Nuvera Fuel Cells

By Bill Mitchell, VP of Marketing
Nuvera Fuel Cells

This past Tuesday, I had the opportunity to take part in a Massachusetts Hydrogen Association Clean Energy Forum entitled “Creating a Clean Transportation Future”. Along with me on the panel were Stephen Costa of the U.S. Department of Transportation, and Sheila Lynch of the Northeast Advanced Vehicle Consortium.

About 50 people were in attendance for the discussions. Maybe it was a result of our high gas prices, or our economic troubles (or both), but based on the feedback from the audience, there was lot of interest in how we could most effectively and expeditiously transition ourselves off of imported oil and towards a form of transportation that is more sustainable, that also keeps money inside the U.S. (rather than flowing to other areas of the world).

My presentation dealt mostly with the identification of early markets that are not only interesting as markets unto themselves, but that can also act as a catalyst to accelerate the introduction of clean transportation. Because Nuvera is a fuel cell company, as one can imagine, I kept my comments in the area of fuel cell vehicles. The basis hypothesis of my talk was as follows: I believe that not only is the fuel cell forklift market interesting from a business standpoint, but this is also an early market that can accelerate the adoption of fuel cell cars.

To make the case for my hypothesis, consider the following. As shown in the graph below, a typical forklift drive cycle is very similar to an urban drive cycle that a fuel cell car would encounter. Because of this similarity, the fuel cell technology and system design between the forklift and the car will, by necessity, be similar (the car having more power, of course).

In a given year, a fuel cell forklift will operate for approximately 5,800 hours. If these hours are integrated into an automotive drive cycle, a year of forklift operation effectively simulates approximately 125,000 miles of driving. In this sense, you can consider the forklift operation as an accelerated durability test for a fuel cell car. During this year of operation, the forklift will need to be refilled about 700 times, and it will consume about 1000 kg of hydrogen.

Get a few thousand fuel cell forklifts in operation and the numbers start to add up. Very quickly you will have a lot of field data that can be directly translated to the automotive fuel cell market. Before the first fuel cell car ever “hits the streets” we could have millions of equivalent miles of data and operation in the forklift market. Further, the hydrogen dispensing experience would directly translate so that by the time fuel cell cars come about, the hydrogen dispensers will have been in operation for several years, performing hundreds of thousands of successful refueling events.

Early market applications like the fuel cell forklift market will help develop the technology and supply chain required for successful fuel cell cars, and educate customers to the advantages of fuel cells and hydrogen. Without a doubt, this will help accelerate the future of clean transportation.

Overall, the audience agreed with my hypothesis. What do you think?

By Chris O’Brien, Senior Engineer
Nuvera Fuel Cells

Let me start by saying that it’s great fun to work on a project that gets noticed. From the start, we knew that the opportunity to design the fuel cell powertrain for Pininfarina’s Sintesi concept car would be a great showcase for our technology – a chance to get the word out about what fuel cells can do in a car that’s made for them. Then, a few weeks before the unveiling of the car at the Geneva Motor Show, the word hit the blogosphere:

“The fuel cells for the electric-hydrogen hybrid, rumored to be worth 700 horsepower all told, are being distributed all around the body…”
Autoblog Feb 7th 2008

“…it will be an electric-hydrogen hybrid system and not a typical one at that (not all concept cars need to generate 700 hp the way the Sintesi apparently does)…” AutoblogGreen Feb 7th 2008

“The advanced drivetrain was a joint-effort between Pininfarina and UK firm Nuvera Fuel Cells. Its makers claim the Sintesi develops a combined output of 700hp…”
Motor Authority March 3rd 2008

…and many more…

The word was getting out all right – it just happened to be inaccurate! Aside from the fact that we’re a US (not UK) company, the engine that we were busy designing didn’t have 700 horsepower! I still have no idea how that number got into all those stories. While the Sintesi may only have 240 horses under the hood (or actually, next to the wheels…there is no hood), it still drives like a high performance car.

While most people think of power as the defining characteristic of an engine, the power isn’t directly what makes the car accelerate - the torque on the wheels is responsible for that. Most combustion engines are quite good at this…at high speeds. IC engine cars rely on the transmission gearing to convert the engine shaft torque at a few thousand RPM to axle torque at a few hundred RPM. In the Sintesi, we have a completely different situation. The electric motors are right in the wheels - no transmission required - and these motors produce their highest torque at the lowest speeds. For the driver, this means that that from a standstill the fuel cell engine can funnel every bit of its power right into the wheels - providing a push-you-back-in-your-seat acceleration.

The end result? The Sintesi, with “only” 240 hp (110 from the fuel cells and 130 from the batteries), can accelerate from 0 - 60 mph in 6.4 seconds. That’s pretty fast. Top speed on the fuel cell power alone is 119 mph; with battery boost the car can reach 155 mph. Not bad for a car that also gets 50 miles per gallon and seats four!

For more information on the Sintesi, see Pininfarina’s site. To learn more about its engine, Nuvera’s Quadrivium Drive, check out this article.

Pininfarina, the famed Italian automotive designer, revealed its latest concept car at the Geneva Motor Show today. The revolutionary new car is called the Sintesi, and it features Nuvera’s new Quadrivium drive, which combines the high efficiency of fuel cells with the ability to operate on both conventional and biofuels.

When Pininfarina approached us with the ambitious challenge of making a high performance power train using ecologically benign technology, Nuvera engineers changed direction away from conventional technologies and embraced a radical new fuel cell concept. The result was four distributed wheel power modules, which allowed the car itself to be designed around the passengers, rather than the power train. The Sintesi brings together the cutting edge design approach of Pininfarina with our cutting edge technology, to provide a concept car as innovative in its look as it is in operation. What do you think of the new Sintesi?