E-car platform with fuel cell option
In addition to MEB and PPE, the VW Group is developing a third electric car kit that can also be equipped with a fuel cell. For luxury cars and commercial vehicles.
VW boss Diess does not want to know much about hydrogen cars yet and is officially fully committed to battery electric vehicles (BEV). In a first wave, the Group wants to build 15 million electric cars based on the modular electrical construction kit (MEB), for more powerful vehicles (more than 306 hp), Audi and Porsche jointly develop a second kit, the Premium Platform Electric (PPE). But the development of a vehicle architecture that can draw its energy not only from batteries, but also from a fuel cell, is already running. It is called Modular Platform Electric (MPE).
"The VW Group is developing a modular platform e-mobility for our cars from the B-segment upwards, which can be used across all brands," said Michael Jost, Head of Strategy of the Volkswagen brand and Group Strategy Product, the Automobilwoche.
Building set with overlaps?
This sounds confusing at first, because so far the Modular Electrical Box (MEB) for cars up to the B segment (middle class, comparable to the VW Passat) as well as the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) were known, which Porsche developed together with Audi. At the MEB stands the ID.-family; the first is the ID.3, which should roll to the first customers from 2020 onwards. The PPE should be ready for series production in 2023. First comes the first PPE Porsche, the successor to the Macan. Audi uses the PPE not first for an SUV, but for a four-door coupe, the size of an A5 Sportback. Internally, the Ingolstadt designate the competitors for BMWs i4 as E6.
The PPE should also carry more, larger and stronger vehicles, so cars from the B segment, perhaps even the successor of Audi E-Tron GT and Porsche Taycan, although technically largely identical, but not based on a separate kit.
New architecture is fuel cell compatible
So if PPE and MPE are both meant for cars from the B-segment, what's the difference? Apparently, the MPE is also intended for the use of fuel cells. For in the Automobilwoche Jost also relativized the negative attitude of VW CEO Herbert Diess to the fuel cell: "In the long run, roughly estimated at the end of the next decade, hydrogen is additionally considered as an energy source for electrically driven vehicles." And further, Jost said about the MPE: "Scalability extends not only to the length or width of the cars, but also to the application areas of volume, premium and luxury."
The fuel cell is needed for all vehicles that are particularly heavy (and correspondingly strong) or that should be able to get very far. Say: luxury cars, but also commercial vehicles. This fits Jost's description of the platform, whose "scalability extends not only on the length or width of the cars, but also on the application areas of volume, premium and luxury".
Both luxury travel cars and commercial vehicles save the fuel cell huge and heavy batteries. At the moment the ID.3., Whose smallest battery has only 48 kWh capacity, weighs about 1.700 kilograms. Current e-cars the size of an Audi E-Tron or Mercedes EQC weigh even more than 2.5 tons. With the largest battery that the kit allows (111 kWh), an MEB car would also come in well over two tons. The practice range would still not be much higher than 500 kilometers.
This is easier to visualize with the fuel cell drive, the fast refueling of 400 to 500 kilos reach by filling the hydrogen tank would be added.
Audi plans fuel cell hybrid
The development of the hydrogen drive is located in the Volkswagen Group at Audi - the MPE would then probably get fuel cells from Ingolstadt, without the new kit would be intended only for the Ingolstadt. Specifically, the development of MPE platforms for commercial vehicles is hardly imaginable for the Ingolstadt, the fuel cell already. In 2018, Audi already announced a patent exchange for Hyundai fuel cell technology, which should accelerate the series development, and announced a luxury-class SUV with fuel cell as the first Audi small series from the beginning of the next decade, ie from about 2021. Hans-Joachim Rothenpieler, Development Board in Ingolstadt, also confirmed at the beginning of July (2019) that Audi is working intensively on fuel cell hybrids. "The combination of hydrogen and battery electric drive is an interesting option for large cars that are used on long distances - about 600 to 800 kilometers".
The combination could be more or less hybrid designed: A battery needs each fuel cell car to cache the hydrogen generated electricity. But enough for less than 5 kWh. Larger batteries can serve as in the Mercedes GLC F-Cell to drive purely electric and then recharge them on the grid - so that would be fuel cell hybrids in most user profiles for the vast majority of time like an e-car on the road, the fuel cell would be used only on longer distances.
It would also be conceivable, however, to always put the fuel cell into operation while driving and to take the energy for the engine out of the battery, because it can cope better with the spontaneous power requirements for brisk acceleration maneuvers. And every intermediate stage is also conceivable, depending on the size of the battery. The larger the battery, the more the vehicle can recuperate (generate electricity with excess kinetic energy).
A plugin hybrid, which is as much as possible with mains power in the battery, carries the expensive fuel cell technology most of the time for free. If only the fuel cell charges the battery, the losses in power generation are accepted at any time during operation.
CONCLUSION
From "either or" (battery-electric vs. fuel-cell), in the future more and more will become "both and" - in the same vehicle type, but not all. Accordingly, in the future there could be purely battery-powered cars for shorter distances and travel or commercial vehicles, which also have a fuel cell on board. The concept could also change in the future - from plug-in hybrids that use hydrogen only for longer distances or fuel cell cars that need the smallest batteries for buffering and recuperation. In between are vehicles that use batteries in the size of today's plug-in hybrid models (about 15 kWh) as a fast, powerful power supply and supply this mainly with the fuel cell. They should drive like BEV, but could refuel like cars with combustion engine today.
Audi develops within the Volkswagen Group on the fuel cell drive, VW on a scalable construction kit (MPE) for it, based on the luxury travel cars larger than today's Passat, but can also be based on commercial vehicles. While the first models will be rolled out on the premium platform Electric (PPE) 2023 jointly developed by Audi and Porsche, MPE cars are expected to be available from 2030 onwards
Should we use hydrogen in the future?
Definitely! The fuel cell combines potentially CO2-free driving and range for refueling.