Fuel cell electric scooter: Comparison between a hydrogen direct and a methanol hybrid architecture

This article presents two architectures for a fuel cell electric scooter. One architecture where the scooter is supplied by a hydrogen supplied fuel cell and one architecture where the energy supply is obtained by a combination of a fuel cell including a methanol reformer and a battery. Both architectures are realized using industrially available systems. The experimental results and the modeling show advantages for both architectures that the methanol supplied fuel cell battery hybrid scooter consumes less fuel. However, the methanol reformer needs considerable time to heat up and the system architecture is more complex.