Demonstration of Small 4-Wheel fuel cell passenger vehicle Applications in Regional and Municipal transport (SWARM)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Joint Technology Initiatives (Annex IV-SP1)
Theme: Public-private partnerships
Destination: Fuel Cells and Hydrogen
Action type: Collaborative project
Partnership: FCH (Art-185)
Countries involved: United Kingdom,France,United Kingdom,United Kingdom,Belgium,Belgium,Germany,Germany,Germany,Belgium,Germany,Germany,United Kingdom,Germany,Germany
Call:  (FCH-JU-2011-1, 2011)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2018-10-31
Duration (months): 73.0
Total project cost (EUR): 15294319.66
EU funding (EUR): 6712985.6
Participants: 20
Project status: CLOSED

This project will establish a demonstration fleet of small passenger vehicles that builds on and expands existing hydrogen refuelling infrastructure. Three European regions will be participating in this effort: the UK (the Midlands and Wales), Belgium (the Brussels area and Wallonia), and North Rhine Westphalia Germany (Cologne/Weser Ems). Due to siting difficulties for two of the project HRS, Wales and the North Rhine Westphalia regions have been selected to replace Plymouth and Bremen in the project respectively. Each of these regions will deploy a new hydrogen refuelling site to close the gaps in a continuous ‘hydrogen highways’ that leads from Scotland via the Midlands to London, connecting to Brussels and on to Cologne and Hamburg/Scandinavia/Berlin. The vehicles employed are low-cost, high fuel-efficiency, hybridised, light-weight passenger cars specifically designed for city and regional transport. These vehicles provide a complementary pathway to commercialisation to the large Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) of hydrogen fuel cell options, by allowing near-term rollout on a commercial basis to a wide range of users – in parallel with the planned rollouts for large OEM vehicles from 2015. Their deployment regions will gain the infrastructure, public exposure and technological understanding to act as seed locations for future large scale OEM vehicle rollout. This project will deploy an unprecedented number of these new road vehicles for demonstration with a view to preparing for large scale rollout following the end of the project. Three organisations will contribute 2, 12 and 20 vehicles respectively. These will be put in the hands of users in a variety of real-life operating environments. An extensive data monitoring exercise will run throughout the demonstration phase, allowing the reliability of the vehicles tested by different users to be evaluated and leading to recommendations for the improvement of future, fully commercial vehicle designs. The three European regions will deploy several hydrogen refuelling stations, adding a total of 3 new stations to existing supply sites, contributing to some of the first regional hydrogen refuelling clusters in Europe. Each region will as a consequence either own a high-standard filling station with high capacity (200 kg/day) and high performance (70 MPa) refuelling technology (Wallonia, Frechen), or build on existing smaller stations of lower capacity and pressure (UK Midlands and Wales). The project will be a near-commercial stepping stone and will include an outreach activity timed to coincide with OEM’s commercialisation plans in the post-2018 period, to attract further vehicles to the newly developed infrastructures - by offering cost effective and readily available focal points for additional hydrogen fleets developing around these regions. Therefore supplementing the SWARM fleet and infrastructure by more vehicles and hydrogen filling stations supplied through other projects and separate funding.

Keywords: lightweight vehicles,fuel cell vehicles,vehicle fleets,hydrogen highway,fuel cell vehicle demonstration,hydrogen refuelling infrastructure