"VW Slashing Fuel Cell Weight; Boosting Power, Range" Green Car Advisor

VW Slashing Fuel Cell Weight; Boosting Power, Range

Volkswagen's John Tillman and HyMotion Fuel Cell Vehicle

Hydrogen-powered fuel-cell electric vehicles still seem more science fiction than fact to most of us, but there's been no letup by automakers in their efforts to bring the technology closer to retail reality.

A Volkswagen Touran mini-minivan running around California these days represents the state of the art, and VW is promising even better things by next spring.

The Touran, a European VW body style not available in the U.S., was rechristened as the "HyMotion" for the fuel-cell version, which features numerous components designed and built in-house by VW.

"We're starting to get away from the wholesale purchase of off-the-shelf systems from other vendors," said John Tillman, head of VW's alternative powertrain programs in the U.S.

By increasing the number of purpose-built components on the HyMotion, VW has "moved closer to fitting the fuel-cell system into its existing platforms with no compromises in ride, noise or handling," he said.

The new HyMotion, one of only four in existence and the only one in the U.S., is based at VW's research garage at the California Fuel-Cell Partnership near the state capitol, Sacramento.

Tillman was showing it off in Southern California over the past weekend as part of the fuel-cell partnership's display at the annual Coronado Speed Festival.

The present HyMotion still gets its most important component, the fuel-cell stack, from Canadian fuel-cell manufacturer Ballard Power Systems. But Tillman says a proprietary stack capable of operating at higher temperatures is coming by April, 2008.

High-temp fuel-cell stacks produce power more efficiently, which enables automakers to reduce stack size and weight while providing the power needed to move a full-size car or truck. The higher temperature systems also require less of the expensive catalyst, usually platinum, needed to convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity.

The second-generation HyMotion, with its fuel compressor and most of its power and control electronics designed and built by VW, is 200 pounds lighter than its predecessor, Tillman said.

The upcoming high-temp system "should make it 400 pounds lighter because everything that supports it -- the pump and compressor, the cooling system -- all will be smaller than the ones we use now," he said. "The costs will be significantly lower, too."

And while the present model sports an 85 kilowatt fuel-cell stack and carries its fuel at 5,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, the next model, despite the downsized components, will be rated at 100 kW. It also will nearly double its fuel capacity -- and range -- with tanks capable of holding hydrogen compressed at 10,000 psi, Tillman said.

Still, fuel-cell vehicles today are no bargain. Tillman said it is still accurate to refer to them as hand-built million-dollar, experimental vehicles.

And upgraded as it is, VW's HyMotion still runs out of fuel in less than 200 miles, and suffers from the same problem that all fuel-cell electric vehicles face today: the scarcity of places to find the necessary hydrogen fuel.

That's not stopping most major automakers from continuing development, however.

They see hydrogen as someday replacing petroleum as the most commonly used automotive fuel, and nobody wants to be left behind in the race to have commercially viable hydrogen-fueled cars and trucks ready for market whenever the market is ready for them.