Data Acquisition System for World Wide Fuel Cell Vehicle Fleet

DaimlerChrysler has released its first world wide fuel cell passenger vehicle fleet [1,3]. This program has been crafted to test and validate advanced fuel cell systems operating under real world conditions. The data gathered on the proposed program will play an important role in bringing hydrogen fuel cell transportation systems to market. In response to the data acquisition needs of this project the Fleet Data Acquisition system (FDA) has been developed. The FDA system consists of: a) an electronic onboard telematics system which allows for the collection and analysis of vehicle data during vehicle operation and b) an off-board back-end system with the necessary interfaces and resources to perform enhanced data processing of the transmitted data from the telematics system. Specifically, this data acquisition system monitors vehicle performance, vehicle diagnostics, and fuel cell propulsion system performance. This data will be used to evaluate fleet efficiency, real world driving variables, and overall system robustness.