Audi (ETR:NSU) has bought fuel-cell patents from Vancouver-based Ballard Power Systems (TSE:BLD), a company that is one of the world’s leading companies in the technology of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Ballard provides clean energy products that reduce customer costs and risks, and helps customers solve difficult technical and business challenges in their fuel‑cell programs.

The German car manufacturer Audi will push up investment in car-making operations by 2 billion euros ($2.44 billion) to a record 24 billion euros over the next five years. Most of these funds will be directed to their production plants in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm which accounted for half the carmaker’s nine-month output of 1.34 million autos. Overall, Audi is investing in green car technologies across the board lately. This means that the car maker’s push for electric and hybrid driving systems will make a big chunk of their future expenditure, but also the profit arising from sales of such vehicles.

The purchase of these patents will provide new impetus for the development of fuel‑cell drive systems at Audi, VW and the Volkswagen Group. As explained by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, Member of the Board of Management for Technical Development at AUDI AG and responsible for the steering of the development departments of all brands in the VW Group: “Audi is acquiring these strategically important patents for the entire group and will make them available to all the brands. In this way, we are securing crucial expertise that will provide new impetus for the further development of this technology.”

While no further clarification on what exactly will these new technologies be used at, we can reasonably presume that new all-electric and hybrid models will benefit from these. Audi has been pushing with their research in this field. Cars like the upcoming Audi R8 e-tron are just a part of the whole model range that will benefit from such research, while the big German car maker is making great strides and slowly catching up to the likes of Tesla Motors and others.

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Hyundai’s much awaited fuel cell car, the internationally known 2015 Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell or the North American Tuscon Fuel Cell. This car is Hyundai’s latest FCEV vehicle that is actually coming to market and will be available around the world fairly shortly as it is a 2015 model year vehicle, meaning we’ll see it on the road later this year. What’s such a big deal about Hyundai’s FCEV is that it is a fuel cell powered electric vehicle that can do hundreds of miles on a single ‘tank’. Instead of being powered by batteries and large battery packs, the ix35 Fuel Cell is basically powered by hydrogen fuel cell technology.

What’s more impressive is that Hyundai was able to get 700 km of range out of the vehicle, which translates to 435 miles per fill up. All you have to do with this car is find a hydrogen fueling station and then fill up your car, which takes up to 3 minutes, according to Hyundai. While the prices of hydrogen fuel varies greatly, it suffers from the same problem that fully electric battery-based vehicles have. There simply aren’t enough charging/refill stations to properly accommodate someone on a daily basis looking to refill/recharge based on where they are. However, with 435 miles of range, most people wouldn’t be looking to recharge their vehicles for at least a week unless they’re trying to drive cross-country.

2015 Hyundai ix35 / Tuscon Fuel Cell

These numbers that Hyundai is reporting in their press release of the vehicle, nearly double that of the stated range of the 2015 Hyundai Tuscon Fuel Cell which has a rated EPA estimated range of 235 miles. So, your mileage may vary (pun intended) but you will very likely still get somewhere around 27.8 Km per liter if converted to gasoline which translates to around 65 MPG. However, fuel capacity and tank sizes are measured in pounds and kilograms rather than in liquid volume due to the way the hydrogen is stored. The actual rating is that it only takes 9.5 grams of hydrogen for the ix35 Fuel Cell to drive 1 kilometer. Based upon this you get a rough estimated range of 593 kilometers or 368 miles, even though the US version does not have as much of a stated EPA range.

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A process known as “cracking” is being viewed as a potential for making hydrogen power more realistic for automotive purposes. Hydrogen is thought to be one of the best alternative fuel sources, but managing it has complications. Ammonia cracking is seen as a safer, less costly method of making hydrogen available.

Cracking separates ammonia into one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen. Hydrogen is typically produced by steam reforming natural gas, a process that wastes some of the energy stored in the gas, but a more significant result is the release of large amounts of CO2, considered to have a negative effect on the environment. Splitting ammonia into its component parts is seen as a more positive approach to obtaining hydrogen.

Expensive precious metals are used as catalysts in the cracking process. Researchers from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in the UK have discovered a new way that overcomes that cost. Two simultaneous chemical processes using cheaper sodium amide replace the use of a catalyst, thus reducing cost significantly.

Professor Bill David along with Dr. Martin Jones led the STFC research team at the ISIS Neutron Source in Oxfordshire. David said: “We can produce hydrogen from ammonia on demand effectively and affordably.” The ammonia can be carried on-board vehicles at low pressure in plastic tanks. David continues: “For cars, we don’t even need to go to the complications of a fuel-cell vehicle. A small amount of hydrogen mixed with ammonia is sufficient to provide combustion in a conventional car engine. While our process is not yet optimized, we estimate that an ammonia decomposition reactor no bigger than a 2-litre bottle will provide enough hydrogen to run a mid-range family car.”

Caption: Prof. Bill David (right) and Dr. Martin Jones with the ammonia decomposition reactor. Credit: STFC

The downside, however, must be attended to. Safety issues revolve around storing on-board high pressure tanks and the cost of installing a new high-pressure infrastructure at the fuel delivery stations are tremendous.

Dr. Steven Chu who holds a Nobel Prize in Physics, 10 patents, and was US Secretary of Energy for four years ending in 2013, said “I always was somewhat skeptical of it because, right now, the way we get hydrogen primarily is from reforming gas. That’s not an ideal source of hydrogen.”

Several attempts to obtain hydrogen by a more acceptable method have been made. In 2013, a team led by Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech developed a way to produce large quantities of hydrogen from xylose, a simple sugar that is abundant in plants.

In a 2009 MIT interview, Dr. Chu had iterated several obstacles then to hydrogen fuel-cell technology along with a quotable comment to put a fine point on those problems. Yet, he told reporters at the Washington Car Show when asked about fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV): “This is an important technology and we want to continue to support the research. Fuel cells can be incredibly reliable.”

David and Jones challenge other researchers to resolve the difficulties associated with hydrogen fuel and to focus on the promise of oil independence. You can find their article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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Toyota has announced that they would be moving away from Tesla’s battery technology, which they were originally one of the first supporters in Tesla’s battery technology and took a 3% share (worth about $690 million) of the company in addition to adopting their battery technology. Keep in mind that currently, Tesla manufactures battery technology for Toyota and Mercedes and is in the process of building a $5 billion gigafab in order to increase their battery capacity. So, while Tesla is looking to expand their battery manufacturing capacity, one of their closest partners is moving away from Tesla’s tech.

Toyota is claiming that they are moving towards a new alternative energy standard which has long been considered to be less feasible than electric power, hydrogen fuel cell. Companies like Honda and Toyota have been toying with hydrogen fuel cell and electric car technology for the past few decades with a few prototypes here and there, but ultimately little to no commercial traction. However, it seems like Toyota isn’t particularly interested in the current model with electric cars where new charging stations need to be installed at users’ homes, work and places that they go. Toyota appears to be more interested in the ‘gas station’ model where people would simply refuel with hydrogen rather than waiting for a charge. So, Toyota recently created the FCV Concept which was announced at CES and ultimately showed where Toyota had been looking to move for 2014 and beyond.

Toyota FCV Concept

While I don’t think anyone can definitively say whether or not Toyota’s decision to move away from Tesla’s battery technology is necessarily a good one, Toyota is still the #1 seller of hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles and that’s still a whole lot of batteries that need installing. I personally understand why someone would look at electric cars as not-so-green technology considering the amount of energy necessary to create those batteries and the source of a lot of the power that charges them. However, I believe that we may ultimately see a combination of hydrogen fuel cell technologies alongside electric car technologies much like we have diesel and gasoline engines which ultimately are both combustion engines but they accomplish combustion via different types of fuel.

Hopefully this isn’t too much of a blow for Tesla, with Toyota moving away from their battery tech. Perhaps once Tesla launches a more affordable electric car and the Model X they will be able to spur enough battery demand on their own so that companies like Toyota aren’t as critical to them anymore.

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