http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10940 Planet Ark London council first buyer of fuel cell vehicle
UK: May 24, 2001 LONDON - The first zero-emissions fuel cell vehicle to be sold commercially was snapped up yesterday by London's Westminster City Council. The van, which will be used in the upkeep of London's parks, was sold to the council by UK-based makers ZeVco for 33,000 pounds ($47,000). "The cost of making this vehicle ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds, but it is like a prototype. It's to show people what fuel cell technology can do, and hopefully attract investment," ZeVco General Manager Alan Osborne told Reuters. Fuel cell vehicles run on an electrochemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen which produces electricity and water. The fuel cell acts as an on board charger to power the vehicle with water its only emission. The ZeVco vehicle has a top speed of 100 kilometres an hour (62 mph) can accelerate from 0 to 50 km/h in 15 seconds and is 50 percent cheaper to run than a conventional combustion engine-powered vehicle. The vehicle looks no different from an ordinary van but it is extremely quiet. "If we made another one now the cost would halve, and you can imagine that if we made a lot the cost would reduce massively," Osborne said. The difficulty of installing a hydrogen refueling network similar to a petrol station network across Britain means that for the foreseeable future fuel cell vehicle producers will target fleet operators as a potential market, Osborne said. "The best market for us is duty vehicles, fleet operators in urban environments such as delivery vans, buses and taxis - people who can bring a fleet back to a central depot and refuel there," he added. Executive Chairman of ZeVco's UK-based parent company ZeTek Nicholas Abson said: "We have been approached by the one of the big three courier companies with a view to producing a vehicle fleet for them." No details of the negotiations were as yet available, he added. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
