Overview
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”.
Funding
Results
Final Report Summary - AUTO-STACK (Automotive fuel cell stack cluster initiative for Europe)
The project combined key European players including automotive OEMs, component suppliers and research organisations in a structured approach to facilitate the development and commercialisation of automotive fuel cells in Europe. The consortium assessed ways to identify and reduce the critical barriers for better collaboration between stakeholders and generate a more attractive business case for a European automotive stack industry during pre-commercial and early commercial phases.
Activities did include the development of a common OEM specification and stack platform concept, analysis of the potential for meeting the mid-term technical and cost targets by the European supply chain, establishment of a technology roadmap, and assessment of synergies with other applications and finally definition of a business concept for a European stack industry.
The results worked out during the project will be used by the consortium members in setting up their specific R&D plans. They will provide valuable input for subsequent product development as well as R&D proposals. The cost model developed within the project will also provide further guidance in hardware development projects. The project results have already been used as a basis to propose component and stack development projects during the FCH-JU AIP 2010 and 2011 calls for proposals by members of the consortium. Further R&D-proposals are in preparation.
The project results have been disseminated via the project web page, conference presentations and public workshops. Proceedings of the public workshops are available for download from the project web page. It is intended to extract selected project results for publication in scientific and trade journals. Furthermore, the public summary reports of the project deliverables as well as the public final report will be available for download from the project web page.