Filed under: Hydrogen, Toyota, Europe/EU

Toyota has joined the Clean Energy Partnership (CEP) in Europe to help promote low- and zero-emission vehicles and related infrastructure. The automaker will be providing five of its Highlander-based FCHV-adv fuel-cell vehicles available for the CEP test fleet in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany. In addition, Toyota and CEP member Total will help to build more hydrogen fueling stations in Germany starting with a completely CO2-free facility at the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport. Several other hydrogen stations in Berlin, Hamburg and along the routes between the two northern German cities are in the planning stages.

Toyota remains committed to bringing series production fuel cell vehicles to market by 2015 and sees fuel cells as the best long-term solution to zero emissions transportation. CEP is working to ramp up supplies of hydrogen from renewable sources to 50 percent of production over the next few years. Wind farms are now a common site in Germany and already produce one fifth of the electricity there.

[Source: Toyota]

Continue reading Toyota joins Clean Energy Partnership, helps build new H2 stations

Toyota joins Clean Energy Partnership, helps build new H2 stations originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now, many people probably haven’t heard about laser hydride compact disc (CD) storage before. I know that I hadn’t before I stumbled across a company called Plasma Kinetics.

Sure, there are many ways to store hydrogen including metal hydride containers which can be quite heavy, compressed hydrogen tanks which are extremely insulated and built to withstand leakage and impact. Some of these tanks are built out of metal alloys and others out of more expensive carbon fiber.

But, Plasma Kinetics has come up with a novel way to store hydrogen for cars that can reduce the weight of the storage tanks by as much as 400 lbs as compared to a conventional automobile and 500 lbs as compared to a Tesla Roadster.

The novel approach is to use Laser hydride CD storage. What this means is that a hydrogen car owner will refuel their vehicle at a regular hydrogen fueling station. The compressed hydrogen fuel will flow into the car and microwaves will ionize the H2 onto CD, similar to what we would put into a CD player in which to listen to music.

And much like the process of listening to music, the device would use a laser to release the hydrogen on demand from the magnesium CD as the car needs it for fuel. The CD’s would be stacked in a series and could provide a range of over 300 miles for the average hydrogen fuel cell car.

Plasma Kinetics is currently displaying their laser hydride H2 storage device at the U. S. Department of Energy’s Arpa-e Summit, which was developed to showcase leading edge and breakthrough clean energy technology. Plasma Kinetics is currently looking for investors to bring their product to the next level of development.

pFiled under: a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/category/hydrogen/” rel=”tag”Hydrogen/a/pa href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/25/report-millions-of-fuel-cell-vehicles-sold-by-2020/”img hspace=”0″ vspace=”4″ border=”0″ align=”top” alt=”" src=”http://www.blogcdn.com/green.autoblog.com/media/2010/02/pike-research-fcv-630.jpg” //abr /
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Pike Research has read some high-tech tea leaves and thinks that, by the end of 2020, 2.8 million light duty fuel cell vehicle (FCV) sales will have occurred. While we can’t say if their FCV prediction (a href=”http://www.pikeresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/FCV-10-Executive-Summary.pdf”summary in PDF/a) is more accurate than their a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2009/12/19/ten-realistic-electric-vehicle-predictions-for-2010/”short term plug-in prognostication/a, or their medium-term a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/19/study-predicts-well-see-466-electric-two-wheelers-by-2016/”electric two-wheeler forecasting/a, they certainly seem to have a firm grip on who the players in the hydrogen space are and have interviewed a good number of people to prepare this report. While some a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2010/01/08/study-battery-electric-vehicles-unlikely-to-be-cost-competitive/”other/a a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2009/02/18/let-controversy-reign-study-says-biofuels-will-speed-up-global/”reports/a recently have had accusations of bias hurled after them, the company does make a point of saying that they are independently run and have endeavored to produce an impartial look at the unfolding market “unfettered by technology hype, political agendas, or emotional factors that are inherent in cleantech markets.” br /
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According to Pike Research, whether the FCV future plays out as predicted will hinge on two things: the growth of hydrogen supply infrastructure and improvements in the “durability and efficiency” of the fuel cell itself. The firm has faith that automakers can meet their targets but is a little less sure whether governments and gas companies will make the investments necessary to grow the segment beyond the niche level in the first years of commercialization. Feel free to unfetter your own feelings about their findings in the comment section a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/25/report-millions-of-fuel-cell-vehicles-sold-by-2020/#continued”after the break/a.br /
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[Source: a href="http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/fuel-cell-vehicles"Pike Research/a via a href="http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/02/pikefcv-20100224.html"Green Car Congress/a]p style=”padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;”a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/26/pike-research-predicts-2-8-million-fuel-cell-vehicles-sold-by-20/”Pike Research predicts 2.8 million fuel cell vehicles sold by 2020/a originally appeared on a href=”http://green.autoblog.com”Autoblog Green/a on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our a href=”http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/”terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style=”clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;”/h6a href=http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/02/pikefcv-20100224.htmlRead/a | a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/26/pike-research-predicts-2-8-million-fuel-cell-vehicles-sold-by-20/” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent link to this entry”Permalink/a | a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/forward/19373602/” title=”Send this entry to a friend via email”Email this/a | a href=”http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/26/pike-research-predicts-2-8-million-fuel-cell-vehicles-sold-by-20/#comments” title=”View reader comments on this entry”Comments/a
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