Strategic alliances for the development of fuel cell vehicles

摘要

The aim of this paper is to explore and describe the current stage of fuel cell vehicle development in the world. One can write three possible future scenarios - an optimistic, a realistic, and a pessimistic scenario: - The optimistic scenario -- The Daimler/Ballard/Ford alliance continues to develop fuel cell stacks and fuel cell vehicle systems as eagerly as they have been doing in recent years. Daimler(/Chrysler)-Benz continues to present its Necar 4, Necar 5, and so on, as planned, and thus keeps Toyota and Honda under severe pressure. Toyota's and Honda's real motivation seems to be not to allow Daimler- Benz to be the first to market. Their investment in fuel cell technology will be very large. At the same time, governments and other stake-holders will quickly and in a timely fashion build up infrastructures. We will then see many fuel cell vehicles by 2004. A paradigm shift in automotive technology will have taken place. - The realistic scenario -- Fuel cell vehicles will reach the same level of development by 2004/2005 as pure electric vehicles were at in 1997/1998. This means that fuel cell vehicles will be produced at the rate of several hundred vehicles per year per manufacturer and cost about $40,000 or more, which is still considerably more expensive than ordinary gasoline cars. These fuel cell vehicles will have a performance similar to today's advanced electric vehicles, e.g., Toyota's RAV4/EV and Honda's EV Plus. To go further from this stage to the mass-production stage strong government incentives will be needed. - The pessimistic scenario -- It turns out that fuel cells are not as pure or efficient as in theory and in laboratory experiments. Prices of gasoline and diesel gas continue to be very low. The Californian 10% ZEV Requirement that has been meant to be valid at least ten years from 2003 through 2012 will be suspended or greatly modified. Daimler-Benz, Toyota, and Honda slow down their fuel cell vehicle development activities. No one is interested in building up the infrastructure for fuel cells. The dominance of internal combustion engines will continue another 20 years