Mercedes-Benz decided to let company trainees do a mashup of what would happen if you combine a futuristic hydrogen car with an old school automobile. The result is the F-Cell Hybrid Roadster.
Over 150 Daimler AG trainees in Sindelfingen, Germany took turns for about a year in creating this 1.2 kw hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that has a top speed of around 15 mph and a range of a little over 200 miles.
The vehicle is a cross between an 1886 Benz Patent Motor Car and Mercedes B-Class F-Cell. There is no steering wheel on this two-seat buggy, only a joystick that steers the large spoked bicycle wheels in drive-by-wire fashion.
As the automaker with the largest fleet of hydrogen vehicles on the road today, it’s good to see Daimler allocating resources to training and development in a forward thinking fashion. This “back to the future” F-Cell Roadster is hip, fun, funky and an excellent training tool for a future generation of engineers.
Is Mercedes experimenting with solid and liquid (not liquid hydrogen)
hydrogen storage?
These are seemingly the only options that will allow for stable
storage of hydrogen over extended time periods at desireable
densities.
A few quick options include:
1) Use hydranol and reform it on board a hydrogen vehicle.
2) Magnesium hydride slurry reformed on board the vehicle.
3) Sodium Borohydride reformed on board the vehicle.
4) The Ovonics tank that is refueled by a stream of hydrogen
and a stream of water to take away the excess heat.
If the answer is no, Mercedes is sticking to compressed gas and/or
liquified hydrogen why is that?
Pure hydrogen as a fuel seems to be a poor choice, but hydrogen on
demand from a rich hydrogen source makes a lot of sense if the
energy required for reforming the hydrogen source is minimal. As
a novelty vehicle, I wonder what it will cost to produce it and
whether or not this vehicle is something people could play with
until more practical hydrogen vehicles make it to market?
I’m sure the list of hydrogen systems that could be used is much longer
than just 4 options. I’m hoping that someone in the car business is
experimenting with methods of getting hydrogen on a vehicle that are
more stable over the long term and able to produce the range people
need. I should be able to leave my hydrogen car fueled in a garage
for a month and lose little to no fuel. Current trends to use compressed
gas and/or liquified hydrogen are not going to offer the stability I’m
talking about. I realize it requires energy input to go from hydrogen
gas to hydrogen stored in a solid or a slurry, but how much energy?