H2GO is an 8 months EIT Urban Mobility KIC co-funded project. The consortium aims to retrofit a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) into a HydrogenBEV and demonstrate the advantages of hydrogen adoption in several urban applications where the BEV might face some challenges in terms of range, cost and limited charging infrastructure.
H2GO will in the end provide an optimized FCH stack easy to be integrated as a range extender. Through a series of interrelated tasks, H2GO will demonstrate the capacity starting from two market ready products to:
- be able to improve FCH energy efficiency installing an innovative blower;
- develop an easy range extender system capable to be installed as ALKE’ BEV retrofit kit.
One of the main problems of utility electric vehicle is the limited battery capacity that determines the so-called range anxiety. fast charger and increased capacity are not environmentally friendly sustainable solutions, since fast charging accelerates battery ageing while increase capacity relies on limited raw material in a still unprepared decommissioning battery value chain.
In the meantime, a new way to manufacture FCH and electrolyzer is opening a new hope for electromobility. Rapid Transport Electrification in EU is affected by several bottlenecks: lack of a proper fast charging grid architecture and need to oversize automotive battery pack to offer a petrol car like range comfort, determine that still electric vehicle are expensive and hard to be used for long commuting or in intensive working activities, moreover still EU is not ready to recycle huge amount of batteries.
The consortium wants therefore to explore the possibility to use FCH as a range extender of those urban light duty electric vehicles that need to operate 8-10 hours a day continuously avoiding any charging stop. By adopting FCH will be possible to reduce the battery pack capacity, to ensure longer working cycle and quick refuelling operation, while assuring lighter weight, clean and silent operation.
H2GO not only answers the demands for green vehicles, with high capacity and long range capabilities, but also aims to increase the willingness of OEMs to embrace this technological transition. The consortium’s UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION assures a new concept of vehicle capable of reconciling the fracture between electric and hydrogen transition activists.
Decarbonization might be achieved only through an integrated adoption of green technologies.
H2GO 