Belgians open arms to ZEVs

Brussels has just seen out the fourth annual Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Drive‘n’Ride, a program aimed at demonstrating the efficiency and real-world viability of automotive hydrogen fuel cell power.

Run in the EU capital each year, the Drive ‘n’ Ride campaign is designed to raise the profile of fuel cell power under the noses of Europe’s key legislators. This year saw politicians and other stakeholders invited to take 30-minute test-drives in different FCEVs, to assess them for cleanliness and eco-friendliness, comfort, performance driving range, and refuelling convenience.

Organised by Daimler, industrial gases and engineering giant Linde, Honda, clean power engineering specialist Intelligent Energy, Opel and Toyota, the two-day event gave more than 100 EU officials, European MPs and other high-level stakeholders hands-on experience with fuel cell power, with the opportunity to sample for themselves the eight fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) on display.

To help convince them the technology is worth public and private investment, Linde and Daimler contributed a compact mobile hydrogen filling station. Complementing the practical elements of the event was a high-level panel debate featuring industry representatives and policymakers discussing how to best roll the technology out to help auto makers reach the EU strategic target of a sub-95g/km fleet average by 2020.

One of the major benefits of FCEVs is that they use hydrogen only to fuel the power source for an electric motor. That means very little is needed, keeping the tank compact and the refuelling time down.

Much of the panel’s time addressed the primary hindrance to FCEVs going to market: the lack of hydrogen distribution and dispensation infrastructure. There are just 200 refuelling stations worldwide, only 70 of which are publicly accessible.

Help is at hand, audiences heard. With FCEV numbers expected to start growing in earnest from 2014 onwards, a number of public-private partnerships (PPP), in Europe and in other parts of the world (of which Australia isn’t one at this point) are looking for ways of redressing the shortfall.

PPPs offer the best way to get around the impasse that sees consumers, auto makers and stakeholders not prepared to step forward into new market spaces until others do.

“Economic and environmental uncertainties are high in Europe today,” the panel’s key speaker, Intelligent Energy CEO, Henri Winand, later told media in a statement. “Clean and energy efficient technologies such as market ready fuel cell and hydrogen pave the way towards the transformation of our fossil-fuel based economies to a more diverse and energy secure future whilst contributing to a sustainable economic recovery. Only a joint effort of Member States, the EU and the private sector today will put these cars on the road as of 2014.”

From the EU’s point of view, such technologies open up massive commercial opportunities, with the market set to rise by current estimates from €200bn to €300 billion between now and 2020.

Picture courtesy of The Green Car Website.

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