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Rethinking the route to lower-cost fuel cells

  • Magazine Feature Article
  • 16AUTP03_05
Published March 01, 2016 by SAE International in United States
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  • English

New fuel cell-powered cars and SUVs from Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and Mercedes-Benz are capturing plenty of publicity on this year's auto show circuit. But the first commercial models are expensive, in part because their fuel cell stacks use costly platinum catalysts to speed the key power-producing chemical reactions.

“The level of platinum use in fuel cells has come down ten-fold in the last 20 years,” observed Yushan Yan, chemical engineering professor at the University of Delaware in Newark, “but I have a feeling that the platinum level will stay where it is for some time to come.”