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Today, nearly half of the world population lives in urban areas. As the world population continues to migrate to urban areas for increased economic opportunities, addressing personal mobility challenges such as air pollution, Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) and traffic congestion in these regions will become even a greater challenge especially in rapidly growing nations. Road transportation is a major source of air pollution in urban areas causing numerous health concerns. Improvements in automobile technology over the past several decades have resulted in reducing conventional vehicle tailpipe emissions to exceptionally low levels. This transformation has been attained mainly through advancements in engine and transmission technologies and through partial electrification of vehicles. However, the technological advancements made so far alone will not be able to mitigate the issues due to increasing GHGs and air pollution in urban areas.

Hydrogen is viewed by many as the most promising fuel for light-duty vehicles (LDVs) for the future. Hydrogen can be produced through a large number of pathways and from many feedstocks (both fossil and renewable). A key issue in evaluating the sustainability of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is an analysis of the processes employed to produce the hydrogen and the efficiency of its use in the vehicle, the ‘well-to-wheel’ (WTW) activities. Several recent WTW studies, which include conventional as well as alternative fuel/propulsion system LDVs, are examined and compared. One potentially attractive renewable feedstock for hydrogen is biomass. A biomass to hydrogen pathway and its use in a FCV has only recently been included in WTW studies.