While the supply base for materials and components in Europe is well advanced and competitive, stack integration is lagging behind due to massive investment requirements and risks associated with commercialization. The project aims to develop approaches to address the critical barriers for substantial improvement of collaboration between major stakeholders and establishing a solid business model for an independent European stack integrator for automotive applications.

In the work proposed, key European players including automotive OEMs, component suppliers, and research organizations are involved to provide a structured approach to establish fuel cells as a mass product ready for market. While the target of this topic is PEM fuel cell stacks for car and light duty vehicle propulsion, synergies with other vehicle categories such as public transport buses and off-road vehicles as well as vehicular APUs and stationary applications will be considered and explored.

The key objective of the work proposed is to “Make a proposal for a market start of an European automotive fuel cell stack industry”.