Status of NHTSA’s hydrogen and fuel cell vehicle safety research program

Hennessey, Barbara C.; Nguyen, Nha T.

Affiliations

¹National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, USA

Abstract

The FreedomCAR and Fuel Initiative is a cooperative automotive research partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Council for Automotive Research (USCAR), and fuel suppliers. It was initiated in 2002 as part of the President’s goal to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, improve vehicle efficiency, reduce emissions, and make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) a practical and cost-effective choice for large numbers of Americans by 2020.

Following the announcement of the FreedomCAR program, NHTSA began collecting information on the status of hydrogen vehicle technology and drafting a research plan to address the impact of fuel cell and hydrogen fuel systems on vehicle safety. In 2004 NHTSA published the plan in the Federal Register for public comment and issued a voluntary request to manufacturers asking them to provide written information on their strategies to ensure that hydrogen fueled vehicles attain a level of safety comparable to that of conventionally fueled vehicles [1]. Additionally, NHTSA published an updated version of this plan for the 19th Enhanced Safety of Vehicles Conference [2].

Funding to initiate NHTSA’s hydrogen safety research program was not made available until 2006. This paper provides a status report on several projects assessing hydrogen fuel system safety that were initiated that year, and the follow-on work that will be conducted in 2007.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv20/07-0046-O.pdf

Cited Works (1)

Year	Entry
2005	Hennessey B, Hammel-Smith C, Koubek M. NHTSA’s four-year plan for hydrogen, fuel cell and alternative fuel vehicle safety research. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 6-9, 2005; Washington, DC.

Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
2009	Hennessey B, Nguyen N. Status of NHTSA’s hydrogen and fuel cell vehicle safety research program. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.