Stellantide it announced last April that it would also launch a variant Fuel cell of its electric vans, and we discover that production has started, and that a first customer already has the new utility vehicle in hand. The first to hit the market Opel Vivaro-e Hydrogen, clearly derived from the electric Vivaro-e. From the same factory Vauxhall special vehicles will also release the Citron and Peugeot twins, i.e. – Hopping Hydrogen And Hydrogen e-Expert.
The new vehicle series is both traditional and innovative. When fueled with hydrogen, the Vivaro-e Hydrogen generates electricity through the fuel tanks, to then move a normal electric motor, which is the same that we see in many vehicles of the Group, with 100 kW of power. The hydrogen cylinders are placed in the ground, where the battery would normally be, so the system does not affect the charging capacity, which remains 5.3 and 6.1 cubic meters, depending on the length, M or L .
The buffer battery withstands power peaks of over 90 kW and is located behind the seats. Here, however, Stellantis has introduced a great novelty, namely being able to recharge the capacity of 10.5 kWh also from an external source, from a column or from a domestic socket, as with a normal electric vehicle, via the on-board 11 kW AC charger. There is therefore 50 km of autonomy which is added to the 400 given by the fuel cells.
In fact, the Opel Vivaro-e Hydrogen and its twins are plug-in fuel cell electric vehicles (PFCEV), a family virtually new to the market, and can rely on the hydrogen supply network and the electric charging network.
The first customer to receive the new Miele vehicle, who uses it in an area where there are several distributors of the precious gas: there are four H2 filling stations in Frankfurt, plus one in Wiesbaden, Bad Homburg and Darmstadt.