FUEL CELLS AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES

The paper is concerned with fuel cell and hydrogen technologies and their application in electric vehicles. Beside positive energy balance effects, these technologies can decrease pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions. Fuel cells and hydrogen are quite mature technologies and already used in transportation systems. There are still drawbacks that prevent wider usage of fuel cell and hydrogen: current costs of electrical vehicles, fuel cells and hydrogen, hydrogen storage, very poor hydrogen infrastructure, lack of public awareness that hydrogen is a safe technology, already developed and applied battery technologies and political issues. Regarding the applicability in light vehicles, proton exchange membrane fuel cells together with hydrogen show good performance. It would not be a surprise that in the future hydrogen might affect the geo-strategy concepts based on fossil fuels.