Latest Ballard Automotive Fuel Cell Goes Out to Customers

Ballard Power Systems says the first evaluation units of its advanced fuel cell platform, the Ballard Mark 902, have been delivered to customers while orders for delivery of production units by end of this year are being received.

TORONTO, Ontario, CA, 2001-11-14 [SolarAccess.com] The Mark 902 platform will power buses in the ten-city European Union bus program announced earlier this year. Earlier Mark 900 technology was used in vehicles such as DaimlerChrysler’s Necar 5, Ford’s FCV, Honda’s FCX-V4 and Nissan’s Xterra FCV. Building on the success of the earlier series, the Mark 902 establishes a new standard of performance by optimizing lower cost, design for volume manufacture, reliability, power density and compatibility with customer system requirements, say Ballard officials. It represents Ballard’s fourth generation of transportation fuel cell platforms. Designed to meet the rugged conditions of transportation applications, the Mark 902 platform allows configurations for stationary power generation use, and is scalable from 10 to 300 kW, depending on customer requirements and applications. Typical power output for transportation markets is 85 kW for passenger vehicles and 300 kW for transit buses. Ballard designed the Mark 902 to accommodate its technology roadmap program, allowing incorporation of advanced technologies as they are developed. Noteworthy in the Mark 902 design are Ballard’s flowfield plates that are made from flexible graphite material and developed over a ten-year period. Supplied by Graftech, the graphite plates provide excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, low cost and compatibility with continuous process manufacturing volume. The unit cell design of the Mark 902 allows scalable combinations to achieve a variety of power outputs. Ballard claims that its fuel cell architecture has achieved power densities of 2,200 watts/liter, and provides great flexibility in designing fuel cell stacks to meet customer performance and cost requirements.