In 2000 the transit authorities in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Porto, Stockholm and Stuttgart decided to participate in a joint fuel cell bus and hydrogen fleet test to significantly enhance the development of Clean Urban Transport for Europe – CUTE. They joined with leading infrastructure companies such as BP, Norsk Hydro, Shell and Vattenfall, and with DaimlerChrysler and its bus subsidiary Evobus. Some months earlier the project ECTOS has been decided which dealt with 3 Fuel Cell Buses in the city of Reykjavik. In 2003 STEP joint this project group in order to strengthen the hydrogen and fuel cell activities in Australia.

These Projects finished in May 2006 and the results are impressive. CUTE, ECTOS and STEP have been a great success leading to a prolongation of the demonstration phase in 8 cities by one more year as part of the EU funded project HyFLEET:CUTE. The fuel cell buses and some aspects of the hydrogen infrastructure gave surprisingly high levels of availability during the 3 years of operation. The projects also demonstrated that the vision of a future transportation system based on fuel cells and hydrogen can become a reality when all the optimisation potentials identified in CUTE, but also in ECTOS and in STEP are realised and transferred into future products. Consequently another core activity of the HyFLEET:CUTE project is the development and demonstration of the next generation FC bus with hybridisation.

More than 6 Million passengers were transported and directly experienced fuel cells. This extraordinary level of exposure is far greater than all other fuel cell projects currently running added together.

The distance driven and the number of operating hours of the bus fleet are perhaps the most impressive figures from the four projects. They document the huge step forward that was taken in the fuel cell bus trials with regard to the lifetime and durability of the Fuel Cell system. Never before has a hydrogen technology project demonstrated such an outstanding operation success. Buses driven by regular bus drivers in regular traffic under normal operating conditions completed a distance of more than 42 times around the globe, producing a wealth of data and building a vast pool of experiences.

The presentation will handle these results but also will deal with some of the optimisation potentials which have been identified.