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€26M ZEFER project to introduce 180 fuel cell electric vehicles into fleets in Paris, Brussels and London

The European ZEFER (Zero Emission Fleet vehicles for European Roll-out) project will deploy large fleets of 60 hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles in each of three European capitals (Paris, London and Brussels). (One hundred seventy FCEVs will be operated as taxi or private-hire vehicles, and the remaining 10 will be used by the police.)

These vehicles will be used in the applications where hydrogen-fueled vehicles are the most valuable—fleets which drive long distances every day, which need rapid refueling, and which operate in polluted city centers where zero-emission hydrogen vehicles can have the greatest impact on avoiding pollution.

The €26-million (US$32-million) pan-European initiative will introduce the 180 FCEVs into a combination of taxi, private-hire and police fleets. These vehicles will be in regular use each day, creating hydrogen demand from each vehicle roughly four times that from a normal privately-owned car. This will help to ensure high utilization of the early networks of hydrogen fueling stations which are already operating in each city. This improves the economics of operating the stations and hence helps accelerate the commercialization of hydrogen as a zero-emission fuel for Europe’s cities.

The project will gather data and disseminate results to demonstrate the business case for future FCEV adoption and test the performance of cars and infrastructure under high-mileage conditions.

ZEFER will be delivered by a consortium led by Element Energy, including hydrogen suppliers (Air Liquide and ITM Power Trading Ltd), vehicle end users (Green Tomato Cars, HYPE and the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime), observer partners (BMW and Linde AG) and partners supporting the analysis and policy conclusions (Cenex and the Mairie de Paris).

ZEFER is co-funded with €5 million ($6.1 million) from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), a public-private partnership supporting fuel cell and hydrogen energy technologies in Europe. The 180 FCEVs will be procured from the vehicle manufacturers able to offer hydrogen fuel cell cars in Europe; the first 25 vehicles are being deployed this week in London by Green Tomato Cars.

Comments

SJC

When you need the range but don't want to carry the weight, fuel cells do the job.

Gasbag

32 million for 180 vehicles is about $175k per. I’d like to see what is included in that budget. Even including operating costs Teslas (pick your model) would be more cost effective.

HarveyD

About halt the total project cost is for new H2 stations. Add ons will cost a lot less.

HarveyD

should read...about half (50%) ....

Gasbag

Can you provide a link as to where you got that info Harvey? All three cities already have H fueling stations.

Implied is that it costs ~$90k per vehicle for fueling infrastructure?

Would that mean ~$70k cost per LDV and ~$20k for fuel and maintenance ?

HarveyD

Excellent Toyota Mirai FCEVs cost $60K delivered. The remaining $117.7K per vehicle must be for infrastructures, ing. studies, land acquisition + installation + maintenance facilities and training.

Doubling FCEVs for each city involved should not cost much more than 60 x $60K = $3.6M per city.

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