Full Title: Review of the Research Program of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership: First Report
Author(s): National Academy of Sciences
Publisher(s): National Academy of Sciences
Publication Date: January 1, 2005
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
This is the first report of the Committee on Review of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Research Program, Phase I, formed in the fall of 2004 by the National Re- search Council (NRC). This FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership is a collaboration among the U.S. government—in particular, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)—the U.S. Council for Automotive Research (USCAR), whose members are DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors Cor- poration), and five major energy companies: BP America, Chevron Corporation, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil Corporation, and Shell Hydrogen (U.S.). At DOE, the program is managed through the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). This is a broad, very challenging research effort to assist in the development of high-risk technologies that will enable the vision of “a clean and sustainable transportation energy future” (DOE, 2004). To achieve that future, the program envisions a transition pathway involving more efficient internal combustion engines (ICEs), followed by increasing use of advanced ICE hybrid electric vehicles and then, by 2015, enablement of the private sector to make a decision about the commercialization of fuel-cell-powered personal transportation vehicles that run on economically competitive hydrogen produced from a variety of energy sources. Research goals have been established for 2010 and 2015 that, if attained, promise to overcome the multiple high-risk barriers to achieving that vision.