Vehicle concept design by using a fuel cell as range extender

Abstract

The most common field of application of current electric vehicles is predominantly located in dense populated areas. For the road traffic between two urban areas, with the resulting high demands on range and vehicle velocity, current vehicles are used with high battery capacities (> 80 kWh), or internal combustion engines as range extender. The disadvantages of these two systems should be solved by a hybrid, zero-emission vehicle concept with hydrogen as energy carrier. Therefore a design methodology and associated tools have to be created in order to calculate a fuel cell powered vehicle based on the selected driving cycle and vehicle parameters. Within the internal DLR research project “Next Generation Car” (NGC), driving cycles will be received for the vehicle concept “Interurban Vehicle” (IUV). The driving cycles will be used for the purpose of designing the IUV with different operating strategies of the fuel cell. After identifying the dimensions of power and energy, the packaging requirements of the fuel cell, battery and hydrogen storage will be determined and the design dependent on the operating strategy will be proposed.