Real-world Fleet Operations

Members of the California Fuel Cell Partnership are progressing through phases as they move toward the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles powered by hydrogen. Through their current fleet programs, CaFCP members are building and evaluating hydrogen fueling stations, gathering data from fuel cell vehicles and advancing station access. This fleet operation phase provides real-world data and information to CaFCP members as they prove out the commercial viability of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and infrastructure. Collecting data and sharing learnings is a critical component of this phase, and helps bring the technology closer to the market.

Demonstration Projects

Vehicle Demonstrations
CaFCP members aim to place up to 300 fuel cell cars and buses in California through 2007. These vehicles are clustered in two main areas: the greater Los Angeles region and the Sacramento-San Francisco area. The automotive companies place the passenger vehicles in fleets or even with private citizens. Fleet vehicles are operated by government agencies, public utilities, universities and private businesses. Each fleet program has at least one associated fueling station. People drive the vehicles as they go about their every day business, providing data and information from a wide range of driving conditions.

Transit agencies are demonstrating fuel cell buses, with seven buses already in daily revenue service. These buses are part of the regular bus fleet, carrying hundreds of people each day on regularly scheduled routes. These programs prove out performance under a variety of operating conditions, including a hilly urban environment and a hot, dry desert environment.

In this phase, auto manufactures, transit agencies and fuel cell technology companies are working to address critical customer requirements. Key challenges include increasing on-board hydrogen storage capacity to provide longer driving range, proving fuel cell durability to ensure a long vehicle life and cutting the cost of the fuel cell systems. By working on these challenges now, the fuel cell vehicles and buses will provide excellent customer performance and value by the time they come to market.

Fuel Demonstrations
CaFCP members operate hydrogen fueling stations to support the fleet vehicles and to evaluate a variety of approaches for producing and delivering hydrogen fuel. For example, some fuel stations are producing hydrogen on site by reforming natural gas or electrolyzing water. Other fuel stations provide hydrogen that is produced at a central plant and delivered by truck to the station. The goal is to learn the most cost-effective and customer-friendly way to provide hydrogen to vehicles, while exploring new approaches including renewable hydrogen production.

Promoting a customer-friendly fueling experience represents another key challenge during this phase. CaFCP members are working together to promote fuel station interoperability—called “common fit” fueling protocols—that will ensure that every vehicle can fuel at any station in the growing network. For example, CaFCP members can measure the quality of the hydrogen and the consistency of the hydrogen fill using specially designed equipment. Tackling interoperability challenges and identifying best practices helps to create working solutions and provides real-world feedback into the development of future standards.

Community Outreach
With any new technology, information and understanding are critical to success. CaFCP staff and members prepare local communities for hydrogen fueling stations and vehicle demonstration programs in their area. CaFCP holds workshops for emergency responders, local officials, media and community members. These workshops provide an overview of how the vehicles and stations work, the benefits of hydrogen and fuel cells, and how this technology will fit into their community. Workshop attendees can talk to engineers and take a ride in a fuel cell vehicle to gain first-hand experience with the vehicles of the future.

Updated April 2006