Zero Emission Vehicles based on Fuel Cell. Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable mobility

Recent analysis from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs shows that by 2030, 60 percent of the world's population will live in large urban centers [1]. As cities become larger, traffic congestion, energy consumption, carbon emis¬sions, and other forms of pollution are increasing, imposing high costs on local and global economies and impacting quality of life and the environment. Sustainable Mobility is one of the main political strategy of European Union (UE) devised to reach a reduction at least 60% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 with respect to 1990 [2]. To achieve this goal new sustainable fuels and powertrain architectures must be developed, the performance of multimodal logistic chains must be optimized and transport infrastructure must be used more efficiently through Information Technology System (ITS). The gradual transition from conventionally fuelled vehicles to Electric Vehicles (EV) in to the urban environment is a major contribution to significant reduction of oil dependence and noise pollution. Compared to conventional vehicles, EV and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) are more fuel efficient because of the optimization of the engine operation and recovery of energy during braking. Fuel cell vehicles (FCV) use hydrogen as fuel to produce electricity, therefore they are emission free [3-5]. Pure battery and FCV present differences in attributes such as range, efficiency, cost, and recharging methods but both technologies can contribute to making road transport more sustainable. Fuel cells used in integrated systems with other innovative technologies, could contribute to create alternative propulsion systems. TAE Institute is involved in a number of demonstration projects regard the development of public and private fuel cell based vehicle addressed to different markets. Vehicles developed for future markets represent a new concept of transport because they are a high-tech and provided with innovative components. In this case powertrain configuration is the "full power fuel cell". For early markets the technical aim is to increase the range of traditional electric vehicles (in terms of km or hours) and powertrain is composed by integrated technologies (innovative batteries, fuel cells, supercap). Fuel cells have a small size because they are used like on board batteries recharge. This paper provides an overview of the state of the art of FCV and EV, with a focus on HEV based on batteries and fuel cell in a range extender approach.