1 2 e-mobility
How AVL is challenging diesel’s powerful
grip on commercial haulage, with realistic
innovations in fuel cell technology
In the global effort to reduce
emissions, it’s not just passenger
cars that must find new, clean-er
powertrain solutions. Manu-facturers
of commercial vehicles
must also deliver viable alternatives
to combustion in order to meet the
demands of global legislation.
Big cities are already seeing com-mercial
BEV solutions being wide-ly
adopted for light-duty applica-tions
such as deliveries and garbage
collection. But when it comes to
heavy-duty and long-haul applica-tions,
which contribute 41 % of the
CO2 emissions attributed to com-mercial
vehicles, there is yet to come
a technology that can viably match
the power characteristics of the die-sel
engine.
At AVL we are challenging this,
with a new fuel cell demonstrator
vehicle that will provide the same
power profile as a diesel truck, of-fering
possible solutions for today’s
technological challenges.
MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE
ACCESSIBLE
The big challenge for any new tech-nological
revolution is not develop-ing
the technology in the first place,
but making it realistically accessi-ble
to its target market. Developing
an electrified, fuel cell-based truck
with the same power as a diesel
truck requires a very high power
density in a small form factor. One
of the biggest obstacles is the cool-ing
system, which has to dissipate
more than double the heat of a die-sel
engine of the same power. This
is because the exhaust gas – in this
case water vapor – dissipates much
less heat than diesel exhaust fumes.
This is just one of a variety of condi-tions
that such a concept must meet
in the real world. Other primary
KEEP ON
TRUCKING
Digital mock-up of the
AVL Fuel Cell Technology
Demonstrator Truck