When a Ford Focus powered by a fuel cell system is shown on the brand’s stand at the upcoming British International Motor Show, it will already have proved itself as a car that can hold its own on the public road.

The car recently led a total of five Ford alternative powertrain vehicles in Michelin's Environmental Car Rallye known as the Challenge Bibendum of 2002.
 
The Ford vehicles were powered by Ethanol (Ford Focus), Compressed Natural Gas (two Ford Focus cars and one Ford Transit) and pure hydrogen (the Ford Focus FCEV Hybrid). 

All five Ford vehicles successfully completed the Bibendum Rallye's seven special tests covering the following disciplines: local emissions, noise, acceleration, braking, slalom, 'elk' test and overall efficiency.  In addition there was over 700 kilometers of driving on public roads, from Heidelberg in Germany to Paris, for the 70 competitors in the event.

Though the Ford Focus FCV is labelled as a ‘hybrid’, it doesn’t reflect the usual definition of such cars, normally using traditional internal combustion engines and electric motor combinations. The Focus fuel cell stack outputs 92bhp and is the normal source of energy for the car. But a 216v battery pack kicks in an extra 25bhp of power when fast acceleration is needed.

The same innovative battery acts as the starter unit for the whole system.

Using this ‘boost’ system instead of a fuel cell on its own means that the powertrain is always acting at its optimum level - what the Ford engineers call the system’s ‘sweet spot’.

Putting the whole system into a ‘standard’ Focus has a double advantage - it proves that at least in the interim an FC car doesn’t have to be built from the ground up, as has been the extraordinary GM Hy-Wire, And it also allows today’s car owner to relate more easily to a technology that is likely to completely revolutionise personal transport. Arguably, as much as did Ford’s Motel T when it ‘brought motoring to the masses’.

It was Jules Verne, the most prophetic technological visionary of them all, who said he was ‘convinced that hydrogen and oxygen, the two elements that combine to form water, will one day – either together or as single entities – be an inexhaustible source of heat and light’.

Well, we’ve achieved most everything else he forecast - put men on the moon, developed submarines that run on atomic power and can stay on undersea duty for literally months. And the fuel cell, a technology that has been around for a long time but required the perfection of other technical systems before it could be properly exploited, is now powering a wide range of vehicles under development by every major manufacturer.

Most of those carmakers are setting 2010 as the time when the systems will have become commercially viable in cars. Given the fact that there are vehicles out there like the FCV Focus, that’s not so far away.

Don’t get me wrong. We’re not there yet. There are problems to be overcome. Range is still relatively short - the Focus can do up to 200 miles maximum just now. And the problems of establishing hydrogen storage and filling points to the level that we have petrol pumps today is a major problem.

A chief fire officer friend winced as we discussed this particular situation. The prospect of having thousands of pressurised distribution tankers and storage tanks about the place was bad enough for his nightmares. With every car of the future also trundling around onboard tanks of the stuff didn’t bear thinking about.

“But I suppose if we were around when they invented the car first, we’d have banned them,” he murmured in resignation. “I mean, 14 gallons of petrol in every car, in a thin metal tank - it HAD to seem like disasters waiting to happen.”

In the FCV Focus, the hydrogen fuel which provides the chemical reaction to get electric current is stored in a big 5,000psi tank in the boot, and stores the hydrogen equivalent of about 15 litres of petrol (a standard petrol tank holds about 65 litres). The GM Hy-Wire uses three tanks under the car floor, and other technologies like the one prototyped in the Peugeot H2O ‘fire engine’ has the fuel in solid ‘hydride’ form.

The Ballard fuel cell stack is the most efficient yet built, and fits under the front seats. Since it doesn’t generate much heat, unlike a standard engine, it can be located in what otherwise would be ‘waste’ space.

Performance isn’t a problem - the FCV Focus can accelerate at a rate which would require a 170bhp 2.5-litre conventional engine to achieve. Though the actual 13.5sec 0-62mph of the car is close enough to a standard Focus for technical reasons.

The use of ‘regenerative braking’, which transfers stopping effort into electrical energy that goes back to the battery system, helps provide an energy efficiency of up to 90 percent, three times the energy efficiency of even the best of today’s IC engines.

The fuel consumption equivalent of the FC Focus is estimated at around 61mpg in normal petrol terms. Something which can be achieved by many modern diesels. But there are no emissions from the fuel cell, except water. And the fuel itself is virtually inexhaustible, unlike oil which is expected to run out or be too scarce to use for motive propulsion anytime between 50 and 150 years’ time.

There are problems to be overcome in producing the hydrogen in an energy-efficient way. But problems are precursors to solutions, and water and solar energy can be an environmentally-friendly way of producing the electrical power to electrolytically split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Though there are no emissions at the ‘tailpipe’ of the fuel cell car, the way that the hydrogen itself is produced must be counted in terms of total emissions of noxious and ‘greenhouse’ gases.

An indication of how the current oil-producing countries are aware of their finite resources is that a number of them, such as the United Arab Emirates and Dubai, are getting heavily involved in hydrogen production research.

The hydrogen could also be produced at ‘filling station’ source, using ‘reformers’ to extract hydrogen from natural gas. Ford’s researchers believe that infrastructures could be developed which would be capable of producing hydrogen fuel at an end-user price similar to that of petrol today.

The first production versions of the of a Focus FCV fleet will be taking to US roads next year for testing, with some of them being leased to Ford fleet customers. There will be a similar, smaller scale, testing programme in Germany.

By 2007, a ‘second generation’ fuel cell system will be on test in an expanded test fleet in selected cities (where there will be hydrogen refuelling facilities) in the US, Europe and Japan.

Ford expects to be selling FC cars in 2010 at prices which are competitive to ordinary IC-powered cars. By then, the total consumption and emissions levels are also likely to be something we can only imagine today.

There IS a future. And for Ford and every other car manufacturer it has the initials FC.

Which are likely to be much more important than GT ever were.