Jun 8 2006
An ongoing successful road-test of a small fleet of hydrogen-powered vehicles has Ford engineers optimistic about their reliability and ultimate roadworthiness.
Ford is testing 30 Focus Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs) in seven U.S. cities and in Canada and Germany. They are driven daily by local governmental employees and have racked up more than 180,000 miles.
"Our fuel cell stacks themselves have demonstrated promising performance to-date," said Greg Frenette, chief engineer of the Focus Fuel Cell Vehicle program at Ford. "They've been operating well out in the field with the technology for the most part being pretty robust. And our customers have indicated that they enjoy driving the vehicles."
These fuel cell vehicles run on electricity and use hydrogen fuel instead of a battery to produce electricity. In the fuel cell oxygen combines with hydrogen fuel to produce electricity. A module then converts the electricity for use by the motor/transaxle, which powers the wheels. The only emission is water. The fuel cell stack is supplied by Ballard Power Systems.
"The Focus Fuel Cell meets all your expectations of an automobile," said Jeff Prather, who uses the vehicle during his inspection rounds at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "You think of hydrogen fuel cells as being futuristic, and the car definitely has a futuristic sound to it - that's one of the fun things about it."
The Ford evaluation fleet of Focus Fuel Cell vehicles includes three vehicles operated in Dearborn by Ford; five vehicles now in use in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia; four vehicles operating in Berlin, Germany; five cars delivered to the Sacramento (Calif.) Municipal Utility District; five cars delivered to the State of Florida; five delivered in Michigan; and the three cars at the California Air Resources Board, the California Energy Commission and the California Department of General Services.
The test FCVs are hooked up with sensors that send data via satellite to Ford engineers in Dearborn, who review it daily. Through the testing program, Ford engineers have discovered areas where improvements could be made, Frenette said. "The most significant problem we found is that if the fuel cell sat in cold weather for a period of time, when turned on, the fuel cell power was diminished," he said.
After an intense engineering investigation, a team from Ford and Ballard determined the cause of the problem and fixed it with a software adjustment, which significantly improved the performance of the vehicle overall.
"We've found with these test vehicles that a majority of fixes were remedied with software, as opposed to having to go in and change hardware," said Frenette. "That's a tremendous advantage, because it is easy to rewrite software."
The Focus Fuel Cell Vehicle is one of the most sophisticated vehicles Ford has developed. While its recent success is an important milestone in Ford's long-term alternative-fuel vehicle strategy, the future is not without its challenges, said Frenette.
"The main issue is the cost of fuel cells systems today, which with its very low volumes, are well into six figures," said Frenette. "We've got to make the cost and reliability of fuel cell systems comparable to today's internal combustion engine."
Storage capacity is another hurdle.
"We've got to figure out how to store hydrogen on the vehicle in a very compact space, and that's a challenge the entire industry faces," said Frenette. "This really requires some significant technological breakthroughs."
Another major hurdle is the hydrogen fuel infrastructure - a potential trillion-dollar undertaking on a national scale. Hydrogen stations have been set up to support the test vehicles, but stations must be as widely available as those for gasoline. And the cost of hydrogen has to be comparable to gasoline, he said. Ford is working with BP, its strategic partner and hydrogen provider in the U.S., on these challenges.
"Once those key challenges are overcome, I can envision that you could buy a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle at your local Ford dealership, but we're talking about a decade or more to get there," said Frenette.
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