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Fuel cell vehicles are undergoing extensive research and development because of their potential for high efficiency and low emissions. Because fuel cell vehicles remain expensive and there is limited demand for hydrogen at present, very few fueling stations are being built. To try to accelerate the development of a hydrogen economy, some original equipment manufacturers in the automotive industry have been working on a hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine (ICE) as an intermediate step. This paper compares the fuel economy potential of hydrogen powertrains to conventional gasoline vehicles. Several timeframes are considered: 2010, 2015, 2030, and 2045. To address the technology status uncertainty, a triangular distribution approach was implemented for each component technology. The fuel consumption and cost of five powertrain configurations will be discussed and compared with the conventional counterpart.

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) combine two sources of energy and offer a wide variety of component and drivetrain configurations. However, optimizing the blending of these two energy sources is complex. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) working with the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV), maintains hybrid vehicle simulation software, the PNGV System Analysis Toolkit (PSAT). PSAT allows users to choose the best configuration and to optimize the control strategy in simulations. The importance of component models and the complexity involved in setting up optimized control laws require validation of the models and control strategies developed in PSAT. In this paper, we first describe our capability to validate each component model with an actual component test, using test stand facilities. Once each component model has been validated, ANL can perform tests on a whole HEV by using a chassis dynamometer.