Nicolas Pocard's guest appearances

Nicolas Pocard

Fueling the Future of Transport Podcast

Everything About Hydrogen

Future of Mobility

Kelly Senecal

Chris Thomas

William Santana Li

Andy Smart

Craig Scott

Paul Comfort

Johnson Matthey

Mark Thomas

Jim Adler

Ed Olson

Ashley Nunes

Ryan Duffy

Ian Adams

Sam French

Jeff Wood

OwlTail

Nicolas Pocard is Director of Marketing &amp; Strategy at Ballard Power Systems, a developer and manufacturer of PEM fuel cell products for markets such as heavy-duty motive, portable power, and material handling. Music credit: Slow Burn Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Nicolas Pocard is Director of Marketing &amp; Strategy at Ballard Power Systems, a developer and manufacturer of PEM fuel cell products for markets such as heavy-duty motive, portable power, and material handling. Music credit: Slow Burn Kevin MacLeod (<a href="http://incompetech.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">incompetech.com</a>) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

#14 - Nicolas Pocard | Ballard - Fuel Cells for Heavy Duty Applications

On this episode of the Fueling the Future podcast, I spoke with Nicolas Pocard, Director of Marketing for Ballard Power Systems, about the future of hydrogen. Following is an excerpt from our discussion, which you can download below or listen to in ITunes. On Why Fuel Cells Are the Sweet Spot for Decarbonizing the Heavy-Duty Fleet: “If you think about a truck or a bus, a transit bus, they are on the road much more often and for longer period of time and covering longer distances than most passenger cars. These vehicles are heavier so they need more energy to move, they operate long hours covering very long distances, therefore they need a lot of energy. And using hydrogen as a very dense energy source and a fuel cell as a generator of electricity as needed by the vehicle is very beneficial for what we call this group of vehicles like buses and trucks and rail and marine where you need a lot of energy.   That’s really where fuel cell delivers today the best value proposition. And this is driven by the operation requirements of those vehicles. Fuel cells will enable the vehicle to have an extended range, so it can operate, for instance,on one refuel of hydrogen for 350 miles. There is no compromise on payload because hydrogen is very light compared to batteries. If you want to do a battery bus or battery truck, you need to put a lot of batteries, a lot of weight on the vehicle in order to accommodate the operational requirement. But that comes as a compromise with the payload, passengers or goods that you are transporting in a vehicle, so that’s one of the issues on those vehicles.   Secondly, the refueling time is very key. Whenever you have a battery vehicle, especially a large battery vehicle, it takes several hours to recharge this battery, where hydrogen takes only five to ten minutes to refuel. If you think about the asset utilization if you use a bus or a truck, which needs to be on the road as much as possible because you want to do two shifts or three shifts, then hydrogen provides a really big advantage in terms of that utilization and very quick refueling.   And, lastly, it’s all about the scalability. If you look at a very large fleet of vehicles like buses and trucks coming back to a single depot where they need to be refueled within a short amount of time, within a limited space, hydrogen provides that scalability. It’s very compact. You have one refueling infrastructure, like today a petrol station, where a vehicle can come up, refuel in 10 minutes, get parked, the next vehicle comes up, refuels, and then when there is a need for it to be used, maybe in one or two hours later, they can go back on the road and go for 350 miles, 400 miles, without any need of roadside recharging during the duty cycle.   So we really see that as a sweet spot for fuel cells, those type of vehicles, heavy-duty vehicles operating on difficult long-duty cycles. This is where fuel cells will deliver the most value to the customer and to the vehicle operators.” The post #44. Nicolas Pocard: Fuel Cells Are the Sweet Spot for Heavy-Duty Vehicles appeared first on Transport Energy Strategies.

On this episode of the Fueling the Future podcast, I spoke with <a href="https://blog.ballard.com/author/nicolas-pocard" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nicolas Pocard</a>, Director of Marketing for <a href="http://ballard.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ballard Power Systems</a>, about the future of hydrogen. Following is an excerpt from our discussion, which you can download below or listen to in ITunes. <h4>On Why Fuel Cells Are the Sweet Spot for Decarbonizing the Heavy-Duty Fleet:</h4> <blockquote>“If you think about a truck or a bus, a transit bus, they are on the road much more often and for longer period of time and covering longer distances than most passenger cars. These vehicles are heavier so they need more energy to move, they operate long hours covering very long distances, therefore they need a lot of energy. And using hydrogen as a very dense energy source and a fuel cell as a generator of electricity as needed by the vehicle is very beneficial for what we call this group of vehicles like buses and trucks and rail and marine where you need a lot of energy. That’s really where fuel cell delivers today the best value proposition. And this is driven by the operation requirements of those vehicles. Fuel cells will enable the vehicle to have an extended range, so it can operate, for instance,on one refuel of hydrogen for 350 miles. There is no compromise on payload because hydrogen is very light compared to batteries. If you want to do a battery bus or battery truck, you need to put a lot of batteries, a lot of weight on the vehicle in order to accommodate the operational requirement. But that comes as a compromise with the payload, passengers or goods that you are transporting in a vehicle, so that’s one of the issues on those vehicles. Secondly, the refueling time is very key. Whenever you have a battery vehicle, especially a large battery vehicle, it takes several hours to recharge this battery, where hydrogen takes only five to ten minutes to refuel. If you think about the asset utilization if you use a bus or a truck, which needs to be on the road as much as possible because you want to do two shifts or three shifts, then hydrogen provides a really big advantage in terms of that utilization and very quick refueling. And, lastly, it’s all about the scalability. If you look at a very large fleet of vehicles like buses and trucks coming back to a single depot where they need to be refueled within a short amount of time, within a limited space, hydrogen provides that scalability. It’s very compact. You have one refueling infrastructure, like today a petrol station, where a vehicle can come up, refuel in 10 minutes, get parked, the next vehicle comes up, refuels, and then when there is a need for it to be used, maybe in one or two hours later, they can go back on the road and go for 350 miles, 400 miles, without any need of roadside recharging during the duty cycle. So we really see that as a sweet spot for fuel cells, those type of vehicles, heavy-duty vehicles operating on difficult long-duty cycles. This is where fuel cells will deliver the most value to the customer and to the vehicle operators.”</blockquote> The post <a href="https://www.transportenergystrategies.com/2019/10/31/nicolas-pocard-fuel-cells-are-the-sweet-spot-for-heavy-duty-vehicles/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">#44. Nicolas Pocard: Fuel Cells Are the Sweet Spot for Heavy-Duty Vehicles</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.transportenergystrategies.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Transport Energy Strategies</a>.

#44. Nicolas Pocard: Fuel Cells Are the Sweet Spot for Heavy-Duty Vehicles

For this episode we have focused mostly on the growing fuel cell landscape and its history. There are two excellent resources for people wanting an overview on this sector. The first is the US DOE, who have compiled annual reports on the sectors progress for over a decade: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fuel-cell-technologies-office Who manufactures fuel cells and what types? A list of 12 manufacturers and their technologies: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomkonrad/2013/12/11/twelve-hydrogen-and-fuel-cell-stocks/#11ece79d1b79 China’s fuel cell focus and who is getting involved:https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/chinas-production-of-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-grows-27-in-2018/https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobile/Toyota-lands-supply-deals-for-fuel-cell-buses-in-China The other is a leading fuel cell consultancy called E4Tech, who have consistently published among the most detailed overviews of global hydrogen and fuel cell projects: http://www.fuelcellindustryreview.com/ There are also some great resources available about Ballards latest projects, sustainability and how their systems work. A few links are below:https://blog.ballard.com/fuel-cell-trainshttps://blog.ballard.com/fcmove-fuel-cell-modulehttps://blog.ballard.com/bipolar-plates  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For this episode we have focused mostly on the growing fuel cell landscape and its history. There are two excellent resources for people wanting an overview on this sector. The first is the US DOE, who have compiled annual reports on the sectors progress for over a decade: <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fuel-cell-technologies-office" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fuel-cell-technologies-office</a> Who manufactures fuel cells and what types? A list of 12 manufacturers and their technologies: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomkonrad/2013/12/11/twelve-hydrogen-and-fuel-cell-stocks/#11ece79d1b79" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomkonrad/2013/12/11/twelve-hydrogen-and-fuel-cell-stocks/#11ece79d1b79</a> China’s fuel cell focus and who is getting involved:<a href="https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/chinas-production-of-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-grows-27-in-2018/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/chinas-production-of-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-grows-27-in-2018/</a><a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobile/Toyota-lands-supply-deals-for-fuel-cell-buses-in-China" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobile/Toyota-lands-supply-deals-for-fuel-cell-buses-in-China</a> The other is a leading fuel cell consultancy called E4Tech, who have consistently published among the most detailed overviews of global hydrogen and fuel cell projects: <a href="http://www.fuelcellindustryreview.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.fuelcellindustryreview.com/</a> There are also some great resources available about Ballards latest projects, sustainability and how their systems work. A few links are below:<a href="https://blog.ballard.com/fuel-cell-trains" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://blog.ballard.com/fuel-cell-trains</a><a href="https://blog.ballard.com/fcmove-fuel-cell-module" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://blog.ballard.com/fcmove-fuel-cell-module</a><a href="https://blog.ballard.com/bipolar-plates" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://blog.ballard.com/bipolar-plates</a> See <a href="https://acast.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.

Why the fuel cell world is different this time - Nicolas Pocard on Ballard and the re-emergence of fuel cells