Hybrid electric fuel cell vehicles

Burke, A.F. (2007) Batteries and ultracapacitors for electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, Proceedings of the IEEE, 95 (4), 806-820. 

Gibilisco, Stan. Alternative Energy Demystified. New York McGraw-Hill, 2007. Gibilisco briefly explains the concept of energy and describes the variety of ways in which it is generated. Included is a chapter on electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles. 

Mellor, P.H., N. Schofield, and D. Howe. 2000. Flywheel and ES peak power buffer technologies. Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Electric, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Vehicles, 8/1-8/5. 

See also Automobile Performance Electric Vehicle Fuel Cell Vehicles Gasoline Engine Hybrid Vehicles. 

Transportation accounts for about one-fourth of the primary energy consumption in the United States. And unlike other sectors of the economy that can easily switch to cleaner natural gas or electricity, automobiles, trucks, nonroad vehicles, and buses are powered by internal-combustion engines burning petroleum products that produce carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons. Efforts are under way to accelerate the introduction of electric, fuel-cell, and hybrid (electric and fuel) vehicles to replace sonic of these vehicles in both the retail marketplace and in commercial, government, public transit, and private fleets. These vehicles dramatically reduce harmful pollutants and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 50 percent or more compared to gasoline-powered vehicles. 

The timetables announced by government and industry have generally been proven too conservative. Many auto companies already have running drivable fuel cell prototypes and it appears likely that some moderate commercialization will be achieved in the next decade. Hybrids are already here and proving to be popular because of their efficiency. They are providing valuable data on the type of electric drives that would be used in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. 

The use of fuel-cell vehicles does not always result in GHG emission reductions. For example, in the case of hybrid fuel-cell vehicles fuelled with CGH2 from the EU s current electricity mix and from hard coal lead to higher GHG emissions than hybrid ICE vehicles fuelled with crude oil based gasoline and diesel. 

Still, the efficiency of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles is about twice that of current internal combustion engines on the highway, and about three times as high in urban traffic (and between 1-1.5 times more than hybrid electric vehicles (IEA, 2005)). A clear advantage of fuel cells is that at part loads, fuel-cell drives have a higher... 

Electric, Hybrid Fuel-Cell Vehicle Components... 

For any dramatic increase in U.S. methanol consumption, most of the supply would have to be imported. While biomass-generated methanol might be economical in the long term, there is a considerable amount of so-called stranded natural gas in distant locations around the globe that could be converted to methanol and shipped by tanker at relatively low cost, should increased demand warrant such investment.24 Methanol from natural gas would have little or no net greenhouse gas benefits in a future fuel cell vehicle, as compared with future hybrid electric vehicles (see Chapter 8). 

How successful will be the competition to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, such as hybrid diesel-electric cars ... 

R. Kumar, S. Ahmed, and M. Krumpelt, Rapid-Start Reformer for Methanol and Fuel Cell Vehicles, Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Technology 96, pp. 123-127 (1996). 

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