The plug-in hybrid is on the way - Paddy Comynlooks at Ford's Edge Plug-In, and makes some prophecies for 10 years ahead. . .
IT'S DUBLIN - 2018. Work is under way on the expansion of the overcrowded M50 to five lanes, and barrier-free tolling has just started to work properly. The long-promised Metro has just been opened by An Taoiseach, Roy Keane, and the summers have got so wet that Carlow now has its own ferry.
We will no longer stop at traditional petrol stations, as regular unleaded petrol is no more. You can have biofuel made from wood, or even better, hydrogen. It might sounds like science fiction, but the hydrogen car is said to be a mere 10 years away from making economic sense. But here at The Irish Times we like to bring you a look at the future, so here is the SUV of tomorrow, the Ford Edge Fuel Cell Plug-In Hybrid. Some of you may be familiar with hybrid technology - usually it means a petrol, or more recently diesel engine, twinned with an electric motor to provide increased power and reduced emissions.
But despite the fact that when it's running on its electric motor there are zero emissions, there is a combustion engine in the background, and that means fossil fuel and CO2 emissions.
So what if you twin two powerful electric motors with a fuel cell stack powered from hydrogen? And here it is, all €1,000,000 worth of one-off, electric/hydrogen-powered SUV. Weighing 2.5 tonnes, the only thing that comes out of the beautifully designed, centrally mounted exhaust is water droplets.
The Ford Edge with HySeries Drive, as the vehicle is known, is a plug-in hybrid which is powered by a 336-volt lithium-ion battery pack at all times. The vehicle drives the first 40 kilometres each day on stored electricity, after which the fuel cell begins operating to keep the battery pack charged. The fuel cell gives a further 320 kilometres of range to add up to a total of 360 emission-free kilometres. You can stretch out the time between fill-ups on hydrogen to more than 640 kilometres if you drive carefully.
The Edge itself is quite an impressive-looking vehicle, with Range Rover alloys and Aston Martin door handles and inside it all looks pretty standard, with a steering wheel, an automatic transmission which is really just a forward and back lever, and a display on the centre console to tell you what is going on underneath.
What is going on underneath is that when your charged battery pack which is driving the electric motors, depletes to approximately 40 per cent, the hydrogen fuel cell halo stack, which are made up of 220 cells, turns on and begins generating electricity to recharge the batteries.
In fuel-cell conversion, the hydrogen is reacted with oxygen to produce water and electricity, the latter of which is used to power the electric motors. The 350-bar tank stores 4.5kg of hydrogen - providing a range of 320 kilometres.
Start the Edge up and nothing much happens, not to the ears at least - just a series of lights tell you that something has actually started underneath. Put it into D, and it moves off sounding like a milk float and this noise continues for the duration of the journey, barely rising above a whisper.
By combining a plug-in powertrain with fuel cell technology, Ford has greatly reduced the size, weight, cost and complexity of a conventional fuel cell system by more than 50 per cent, so there is a proper boot in the back, and it also doubles the lifetime of the fuel cell stack.
The difficulties and challenges at the moment with this technology are many. Getting the right infrastructure in place, storing hydrogen, the huge component costs and the sustainable production of hydrogen remain the major challenges facing this emission-free method of transport.
But since computers used to take up entire rooms, and you used to have to take out finance on a video recorder - the technology is expected to get smaller, cheaper and ultimately more accessible. Until it does, though, the oil reserves will continue to be drained for some time to come.
Plug-In Hybrid Battery Pack: 176bhp
Range:40km
Fuel Storage:4.5kg Hydrogen @ 350bar
Dual e-Drive Electric Motors:460Nm of torque
Top Speed:140km/h
Fuel Cell Stack:Ballard Halo Stack; Range using fuel cell stack: 320km
Price:€1,000,000
Available:not for a while; Ford reckons it will be 10 years before this technology becomes affordable.