Projects funded through this solicitation must demonstrate an advanced, zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell-electric truck or bus that can meet challenging duty cycle requirements such as long routes, limited refueling opportunities, and high payload weight capacity needs. Projects must develop improved hydrogen fuel cell vehicle integration strategies or integrate pre-commercial component technologies (e.g., more durable and lower cost fuel cells, more efficient air management, lighter on-board storage tanks or tank configurations) to improve performance, fuel efficiency, durability, maintainability, and total cost of ownership. Projects must aim to advance the technology readiness level (TRL) of the improved hydrogen fuel cell vehicle integration strategy and/or pre-commercial component technology from TRL 4-5 to TRL 7-8. Projects must have a path to commercialization to ensure benefits beyond the initial vehicle demonstration.
Along with any other proposed targets (e.g., horsepower, torque, range, payload weight capacity, and refueling time) important for commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell trucks and buses, projects must aim to achieve the target performance metrics indicated in Table 1. These and other critical target metrics should be identified and explained in the Project Performance Metrics (Attachment 11).
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Truck and Bus Target Performance Metrics
Metric | Truck Targets | Bus Targets |
Fuel cell system lifetime | 25,000 hours or 10 years/ 1,000,000 miles | 25,000 hours or 12 years/ 500,000 miles |
Fuel economy improvement over equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE) powered vehicle, or Energy Economy Ratio (EER)[1] | At least 1.9x | At least 1.9x |
Total cost of ownership reduction compared to current fuel cell vehicle technology | At least 30 percent | At least 30 percent |
In addition, projects must address the following general requirements:
- Develop a heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell truck or bus design that can meet the equivalent operational performance of a traditional ICE-powered vehicle including but not limited to horsepower, torque, range, payload weight capacity, refueling time, and durability. The hydrogen fuel cell truck or bus design must be able to effectively compete with a traditional ICE-powered vehicle as a one-to-one replacement.
- Incorporate learnings from initial pre-production prototype demonstrations and component-level advancements to accelerate progress towards the introduction of commercially attractive heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell trucks and buses.
- Develop engineering advancements or innovative integration strategies to improve performance, efficiency, durability, and operating costs of the hydrogen fuel cell truck or bus over representative duty cycles in pursuit of the target metrics identified in Table 1 and proposed in Attachment 11. Evaluate key design tradeoffs between various subsystems including the hydrogen fuel cells, onboard storage, thermal management, power electronics, batteries, controls, and others to optimally meet the performance needs of the vehicle application.
- Demonstrate the vehicle using the improved hydrogen fuel cell powertrain with a California fleet in representative real world operation. Demonstrations must be designed to validate the vehicle’s ability to meet the specified challenging duty cycle requirements. Projects may include multiple demonstration sites and fleet partners, but at least one demonstration site must be located in a California natural gas Investor Owned Utility (NG IOU) territory.
- Analyze collected real world demonstration data to validate design improvements and calculate a projected total cost of ownership with a detailed breakdown of capital, operating, and maintenance costs associated with the vehicle. Compare the final vehicle cost and performance metrics with equivalent ICE and battery-electric vehicles. Projects must also compare final vehicle metrics with the current state of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology to document improvements.
- Leverage real world demonstration data to identify opportunities for commercialization and continued technology advancement.
- Conduct outreach and collaborate with community and industry partners to share the results of the demonstration and educate the public on project benefits.
[1] EER means the dimensionless value that represents the difference in energy efficiency of a fuel as used in a vehicle powertrain compared to a reference fuel. EERs are often a comparison of miles per gasoline gallon equivalent between two fuels.
There is up to $4,000,000 available for grants awarded under this solicitation. The minimum funding amount for each project is $1,500,000. The maximum funding amount is $2,000,000.
Match funding is required in the amount of at least 20 percent of the requested project funds. Applications that include match funding will receive additional points during the scoring phase.
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