An agreement forged between Mercedes-Benz, Renault-Nissan and Ford will bring down the cost of fuel cell technology in production cars to about the same level as for hybrids within three years, Benz's head of corporate research has told a German publication.
Speaking with Automobilwoche, Dr Herbert Kohler announced that a Mercedes-Benz fuel cell vehicle could have reached production by now – but not at a price affordable for consumers. Recently, however, Mercedes-Benz has joined forces with Nissan/Renault and Ford to develop the hardware and roll out shared components across the brands, thus yielding considerable savings to be passed on to the vehicle buyers. "We could have introduced a production-ready fuel cell vehicle earlier," Dr Kohler explained. "It was previously our intention to launch one in 2014-2015. Then last year, we entered our collaboration with Nissan and Ford to jointly develop a fuel cell system while reducing costs due to higher volumes. All three partners would use the same components as much as possible. That is why we are working toward the objective of 2017."
The interviewer then asked the Benz executive how the fuel cell vehicle would be priced, relative to Toyota's recently announced FCV model, which is going on sale in Japan this year priced at around $73,000, but not likely to reach Australian shores. "Our goal is for the price of a fuel cell vehicle to be oriented to the price of the hybrid version of a comparable model," Dr Kohler replied.
While the best known Benz fuel cell vehicle to date is the F-Cell, based on the B-Class hatch, fuel cell technology lends itself to being packaged in different footprints, which means a fuel-cell E-Class, S-Class or C-Class. It could even find its way into a Mercedes-AMG model. With Mercedes-Benz thinking along these lines – and Toyota already working towards the same goal – lower priced fuel cell vehicles from Nissan/Renault and Ford shouldn't be too far away either. But it's all academic in a country like Australia, where hydrogen is not freely available through service station outlets.