LA MOTOR SHOW: VW Golf SportWagen HyMotion Concept Car
Long-range, zero-emission driving was once a pipedream. Volkswagen says it's nearly hereFresh from the acclaim of its Golf GTE plug-in hybrid launch, Volkswagen has used the Los Angeles Motor Show to show its next step into hydrogen power.
It has fitted its acclaimed Golf with a combination of a hydrogen fuel cell and a range-extending lithium-ion battery to create a small electric car boasting 500km of fuel range.
The first MQB-architecture car to be fitted with a fuel cell, the Golf Sportwagen HyMotion research car combines a fuel-cell stack in the engine bay with a 57kg lithium-ion battery under the boot to deliver what it insists is the best of both electric worlds with the least possible range anxiety.
With a 100kW/270Nm NT-PEM fuel-cell stack sitting up front, four carbon-fibre and aluminium H2 tanks along the central tunnel and the 1.1kW/h battery above the rear axle, the all-wheel drive Golf can stretch out to 500km of range on the NEDC cycle.
Volkswagen claims the car will take 10 seconds to reach 100km/h and has a 160km/h top speed.
Volkswagen planned the MQB architecture to accept fuel-cells and, like the Hymotion research vehicle, a plug-in hybrid fuel-cell, but it's not alone. Volkswagen also has a fleet of Passat HyMotion vehicles testing in California.
With the Golf already offered with petrol, diesel, gas, electric and plug-in hybrid powertrains, the hydrogen option is just about the last one the ubiquitous small car has yet to put on sale. Yet Volkswagen insists this is only because the public infrastructure for hydrogen supply is not yet convenient or significant.
The 300-cell fuel-cell stack forces the hydrogen onto an anode, where each atom is broken into protons and electrons, with the protons migrating through the polymer cell membranes to reach the cathode. There they react with oxygen, forced as air into the stack by an electric turbocharger, to create water vapour.
The electrons, meanwhile, supply the car's electricity, delivering between 0.6 and 0.8 Volts per cell for a system efficiency of about 60 percent of the available energy in the H2.
Volkswagen has been researching fuel cells for production since the 1990s and the Golf Sportwagen HyMotion concept car also has a single-speed transmission, an electric turbocharger to ensure airflow into the fuel-cell stack, a DC/AC and a DC/DC converter.
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