Fuel Cell Bus Club

The Fuel Cell Bus Club comprises the participants of the projects CUTE, ECTOS and STEP ([1]). They currently operate the largest fleet of fuel cell buses in the world, 33 buses, as part of a two-year Mercedes-Benz Citaro hydrogen fuel cell bus trial with three buses in each city. The buses were estimated to cost US$1.2 million each and have a range of 300 km and carry around 70 passengers.

There are three buses each in 11 cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Perth, Porto, Reykjavik, Stockholm and Stuttgart.

Projects

Fuel Cell Bus Club

All information is shared between CUTE, ECTOS and STEP.

CUTE

CUTE stands for Clean Urban Transport for Europe. This European Union initiative is responsible for the fuel cell buses in 9 of the above-mentioned cities.

ECTOS

ECTOS stands for Ecological City Transport System. Icelandic New Energy is responsible for this project, the aim of which is to demonstrate "state-of-the-art" hydrogen technology by running part of the public transport system with fuel cell buses in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Hydrogen will be produced from domestic geothermal and hydro-powered energy sources by electrolysis.

STEP

STEP stands for Sustainable Transport Energy for Perth. This initiative of the Government of Western Australia's Department of Planning and Infrastructure (DPI), being run by Path Transit (mostly) through Transperth is responsible for the fuel cell buses in Perth, Western Australia. These three buses are called "EcoBuses".

STEP is also sharing information with other fuel cell bus projects (see below).

Three fuel cell buses began service in Perth on September 27, 2004.

According to Transperth's website, the EcoBuses will be out of service until further notice (the page was updated on April 8, 2005), however, the DPI's website seems to have no information on this.

Partners

The buses were manufactured by DaimlerChrysler, the manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, and use fuel cell engines manufactured by XCELLSIS Fuel Cell Engines, now a division of Ballard Power Systems, developed as an alliance of Ballard, DaimlerChrysler, and Ford Motor Company. A number of the cities are receiving their hydrogen from BP. The trial is being independently evaluated, mostly by Murdoch University.

The Perth trial has received 2.5 million dollars funding from the Department of the Environment and Heritage and the Australian Greenhouse Office.

The Perth trial has been endorsed by the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

Other Trials

The trial by the Fuel Cell Bus Club follows on the heels of the two-year 3-bus demonstration projects in Chicago and Vancouver (1998-2000). The six buses in those trials, which used an earlier version of Ballard fuel cell and different Daimler bus body, carried more than 200,000 passengers and traveled over 118,000 kilometers (73,000 miles).
Perth has also agreed to share data with the 2-year 3-bus trial in Oakland, California beginning in late 2004. During this period, Sunline Transit (Palm Springs, California) will operate one bus and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (Santa Clara, California) will operate 3 buses although some of these are from a different manufacturer.

Projects