Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle for Mexico City

The search for alternative fuel for transport vehicles and also replacement of internal combustion engines in order to reduce the harmful emissions have been forcing the vehicle manufacturers to innovate new technology solutions for meeting the stringent legislative targets. Mexico’s commitment for de-carbonisation of transport sector and meeting the environmental goals is shaping it especially, and with this, it favours the move towards electrification of the vehicles. The aim of the present work is to numerically evaluate the possibility of replacing the IC engine in the existing hybrid vehicles with the Hydrogen fuel cell system. This work modelled a Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle based on Toyota MIRAI and validated the fuel economy performance of the vehicle using experimental data. This validated model was used to estimate the fuel economy for real-world drive cycles generated in 2019 from Mexico City. It considered three different drive cycles representing real-world driving in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico. This study estimated the amount of reduction in CO2 and other pollutants for the year 2020, and 2030 and 2040 if the IC engine in the electric hybrid vehicles is replaced with the Hydrogen fuel cell. The study also estimated the amount of Hydrogen fuel required for replacing the IC engines with the Hydrogen fuel cell for moving towards electrification of light duty vehicles.