London’s hydrogen fuel cell taxi is ready for the 2012 Olympics
10 August 2010 | Green Technology | 1 Comment
Lotus, a well known British company, famous for its Formula 1 and Elise sports cars, designed a new taxi powered by hydrogen in order to serve London by 2012 Olympics. This new “green” car looks like any other black London taxi cab, but under its hood lies the latest hydrogen fuel cell technology. With two small electric motors to run the rear wheels, this new taxi cab does not produce any emissions and still can run for 250 miles, reaching a top speed of 81mph.
Kit Malthouse, London’s deputy mayor wants to build six hydrogen filling stations in the capital and he also planed to planned to bring on the city streets around 50 hydrogen powered taxis and 150 hydrogen-powered buses.
“The intent is to take the taxis and retrofit a powertrain that has zero tailpipe emissions…But also it has to deliver some very important things: a reasonable range, very quick refuelling time and no modifying the passenger or driver space.”, said Henri Winand, of Intelligent Energy.
They have explained how this hydrogen powered taxi cab works: This taxi can run using only its battery pack but it has also an other important advantage: the hydrogen fuel cell produces enough electricity to feed the battery pack under the taxi’s floor and then the batteries will drive electric motors in the wheels. Simple and efficient! “To do that with a purely battery-electric vehicle, you would have to take up most of the space at the back with batteries, where the passengers are, or certainly you would constrict that space substantially…And you’d probably have to stop halfway through the day to plug in somewhere.”, said Winand.
Tags: electric taxi, Fuel Cells, hydrogen british taxi, hydrogen cab, hydrogen fuel, hydrogen powered taxi, london hybrid cab, london hydrogen taxi, taxi cab
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