Electric mobility must become suitable for everyday use by everyone in order to reduce environmental pollution, especially in inner-city areas. For the daily commute to work, battery storage is today the most suitable means of choice. Long-distance drivers, however, have to plan for longer stops despite quick-charging columns. This is a clear advantage of hydrogen drives, whose tanks can be filled in a few minutes. In a joint research project funded by the HessenAgentur, the EDAG Group and Hexagon Purus (a specialist in composite high-pressure tanks and systems for installation in vehicles of all kinds) are investigating how a hybrid storage system can be implemented that can combine the advantages of both drive alternatives.
The research project, scheduled to run for 18 months, will develop a flexible storage system for the vehicle floor in which the latest generation of batteries and hydrogen pressure tanks can be installed in parallel. The customer should then be able to configure the respective number of storage individually. It will be able to cover daily distances with battery electricity and long journeys with energy from a fuel cell powered by hydrogen tanks. This solution, based on the "EDAG ScaleBase" scalable vehicle platform developed by the EDAG Group, offers great advantages for vehicles used for business and private purposes. The inter-changeability of the storage units also enables resource-saving secondary use and meets the sustainability requirements of the EDAG Group and Hexagon Purus.