The announcement of this new fuel cell development program comes two weeks after SSPC announced that it entered into a joint venture to develop a fuel cell powered van with Global Fuel Cell Corporation. Fuel cells run on hydrogen gas that can be produced from variety of fuels including natural gas, propane, bio-diesel, methanol, and gasoline.
Natural gas is the fuel of choice and presents the least amount of problems in conversion.
Unfortunately, automobiles cannot carry enough natural gas tanks and therefore have range limitations. However, fuel cells also have very large market applications as stationary power generation units. Power generator fuel cells are not confronted with the same technical hurdles as automobile fuel cells. For example, stationary fuel cells can run indefinitely on natural gas supplied by local gas mains, which presently exist in most U.S. cities. Secondly, the space limitations in automobiles do not present a problem in stationary fuel cell applications.