Just four days after the Toyota BMW
announcement, Daimler, Renault-Nissan and Ford also confirmed the joint
development of a common fuel cell system in order to speed up the availability
of zero-emissions technology and greatly reduce associated costs. Each company
will invest equally in the project, with the goal to launch the world’s first
affordable, mass-market FCEVs as early as 2017. The partners say the JV will
realize unique collaboration across three continents and will help define
global specifications and component standards, and send a clear message to
suppliers, policymakers and the industry to encourage the further development
of hydrogen infrastructure worldwide.
The
Terra is about the size of a Nissan Juke, and uses the Leaf’s electric motor.
But instead of a battery pack, this concept SUV has a hydrogen fuel cell stack.
Once hydrogen is pumped in, the fuel cell separates a hydrogen atom’s protons
(which travel through a membrane) from its electrons, which travel around a
circuit inside the cell, releasing electrical energy.
Mitsuhiko
Yamashita, executive vice president of, supervising R&D, said, “Fuel cell
electric vehicles are the obvious next step to complement today’s battery
electric vehicles as our industry embraces more sustainable transportation. We
look forward to a future where we can answer many customer needs by adding
FCEVs on top of battery EVs within the zero emissions line-up.”
Thomas Weber, member of the board of
management of Daimler and responsible for group research at Mercedes-Benz,
said, “We are convinced that fuel cell vehicles will play a central role for
zero-emissions mobility in the future. Thanks to the high commitment of all
three partners, we can put fuel cell e-mobility on a broader basis. With this
cooperation, we will make this technology available for many customers around
the globe.”
Raj Nair, group vice president for global
product development at Ford, added, “Working together will significantly help
speed this technology to market at a more affordable cost to our customers. We
will all benefit from this relationship as the resulting solution will be
better than any one company working alone.”
Post 2015
With the automotive industry gearing up to
the market launch of fuel cell vehicles in 2015, speculation about what happens
after that point is already growing, with potential alliances being formed and
analysts predicting market growth.
“By 2020, fuel cell cars will be available
worldwide,” states Hirose. “We’ll have the results of our alliance with BMW by
then; it’s a very costly program so we are sharing it. At the start, though, it
will not be a huge number of cars because the market will be very limited. It’s
not just the production that’s important, it’s also about educating people and
the cost.”
Like
the Juke and most other small crossovers, Nissan envisions the Terra as a
suburban runabout, a vehicle with the all-wheel traction and tall driving
position of a truck, but that is designed to be driven on roads exclusively.
Does that mean, then, that a fuel cell car
is likely to cost a buyer twice as much as a conventional model of similar
size? “Well, we dream of selling a Corolla at the price of a Ferrari! We’ll
have to make it affordable for a premium car, so it will be triple the price of
a small car. We are still discussing what badge it should have – maybe Lexus,
maybe Toyota. We haven’t yet decided which market it should be sold in first.
It could be Japan, the USA, Europe – there are many things we still need to
decide.”
Looking further ahead, a real milestone
will be reached when the millionth fuel cell car takes to the road, but when
might that be? Hirose can do no more than estimate, but reckons on sometime
between 2025 and 2030. “But then,” he warns, “if you’d asked me the same of a
hybrid in 1997, by which time we’d been working on the Prius for 10 years or
more, I might have suggested a similar timeframe. As it was, we had five
million in five years.
The
second model is the Prius C concept, which is the inspiration for the third
smaller Prius model that will go on sale in the first half of 2012. The Prius C
Concept, with c representing a "city"-centric vehicle is supposed to
appeal to a younger audience.
“It’s always difficult to start, but
projects such as these get much easier with time. The company has a long
vision: in Japan, we say that the better rice field is given to the son. As for
the break-even point, that should come by the third generation of FCEV
products. It can’t happen in the first generation if we include the research
and development costs. It could just happen during the second. But by the
third, in 2024 or 2025, it should be similar to where we are now with the
hybrids.” Having helped design and develop the ground breaking Prius with its
Hybrid Synergy Drive powertrain, in doing so facilitating the hybrid breakthrough,
it’s hard not take Hirose’s fuel cell predictions very seriously.
