Full Title: Fuel Cell Buses in U.S. Transit Fleets: Current Status 2017
Author(s): Leslie Eudy and Matthew Post
Publisher(s): National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Publication Date: November 1, 2017
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
This report, published annually, summarizes the progress of fuel cell electric bus (FCEB)
development in the United States and discusses the achievements and challenges of introducing
fuel cell propulsion in transit. The report provides a summary of results from evaluations
performed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). NREL considers these FCEB
designs to be around technology readiness level (TRL) 7 to 8, that is, full-scale validation in a
relevant environment. At this point in development, capital and operating costs for FCEBs are
still much higher than those of conventional diesel technology. This is to be expected
considering diesel is a very mature technology (TRL 9) and FCEBs are still in the development
stage. This annual status report combines results from all FCEB demonstrations, tracks the
progress of the FCEB industry toward meeting technical targets (as shown in Table ES-1),
documents the lessons learned, and discusses the path forward for commercial viability of fuel
cell technology for transit buses. These data and analyses help provide needed information to
guide future early-stage research and development.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal
Transit Administration (FTA) have established performance and cost targets for FCEBs. These
targets, established with industry input, include interim targets for 2016 and ultimate targets for
commercialization. FCEB technology continues to show progress toward meeting technical
targets for reliability and durability while also decreasing in cost. Table ES-1 summarizes the
performance of the FCEBs in the report compared to these targets