Volvo C30 Hydrogen-Electric Hybrid Concept: Car of the Future

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Volvo is developing a concept car C30, which is going to have hydrogen fuel cell and electric drive to propel the car to a maximum range of 400 km. The hydrogen fuel cell is contributing 250 km of range here. But the real news is that Volvo is going to make an on board gasoline to hydrogen converter, which seems out of this world though! Volvo says this on board reformer technology will help double the range without increasing the size of the battery. This conversion process is said to be 85% efficient.

So, why hydrogen electric, why not gasoline electric or diesel electric. Volvo’s answer is quite logical here. Like in the forthcoming Chevrolet Volt, the petrol is used as a fuel to produce electricity to charge the battery, which in turn provides power for the electric motor to power the car. But in this process, lots of energy is wasted as in the form of heat energy, which is not going to happen in the conversion of hydrogen to electricity.

Since Volvo is making hydrogen from gasoline, then electricity from hydrogen, this process will have way too more efficiency than a simple IC engine. Thus conserving the fossil fuel left on earth. Also it helps to solve the problem of hydrogen transportation infrastructure lagging behind vehicle technology.

Source: Cnet

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