Fuel Cell Vehicles: Opportunities and Challenges

One of the major goals of the automotive industry is to improve vehicular fuel efficiency and performance with much lesser percentages of harmful tailpipe emissions. One of the major technologies includes fuel cell vehicles (FCV). Various advantages of fuel cells including reliability, simplicity, quietness of operation, and low pollution have made them an attractive potential candidate for providing automotive power. This paper aims at discussing the basic possible topologies of fuel cell vehicles and the major issues that need to be overcome in order to make them practically viable. In addition, critical comparative factors between the FCV option and its closest competitor, the hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) option, are presented. Finally, this paper provides a summary of various fuel cell demonstration vehicles wherein various social and cost related issues are addressed.