Morgan working on fuel cell sports car

Morgan is working on a fuel cell car that’s based on the Aero Eight and will be completed within three years. The LIFECar project is in collaboration with the UK Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), fuel cell maker QinetiQ, BOC, OSCar, and a number of educational institutions. The fuel cell will power four separate electric motors, one at each drive wheel.

Regenerative braking and surplus energy will be used to charge ultra-capacitors, which will release their energy when the car is accelerating. This architecture will allow the car to have a much smaller fuel cell than is conventionally regarded as necessary. It will only be as large as is required to provide cruising speed, which is approximately 24 kW. The £1.9m budget for the project will be covered by the DTI and other industry sources.

Charles Morgan, founder of Morgan, said in a statement that Morgan’s goal was to “combine advanced technology while retaining the best in traditional ways of designing and building cars,” and that they wanted to build “a sports car that is beautiful, brilliant to drive but pollution free.”

We love that fact that this innovative small car company that produces retro designed cars is working on cutting edge fuel cell technology, even though the chances of actual production close to nil.



Click ahead for more technical information about the LIFEcar.

Technical Background

The car's fuel cell system operates by electrochemically combining on-board hydrogen with oxygen taken from the air outside. Although in most respects fuel cells are more like engines than batteries, to the extent that they generate energy from fuel in a tank rather than store energy, like batteries, they use electrodes (solid electrical conductors) with an electrolyte (an electrically conductive medium). When the hydrogen molecules come into contact with the negative electrodes, the molecules split into protons and electrons. The protons are then carried across the proton exchange membrane to the positive electrode of the fuel cell whilst the electrons travel around the external circuit as electricity. The molecules of the hydrogen and oxygen are combined chemically, with water as the only waste product. The only emission from the QinetiQ fuel cell will be water vapour. The electric power generated by the fuel cells powers the electric motors and turns the wheels of the vehicle.