The last time I talked about APFCT I gave an update about their fuel cell microcar and FCV scooter program in Taiwan. What is unique about both of these programs is the swappable canister (compressed hydrogen tank) aspect where a rider or driver can swap out fuel tanks in about 1 minute and go on their merry way.
When I had talked about this in April 2011, APFCT was building 10 fuel cell microcars and 10 fuel cell scooters. Now, APFCT has been awarded a contract to build an additional 80 hydrogen fuel cell scooters.
According to APFCT, “Previously, APFCT built and run a fleet of 10 fuel cell scooter under the same BOE subsidy program. This new project is the continuation of previous project and takes the demonstration and validation progress to a further stage to be tested in real life usage. There scooters will be used by people in different areas and scenarios of daily usage, for example, for work commute or tourist rental.
“Another focus of this project is to closely understand user perception and their experience of using fuel cell scooters. This project will also collect information of its hydrogen supply model, metal hydride canister exchange model. The manufacturing of the scooter fleet is expected to be finished in May next year and then the implementation of fleet operation will kick off.”
This test marketing phases sounds like APFCT is getting very close to the production phase. If all goes well with those 80 fuel cell scooters, then production models in Taiwan won’t be far behind and will most likely beat hydrogen fuel cell cars to market by the year 2015 that most major car manufacturers have agreed will be the date of commercial rollout.