While Volkswagen may be offering their first electric car as early as 2010 and are already imagining their 2028 electric offerings, the company's chief research officer, Juergen Leohold, doesn't see an explosion in the numbers of electro-mobiles on the road any time soon. In fact, by the time 2028 rolls around, he only expects them to make up only 10 per cent of that future fleet. What does he see as the big hold up? Batteries. According to the German boffin, lithium ion batteries may have already come a long way but they still lack in energy density and production capacity. Their current cost is also seen as prohibitively high. To top all that, he doesn't think it will ever top the internal combustion engine when it comes applications like long-haul trucks. Way to buzzkill, dude.

All that is not to say he is not a fan of the technology. Au contraire, mes frères. He expects VW to start off with small city cars, not unlike the Up! pictured above, but then use the electric drivetrain in larger, family size models. He says, "We have an ambition to electrify more than just the really small cars, but also our main model series, the Golf," Ah, that's more like it!

[Source: Deutsche Welle]

The Associated Press is reporting that last Tuesday researchers at Volkswagen unveiled the first viable high-temperature fuel cell (HTFC) for passenger vehicles. In theory, the benefits of an HTFC over the more common low-temperature fuel cell would allow it to run more efficiently while demanding less from the environment.

Typically a low-temperature fuel cell runs at 176 degrees Fahrenheit whereas VW's high-temperature version can run at levels as high as 248. Because of this the HFTC doesn't need the complex, expensive cooling system required by the less tolerant LTFC. Also, the HFTC is lighter, more compact, more stable and cheaper than the LTFC. Juergen Leohold, head of Volkswagen's corporate research, went as far as to say, "we no longer give much chance to low-temperature fuel cells going into series production."

VW says the new fuel cell design could be used in passenger cars by 2020. I wonder if that'll give us enough time to clean our electricity grid and figure out how to make hydrogen in an environmentally friendly fashion.

[Source: Associated Press via International Herald Tribune]