December 16, 2005--Hyundai Motor Company delivered the first of 10 Hyundai and Kia Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV) to the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit) today. The delivery marked the beginning of a five-year demonstration and validation project designed to evaluate fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen infrastructure technologies.
A team, consisting of Hyundai, Chevron and UTC power, officially began testing to support research into hydrogen-powered fuel cell technology in February 2005 when Chevron opened it first-ever hydrogen energy station at the Hyundai America Technical Center (HATCI) in Chino CA .
In addition to HATCI and AC transit, fleets will also be placed at Southern California Edison and the U.S. Army facilities in Detroit to develop and implement a practical, business-based hydrogen energy infrastructure and associated technologies as a part of the five year program.
Hyundai plans to place two addition Tucson FCEV with AC Transit in early 2006 and will round out the fleet with six Kia Sportage FCEV models in late 2006 and 2007.
While the delivery of the first vehicles in itself is newsworthy, the observation that I have is: Where are the American companies that could have been involved in the development of these vehicles? With all of the controversy now going on about the possible failure of Ford and General Motors, this is just more evidence that these companies are and were not investing their R&D dollars in the right technologies. For the most part American car companies have said that they were not investing in hybrid technologies because the fuel cell was a better answer to our automotive technology requirements. Now they do not have that technology either. Hyundai is a newcomer to automotive technologies, we should be able to beat the pants off of them with the megabucks (formerly) available to our automotive industry. The answer is fairly obvious; the new companies are more flexible, are more open to new ideas and do not have the bureaucracy that stymies adaptation of change. I do not in any way want to demean the capability or the significance of Hyundai, I am sure their products represent a sigificant contribution to fuel cell technology, certainly more than American car companies are capable of at the present time.
Resource: Hyundai Delivers First Fuel Cell Vehicle to AC Transit to Initiate Fleet Testing Program, Tuscon Post, December 16, 2005
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Check out this introduction article on fuel cell:
http://www.articleworld.org/fuel_cell
Content:
1.Constituents of a fuel cell
2.How it works
3.Applications
4.History and development of fuel cells
Posted by: articleworld | May 25, 2006 at 07:17 PM