Fuel-Cell Powered Personal Transporters
Each day future of mobility looks less and less like the automobile – old concept of moving a few tons of steel to carry one or two people is far from optimal, and in the age of global warming, eco-friendly transportation is becoming hot topic. Analytics already voiced expectations that market for short-distance, one and two person transport vehicles will emerge very soon (by 2009), and we speculate that first design units to accommodate this new market, are being developed today under electric wheelchair tag…
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Recently we saw plethora of electric wheelchairs with a fuel cell unit, and here we are reviewing five of them… The most coverage definitely got Suzuki's MIO concept, which was based on Suzuki's previous electric wheelchair "Senior Car" operable with a handlebar, but is now a motor driven wheelchair that runs on electricity produced by fuel cell unit. MIO is told to be user-friendly and also boasts a longer travel range compared to existing electric wheelchairs with a lead-acid battery. MIO's fuel cell unit employs a direct methanol that directly supplies methanol to the cell for hydrogen reaction along with a large-capacity Li-ion secondary battery. The hybrid wheelchair can run 40 km (25 miles) or more with one recharge of methanol (4 liters), and allows easier handling because there is no need to recharge from the mains power source as with electric wheelchairs, and at the same time offers user more information thru LCD display with information on remaining fuel, power generation state… Details on the fuel cell unit and the Li-ion secondary battery were detained, as Suzuki marked MIO as a prototype. This could mean that MIO still has many problems or that