VW tests alternate fuel vehicles
By: Jack Nerad for Driving Today
Date: 2002-03-13
Volkswagen recently completed the first long-range test drive of its innovative HY.POWER fuel-cell car, and at the same time successfully tested a high-tech Jetta Turbo direct injection diesel using a super-clean synthetic diesel called SunFuel. SunFuel is a non-traditional low-sulfur fuel that can be made from renewable sources such as plants, waste products, pomegranates and other stuff that's kinda like that. Both cars were tested in the depths of winter and driven over the demanding 6,578-foot high Simplon Pass.
Together with the Paul Scherrer Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, Volkswagen developed a low-cost hydrogen fuel cell with extra high performance "supercaps," or ultra capacitors, that can store a fuel-cell engine's electrical energy for use during strenuous driving, such as passing on grades. These supercaps eliminate the need for heavy energy storage batteries that are a problem with many other experimental hydrogen vehicles being tested and are a big drag to lift.
After testing the SunFuel Jetta, Volkswagen believes the fuel, which offers the lowest particulate emissions possible today, could be used in future near-zero emission fuel-cell cars that use a reformer device to convert regular gas or diesel fuel into hydrogen. Within Volkswagen's fuel strategy, the Jetta SunFuel vehicle represents one of the first steps toward the introduction of a desirable production fuel cell car that could potentially be filled up at a local gas station.
The Volkswagen Bora HY.POWER prototype, which does not use a reformer, obtains its energy from on-board hydrogen to create a hydrogen fuel cell; fuel cells generate electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Below-zero temperatures and steep gradients are a major challenge to a system with an electric traction motor driven by "cold combustion" of the hydrogen fuel--a more severe test than has ever been attempted before. Fuel cells that use hydrogen offer zero emissions and fuel cells that use gas with reformers offer near-zero emissions.
Comments to this article have been disabled.
