Green Tech

Congress is seeking to maintain funding for fuel cell vehicle research, rebuffing the Department of Energy's proposal to cut $100 million in funding.

The Appropriations committees from the House and Senate earlier this month published budgets that have significant sums devoted to hydrogen research and specifically for fuel cell vehicles.

The House plan calls for $40 million in research through the Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies program and the Senate plan would provide $190 million to various hydrogen technologies, according to Environment & Energy Daily. (Click for PDFs of House appropriations and Senate appropriations.)

In May the Department of Energy proposed slashing fuel cell vehicle research by about 60 percent, which would have been a cut of about $100 million. At the time, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that after years of research, hydrogen-fueled cars were still years away from commercial viability.

"We asked ourselves, 'Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?' The answer, we felt, was 'no,'" Chu said in May.

That proposal was criticized by hydrogen industry trade groups, arguing that fuel cells have a role among other power train technologies.

All the major automakers have fuel cell vehicle programs with small numbers of cars leased to consumers for testing. Although these cars are available, they can only be fueled in the few locations that have hydrogen filling stations.

In addition to the lack of distribution infrastructure, storage of hydrogen remains a technical challenge. Hydrogen also has to be produced from other sources, such as natural gas.

The House Energy and Water appropriations, which includes Energy Department funding for 2010, passed on Friday with $45 million for "hydrogen vehicle technologies" added to the $40 million the appropriations committee had originally called for, according to the National Hydrogen Association.

Robert Rose, executive director of the United States Fuel Cell Council, told The New York Times that he hopes a vote on the Senate appropriations bill comes before the August recess.

The Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell takes part in the Hydrogen Road Tour.

(Credit: GM)

Electric cars have been getting plenty of buzz lately, but the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is still going strong. The California Fuel Cell Partnership, along with Powertech Labs, National Hydrogen Association, and U.S. Fuel Cell Council, will seek to regain the spotlight with a road trip to demonstrate the practicality of these vehicles.

The road tour route runs up the West Coast, from Chula Vista to Vancouver.

(Credit: California Fuel Cell Partnership)

Twelve fuel cell cars from seven automakers will drive from Chula Vista, in Southern California, up to Vancouver, Canada, a trip of 1,700 miles. Vancouver was chosen for the destination because it will play host to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, where a fleet of fuel cell buses will provide transportation.

Fuel cell cars that will be making the trip include the Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell, Mercedes F-Cell, Honda FCX Clarity, Hyundai Tucson FCEV, Kia Borrego FCEV, Nissan X-Trail, Toyota FCHV-adv Highlander, and Volkswagen HyMotion. The cars, which have ranges of 200 to over 500 miles, will be relying on a mobile refueling station for their hydrogen needs.

The tour starts on May 26 in Chula Vista, and ends on June 3 in Vancouver. Stops have been scheduled along the route so the public can get a chance to see these cars. Check the Hydrogen Road Tour '09 Web site to see if there's an event near you.

(Credit: CNET)

VW Passat Ling Yu hydrogen fuel cell vehicle photos

If you watched the Olympics in Beijing, you may have noticed Volkswagen Passats being used as pace cars for some of the running and cycling competitions. More than just product placement, these Passats demonstrated a hydrogen fuel cell power train built by Volkswagen at its China research laboratory. The car is called the Volkswagen Passat Ling Yu hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and we got a chance to drive it here in California.

Volkswagen brought a number of these cars to the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CFCP), a unique organization that works with major automakers such as Honda, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, and Volkswagen on fuel cell research. CFCP also promotes research into hydrogen generation and filling stations.

So, on a hot Sacramento day, we took the wheel of a car that just might be the future of automotive transportation. As the car is built on the Passat platform, it doesn't exactly look like the car of the future. The controls and ergonomics are all very familiar. But a kilowatt gauge takes the place of a tachometer on the instrument cluster.

The gauge on the left shows how many kilowatts the motor is drawing.

(Credit: CNET)

Although driven by an electric motor, which doesn't make much sound in itself, the car produced a steady whining sound. Not unpleasant, but certainly noticeable, it came from the compressor used to push hydrogen into the fuel cell. The power-train packaging is similar to that of a gas-engine car, with the fuel cell stack, compressor, and control software under the hood, and hydrogen tanks at the rear axle. The car also has a lithium ion battery in the middle of the chassis, which provides electricity storage for the regenerative brakes and supplements the flow to the motor.

The Department of Energy's proposed budget boosts research on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources but makes cuts in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles because the technology is many years from being practical.

The DOE published details of its $26.4 billion fiscal 2010 budget request on Thursday, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu held a news briefing to cover the highlights. (Click for a PDF of his presentation.)

"We asked ourselves, 'Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?' The answer, we felt, was 'no,'" Chu said in a briefing, according to Energy & Environment Daily.

Fuel cells have been touted by politicians and people from the industry for many years. The major auto companies have hydrogen fuel cell development programs and lease a limited number of cars to people near the few hydrogen filling stations in the U.S.

But there are many technical challenges to making fuel cell vehicles broadly used, including compact storage, the distribution infrastructure, and the longevity of fuel cells.

The DOE will continue to fund research for stationary fuel cell applications, such as backup power on the power grid or at commercial facilities. Hydrogen can be captured from natural gas or other sources. A fuel cell makes electricity, generating only water vapor as a byproduct--what's considered zero emissions.

The National Hydrogen Association criticized the DOE funding decision, saying that there should be a range of different vehicle technologies.

Another funding area expected to be cut is the $200 million spent on deep-water oil and gas research, which Chu said that industry could fund on its own.

Chu also said that the DOE will seek to create eight "innovation hubs," which would be small research areas designed to attract more scientists into energy, according to a report in The New York Times.

Other proposed areas of investments are: electricity transmission infrastructure, plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles, nuclear energy, and so-called clean coal technologies to make coal power generation less polluting.

We had a random encounter with this hydrogen-powered F-Cell vehicle.

(Credit: CNET)

While out testing the very stylish Aston Martin DB9 Volante in the Santa Cruz Mountains recently, we ran across the car's opposite, a Mercedes-Benz F-Cell research car. We caught up with the F-Cell (easily) and followed it to a vista point, where we cornered its driver and started grilling him about the car. It's not often you see the future of the automobile out in the wild like this.

This F-Cell was from the first generation, built into Mercedes-Benz's A-class platform, a small vehicle that's not sold in the U.S. Its 5,000-psi hydrogen tank feeds a fuel cell that produces electricity, in turn powering an 87-horsepower electric motor.

The driver of the car was a Mercedes-Benz engineer stationed with the car in Palo Alto, California. The company maintains many test fleets. He had pulled into the parking lot not because he thought James Bond was on his tail, but to plug his laptop into the F-Cell and download diagnostic data. Mercedes-Benz has logged well over a million miles with these F-Cell cars, and every mile yields useful data about performance in the real world.

(Credit: ONR)

In what it says is a "first of its kind" initiative, the U.S. Navy plans to launch sometime this spring an unmanned aerial vehicle for a 24-hour endurance flight carrying a 5-pound payload and powered entirely by a hydrogen-powered fuel cell.

Called the Ion Tiger, the UAV can travel farther and carry heavier loads than earlier battery-powered designs, according to the Office of Naval Research. It also boasts "stealthy characteristics" such as reduced noise, low heat signature, and zero emissions (PDF).

"This will really be a demonstration for a fuel cell system in a UAV application," ONR Program Manager Dr. Michele Anderson said. "That's something nobody can do right now."

Fuel cells convert hydrogen and oxygen into water in a pollution-free process to create an electrical current delivering up to double the efficiency of an internal combustion engine, researchers claim.

The Tiger will use a "500-watt polymer fuel cell with a high specific power system." Weight will be reduced using high-pressure lightweight hydrogen storage tanks. The UAV has already "demonstrated sound aerodynamics, high functionality, and low-heat and noise signatures under battery-powered tests," according to ONR.

This test will show how a surveillance drone can operate economically with less possibility of detection and still exceed the duration of previous flights seven-fold.

Collaborators include Protonex Technology and the University of Hawaii.

Lilliputian Systems, a company developing butane-fueled energy storage for consumer electronics, said on Thursday that it has raised $28 million in additional funding.

The company, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also announced that Analog Devices' co-founder Ray Stata has joined its board and that it named Michael Umana chief financial officer.

Since its founding seven years ago, Lilluptian Systems has been quiet about its product development but has revealed a few more details in the past few weeks. Its financial backers, which include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Atlas Ventures, and Rockport Capital, have put at least $88 million into the company.

The technology behind the company is a solid oxide fuel cell and a method for manufacturing chips embedded in its storage units.

The business plan is to make fuel cells and butane cartridges for running consumer electronics, like iPods, mobile phones, and laptops. The company claims that its system will able to pack five to ten times more energy than similarly sized batteries and be much lighter.

At a recent event on energy storage at MIT, the company's vice president of business development Mouli Ramani said the butane will be sold in sealed cartridges that will have identification chips, according to a report at Technology Review. That makes the cartridges approved for airline travel, he said.

The cartridges will go on sale in the middle of next year and will be sold for between $1 and $3. The fuel cell charger will cost about $200 at first, with the price expected to fall to $100 over time, according to the report. Lilliputian plans to supply the "generator chip" for chargers and reference designs for other storage companies to make chargers, the company said.

Fuel cell chargers for consumer electronics have been under development for years but there are still only a few products actually in use.

Medis Technologies released a portable fuel-cell charger last year that can be recycled. MTI Micro has developed methanol fuel cell chargers for some electronics, but it said last week that the company needs additional funding to commercialize the product.

PowerAir late last year released a gadget charger that uses a zinc solution. Meanwhile, consumer electronics giants including Toshiba and Sharp are working on fuel-cell charger products.

Liquid fuel cells have the potential to give gadget users a longer run time than batteries and provide portable back-up power. But they do require the availability of fuel cartridges which should be recycled to be considered an environmentally friendly choice. Portable fuel cells also face the challenge of displacing rechargeable batteries.

A driver fills up a Fuel Cell Vehicle with hydrogen at one of California's few public hydrogen refueling stations. California is expected to get 46 more hydrogen retail stations by 2014.

(Credit: California Fuel Cell Partnership)

Paving the way for the so-called Hydrogen Super Highway, California Fuel Cell Partnership released a roadmap that details plans for 46 retail hydrogen fueling stations in six targeted California communities by 2014. Hydrogen is considered to be the holy grail of clean transportation because Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCV) emit only water when driven, but a lack of infrastructure is one of the major roadblocks to this advancement.

"By 2017, automotive manufacturers plan to place 50,000 zero-emission fuel cell vehicles in customer hands. FCVs will provide the performance, durability, driving range, and comfort that customers want, and meet the nation's need for a domestic fuel that is better for the environment," said Catherine Dunwoody, CaFCP's executive director in a press release.

For the moment, only six of the state's 26 hydrogen refueling stations are open to the public. Most are privately owned and operated for corporate fleet or testing vehicles. The CaFCP gave details for the cost of building 40 stations by 2012, which is projected to be $181.5 million and is expected to be funded largely by the government to incentivize the industry to begin the transition to hydrogen.

(Credit: New Holland Agriculture)

Taking the lessons learned from the development of hydrogen-powered cars and applying them on a larger scale, New Holland Agriculture has developed the impressive NH2, the world's first hydrogen-powered tractor.

A peek under the hood reveals the radical new hydrogen-electric power plant.

(Credit: New Holland Agriculture)

The NH2 was developed as part of New Holland Agriculture's Energy Independent Farm concept, a framework for future agriculture in which farmers produce their own compressed hydrogen from water using electricity produced by wind farms, solar panels, or biomass and biogas processes situated on the farm.

The experimental NH2 tractor replaces the traditional combustion engine with hydrogen fuel cells that convert compressed hydrogen back into electricity to drive the electric motors powering the tractor's drivetrain and auxiliary systems.

More than just an idea, the NH2 tractor is a 106-horsepower, working prototype able to perform all the tasks of a New Holland's T6000 tractor, only with no emissions and in near silence.

The fuel cell generates less heat than an internal-combustion engine, offers a consistent output of power, and does not produce polluting nitrogen oxides, soot particles, or carbon dioxide. The clean operation of the tractor brings added health benefits when working in confined areas, such as animal sheds or greenhouses.