Intelligent Energy leads fuel cell project

Intelligent Energy will lead a pan-European industry group to develop VolumetriQ , a 90kW EC fuel cell project aimed to power hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2020.

VolumetriQ is a three-year EUR5 million program that aims to develop fuel cell stacks for mass production.

The project will also involve four industrial partners; Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells, Solvay Speciality Polymers, ElringKlinger and Pretexo; as well as academic input from CNRS Montpellier. Furthermore, BMW Group and Daimler will participate in the project to set out the stack requirements.

VolumetriQ got off to a great start recently as representatives from the partner businesses gathered at Intelligent Energy’s Loughborough headquarters to kick off the scope of work. The programme outputs must demonstrate cost reduction, advance manufacturing technology with optimised component detail designs.

Intelligent Energy’s Director of R&T, Dr Chris Dudfield, said: “Hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles are a reality for the ‘here and now’. To bring them to mass market, we need to ensure our fuel cell stacks are robustly industrialised, which is the aim of this programme.”

“The results of this programme will bring a significant opportunity to OEMs to deliver Intelligent Energy’s proprietary 90kW automotive fuel cell architecture in the next generation of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) which, we believe, offers the best solution to the automotive industry to scale up the production of FCEV’s and deliver vehicles that meet the demands of the consumer as well as crucially delivering zero-emissions at the tail-pipe. We are very excited to be moving our technology forward with our partners.” Dr Dudfield concluded.