Fuel Cell Nation

Daimler/Mercedes-Benz Fuel Cell Claims - Oops!

In my recent post Mercedes Fuel Cell Vehicle PR Tour - Oops!, I discuss how a mistake in a 2011 Daimler press release was repeated in a Bloomberg News story. The mistake concerns bragging rights for performing the world's first demonstration of a fuel cell car! You'd think they'd do a little fact-checking on their press releases!

The 2011 press release claims:

"Mercedes-Benz recognized this potential at an early stage, launching the first vehicle with fuel cell drive, the NECAR 1, as early as 1994." (Left)

Oops!

One of the first hits on my Googling "first fuel cell vehicle" for my earlier post was the hydrogencarsnow.com post 1966 GM Electrovan (left)! Verifying this was a real van was easy, as General Motors has a Fuel Cell Milestones page that confirms its existence. In fact, this earliest fuel cell car is housed at the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, MI.

So I checked to see if the Daimler mistake that was made in their 2011 press release was an isolated incident, or if they made similar mistakes in earlier releases. Guess what -- I easily found ten (10!) Daimler press releases saying the same thing! (Then I stopped counting.) The earliest I found, dated Nov 8, 2007, Daimler AG to Become Majority Stakeholder in New "Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation", says:

"A pioneer in fuel cell technology, Daimler introduced the world’s first fuel cell vehicle as early as 1994."

I also found a similar 2007 Ford press release: DAIMLER AG, FORD MOTOR COMPANY TO BECOME PRIMARY STAKEHOLDERS IN NEW AUTOMOTIVE FUEL CELL COOPERATION. The Ford version, slightly modifying the Daimler text, says:

"A pioneer in fuel cell technology, Daimler introduced the world’s first fuel cell vehicle in 1994."

So the 2011 mistake is not simply a matter of semantics, or a bad translation from the German. The truth is that for years Daimler has believed that they made the first fuel cell vehicle!

I sent an email to the Daimler PR people to see if they'd correct their most recent over-statement, given their pattern of mis-statements. After some back and forth with Matthias Brock (Research, Development and Environmental Communications, Head of Media Relations, Daimler AG), he told me they would not correct the press release. On the plus side, he at least said "You are right - we could have been a little bit more precise by saying 'Mercedes-Benz recognised this potential at an early stage, launching ITS first vehicle with fuel cell drive, the NECAR 1, as early as 1994.'", as well as  "Thanks Keith, we are going to take that into account in the future."

The only problem is that the Internet Archive, as well as Google and everyone else, now have an extensive record that claims that Daimler/Mercedes-Benz had the first fuel cell vehicle. Poor GM is not getting the credit for being 18 years ahead of Daimler!

Crystal City, Here I Come!

Time for the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program and Vehicle Technologies Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting (AMR). May 9-13, 2011 I am traveling to the Crystal City Marriott and Crystal Gateway Marriott, in Arlington, Virginia to make a poster presentation. The Poster is for the first year of a Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant I wrote titled "Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi."

The Poster presentation for the last year's Phase I work at Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC is located here: Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi.

Here is some background on the project:

"U.S. automakers have invested significant resources in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. However, to enable their widespread use, an additional major investment will be required to construct an infrastructure for hydrogen production and delivery to fueling stations. In order to facilitate this transition, the DOE has recommended that high-pressure hydrogen generation for home refueling of fuel cell vehicles be implemented as an intermediary approach.

GES has developed PEM-based electrolyzer technology for producing hydrogen at moderate to high pressure directly in the electrolyzer stack ... A low-cost process for producing high-pressure hydrogen from water by electrolysis will significantly advance the development of the hydrogen economy, providing hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles at a price competitive with that of gasoline on a per-mile basis. The ability to produce hydrogen economically, the relatively low capital cost of the electrolyzer unit, and the low maintenance cost of the unit will allow widespread distribution of hydrogen home fueling appliances deemed necessary for the introduction of fuel cell vehicles."

I just submitted a U.S. Patent application on this idea, so I can't really say anything in addition to what's in the public documents. But, enjoy!

Global Observer - Oops!

Edwards Air Force Base            (Craig Butz photo)

AeroVironment (AV) had quite an April Fool's Day event!

At 2:30 am PDT on April 1, 2010, the liquid hydrogen-fueled Global Observer unmanned air vehicle (UAV) "experienced a mishap" during extended duration flight testing. Personnel at Edwards Air Force base, where the Global Observer testing was based, report that it crashed. The crash occurred approximately 18 hours into its 9th test flight. The Global Observer was conducting "envelope expansion" flight testing, flying higher and for a longer duration than it had previously. Crash details are sparse, probably because AV has been ordered by the US government not to discuss the accident until after an investigation was completed. Crashes during developmental testing are not unusual, as Northrop Grumman suffered from the loss of a prototype RQ-4 Global Hawk during flights in 1999.

In my previous post, Hydrogen for 65,000 Feet, I discuss how the Global Observer was designed to fly for five to seven days, powered by liquid hydrogen, at altitudes up to 65,000 feet. Design criteria included 2.8 kilowatts (kW) of power for a 380-lb. payload, and a liquid hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine producing about 60 kW of electricity.

AV received a US$140 million contract in September 2007 for a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) of the Global Observer (GO-1). Three GO-1s were planned on being built under the JCTD, jointly overseen by six U.S. government agencies. The second air vehicle is nearing completion at the AV factory. The third unit was supposed to be a backup, but it has not been discussed since the order was announced in June 2009. AV has recently stated that most of the funding for the program has been spent.

The worst part for AV is that this high-profile crash comes after another high-profile crash 8 years ago. On June 26, 2003, the NASA-funded Helios prototype UAV broke up and fell into the Pacific Ocean about 30 minutes after take-off from Kauai, in the Hawaiian islands. Helios had been quite a successful UAV, because on August 14, 2001, Helios set a world record for a winged aircraft at an altitude of 96,863 feet (29,523.8 m). Unlike Global Observer, Helios had solar cells, an electrolyzer supplied by Giner Electrochemical Systems designed to produce hydrogen and oxygen for storage, and a fuel cell fueled by the hydrogen and oxygen to produce power overnight.

According to Wikipedia,

"The (Helios) investigation report identified a two-part root cause of the accident:

1. Lack of adequate analysis methods led to an inaccurate risk assessment of the effects of configuration changes leading to an inappropriate decision to fly an aircraft configuration highly sensitive to disturbances.

2. Configuration changes to the aircraft, driven by programmatic and technological constraints, altered the aircraft from a spanloader to a highly point-loaded mass distribution on the same structure significantly reducing design robustness and margins of safety."

Hopefully AV can quickly get beyond this latest tragedy to continue their groundbreaking work. And hopefully the conclusions of the Global Observer investigation are not as painful as those of the Helios investigation. AV better hurry, though, as Boeing plans to fly its company-funded Phantom Eye hydrogen-fueled high-altitude, long endurance (HALE) UAV demonstrator at Edwards later this year, and Aurora Flight Sciences hopes to fly their Orion twin diesel engine-powered, five-day-endurance medium-altitude UAV this year under an Air Force-sponsored JCTD.

 (Boeing photo)         (S. Schaeffer-Hopkins photo)