expertise can be used in electric cars anyway.
While every other car company is racing to match the Prius’ ICE/battery hybrid design, Toyota has the next best thing in it’s sights: a fuel cell/battery hybrid with drive-by-wire on all four wheels. Yes…we know its only a concept car. But it seems like only a few years ago that people said that very same thing about Prius. And, a TreeHugger can dream can’t he? For some cool trade show jargon have look below the fold.
The Fine-N is a fuel cell hybrid concept vehicle designed to shape the future of motoring. Advances in fuel cell hybrid system technology promise to bring the future motorists more than just environmental benefits, a new freedom of vehicle form liberated from the usual power train layout ..
The Fine-N’s overall package consist of a low-flat floor with the length of a Corolla, but with a cabin even more spacious than the luxurious sedan Lexus LS430. The vehicle employs four in-wheel motors in an innovative “cabin on wheels” configuration. Key to the fresh proportions of this ground-hugging, long-wheelbase-to-length design is Toyota’s fuel cell hybrid technology, which allows freedom from conventional power train layout constraints so that individually electric-powered wheels can be positioned nearly at the vehicle’s four corners. With a spacious interior cabin, a cockpit fit for your driving environment, interactive controls and gauges, and a large multi-information display, and a video camera, the Fine-N is truly designed with focus on driving requirements.
As a pioneer in making practical fuel cell hybrid vehicles (FCHV), Toyota now shows the way to an even more advanced fuel cell hybrid system… Electric power from the Toyota FC Stack and a lithium ion battery drives a motor to power the vehicle, delivering acceleration on a par with a gasoline engine vehicle.
Honda PUYO concept car from Tokyo Auto Show
Honda is an doubtless leader in concept cars creation. At the Tokyo Motor Show 2007, Honda presented the Honda PUYO concept car. This car looks not like a car at all, a kind of a small bus! But, this car is full of advantages: it is aimed to convey nice and friendly impression and to be fun, safe and bright, what is more environmentally-friendly car based on fuel cell technology.
The motto of Honda cars looked like this: “For the endless joy of mobility on our earth”. So, Honda designers were aimed to make environmentally and driver friendly car and at the same time funny car (this car is a pleasant one for both diver and people around).
Exterior design So, while designing PUYO, manufacturers followed these aims: to make car cornerless, car with the maximum spaciousness, make a car of great real-world safety. Also, the body of the car is a luminescent one.
Interior design This car is made and aimed for you to feel yourself comfortable. It gives a “silky feel” and feeling of clearness. Driving becomes a real pleasure. A joystick is put instead of a steering wheel.
Honda PUYO – general impression
PUYO is something that conveys warmth and friendliness, also, it take care about people round and makes them laugh. The body of the Honda PUYO is made from special material (like gel), thus, the safety is high and lights shining through the gel body are so cute. The design is minimalist but still ultra-efficient.
Earlier this week, a team of scientists at Loughborough University demonstrated the ENV, the world’s first ever hydrogen-powered motorbike (video).
Instead of a standard fuel tank, the ENV (short for Emissions Neutral Vehicle) contains an onboard fuel cell that can be filled with hydrogen in just three minutes. The cell then converts the hydrogen to electricity, enabling speeds of over 50 mph, and a range of 100 miles, with no emissions except warm air and water.
Mercedes-Benz unveil new F600 fuel cell concept
With the growing demand for cleaner technology, car manufacturers are increasingly looking at concepts like fuel cell to make their future cars more eco-friendly. And Mercedes have become the latest automobile giants to step into the game. Presenting a fuel cell version of their diminutive B-class in Europe, the company has unveiled their latest venture, the “Mercedes F600 HyGenius” fuel cell concept.
With a smaller, more powerful and more efficient fuel cell stack hidden in the F600’s “sandwich floor”, the car instantly ranks high on the green meter. Running on a hydrogen tank, a drive motor, and a lithium ion battery, the system gives the equivalent of 115 hp, performing on demand just like any other production, a quality which might just make this eco-initiative a reality in the near future.
Ford is playing to our space-age side with their futuristic crossover concept, the Airstream.
Ford designers looked to the iconic design of the Airstream trailers and the optimistic future of2001: A Space Odyssey to create this plug-in hydrogen fuel cell concept vehicle unveiled at the2007 North American International Auto show on Sunday.
The Ford Airstream concept is powered by a plug-in hydrogen hybrid fuel-cell system called HySeries Drive. Interestingly, the hydrogen fuel cell is not the main power source. The Airstream runs on an electric motor powered by lithium-ion batteries which are charged by plugging them in a standard wall socket, and the fuel cell simply acts as an on-board “generator” to recharge the batteries when needed while in transit.
In pure electric mode the Airstream Concept can travel 25 miles before the fuel cell begins to operate to recharge the 336-volt lithium-ion battery pack. After that the hydrogen-power cell kicks in and can take the vehicle up to an additional 280 miles.
The fuel cell on the HySeries Drive system has a few advantages over others: It weighs about half what any current fuel cell does, so it will be more efficient on the vehicle it powers, and it costs significantly less to make. Also, current fuel cells don’t do well when the mercury dips below freezing, but the HySeries fuel cell can operate in the dead of winter.
While the Airstream will never be made, the HySeries Drive technology is currently on the road in a Ford Edge prototype, which was created with partial funding from the U. S. Department of Energy. Is it reasonable to expect to see it available to consumers in the future? Who knows. Ford seems more in love with the actual design of the concept than the technology. In fact, I suspect the hydrogen technology may merely be a way to make their futuristic concept even more kitchy (space ships are supposed to run on hydrogen, right?)
When I see HySeries Drive at the dealership, maybe then I’ll be excited. As I always feel about concept vehicles: “If you think the style and technology are so great, go ahead and make something you can sell me.”
Pininfarina, the famed Italian automotive designer, revealed its latest concept car at the Geneva Motor Show today. The revolutionary new car is called the Sintesi, and it features Nuvera’s newQuadrivium drive, which combines the high efficiency of fuel cells with the ability to operate on both conventional and biofuels.
When Pininfarina approached us with the ambitious challenge of making a high performance power train using ecologically benign technology, Nuvera engineers changed direction away from conventional technologies and embraced a radical new fuel cell concept. The result was four distributed wheel power modules, which allowed the car itself to be designed around the passengers, rather than the power train. The Sintesi brings together the cutting edge design approach of Pininfarina with our cutting edge technology, to provide a concept car as innovative in its look as it is in operation.
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