Week 1 Challenge

ANSWER 1:
Fuel cell vehicles were in Asia, North America and Europe by Honda, Hyundai, Benz, Toyota etc
There were many demonstration projects by Automobile makers like Lotus, Ford, Nissan, Audi, BMW, Mazda, Chevrolet, Maxus etc and many are in still developing prototypes. The Fuel cell vehicles has opened as next best alternative due to its zero emission and quick fuel topup which was a problem in Electric vehicles.
Here, I project few car makers who introduced FCV in production for public in the continents and their latest models available.
NORTH AMERICA
HONDA FCX HONDA CLARITY FCV
Fuel Cell
86 kW 103 kW
MOTOR 100 kW@282Nm 130 kW @300 Nm
RANGE 305 KM 589 KM
ACCELERATION 0-100 km/h in 11 seconds 0-100 km/h in 7 seconds
STORAGE 4 kg@ 350 bar 5.46 KG @ 700 bar

ASIA
First fuel cell car in Asia was by Hyundai released in 2005, the latest model is Hyundai Nexo

HYUNDIA TUCSON FCEV HYUNDAI Nexo
Fuel Cell
100 kW 95 kW
MOTOR 100 kW@300Nm 120 Kw @395 Nm
RANGE 300 KM 611 KM
ACCELERATION 0-100 km/h in 13 seconds 0-100 km/h in 7 seconds
STORAGE 6.3 kg@ 350 bar 6.3 KG @ 700 bar

EUROPE
First fuel cell car in Europe was developed by Benz, which is a modified class A Benz car and
BENZ A CLASS FCEV AUDI H TRON
Fuel Cell 65 kW 110 kW
RANGE 150 KM 600 KM
ACCELERATION 0-100 km/h in 16 seconds 0-100 km/h in 7 seconds
STORAGE 6.3 kg@ 350 bar 6 KG @ 700 bar

ANSWER 2:
Fuel cells which is seen as the next big thing in energy and automobile market due to its zero emission and quick fuel top up.
PEM cells must be competitive with conventional internal combustion engines to replace them in both cost and performance. It is observed that 13% of the cost of vehicle is taken up by fuel cell module in a FCV. The PEM from its prototype to recent available model are high in cost. The cost of a fuel cell per kW is around 1700 USD, which is likely to reduced to 600 USD/kW BY 2030.
The high cost of PEM cells account to the following reasons and when addressed these, it may cause drastic reduction, approximately 60% in cost by 2030.

Figure 1: Expected trend in cost of fuel cells.
1. Platinum as electrode:
The main part of PEM cells is electrodes used to conversion of Chemical energy into electrical energy. The electrodes used is Platinum, even though the quantity used in PEM cell is very low around The production cost of Platinum is very high due it being a noble metal 0.2-0.4g /kw-
The fabrication of electrode in PEM cell is also a costly process. Ultimately this causes the rate of production of PEM cell to be high.

These can be overcome by
a. Recycling of Fuel cells, from where costly platinum can be extracted and reused.

b. Using cheaper fabrication process in electrode integration and R&D in this may help to reduce the cost. These are expected to be happened in near future.

c. Replace the Noble metals with Novel metals for catalyst. Huge research is going on this field, many cost effective materials are expected. This can decrease the cost of PEM cells. This may happen step by step from dosed Noble metals to, nanocrystals, Nano frames.

2. Fuel Cell cycle life
The present cycle of fuel cells is taken as 25000 hours. This is an optimistic assumption of life. To bring cost down we need to increase the fuel cell life. It is estimated that the fuel cell life may increase to 30000 hours by 2030. This may bring the levelised rate of fuel cell in life cycle to decrease. To increase life, the life of components to be increased. They can be increased only bettering the manufacturing techniques and material used in PEM cells.

3. Volume of production
One of reason for high cost is the production rate of FCV. Large volume of production can significantly reduce the cost of fabrication of each product. On a large scale we can considerably optimize every production process. Large scale production can happen only when adoption of the fuel cells happens in large scale.
To happens this change in policy to be brought by the agencies and governments like subsidy or tax savings or drive the conscious of customer for green earth etc. and government can introduce policies to stop availability of pollution causing vehicles. Many countries have started the above process in big way, this may cause the demand for FCV to shoot up and industry is expecting this will cause a significant demand in FCV and forcing manufactures to turn for mass production