IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2018 - 4

technology leaders

Hydrogen: What's Different Now
By Chris Gearhart

his is an exciting time
for hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FceVs). they
seem to be on the verge of a major
market breakthrough. however,
those of us who have been working
in the hydrogen and Fc industry for a
while are familiar with the boom and
bust cycle of FceV hype-it feels like
we have been here before. the first
Fc automobile was designed as far
back as the 1960s. nasa was using
Fcs to power its spacecraft, and, in
1966, general motors (gm) used this
space-age technology in the prototype gm electrovan. the electrovan
used the body and chassis of gm's
handivan, their production utility
van at the time. the Fc and hydrogen
components for this vehicle filled
nearly the entire available space of
the van. at this point, Fcs were clearly too expensive and impractical for
production vehicles.
a few years later, during the
height of the energy crisis, the hydrogen economy received a large
amount of attention. hydrogen offered a way to decouple transportation energy requirements from
petroleum production and ease U.s.
dependence on imported oil. however, with the return of cheap gasoline in the 1980s, momentum around

the hydrogen economy, which could
have spurred the development of Fc
vehicles, slowed. With the development of viable polymer electrolyte
membrane (Pem) Fc technologies in
the 1990s and a wave of new research,
the industry launched into the next
phase of Fc vehicle excitement.
Daimler produced the necaR-1 vehicle in 1994, and, in the next six years,
toyota, gm, mazda, Ford, honda, nissan, and Volkswagen all developed
Fc demonstration vehicles. it seemed
that FceVs were on the verge of a
market breakthrough.
however, this enthusiasm created
expectations that grew faster than the
pace of technological development.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s,
car companies launched several limited FceV-demonstration programs.
the vehicles in these programs
showed significant promise and provided an invaluable learning opportunity, but they were not quite ready for
production. these results have led
many people to say that FceVs are
the future and always will be. so,
what is different this time? Within
the past decade, there have been
many changes that will have significant impact on the hydrogen
Fc market.

Improved cost and
Performance of Fcs
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MELE.2017.2784630
Date of publication: 28 February 2018

I E E E E l e c t ri f i c a t i on M a gaz ine / march 2018

Perhaps the most significant development is that the fuel cells them-

selves have improved. Fc costs have
dropped dramatically-by 60% since
2006-while performance has
improved. the U.s. Department of
energy calculates the cost of Fcs,
manufactured at high volume, to
b e roughly Us$50/kW today, as
compared to its cost of more than
Us$120/kW a decade ago (Figure 1).
Durability has increased by a factor
of four, and the power density of Fc
stacks continues to increase, making
them easier to package in vehicles
(satyapal 2016).

availability of commercial
Fc Vehicles
a decade ago, car companies were
deploying small demonstration fleets
of FceVs. today, hyundai, toyota, and
honda all have commercial vehicles
available, and although sales are still
small compared to other types of
vehicles, they are growing rapidly. as
of may 2017, total FceV sales passed
2,700 in the United states. in addition, monthly sales numbers are
increasing by an average of roughly
10% every month (Figure 2) (cobb
2017). thus, FceVs are no longer
demonstration vehicles; they are
commercial products.

reduced cost of
renewable hydrogen
the cost of renewable electricity
generation has dropped, enabling
cost-effective green hydrogen. Within
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