Advances in fuel-cell development

At AEI's second Fuel Cell Transportation Technology Summit, moderated by DaimlerChrysler's Reginald Modlin, OEM, supplier, fuel company, and government experts gave their views on the advanced propulsion technology.

An ever-widening disparity between oil production and consumption in the U.S. illustrates the country's dependency on foreign-produced oil. On a daily basis, passenger and commercial vehicles in America consume millions more barrels of oil than what is produced on U.S. soil. From a global perspective, the U.S. uses 26% of the world's oil production while generating only 9% of the total. “The message is we need to be going full-out on all the technologies that can make a difference to reduce this growing oil gap,” Thomas Gross, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Office of Transportation Technologies, said during April's Fuel Cell Transportation Technology Summit II presented by AEI in Dearborn, MI. “This dependency has very important consequences to us.”

In January, U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced the Freedom CAR (Cooperative Automotive Research) program, anchored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Council for Automotive Research, a precompetitive research initiative led by DaimlerChrysler Corp., Ford Motor Co., and General Motors Corp. Freedom CAR endeavors to lessen the dependence on foreign petroleum, reduce pollutant emissions, and enable fuel to be obtained affordably and conveniently. The basic Freedom CAR strategy focuses on developing technologies to enable mass production of affordable hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles (FCV) as well as the hydrogen infrastructure, supporting hybrid technologies, and advanced materials to reduce oil consumption and environmental impacts.