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Fuel cell and battery electric powertrains are maturing zero-emission technologies expected to complement each other in the future. At present, battery electric powertrains have emerged competitive for urban light-duty transportation while fuel cell powertrains have emerged competitive in heavy-duty commercial transportation, alongside conventional internal combustion engine propulsion. This paper assesses the benefit for fuel cell powertrains in off-road vehicles, taking into account current and target industry data for powertrain components. Specific emphasis is placed on three important aspects, namely driving range, vehicle weight, and vehicle cost. A model-based design approach is then adopted to size the powertrain to meet a set of performance requirements.

During the last years, fuel-cell-based powertrains have been attracting a lot of attention from commercial vehicle manufacturers for reducing vehicle-related Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Compared to Battery-Electric Vehicles (BEV), fuel-cell-based powertrains has the strong advantage of dealing with range-anxiety, which is crucial for commercial vehicle with high duty-cycle energy requirements. Amongst the different fuel-cell types, Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel-Cells (PEMFC) have the greatest potential for utilization in automotive applications, due to their relatively high technical readiness, market availability and utilization of hydrogen (H2) fuel. In addition, Solid Oxide Fuel-Cells (SOFC) show good potential due to existing re-fueling infrastructure for light hydrocarbon fuels or heavier hydrocarbon fuels (e.g. diesel).

This paper introduces a new method for driving style identification based on vehicle communication signals. The purpose of this method is to classify a trip, driven in a vehicle, into three driving style categories: calm, normal or aggressive. The trip is classified based on the vehicle class, the type of road it was driven on (urban, rural or motorway) and different types of driving events (launch, accelerating and braking). A representative set of parameters, selected to take into consideration every part of the driver-vehicle interaction, is associated to each of these events. Due to the usage of communication signals, influence factors, other than vehicle speed and acceleration (e.g. steering angle or pedals position), can be considered to determine the level of aggressiveness on the trip. The conversion of the parameters from physical values to dimensionless score is based on conversion maps that consider the road and vehicle types.