Fuel Cell How Stuff Works
fuel cell how stuff works
A Day in the Life of a Fuel-Cell Vehicle
It was one of those serendipitous occurrences. There I was at BusCon (a convention for…yep…buses) to interview a gentleman from Mercedes-Benz who was involved in the company's Sprinter van division. Riding shotgun over the process was our regional Mercedes PR rep, Dan Barile, who, during lunch, mentioned that Mercedes had a fuel-cell-powered car stationed in Los Angeles. As I'm sort of Consumer Guide's resident "green guy," he asked if I'd have an interest in driving it.
"Why…yes I would."
"Well then," Dan said, "Next time you're going to be in L.A., let me know a little in advance, and I'll set it up."
As it so happened, I managed to score a press trip to Tinsel Town the following month, and Dan was true to his word. Waiting for me at LAX was a steel-blue B-Class compact hatchback, a car not sold in this country and that I'd never driven -- in any form.
Some years ago, when electric cars powered only by batteries were still considered impractical, fuel-cell cars were thought to be the next big thing. Essentially, a fuel-cell car is an electric car, but instead of using one big battery to power the drive motor, it uses a much smaller battery that is constantly recharged by a fuel-cell stack. A fuel-cell stack converts hydrogen and the oxygen in ambient air into electricity, with the only by-product being a small amount of water vapor. Fuel-cell cars typically carry the hydrogen in pressurized tanks mounted beneath the floor, and they can be refilled at a hydrogen pump similar to a common gas pump. In the case of the B-Class Fuel Cell car, the tanks hold enough hydrogen to drive about 200 miles, and they can be refilled in about 10 minutes. By contrast, a battery-powered Nissan Leaf can only go about 75 miles on a single charge, and it takes about seven hours to fully recharge the battery on a Level 2 charger. Thus the promise of fuel-cell cars is that they are essentially as pollution-free as an electric car, but have a much longer range and much shorter "recharge" time.What the problem has been is that there is little infrastructure in place for hydrogen refueling.
California has more hydrogen refueling stations than any other state, with 23, yet only five are accessible to the public; the rest are for private companies. Only 17 other states have any at all, and most of those just have one or two--none of which are open to the public. So fuel-cell cars have a huge hurdle to clear in terms of refueling capability.
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