EU Project ZEFER testing business case for fuel cell cars

Zero Emission Fleet vehicles for European Roll-out, or ZEFER in short, is a new EU project that will deploy a total of 180 FCVs in three European capitals, namely Brussels, Paris, and London. The €26m project is designed to see how hydrogen fleets perform in the real world, that is as taxis and police cars.

The British will make the start with Green Tomate Cars expecting 25 Toyota Mirai to arrive in London this week. The chauffeur service has been running low-emission hire cabs for some time and is one of the fleet operators that take part in ZEFER.

In order to test FCVs in taxi fleets as well as cars for the police ZEFER unites all interested parties, from vehicle and hydrogen infrastructure providers to fleet operators. Led by Cambridge-based consultancy Element Energy, the ZEFER consortium obviously got Toyota on board but also includes Air Liquide and ITM Power Trading as well as fleet operators Green Tomato Cars, HYPE and the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. BMW and Linde are there to observe while other partners are supporting the analysis and policy conclusions (Cenex and the Mairie de Paris).

As well as testing the cars under high-mileage operation, the project aims to bolster the hydrogen infrastructure in each of the cities. With the vehicles in daily use, each will create hydrogen demand roughly four times that of a regular car. According to the consortium, the goal is to gather data and disseminate results to demonstrate the business case for future FCEV adoption.

All fuel cell vehicles shall have arrived in London, Paris and Brussels before the year’s end and are expected to accumulate zero emission mileage rather rapidly. The project website says in Paris and Brussels mileages will be over 90,000 km a year; and in London mileages will be over 40,000 km per year.

itm-power.com, theengineer.co.uk, fch.europa.eu (project website)