Advances in Automobile Engineering
Open Access

Abstract

Opportunities and Barriers of Hydrogen

Oscar Scar Castillo Campo

The environmental impact of the road transport sector, together with urban freight transport growth, has notable repercussions in global warming, health, and economy. The need to reduce emissions caused by fossil fuel dependence and to foster the use of renewable energy sources has driven the development of zero-emissions powertrains. These clean transportation technologies are not only necessary to move people but to transport the increasing demand for goods and services that is currently taking place in the larger cities. Full electric battery-powered vans seem to be the best-placed solution to the problem. However, despite the progress in driving range and recharge options, those and other market barriers remain unsolved and the current market share of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is not significant. Based on the development of hydrogen fuel cell stacks, this work explains an emerging powertrain architecture concept for N1 class type vans, that combines a battery-electric configuration with a fuel cell stack powered by hydrogen that works as a range extender (FC-EREV). A literature review is conducted, with the aim to shed light on the possibilities of this hybrid light-duty commercial van for metropolitan delivery tasks, providing insights into the key factors and issues for sizing the powertrain components and fuel management strategies to meet metropolitan freight fleet needs. Nowadays, energy efficiency and sustainability are critical objectives in the value chain of business activities. Manufacturing and logistics are key links in this chain. According to International Energy Agency (IEA) and European Environment Agency (EEA) data, at the end of the year 2017, the world-level energy consumption for the industry and transport sectors were almost the same, around 12.6 ZJ, nevertheless, CO2 emissions for industry and transport were around 6.2 Mt of CO2 and 8 Mt of CO2 respectively. However, what is more interesting, observe the trend curves of energy consumption and CO2 emissions, which, for industry, has been similar since 2011, however, in the transport sector, it is continuously growing. In particular, if we focus on road transport share of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU28 zone, according to EEA data, is observed that this means of transport has the most important impact with 71.7%.